Myers and Carvey bring a lot of goofy, adolescent charm to the party, but not enough to save an idea that's grown stale. [10 Dec 1993, p.C3]

If only the explanation and resolution of the action were more compelling, Dark Water might have been a thriller of the first order.

The role of Kate, a spunky but romantically unfulfilled marketing expert, seems made for Ryan. Unfortunately, Ryan no longer seems made for it.

The film is always at least mildly interesting, because international arms dealing is a fairly compelling issue, but it's never as informative as a good documentary nor as engrossing as a good narrative. It's a hybrid that's frustrating in two distinct ways.

Doesn't transcend the yawner template of coming-out films.

A decent-looking and harmless computer animated film that is notable mostly because it doesn't appear to contain a single original idea.

The King’s Daughter has a script that reads like it was written in crayon, by someone using only their thumbs. But two good performances make the film watchable: Pierce Brosnan as King Louis XIV and William Hurt as his adviser and confessor, Pere Francois de La Chaise.

Most of Last Christmas consists of watching this young woman stumble and fumble through life, and thanks to Clarke’s effortless ability to engage a viewer’s sympathy, that’s almost enough.

By the time we reach the unsatisfying cliffhanger ending, there’s little to look forward to.

Jefferson in Paris is dull, sluggish and unfocused.

The premise of The Proposal is one big cliche.

The least offensive teen movie in ages.

With most movies, the question for viewers is: Who should see it? With Project X, the most pressing issue is: Who shouldn't see it?

To be sure, Big Pharma execs make for natural movie villains these days, but this story could have used a tad more subtlety, something that was in short supply here.

As Kaiulani's story, it falls flat, having collapsed under the weight of the genre's mushier conventions. There are too many swooping violins, too many trite generalizations, too few moments that throw a light on history and turn it into art.

Although Jones and Pearce are interesting when onscreen alone, their chemistry is slightly off.

A frustrating film that feels cobbled together.

Two Night Stand has its moments. But moments are all this movie has — and all its characters are likely to get.

The second-half of Burning is allegorical and intentionally obtuse. It’s intriguing, even. But it all leads to an ending that satisfies no one, especially after 2½ hours.

Neither does it help that, despite the wit and literacy of Enough Sad, its form is straight out of a teen romance: A cool kid starts dating someone less cool, and then engages in some elaborate deception that, if found out, will threaten the progress of young love. The funny thing is, if Enough Said were converted wholesale into a high school romance, the characters' behavior might ring more true.

About as loony and soapy as a movie can get. In other words, it's about as loony and soapy as the novel, and I say this as one who obsessively consumed all four installments in Stephenie Meyer's mega-selling series.

Too lackluster to be praised highly, yet too benign to be excoriated, “Rock Dog” is the perfect family film for a rainy day with no other options. It does not deserve mention in any animation history book; and yet it’s completely satisfactory in the moment.

The film's aim -- to dazzle and inspire -- is sapped by Cruise's vein-popping, running-the-marathon performance.

It’s hard to dislike a film where almost every character, no matter how small, brings something to the screen, and because of that, Wilson World is worth inhabiting for a few hours.

There is a built-in pleasure in seeing Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen, Jane Fonda and Mary Steenburgen in the same movie. We’re used to them. We like them. We like being around them — but not so much that we can’t notice that Book Club is a pretty strained affair, not especially funny and weirdly off key.

The result is a movie that one watches with the sense of pushing it up a hill.

Offers some memorable stories, but it simply tries too hard.

An elegant-looking picture, carefully made and beautifully put together, but when the gloss wears off, you're left with an experience that doesn’t quite satisfy. [5 Oct 1990, Daily Datebook, E10]

It could have been something special, but two things drag it down to mediocrity -- director Clare Peploe's misunderstanding of Marivaux's rhythms, and Mira Sorvino's limitations as a classical actress.

Too labored and cliched to incite passion in an audience.

After a promising opening, with Jason on a rampage and a cold, peculiar bounty hunter (Steven Williams) on Jason's trail, Jason Goes to Hell switches focus midway to the young couple, and from there things go downhill. Still, the film has its moments. [14 Aug 1993, p.F1]

In the Blink of an Eye proves yet again that Stanton is a dreamer, with an unshakeable faith in humanity. That’s not nothing.

At times, the story seems like a side-show, and at other times, the serious information just seems discordant. However, to the movie’s credit, none of it is boring.

