How bad does it get? How far past the basement can one elevator go?

This is a movie in which whole sequences consist of nothing but guys fighting stiff computer images. Such scenes would be boring even were they done well, but these scenes aren't done well.

It represents 2 1/2 of the longest hours on record, a jumbled botch that is so confused in its purpose and so charmless in its effect that it must be seen to be believed, but better yet, no. Don't see it, don't believe it, not unless a case of restless leg syndrome sounds like a fun time at the movies.

A limp, slow-moving and desperately unfunny comedy.

Sometimes excessiveness and implausibility are virtues in disguise. Movies this enjoyable don't come about by accident.

Until its final seconds, Seven Days in Utopia is just a piece of gee-whiz, G-rated, nicely shot evangelism outfitted as a golf movie. Then it cuts away at the pivotal moment that's normally the life's blood of inspirational sports dramas - and becomes something vastly more obnoxious.

A delicate film - not flimsy, but fragile - that holds together on the strength of Efron's physical presence and performance.

The script highlights an annoying lack of self-preservation on behalf of the protagonists. But the movie tries to be more than just a creepy doll freakout, and delivers the requisite scares.

The first and most honest thing to say about Miracle at St. Anna is that it's an awful mess.

It's fast, snappy and entertaining in a superficial way. But it lacks gravity and authenticity and seems more like a product than an attempt to tell a story.

Seems it's never going to reach liftoff.

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.

Despite the fact that the movie covers some new cinematic territory, much of the humor feels recycled, mostly from the "Seinfeld" episodes "The Boyfriend" (the one where Jerry has a man crush on Keith Hernandez) and "The Outing."

As bad as its title.

Recalling the earthiness Broderick Crawford brought to the original, I couldn't help thinking Gandolfini should have been cast as Willie.

A surprisingly clever lunatic comedy that may prompt some sniping from liberal fussbudgets, but has undeniable comic vitality. [15 Oct 1993, p.C1]

For at least an hour of its hour and a half running time, Fist Fight is a complete failure, a sour comedy without laughs. But then something happens in the movie’s last quarter. It doesn’t exactly redeem itself, but it comes into focus and starts making sense on its own weird terms.

It's just horsing around that comes to nothing. No, it's worse. It's horsing around designed to disguise nothing as something.

Misfires so severely that even the clever details get obliterated in the resulting mess.

Mercury Rising is a Bruce Willis action movie, which means that most of us know what it will be like going in, and the only question is whether it's a good one or a lousy one. Answer: This is a good one.

It's a big disappointment.

Has many grotesque sex scenes, interspersed with sights of Chong rambling in a dissociated way as she sits in her squalid apartment.

Boyle isn't the first British or European filmmaker to make his obligatory zesty American road movie (apparently it's a dream for anyone raised on American cinema), but knowing that doesn't make A Life Less Ordinary any less tiring or its numerous pilferings any less obvious or annoying.

Well written but weakly executed, it's hard to imagine anyone is going to cherish the film, if they even remember it in three months' time.

Children will enjoy the physical humor, but discerning adults are advised to pawn their sons and daughters off on some other unsuspecting chaperone -- preferably one who doesn't read movie reviews.

Watching this movie is like eating a hot fudge sundae and lasagna in alternating bites.

Fans of J-horror (for Japan, where the genre was born; its conventions have since spread to South Korea and Thailand) will find Shutter familiar; others may just doze.

It is a colossal bomb, an epic miscalculation, an excuse for actor self-indulgence and for what sounds very much like bad improvisation.

At its core, Star Trek: Section 31 suffers from a kind of existential emptiness. It appropriates some of the surface-level iconography of “Trek” but fails to uphold its spirit. It nods to continuity, but the dense lore feels like a gatekeeping exercise and the breezy tone undermines the gravitas of its own premise.

There's no point complaining that Honey is a tired reworking of an old formula, because it's intended for a young audience that doesn't know the formula.

Forgettably mediocre, but it's not atrocious.

