Unfortunately, the characters are so programmatic, the premise so ridiculous and the situations so far-fetched even if you accept that premise that no energy can be built, and the little that's there can't be sustained. Red Dawn is a vigorous but pointless exercise.

First Daughter can be measured in degrees of Holmes' discomfort... There's never a moment when she doesn't appear as if she'd rather be in a different movie.

An overwrought and ultimately silly thriller.

In his L.A. debut, director David Green seems to think that close-ups of Cage's big blue eyes substitute for suspense and drama. They don't. [25 May 1990, p.E5]

Badly made and poorly written, Blended is a rehash of Adam Sandler's 2011 comedy "Just Go With It," only without Jennifer Aniston and without laughs. It not only gets the big things wrong. It gets the small, easy things wrong.

A pretty lame premise for a movie.

A sour story with a repellent lead character, deadly comic schtick and tin-eared direction to produce 90 minutes of sheer, plodding mirthlessness.

Perhaps it's the soothing, storybook quality of Steve Martin's narration, or the predictable third act turn, but Love the Coopers does come together in the end.

So there’s nothing here to see, except maybe the white dress that Vergara wears in her first scene.

Represents his (Smith) first act of cinematic cynicism, his first crime against his own talent. With this action comedy, he has given us 110 worthless minutes, a bad formula movie like every other bad formula movie.

The resulting film has the integrity and the ugliness of the truth. It's not true because it's ugly; no, it's ugly because it's true.

Someday, one hopes, Mulcahy will make his masterpiece blend of action and story. Until then, Highlander 2 will have to be considered a steppingstone. [01 Nov 1991, p.D7]

As for Fraser, his clumsy humanity is endearing, but by now, assuming he has invested wisely, he should have enough money saved so as to not have to waste his talent anymore.

When a movie sets out to be awful and achieves its goal, does that make it a success?

By the end, it reveals itself as too pat, too absurd and -- as a polemic against capital punishment -- philosophically self- defeating.

It is partly a failure, but mostly it succeeds, and the film's aspiration is so enormous that that's enough for a moving experience.

It may smell awful from a distance, especially if you have low tolerance for lowbrow humor, but up close this yarn about an unlikely golf star is fairly painless.

Jack is a warm, heartfelt disaster that shows that life is fleeting but movies can be very long indeed.

There are people who like movies like this, who like when a movie screen looks like their computer screen and who don’t mind when everything is fake, including the emotions. Artemis Fowl is a genre movie, and as such, it’s an OK version of the thing it is. I just can’t stand the thing it is.

The most shocking thing about Harry and Max isn't the subject matter. The most shocking thing is just how tepid it is.

The result is a movie that serves as little more than an excuse for Moore and Bridges to camp it up.

Doesn't know what it wants to be: either a goofball satire or a heavy-handed social-message movie.

The Cave is National Geographic mixed with Roger Corman, and by the end you'll probably be wishing you saw "Red Eye" instead.

There is one thing interesting about Alex Cross, and if you miss this, you've missed the whole movie. It's not the story - it's worse than mediocre. It's not the lead actor - nothing wrong with Tyler Perry, but as an action star he's no Vin Diesel. And it's not the dialogue, which has a clunker every other scene. It's the direction. Notice the direction. Alex Cross is a good example of what a seriously talented director can do with a heaping pile of garbage.

Assuming you can appreciate the high level of gore and assorted sadistic weirdness, the action is satisfying.

It's hard to tell if Cage's performance is a grand stab at all-out, no-holds-barred comic acting or one of the worst dramatic performances in a film this year. [2 June 1989, Daily Datebook, p.E8]

Kang is so over the top and jumbled in his storytelling, this could be his Michael Cimino ("Heaven's Gate") moment.

Throwing your $10.25 down a storm drain is a better idea; at least that way you won't feel the added self-loathing of wasting more than an hour and a half of your life watching Eva Mendes in the worst acting job of her career.

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.

Bulletproof is a raunchy exercise in macho posturing -- but thanks to a layer of satire, the new action comedy at Bay Area theaters provides a few zingers of lowbrow entertainment.

Seriously lacks both romance and comedy.

The big disappointment of The Babymakers is that it doesn't come close to being worthy of its two stars, Paul Schneider and Olivia Munn.

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.

Unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger, however, Vin Diesel shows no discernible comedic skills.

Neither original nor presented in a convincing way.

It depicts the world of a century ago in a way that comments on the anxieties facing the world today, and it does so, at least for a while, with cleverness and a sense of fun.

It's a plodding, episodic film, reverent and sanctimonious, and its pro-Southern viewpoint -- a time-honored Hollywood tendency -- makes "Gone With the Wind" look like a Northern polemic.

It’s nice to see Pegg stretch a little and play the bad guy. Too bad Kill Me Three Times doesn’t give him better material.

Some of the talking heads say entertaining or thoughtful things and some of the locations are quite exotic. But does this justify 98 minutes of screen time?