You know what? The whole thing is harmless.

It's not a terrible movie, just a disappointingly pleasant one.

It’s competently made but boring — and desperate.

Suffice to say that McNeil plays it way too safe. Trying to have it both ways, he satisfies no one.

Like its protagonist, Ceremony is as smart as it is exasperating.

A film one watches at an emotional remove, but from that distance there are sights and moments to appreciate.

Cold Comfort Farm may be hysterically funny to regular readers of Hardy, Lawrence, Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, but it won't ring many bells for the rest of us.

In making the movie, writer-director John Ridley had to negotiate with the Hendrix legend — that is, reality had to accommodate audience expectation. In that sense, Jimi: All Is by My Side does a reasonable job.

The premise of Jason X is silly but strangely believable.

The movie tries to make up for its lack of propulsion through various means, with mixed results.

Benefits from Smith and Lawrence's chemistry. As long as they're on screen together, things breeze along. But when they're apart, the movie flounders.

Perhaps because Jenkins can’t translate to the screen the incisiveness and music of Baldwin’s prose, he brings on real music from other sources. Over and over, and increasingly as the movie wears on, Jenkins drowns his film in mirthless jazz and pop interludes to the point that the action feels stuck in cement.

It’s obvious that this is a well-intentioned, sensitive labor of love, and Hooper’s strategy of keeping it safe is bound to bring in folks who might otherwise avoid such material. For the rest of us, we must settle for a film that is solid but never quite soars.

Well, there’s one way for a biopic about a self-loathing, self-aggrandizing, self-pitying and self-involved music star seem different: Make him an ape.

If there's a revelation to be gleaned from these youthful entries, it's that much of what made Hitchcock great was there from the beginning. [18 Feb 2007, p.26]

Clocking in at 105 minutes, Love Don't Cost a Thing drags for stretches. The nicest thing about most standardized teen movies is their brevity. When we all know where it's going, it shouldn't take so long to get there.

The results may be sports-movie predictable in many ways, but the Mighty Mites’ impossible story is one deserving of resurrection from the dusty archives of Texas history.

Isn’t bad, but it seems unnecessary. It’s even a little bland.

At the very least the film can be congratulated for being anarchic enough to explore an attraction between the two oldest Brady kids, Marcia and Greg.

It's an interesting spectacle, but not enough to carry a movie.

One must be very, very, very, very, very interested in Yorkshire, circa 1980, to embrace and enjoy The Red Riding Trilogy. And yet ... there is something to be said for an enterprise this specific and uncompromising.

Despite most everything else in the movie being predictable, Bray’s mystery is hard to guess.

Director Sidney Lumet takes another shot at New York City police corruption in his new film, but despite some solid performances, Night Falls on Manhattan fails to deliver the passion of such Lumet classics as "Serpico" and "Prince of the City."

The movie's gimmick for airing the contents of a woman's head is not unlike that used for the dogs and tots in those "Look Who's Talking" movies.

Exhilarating but blatantly biased.

A Cinderella story with star appeal going for it and everything else against it.

Entertaining, but it's about one notch below being something anybody really needs to see.

Your heart will go out to Shlain, who clearly adored her father. But other parts of Connected may remind you of an Al Gore lecture.

It would have been enough that Singleton raise these difficult questions without trying to wrap them up, too, in the last five minutes.

With In the Heart of the Sea, director Ron Howard has given us a painstakingly crafted bore, a lovingly rendered snooze, and a very expensive means by which audiences can experience restless leg syndrome before being carted off to the land of happy slumber.

A relentlessly earnest teen film.

Joy never completely loses its way. But it almost does, and it never quite arrives.

If you’re looking for scenes of big, awful creatures fighting each other and knocking over skyscrapers — and for the spectacle of people scurrying below, running from the huge stomping feet — you will find little to dislike in Godzilla vs. Kong. It does its job. It’s a monster movie.

The terseness of Hosseini's prose has been replaced by the sentimentality of the director's approach.

Ting’s conceptually solid film is briskly paced, and its heart is in the right place. With a more fine-tuned screenplay, it could have been better than a serviceable movie.

A silly Hong Kong action flick from actor-turned-director Corey Yuen, fits nicely in the "bimbo fu" genre.

The story is too slender for its two-hour running time, and the pace is lugubrious, as though everyone in front and behind the camera were depressed. But the biggest obstacle is the protagonist (Joaquin Phoenix), who is almost without definition.

