It's a knock-off of every science-gone-too-far cautionary tale since Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein." The Lawnmower Man, for all of its au courant use of virtual reality, is alarmingly similar to a creepy '60s episode of TV's "The Outer Limits."

But this soggy, sentimental tour through a rural dreamworld of salt-of- the-earth versus supercharged intelligence never quite gets deep enough to touch the soul -- or to make sense.

What a waste of a great comedian. What demented casting.

The real issue is that everything about Adam’s journey feels half digested and tossed back up. We’ve seen it before. It was better the first time.

Anyone who prefers Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock to Ralph Fiennes and Jennifer Lopez is bound to regard Two Weeks Notice and not "Maid in Manhattan" as the better candidate for romantic comedy of the season.

If it doesn't always come off, enough headlong energy develops to carry it through.

This is a monster movie -- 92 minutes, lots of action, lots of green legs stomping, get in, get out.

It falls short where it counts: In the final confrontation.

Sometimes the movie is a little too slick. Some of the characters, such as Sean’s girlfriend (Jacqueline Byers) and the FBI agents who begin to believe Sean’s story, are underdeveloped. But Tennant, excellent as a creep, and Sheehan, who is appealing in his helplessness, provide the necessary depth.

The gentle spirit of Wild Mountain Thyme envelops us early, to the extent that, midway through, even though there is very little left to resolve, we are in its spell.

Cave, who gained notice with much-lauded Hulu feminist horror film “Fresh” (2022), is too busy condescending to her characters to be invested in what happens to them.

If your tolerance for Branagh's shtick and Woody's narrowness of focus is as low as mine, you can take solace in the director's joke on himself.

Belushi is profoundly unfunny. Opportunities are provided for him to do shtick -- running amok in the jacuzzi, drooling over a pretty girl -- and it's like watching a form of communication from an alien civilization. What is he doing up there? [17 Aug 1990, p.E11]

Has a certain slow, mechanical quality.

Heartfelt but interminable movie.

Does what good horror movies do: It taps into the baser emotions.

Plays like the cinematic equivalent of a paperback bodice- ripper with embossed type.

The lead actors on both sides of the vampire divide are all strong personalities.

Before it degenerates into a complete mess, it's an entertaining mess, and something about its willingness to please maintains the audience's goodwill throughout.

The pleasures are intermittent but can be located: Jennifer Coolidge, as Jane's travel companion, is funny even when the script isn't, and Feild is a nice stand-in for Colin Firth in the Austen hero department.

There are barrages of fast cuts to distract us from the fact that the director is showing us no real action.

The narrative is clumsy, and the monster scenes are ridiculous, but not ridiculous enough to be funny, just ridiculous enough to be boring.

The film holds no surprises. It's strictly by the book, uninspired and only vaguely sincere. But Michael J. Fox is not by the book; he is always genuine. Fox's charm, his comic ease and his genuine good acting manage to keep this mediocre ''vehicle'' afloat, scene by scene, to the end. I believed he was in love with the girl, even though I couldn't figure out why. [1 Oct 1993, p.C3]

A Journal for Jordan...is such a sweetly, well-intentioned film — one meant to bring a Christmastime lump in the throat in a year that gave us so many lumps of coal — that it feels churlish and downright Scrooge-like to point out its flaws. But the subject matter deserves better than this overlong melodrama spiked with occasional moments of welcome humor and pathos.

It's a stoner movie all the way, with much deep thought but little active conflict.

The bloodshed is somewhat less gory than in many slasher films -- with stress on the "somewhat." [26 Sep 2004]

As a movie, Spinning Gold is a clumsy effort with a lot wrong with it, except for the real-life story, which never stops being interesting.

Emotionally false.

This is just plain bad - and it's a surprise.

The last half-hour of “Opus” is an unbearable slog, with an unsatisfying ending.

Holes in the script, overwrought camera work, dialogue that's embarrassing, and a plot device that's obvious 10 minutes into the movie - all these are major problems.

Could use script transfusion, or at least a few quarts of levity.

Mocking Tinseltown is a pretty exhausted subject, and even Jaglom, a genuine insider, has a hard time making it fresh.

Its urban devastation knows no peer. Robots smash into each other with steely ferocity, and the humans - well, they do a fine job providing comic relief.