Jonah Hill has directed and co-written an impressive little movie with “Outcome.” It could be called a Hollywood satire, but what’s striking about it — and audacious and unexpected — is that it’s dramatic and heartfelt. Here and there, it even comes close to being sentimental.

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

The battle in Battle: Los Angeles is grab-the-armrest tense until the last seconds.

Without the sheer watchability of Johnson, Reynolds and Gadot, Red Notice would have been intolerable. It also would have been pointless. But with them, it’s a pleasantly lousy movie that some people, if they look at the screen and squint really hard, might mistake for something decent.

Child's Play 2, stupid as it is, is a surprisingly tight low-budget production, making effective use of dark settings and rainy nights, and a handful of in-yer-face scare tactics that keep the action pumped up. [10 Nov 1990, p.C3]

As haunted-house thrillers go, Cold Creek Manor is more ludicrous than the average but at the same time more handsomely produced.

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

The Bye Bye Man is the kind of mess that happened by committee.

So while director Evgeny Afineevsky practically makes the case for Francis’ sainthood — immersing the viewer in a nonstop barrage of swelling violins and inspirational music, featuring interview after interview of people who have been touched personally by the pope — his bloated two-hour film leaves many unanswered questions.

Caught in the Web is of little interest as entertainment, and if it were set in an unimportant or overly familiar country, it would be entirely forgettable.

Ugly, gore-strewn and, ultimately, ridiculous.

Nearly unbearable.

The Island of Dr. Moreau ought to have been a great film in these times of gene splicing and DNA research and all the moral, ethical and practical questions those developments raise. But director John Frankenheimer and screenwriters Richard Stanley and Ron Hutchinson's attempt to update Wells yields only a maddening mess of empty gestures.

It’s bigger, vibrantly colorful and slightly more ambitious, with glimpses of an interesting movie trying to break through, but it keeps snapping back to what’s safe.

The movie's most inexcusable failing is that, despite all the flashbacks, we never get a sense of what this relationship was like when it worked.

Crush is that strange mixed bag -- an otherwise wretched movie in which an actress gets to do some of her best work.

A street-dance film that's lively and silly and about as "street" as a Britney Spears video.

It's a swashbuckling extravaganza, but Davis is not convincing. And before anyone objects, it's not because she's a woman. Get out already! This is the '90s, and women can do anything. But they can't escape from a lousy movie any better than a man can.

If this action extravaganza represents the future of movies, it's going to be a sad, dead and awful future.

Whatever else W.E. may be (lousy, a waste of time, tin-eared, sleep-inducing, occasionally laughable, etc.), it's sincere and ambitious.

The Out-Laws is dead on arrival.

A spiritual successor to "The Pursuit of Happyness," but darker and more oblique.

Perry is at his best playing frenetic confusion.

So quick that the flat moments are rapidly, inevitably chased by a new gag.

Won't work until the film comes out on video.

An awkward and aggressively unfunny film.

Directed by Mark Waters, cast members seem to operate on the belief that they can best deal with the plot’s improbabilities by grimacing their way through and not giving anyone time to react to them. Pesky details brushed aside, the film can play to its strength, which is the charm of its leads.

Don’t expect surprises or something to ideologically critique. This is kooky carnage. You came for Dave Bautista stomping a motorcycle into submission, and damn it, that’s what you’re gonna get.

Even without surprises, or drama, or clever dialogue, or even a single scene of any merit, Rebound goes along pleasantly.

So many horror conventions are at work in After.Life that either the filmmakers are parodying them or couldn't come up with anything better. I'm betting on the second choice.

Somewhere along the line, someone seems to have thought this was ''Last Tango in Paris'' all over again. It ain't. [19 Aug 1994, p.C3]

Tooth Fairy would be substantially less likable without Johnson's native-born flair for self-abasement.

It's hard to sit all the way through Aeon Flux while fully awake.

The movie lacks joy. It has poignancy and intelligence, and it holds interest, but it never opens up into happiness and fantasy. Maybe it's the recession.

By the end, everything that was initially serious about the film becomes silly and everything appealing about it turns sour.