Really doesn't pay off much.

A little like spending the holidays with strangers. The spirits are high, the relationships are warm, the personal stories have a shared history, and even though you're on the outside of things, you appreciate the people in a remote and perhaps admiring sort of way. Still, when it's time to leave, you're not sorry.

It's merely adequate, with one riveting element but limited chills.

The most notable thing about Hop is its technical perfection. It puts live action and animation into the same frame so seamlessly that the filmmakers might easily not get credit for it.

The picture never comes out from under the weight of its dreariness, despite fine acting, foot chases and conspiracy theories galore.

The main problem with "Pretty in Pink" today is simply that the entire section involving Jon Cryer, as Ringwald's pompadour-wearing best friend, is excruciating to watch. It must have been equally excruciating to perform. Basically, any time Cryer is onscreen, the story ceases to advance. He is there as comic relief only - or comic filler - but there's nothing funny about either the role or the performance. Still, there's a really good, perceptive 50-minute teenage story buried in this 96-minute movie. And a pretty good time capsule, besides.

The narrative doesn’t generate much interest; the nature of the ultimate ending is discernible from a distance, and the movie’s message about nature and the natural order seems forced. Still, there’s a lot here that’s impressive. Lamb is too vivid and original to forget.

It Chapter Two is a messier production that barely seems coherent even with the first film as a primer.

Writer-director Michael Tully simultaneously pays tribute to his own 1980s childhood and the cliched movies he grew up watching, and the result is one of the most honestly dishonest movies you'll ever watch.

A ridiculous teen horror movie that piles on more than enough dry humor and freshly moistened gore to satisfy its lowbrow audience.

This is a bad film by a good filmmaker. It has the veneer of substantiality, but it’s unsubstantial. It is the product of sincere conviction and artistic confidence, but both were misguided. Every filmmaker needs to take the occasional chance, as Christopher Nolan did with “Tenet.” Not all chances pay off.

While there's enough to keep the viewer sort of interested and amused, ultimately the whole affair is a trip to nowhere with characters who are more caricature than real. [29 Sep 1990, p.C3]

Stewart’s impact is evident within the first hour of “Martha.” That’s a good thing, because the younger audience this film might be targeting lacks the patience for another hour of Cutler’s photo parade, no matter how extraordinary his subject.

Rodman can't act, but his outsized personality fits right in. Van Damme, as always, does his job and looks good doing it. As for Rourke, he's taken the first step. Now he just needs to rinse and repeat.

As a movie about mental illness, Silver Linings Playbook is more lightweight than lighthearted. But thanks to Lawrence, it does one good thing most movies don't do. It actually gets better as it goes along.

Without peril, The Phantom can only get by on dazzle, and there's not quite enough of that to hold interest -- unless you're 8 years old and seeing dazzle for the first time.

Grudge Match at its core is an affront to the cinema gods, an attempt to capitalize off two iconic films for a few cheap laughs.

Offers a lively but jumbled insider's view of a world of great talent and greater risk.

The movie is hampered throughout by little inconsistencies.

Fascinating context but awkwardly told.

Strains through buckets of verbiage and muddled plot to seize only a few dopey laughs.

The problem with Birth of the Dragon, George Nolfi’s largely fictionalized account of a 1964 fight between an Oakland martial arts instructor named Bruce Lee and San Francisco instructor Wong Jack Man is that Lee...is the third-most important character in the film.

But let’s be fair: If this were the first cop movie ever made, we’d be grateful for it. It holds interest. It’s never quite boring. And there are worse things you can do with your time than watch Boseman, Miller and Simmons for an hour and a half. Just know that 21 Bridges is the kind of movie you’ll forget five minutes after seeing it.

This film is the equivalent of your third or fourth favorite present on any given holiday. It will entertain a few children in the moment, satisfy a few adults who are barely paying attention, then quickly be forgotten.

It is never less than interesting. But who wants interesting from a movie called Cats & Dogs? It needs to grab the audience by the scruff of the neck and shake it.

Isn't likely to win Murphy another Oscar nomination, but it allows him to do what he does best - loads of physical comedy.

Its slow-boiling brew of dread turns out to be more tepid than terrifying.

The enormous, make-or-break things are perfectly in place, and just that is enough for a reasonably enjoyable movie. But plot problems, some comically weak dialogue, repetitious scenes and a non-ending ending keep the experience a little more earthbound than it had to be.