Diego also lacks any nuance as a character. He is grim and humorless, like most everything else about this film.

Going after one innocent man was bad enough. Going after another constitutes a pattern. This marshal isn't a hero. He's a menace.

Everything connected with the lovers, who are the point of the movie, is either ordinary or unwittingly funny, and the laughs come early.

So inept it's almost entertaining.

Wonderstruck should not be confused for a brilliant but challenging film. Rather, it’s narratively deprived and with entire sections that are completely charmless.

The film occupies that peculiar space that many of us would prefer to believe doesn’t exist, a movie that’s worthy but often inert, by turns enriching and enervating: a good boring movie.

You can’t make a raunchy comedy and a sentimental paean to motherhood at the same time. You have to choose either one or the other. Raunchiness or sincerity. Try to do both, and you end up with a flailing, unfunny wreck, like the mix of contradictory and self-defeating impulses that we find here.

This version is a well-meant but corny distillation -- a whole lot of bombast and phony exaltation in the name of entertaining enrichment.

Lame, haphazard teen comedy.

The movie is occasionally clever, but still inferior to last year's "Twilight" film, mostly because the story is so muddled.

We’re supposed to be taking a fun thrill ride here, with a little existentialism to boot, but Copshop can’t escape its arrested development.

Perfunctory, thrill- free sequel.

The character motivations are weak, and the story is poorly structured. But its camera work, possibly intended to distract audiences from the movie’s flaws, only compounds its problems. It distances the audience and makes Jason Bourne a chore to sit through.

Has more in common with a horror movie than with a genuine political work.

Two hours of senselessness and overkill, decked out in lurid, bad-trip colors.

For all its hidden-camera footage and teary confessions, the movie rings as true as an episode of MTV’s “Real World.”

McCarthy is one of our finest physical comedians. Every moment of physical comedy she performs here is cringey.

First Purge further lessens the drama by offering a hero and villains too mercenary to care about.

It’s a train wreck, but certainly a watchable one that almost plays like fan fiction.

It's a tepid, quiet and uneventful film, directed almost in slow motion, with no narrative propulsion and with a succession of very similar scenes. The actors speak softly and pause a lot. And in the background is the steady hum of the soundtrack.

The most humorous actor in the film, Joey Kern as Sweet Lou the cradle-robbing ladies' man, gets laughs only because he's performing a note-for-note rip-off of the Matthew McConaughey character in "Dazed and Confused."

It’s a film that feels instantly antiquated, despite its attempts to capture Gen Z angst.

Serious intent may be lurking somewhere in there, but it's buried under layers of stupidity - not just stupid jokes, which is what you want from Sandler, but also stupid, shallow thinking.

One of those comedies in which almost everything good about it is extraneous. There are funny lines and quirky bits, but in terms of story and character, the movie is empty and pointless.

There’s no one to root for, not even the dead girl. Nothing seems important enough.

In Step Up 3D, what's going on is: nothing.

Builds into a shapeless riff on the existentialist misery of company.

Spirited was never going to be any good, but it would have been slightly better — and a change of pace — if Reynolds and Ferrell had switched roles.

The problem comes down to this: If you take the spirituality out of Ben-Hur, you take the Ben-Hur out of Ben-Hur.

Poor casting is compounded by a ludicrous script.

It’s far from the worst movie ever produced, but it’s a one-of-a-kind disaster, and therefore interesting.

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]

The strain and desperation are apparent from the first scene.

A pile of junk.

A final word about Bardem: He’s simply terrific. With his shaggy curly hair, exaggerated showmanship, athletic dance moves and operatic gestures, Hector is part Willy Wonka and part Gene Kelly — it’s Bardem’s most off-the-rails performance since his turn as a James Bond villain in “Skyfall.”

Never comes alive.

Had a lot of promise, but ultimately isn't very funny.

Fans of previous incarnations are advised to check their nostalgia at the door, while the uninitiated may simply check their brains.

You can't fool me. I know it's actually a parlor game.

It isn't smart or even very scary.

While The Assassin is a noble misfire, here’s hoping Hou, who is 68, can saddle up for another ride soon. Another decade would be too long to wait for another vision from this most special director.

A wretched comedy about middle-aged romance.

Floats is corny and false, with a script by Steven Rogers that's almost 100 percent artificial sweetener.

A great role becomes an unenviable chore, in which a superb comic actress finds herself trying to sell a series of unfunny comic situations by mugging and pushing with all her might. It's an unflattering spectacle for all concerned.

The Ice Age screenwriters seem to be making up the rules as they go along, distracted by tired side plots to give the other characters a reason to exist in the film.

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

An agony of bad plotting and whimsical, lifeless scenes.

These people are so stupid that they make us think, well, wait a second: Maybe those livers and kidneys could be put to better use.

Nobody would claim it adds up to much of a comedy. It's strictly for someone looking for a goof-off.

The film is intended to be light and whimsical, but with a core of sincere emotion. But it's as if the thing were made by Martian anthropologists who assume that human audiences are as twisted as the people onscreen.

Jennifer 8 is an empty-headed thriller, uninspired, by the numbers, the kind of movie that gets made not because anybody wants to make it but because of a perceived market out there for this kind of picture. People do like thrillers, but they don't like long, boring, vapid thrillers, and Jennifer 8, which opens today, is definitely in the latter category. [6 Nov 1992, p.C1]

But Congo leads to nothing but a fierce battle with the gray gorillas, a kind of guns vs. fangs scene; and a convenient and incongruous volcano eruption that looks as artificial as a video game.