Even as a showcase for the actors, Bird on a Wire is disappointing. More than anything else it's an action movie, and not a very good one, with wall-to-wall chase scenes from start to finish. [18 May 1990, p.E1]

The obvious idea is to stage a motorcycle version of "The Fast and the Furious." Instead we get the flat and the tedious.

A disjointed movie with uneven acting and too many scenes that defy belief.

While it is a spectacle of animatronics, digital graphics and other special effects, the actors are never overwhelmed by them as personalities.

Less a new Japanese movie than a series of scenes from old American ones, most notably "The Terminator" and "ET."

Would be a completely routine horror movie, except that it has a superior director. Watch this film for five minutes, and it's clear that Victor Salva knows how to make movies.

Just another bloody cop thriller.

If you want to see Li and Statham in an underwhelming martial arts film, rent "The One" instead. Li talks considerably more in that movie, but at least he punches a lot of people out.

This will never be the movie of the month, but you could do a lot worse at the multiplex.

Clumsily directed yet entertainingly written by Oakland native Nnegest Likké, Phat Girlz is like "Rocky" with cellulite. Or maybe "Pretty Woman" without all the bony butts. It has a lot of heart and soul, but it's almost never mean-spirited.

The original Space Jam was an out-of-nowhere delight, and Jordan gave space to his fellow live action co-stars, such as Bill Murray, Larry Bird and Wayne Knight. It was also in and out in 87 minutes; Space Jam: A New Legacy, directed by a good filmmaker, Malcolm D. Lee (Girls Trip, The Best Man), is a bloated 115 minutes, its mayhem and madness wearing pretty thin as it goes along.

If anyone wants to watch naked men in the shower, naked men doing erotic dancing, naked men in bed and almost-naked men pumping iron, this is the film to see.

The result is a children's movie that's almost worth seeing even when not accompanied by a child. It's certainly a painless experience, and at times it's quite funny.

A stupid movie -- but a deliriously stupid movie, which gives it a certain grandeur.

A fun afternoon for preteen moviegoers that has just enough charm, humor and game- for-anything actors to keep parents halfway interested as well.

A bleak, tedious enterprise, shot in earth tones and Gothic gray and blue.

It's just too bad that almost nothing in the movie seems original. The "Thriller" video may have featured hokey dancing zombies, but at least someone was making an effort.

Criminal depicts a compelling situation, made rich and entertaining through its extreme characters.

Well intentioned, but only occasionally creepy.

Amusing performances -- especially from Willis, who takes on a new personality with each new hairstyle -- can't disguise the fact that the film is basically a pastiche of recent movies.

Harris and particularly Elise give over-the-top performances that bring Diary to the edge of soap opera.

Obvious, but at least it's clean.

Graffiti Bridge is a bad excuse for a movie but a very good excuse for a rock concert. [03 Nov 1990, p.C3]

Humorless, confusing and not very fun to watch.

The movie turns lighter and less morose as it rolls along, which is good for viewers who prefer a bit of honey to offset the bitter taste of hormones.

About a third of it is a brilliant setup - but it's for a joke that never happens, at least not completely. A comedy, especially a broad sex comedy, needs to go to extremes. But Sex Tape is a little careful and contained.

One of the most quietly powerful endings in recent memory.

Director Nadia Tass is an Australian film maker making her U.S. debut, and she does a good job of handling the male bonding. But, this becomes a road movie with too much rambling. [09 Aug 1991, p.F1]

3 Ninjas is shoddy, violent and numbingly pointless, an action comedy in which three brothers spend their summer practicing martial arts under their grandfather's tutelage. [07 Aug 1992, p.C4]

A complete washout, a joyless, pointless and fundamentally idiotic enterprise.

Ladybugs isn't a very good movie; but it's a Rodney Dangerfield movie, and that's not bad. They used to call pictures like this ''star vehicles.'' Here the story, the plot, the other actors and everything else serve as nothing but a bland backdrop for Rodney Dangerfield's humor and appeal. [28 March 1992, p.C3]

Perhaps anticipating an older audience, most of the lessons are one-sided, with the old-timers seemingly harming the children while actually saving them.