For the first 20 minutes or so, Crazy People is lightweight but fun. Then the movie defies its own logic and falls apart. [11 Apr 1990, p.E1]

Instead of defining and spoofing its period, its attitude and its social barometer, Leave It to Beaver just stumbles about in a bland, irony-deprived suburbia that denies the movie any juice or bite and renders the Cleaver family even duller than it was.

Mildly caustic, sentimental and slow.

If there’s a weakness to the movie, it’s that, despite its gut-level appeal, it doesn’t dazzle us with anything brilliant or unexpected. However, there are some nifty turns here and there, so it’s not entirely mediocre.

The only thing scary about the new version is realizing that someone keeps giving director Jan De Bont money to make movies.

A movie for people who value heart and earnestness over technical filmmaking skill, and consider unpredictable plot turns a betrayal.

Relentlessly bland.

Some of the results are delightfully loopy. Some are cornball.

Nowhere near as bad as "Coneheads," but still isn't worth your time.

Instead of getting smirky and campy and blowing out the joke in the first few scenes, Grahame-Smith and director Timur Bekmambetov straight-face it. They ask themselves, well, what would it be like if the main struggle of Lincoln's life were with vampires intent on taking over the new world? And they answer the question as realistically and soberly as they can within this loony framework.

A two-hour nervous breakdown.

The first half is a lavish exaggeration of the original movie, with inventive turns and gimmicks and what at least passes for a real heart. And then -- all at once -- it begins to unravel. I don't know what happened. [22 June 1990, p.E1]

The remake of The Last House on the Left breaks the template, taking the 1972 original into an interesting new direction, with bold camera angles, good actors and a script that heaps on just as much character development as carnage.

Persuasion is a handsome film, but it doesn’t have much trust in its audience to think or feel for itself.

Fire in the Sky doesn't look like it had an expensive budget, but it uses what special effects it has to good effect, and the scenes of Travis on the space ship are genuinely scary. You stop asking, ''But did this really happen?'' -- not a bad question, actually -- and start imagining what it might have been like. [13 Mar 1993, p.C3]

It starts exploring different facets of its premise and transforms itself into a fairly competent suspense thriller. That's enough to make it respectable, but a few things keep Next from being lovable or memorable.

For all this, there is one unalloyed good thing to be said for High Tension. When all is said and done, it really does live up to its title. In every other way it's trash, but that truth-in-advertising aspect is a major weight to throw into the mix.

Maren’s direction is tonally right, full of warmth and touches of humor; he makes it an inviting film to watch.

Every last joke in the movie - verbal gags, visual gags, musical cues, camera moves - is crushingly literal.

What distinguishes Pattinson in the role is the sense he conveys of someone roiling and churning beneath a surface that is almost, but not quite, calm.

For golden retriever lovers, "Fluke" is a must-see. For everyone else, wait for the video.

Like many films that attempt to be inspiring, Heavyweights uses the sound track like a rubber hose to beat the audience into submission. The movie is so honest and good-natured that it's hard to stay mad at it for long. [18 Feb 1995, p.E1]

Nasty to women, cruel to old people and tosses in a cardboard gay couple for gratuitous laughs. It's also got one of those annoying soundtracks that lays rock music right over the dialogue -- as if it wanted to distract us from it.

If there’s a casualty in the sequel it’s Bell, who may be the funniest of the young actresses, but has the most limiting character, forced to repeatedly work a single my-mom-is-a-stalker joke.

Deadfall is dreadful -- pretentious story, bad acting, off-kilter direction, disgusting violence and irrelevant sex. [06 Dec 1993, p.D2]

It's both amazing and depressing how much talent goes to waste in the lame adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s 1973 absurdist novel.

It's beautifully shot by first-time feature director Antoine Fuqua, whose eye for sensual surfaces, deft camera moves and elegant framing was refined with commercials and music videos

It’s average. If you like this sort of movie, knock yourself out.

An often amusing but also an aimless and forgettable animated comedy that is noteworthy mostly for its random musical numbers and surprising amounts of violence.

While it's filled with quality actors, this James Bond tale for tweens feels like something you should be getting for free on television.

It's visually stunning, especially in scenes of the African countryside, and takes more risks than most independent films.

It could be considered an achievement that a full-length feature movie with a talented ensemble cast, led by Kristen Bell and Allison Janney, couldn’t create a single character that you would want to spend more than five minutes with, but there it is. Not even picturesque London can save this witless comedy.

The pleasures of Suburbicon are in the moment, and the moments fade before the next moment. There’s no build, just flashes of virtuosity — flashes ultimately in the service of nothing.

