Stupid yet cogent, High School High is a rapid-fire gag machine that's dopey enough to get belly laughs and smart enough to earn a C-plus as engaging entertainment.

The Shack is unshakable in its religious message, and that’s admirable in a cynical world. But viewed objectively as cinema, it’s just not a very good film.

Tony Scott's vigorous direction is sometimes too vigorous. Loud rock music underscores many scenes, and Scott's habit of shooting at odd angles begins to seem like a mannerism. But on the whole his ambitious attack helps make The Fan entertaining in the moment, even if it's forgettable immediately afterward.

A fairly mediocre film, not nearly as funny as it should be, nor as heartfelt. On the plus side, it's only 85 minutes long and isn't boring. On the downside, it has an intrusive pop soundtrack and a screenplay full of fake conflicts.

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

The Ex isn't painful, horrible or despicable, but it is an amazing mess.

Proves that it's possible to make a movie so tasteless and so crude that audiences don't laugh. This is worthwhile information. It means there's a limit.

Nothing but a showcase for the inherent comedic gifts of Cameron Diaz. The problem is she doesn't have any.

The most disingenuous film of the year. A sham. Pathetic. Embarrassing. The people behind this movie, which was made in Afghanistan, should be ashamed of themselves.

Imagine if instead of creating new music, a recording artist kept putting out the exact same album, just playing the songs a little louder each time. That's what it feels like watching Transformers: Age of Extinction.

It’s a formula movie, which wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, except that it’s a sort of bad version of itself.

Almost gets its right.

An uncomfortable ride.

In UHF we get 90 minutes of Al Yankovic, and that's 85 minutes too much. The problem isn't that he's weird, but that he isn't weird at all. The premises for his gags are commonplace and predictable, and his follow-throughs lack imagination. He seems incapable of spinning more than one tired joke from each set-up. [21 Jul 1989, p.E1]

Beatty's "Heaven Can Wait," released in 1978, was a comic fantasy about a near-death experience. This new version is a near-life experience.

Either Shelton knows this world well, or he's such a great bluffer it doesn't matter.

Isn't a terrible addition to the teen coming-of-age party movie catalog. It just feels dated.

It's not fun to watch.

A ho-hum thriller about corporate spying in the high-tech world, comes off as a lot more preposterous than paranoid, and it takes no more than a few frames for the eye rolling to commence.

This “Guide” is not for everyone; it gleefully earns its hard-R rating. But folks who enjoy their teen humor splattered with zombie guts won’t be disappointed. Scout’s honor.

The sequel is even more silly, and much less fun.

It's hard to deny that the first two-thirds of G.I. Joe is an enjoyable film, especially when graded on the curve of lowered expectations. Compared to other big-budget movies out this summer, it's pretty mediocre.

Plodding and unfunny.

The satire is unfocused, while the story goes nowhere. Too bad. The material is ripe for satire.

Amounts to an infomercial posing as an expose.

A messy, ambitious comedy.

The dialogue is so earnest that its lack of humor becomes a source of humor in itself. The acting is so primal that you’ll swear a porn sequence is about to break out.

It's original and poetic, and if you see it you will probably remember scenes from it a year from now, because it's not really like anything else. It's very much its own thing.

I found “Cats” pretty bland, but it has its moments of catnip, and as a holiday movie option that anyone could see, it might be just the ticket.

So the movie's OK in spots, but it's mostly so familiar that even the young target audience may get that deja vu feeling.

A film with its heart in the right place. Unfortunately, its head is stuck so far in the clouds that it dissolves into preachy do- gooder mush.

It’s a taut erotic thriller with the obligatory plot twists and a surprise ending that isn’t all that much of a surprise because Careful What You Wish For is the kind of taut erotic thriller that comes with a surprise ending.

The result is eight times as strange and exponentially more potty-mouthed than the original series.

The whole thing runs about an hour too long: It should have been a TV show. The adventure's too big for the kids who would love it the most.

This lurid thriller comes to life in fits and starts, and then sinks into the bog of its own cleverness once again.

This is the kind of made-for-cable-level movie where a pedestrian script (by Richard D’Ovidio) with the usual horror cliches is elevated by strong acting, no-nonsense direction and a couple of neat twists.

The action is violent and improbable but not staged with particular pizazz.

A boxing movie that exists in that gray area between prototypical and typical, the quintessential and run-of-the-mill.

A cute and amusing little romance that has all the fiery impetuosity of an egg sandwich.

An overblown action monstrosity with no surprises, no exhilaration and no thrills.

Standard hack-and-giggle fare, with a few wisecracks mixed in with the gore.

A movie that seems to have been made by people who don’t understand the history, true nature or appeal of their iconic characters.

May be far from perfect, but the big question is why you're sitting in a movie theater watching it instead of cuddling up at home with the remote in one hand and a steaming toddy in the other.

It's a romantic comedy with insights into sex and relationships that are old and obvious.

The movie’s ridiculous.

This isn’t close to being a great movie. But if you don’t overthink it, there is some fun to be had in the grisly consequences.

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

Saint John of Las Vegas was a bad script that somehow got made into a bad movie with good people in it.

The film is fun and extreme, and though in the end rather pointless, there’s a certain audacity here — a delight in extremity — that’s appealing.

As plain awful as Untraceable is, possibly the worst thing about it is that it pretends to mean something.