Things are generally cute in the film -- and that goes for the stars -- and it all chugs along in some curious bubblegum-chewing sort of way. But the flavor's decidedly flat. [18 May 1991, p.C3]

Falls apart immediately, then limps on for 45 minutes more.

An inane musical melodrama.

It’s just bad. It’s boring, folks.

As bad as its title.

Rotten, pretentious movie full of minimalist dialogue and self-consciously arty cinematography.

The movies have been heading toward this for a while, and now with Mile 22 we get a film that is almost wall-to-wall violence. There is very little talk, and what little talk there is is entirely confrontational. People are either cursing at each other, threatening each other or killing each other.

For all it does right, there's something seriously wrong.

You know there is something seriously wrong with Anna Karenina when you start rooting for the train.

A mix of the powerful and the ridiculous, and eventually the ridiculous wins. The movie deals with a big subject that has received scant treatment in movies - the genocide in Bosnia in the 1990s - giving voice and testimony to what happened there. But the ill-conceived fictional elements take the picture right off the rails.

An unflinching -- yet overlong and overindulgent -- film.

If the first "Hangover" movie were this awful, there never would have been a Part Two. This is a joyless, unfunny mix of comedy and drama, a complete waste of time, with exactly one good joke in the entire movie. It comes in the first minute. After that, you can leave.

“Ant-Man: Quantumania” is a glum, tiresome exercise that follows the pattern of every run-of-the-mill superhero movie ever made.

Screenwriter Don Mancini, who created Chucky, has decided to rely on the same formulae from the earlier pictures. It doesn't give Jack Bender -- who directed TV's wonderful The Dream of Oz last year -- much of a chance to prove himself with his first feature. [30 Aug 1991, p.F3]

Besson is a pro when it comes to action movies, but this part live, part animation effort is a mess, highlighted by creepy animation, derivative plot points and a child star who speaks way too fast.

There are two main obstacles to enjoying The Last Witch Hunter. One is your ability to buy Vin Diesel as an immortal slayer of evildoers plying his trade in today’s Manhattan. You also have to swallow a by-the-numbers plot buried under an avalanche of fast-and-furious but underwhelming CGI effects.

Ringwald looks stunned most of the time and lacks the sparkle generally associated with a free and independent spirit. But then, so does the script. [22 Jun 1990, p.E3]

“Batman v Superman” is an insanely long and convoluted action movie, made worse by an air of importance. It’s dispiriting and visually bland.

A bright young actress, a movie-star actor and a potentially interesting concept gets smothered in 128 minutes of colorful, empty nonsense.

Anyone expecting a flashy Bond-style fantasy is going to be disappointed.

Even worse, Little Joe is a horror movie that, rather astonishingly, lacks a climax. The ending falls off a cliff. The result is not to make viewers ponder the unresolved and wonder what might happen next, but to question how they’ve spent the past 105 minutes.

This is anti-funny, where every attempt at a joke is like a little rock thrown at your face.

A lot of the acting is amateurish, and most of the plot feels like a rehash of a rehash. The music, written and performed in the spirit of L7, is small consolation.

The film is kindly and well-intended, but it’s also sentimental and lifeless. Swan Song is a rare movie without a single good scene.

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.

For the most part this is a dull, dour documentary on what ought to be a joyful or at least fascinating subject.

Maybe there's a metaphor here, but figuring it out wouldn't make Trouble Every Day any better.

Has no narrative throughline, no emotional spine. It's a mess.

Two awful things about Push are at least interesting: The first is the way in which the story is confused. The second is that the story makes no sense.

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.

Bluntly speaking, Ju-On is anything but frightening. Ridiculous. Unbelievable. Unintentionally funny. It might as well be a parody of a horror film.

A white-trash burlesque that springs from the notion that people chasing each other in cars and doing stupid things in motels are inherently funny.

Unfortunately, it’s not much of a movie. The best thing “Happytime” has going for it is shock value, and that wears away after about 10 minutes. It doesn’t have an interesting story, and the jokes fall flat.

Occasionally amusing but rarely engaging, it leaves one feeling like they’re standing to the side and watching someone else play a video game.

Neither funny nor exciting. It’s at best incongruous, the kind of incongruity that seems delightful on the page but not in practice.

Either “Nightbitch” shouldn’t have been made or its premise should have been transformed and built upon.

The Front Room becomes an exercise in psychological torture porn; it’s a movie you endure rather than enjoy.

It's as close to nothing as anything could be while still being something.

A romantic comedy and an adventure story, but in this case that just means it bombs in two distinct ways.

If you're no longer old enough to carry a Hannah Montana lunch box, this movie will feel like punishment.

There's just the matter of facing it: that The Perfect Man is just something slapped together -- by people who don't care, for an audience they figure will care even less.

A few amusing moments mixed in with the painful ones.

Unwatchable.

Unfortunately, A Letter to Mona, directed by Hiroyuki Okiura, embodies this sense of frozen time with a tedious narrative punctuated by occasional bursts of sentimentality and hard-to-penetrate humor.

The result is a diligent brand of gloom. When it isn't being diligently gloomy, it's being obvious. When it isn't being obvious, it's being sneaky, and when it isn't being sneaky, it's marching toward a climax of B-movie violence, stupidity and nuttiness that summarily bumps off the movie's least annoying character.

Dragons may have seemed less out of place three decades ago, but it would have been a bad movie then as well. It's filled with clumsy transitions and erratic performances, and tied together by an awkward framing device.