Kids probably will enjoy portions of Return to Oz, but at best, it's a mechanical movie that never finds a real heart to engage an audience. [21 Jun 1985, p.79]

Ritchie aspires to be a great British director, but his working his way through British icons — Sherlock Holmes wasn’t even safe — does no one any good. He just reduces them to his own vernacular, his own level, and he ends up revealing nothing about them and everything about his own narrow vision.

There’s nothing wrong with a big, dumb-as-dirt action flick. You’ve made some enjoyable ones over the years — the first “Transformers,” “Bad Boys” — but 6 Underground, a nonstop stunt reel with a few, admittedly impressive displays of your usual visual verve — is just “Fast & Furious” crossed with an old Whitesnake music video, but with fewer functioning brain cells.

Jackpot! involves a fight to the finish between the abundant charisma and likability of leads Awkwafina and John Cena and the impossible material they were given. The actors lose, because nobody could survive so many jokes based on groin kicks and bathroom humor or a movie premise as lacking in context as it is sky-high in concept.

This movie has a sweetness at its core.

Unlike the game, Clue doesn't take murder seriously. Writer-director Jonathan Lynn has made a campy non-thriller rather than laying down the mystery and then having fun with it; the comedy kills the plot.

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.

I found myself enjoying Lionheart, mostly because Van Damme is appealing and easy to root for. I like the steady, oddly unjudgmental look that crosses his face when he's about to beat someone to a pulp. [12 Jan 1991, p.C3]

If you see only one bad movie this year, definitely make it Knowing. The first major disappointment from director Alex Proyas is a disaster movie, a horror picture, a "Da Vinci Code"-style thriller and an end-of-days religious film all at once.

For a time, Journey 2 becomes a lost episode of "Lost," then it becomes "King Kong," minus the ape. Then it becomes a ukulele music video featuring the Rock's take on Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's "What a Wonderful World."

Depending on your tolerance for talking Chihuahuas, this could make for a fun family night out.

I had a migraine when I started watching Larry Crowne, and by the end, it went away. None of this quite adds up to a recommendation, but it's close. Very close.

Memorable enough.

Neeson also does a good job tracing his character’s cognitive deterioration over the course of the movie. As such, Memory is like a hybrid, mixing serious sections with Neeson’s usual action stuff. Call it a little bit of this and a little bit of that, or not enough of this and not enough of that.

Something to see and occasionally even to laugh at.

A caper comedy with some definite problems.

To be fair, War of the Buttons is a film with a modest agenda. It does not attempt to provide a complete or even vaguely realistic depiction of the rural French resistance in the endgame to World War II. Instead, it provides a fable.

An occasionally charming, sometimes amateurish film .

A strange mix of the campy, at least in the English dubbing, and the awesome.

An extremely funny movie, and this is coming from someone who barely cracked a smile during ``Friday,'' the first installment of this franchise.

In the end, What to Expect, isn't an inspired movie, but a manufactured one, but one with some laughs and some moments. Plus, it has Chris Rock, who gets to liven things up as the ringleader of a beleaguered fathers' group.

The least they could have done with the sequel Candyman : Farewell to the Flesh is make it scary. How they managed to give us a killer with a bloody hook going around eviscerating people and have him come off as mild as a butterfly is boggling.

Seriously, don’t see Black Adam. Don’t encourage this. I don’t even want to admit that it’s an actual movie, but assuming it is, it’s the worst of the year — and one of the worst I’ve ever seen.

That's the real problem with this melodrama. Whether or not you agree with the pacifist message, the presentation is often overwrought and maudlin.

An overwrought weepie, it may be inspired by the recent dramas of Pedro Almodóvar, but it comes off as Almodóvar Lite -- muy lite.

The movie unfolds as a series of enjoyable, pressurized encounters between the lead character and everyone else — particularly, Bobby Cannavale as Carol’s ex-boyfriend.

Here, where even the stepmother has a backstory, Cannon seems intent not just on trying to blot out the original’s sexism but also its mystery. In trying to be safe and copacetic with modern sensibilities, this Cinderella neuters itself.

The movie goes to Vienna, to Egypt and to Italy and was probably more fun to make than watch.

As much as Machete Kills is a reunion and continued revival, it also represents a sort of gentrification of the exploitation genre. It's probably time to move on and let a new generation of kids take a crack at making bad films.

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

Silly, but an enjoyable, well-paced fantasy-action story.