Aspen Extreme is an extremely slow-moving story about romance, buddies and skiing in the famous Colorado town. With a pleasant cast of mostly unknowns, except for Finola Hughes (''General Hospital's'' Anna Devane), it almost saves itself with spectacular downhill action scenes. A big almost. [23 Jan 1993, p.C3]

Martin Lawrence finally gets to show what he can do as a screen comedian.

A disgrace to the talents of Robert De Niro and Eddie Murphy, but it's not enough just to say that. It's also a disgrace to the talents of Rene Russo and whoever drove the coffee truck to the set every day.

The race is on for worst film of the year honors. Among the top contenders: Men Cry Bullets.

Flimsy mockumentary.

This is just a slightly better than mediocre film with a disconcerting grasp of the truth.

Full of action without thrills, comedy without laughs, noise without meaning and violence without reason (or even any cool combat choreography), it’s a headache with a Hollywood marketing budget.

There's a good idea behind Repo Men, not a whole lot of thinking, but at least one whole idea.

An otherwise passable horror film that delivers more than enough cheap thrills to forgive the plot holes.

In the end, there is something to be said for letting actors loose on a roller-coaster ride, but from time to time, someone needs to be operating the brakes.

With its flat story, numbed-out protagonist, and faux artistic lighting and set design - everything is dark or moody or darkishly moody or moodily dark - Max Payne seems a good half hour longer than its running time.

Delpy and Scott are able to put it over. She's French and deep and mysterious. He's a fresh-faced American, an open book. Liking them makes it possible to (kinda) like this otherwise routine horror movie.

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.

The most enjoyable way to watch Surveillance - "enjoyable," in the relative sense - is to take its awfulness for granted and pay attention to everything Bill Pullman does.

Fifty Shades Freed has something extra going for it, in that it depicts something that movies and pop songs and pop culture in general tend to avoid, which is the romance of familiarity.

While many of the film’s action sequences are in slow motion, it’s the story’s narrative (credited to Snyder, Shay Hatten and Kurt Johnstad) that really crawls.

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]

May be a good tactical move for the artist's career, but it's a bad movie.

Silent Hill has plenty of bad acting, bad dialogue and a confusing plot -- all of which become exponentially more painful when the movie goes on forever.

The Lazarus Effect is not the usual mindless thriller, but it’s as flat as an open soda from last week, with dull characters and virtually every scene taking place in a single location. It looks as if it cost about 12 bucks to make — and somebody got robbed.

The Honeymooners isn't the worst of the endless spate of TV rehashes, but it still feels perfunctory.

When Travolta plays, everybody has a good time.

A third-rate effort, with a weak script, cheap-looking effects and no genuine frights.

The narrative is a mess, and the overly long action sequences are easily forgotten.

To see Perfect Stranger is to wish for a more sophisticated vehicle for a film actress this good, but actors -- and audiences -- take what they can get. This is better than most.

The chief problem with Your Highness is its lack of imagination - its misuse and overuse of language and visual riffs that are only marginally amusing at best.

A wannabe weepie about a woman diagnosed with breast cancer, is Spain’s equivalent of a Lifetime movie, but it’s often lifeless, even with a decent performance by Penélope Cruz.

Between “Jexi” a few weeks ago and now this, October has ended up becoming quite a great month for bad movies about scary software.

Show Dogs is really bad, even for a talking-dog movie.

Perfectly acceptable, perfectly bland, competently acted but by no means a scary horror movie, in which "they" are coming to get people.

A distasteful, overlong slog, but at least the filmmaker appears to have put everything he wanted to up on the screen.

The Garfield Movie is a reheated tray of stale lasagna.

An ugly, misguided exercise.

It's monumentally coarse and vulgar, aimed at the mentality of a 14-year-old locked inside his father's liquor cabinet, and nothing about it is funny, least of all Adam Sandler.

Every once in a while you catch glimpses of originality and see what Gray Matters might have been if it hadn't gone soft and safe.

Has a high-gloss, heightened style reminiscent of that of the film's executive producer, Joel Schumacher.

Taps into a fear hitherto unexplored by cinema: fear of Bill Gates.

Score it big-time inane but a load of fun.

The Road Within is never good. The presentation of Tourette’s syndrome may be authentic, but everything else about the movie — the emotions, the characters, the situations — rings false.

Death Wish is easily the second best “Death Wish” movie ever made, and not a distant second.

The screenplay is so cognitively impaired that the filmmakers might have been better off hacking up "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," "Dazed and Confused" and "Dude, Where's My Car?" and then sticking together random bits with masking tape. At least that would have made some sense.

First-time director Lindsey Anderson Beer and her co-adapter Jeff Buhler have some nice ideas that never quite gel.

Though far from memorable, it's a moderately charming number calculated to radiate a certain Father's Day glow. [17 Jun 1994, p.C3]

In between the scenes of folks being impaled, cut in half with swords and blasted with shotguns are moments of light comedy, but these moments don't succeed in lightening up the picture but rather make it seem as if it were made by Martians with only the vaguest notion of human sensibilities. [16 Mar 1990, p.E6]

This Hellboy has story problems, with too much exposition and not enough character development. “Stranger Things” actor David Harbour, seemingly a perfect choice for his ability to project melancholy and a luggish humor, isn’t given enough time to do either of those things.

The film is neither fish nor fowl nor some arresting new entity, but a lumpish coagulation of conflicting impulses and unrealized gestures.

A generational spectacle that's fun to witness.

The result is a worthy woman's film and Jolie's best showcase to date.