Harmon proves that he can act stupid, and that's not enough to make the movie funny… You're supposed to like Freddy (Harmon), and you're supposed to like his brainless students… But you hate everybody. [24 July 1987]

The film has a good cast, and is competently made in a plain-vanilla way, but its greatest appeal will be to those who share its endorsement of traditional religious values.

Why Lopez decided to do this inept, cliche-infested film is anyone’s guess. She may be an actress of limited range, but her work includes solid movies like “Selena” and “Out of Sight.” Unfortunately, Lopez’s resume now includes this stinker. And we’re all the dumber for it.

Numbskull entertainment.

Self-serious, pointless and silly.

Lots of people will leave screenings of this movie in disgust -- and laughter is the last thing they will hear on the way out.

There might be a lot of guts scattered around in Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, but it's a completely gutless movie, without the wit to be a comedy or the nerve to stand on its own as a straight horror picture. It just floats around at its own dull pace, trying this out and that out, as it slowly sinks. [13 Jan 1990, p.C30]

It took the franchise four tries, but with Expend4bles, they’ve finally made a solid and consistently effective action movie.

A rather boring horror film.

A good movie that has been sitting in a film can for two years waiting for a miracle. The miracle came -- Suvari's sudden popularity.

While the fourth "Exorcist" movie may have unmitigated disaster written all over it, the finished product is somehow sort-of-kind-of not all that bad.

A lot more enjoyable if you can leave your cognitive skills at the door.

What can you say about a comic sci-fi adventure that’s neither funny nor thrilling, but is packed with awesomely rendered visuals of dumb-looking things?

It's harmless.

In this case, it's considerably better, adapting the 007 template in a story of a crazed bald cat named Kitty Galore (voiced by a hissing, chichi Bette Midler) and her malevolent plot to conquer the world. It's brilliant in its simplicity

As Hunt’s life unravels, so does the movie, though the story maintains a certain baseline of interest just by virtue of being sordid.

Bastian is a difficult kid to sit and watch for 90 minutes -- self- important and with a shrill voice. The story is all over the place, setting the audience up for things that never pan out and defying its own logic. [09 Feb 1991, p.C3]

More hokey than heartfelt.

The film has some chuckles, if no belly laughs; it has some warmth, if no great heat.

The movie is stiff and schmaltzy and clumsily directed.

The lowdown on Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, Rob Schneider's first starring role, is that it is. Lowdown, that is.

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."

In its own ridiculous way, The Butterfly Effect is an entertaining movie, despite mediocre acting, lackluster direction and a story that's sometimes frustrating. It has the integrity of camp, maintaining an odd earnestness in the face of its own absurdity.

Two If by Sea should have been titled "Two at Sea." It's adrift. Stars Sandra Bullock and Denis Leary have no chemistry together, and a perfectly good story is wasted on a really bad script.

Once you're done trying to conjugate the smurfs, there's a better movie than anyone could have possibly expected, thanks in large part to an honest effort by Harris in a thankless role.

The real magic of “School” resides in its stars. Caruso loses Sophie’s moral direction in deliciously fun yet behaviorally alarming ways. Wylie finds Aggie’s righteousness without damaging the character’s cunning intellect; a scene involving “wish fish” has no business being as moving as Wylie makes it. Together, the young actors take this project beyond good and evil, into the realm of something real.

Lackluster mob picture.

A wretched comedy about middle-aged romance.

The update is a different kind of failure, too much endless and not enough love.

It has the simple charm of being mindless fun with nary a worry that there are several pockets of lame gags or far-fetched comedy bits that refuse to register on the giggle meter. [16 Feb 1990, p.E3]

Marks Chan's full arrival as an actor. Take away the violence - - and there's plenty of it for those who crave Chan's physical pyrotechnics -- and he's still an immense pleasure to watch onscreen.

Sloshes between comedy and drama, never quite hitting stride as either.

Just like a low-budget football comedy, only with money.

Don't tell Mom, but everybody seems stoned.

A movie that has two good ideas. It needed three.

As far as complete wastes of time go, Zookeeper is not especially offensive. Yet it is surprising that everything you might expect to be charming in it just isn't - namely all the bits involving animals.

About as awful as a film can be without being the ultimate awful, which is boring.

Crossover has one redeeming quality: a heart that's in the right place. It's a bad movie with a good message -- but does anyone really want to pay $10 for an ABC After School Special version of "He Got Game"?

Unfortunately, the best jokes in Loaded Weapon were in the coming attractions. What's left amounts to just a lot of flailing around in search of a handful of half-hearted laughs. [5 Feb 1993, p.D5]

Oddly comforting in its inconsistent acting and bad monster makeup.

Daddy’s Home 2 is an excessively negative, strained and predictable comedy.

We all know how actors overact when they play Italians, and we all know how actors overact when they play brain-damaged characters, so just imagine Knight's performance as a brain-damaged Italian American.

Dax Shepard from MTV's "Punk'd," in his first major big-screen role, steals Without a Paddle. Not that it's too hard to do.

A supernatural thriller that keeps your attention while failing to hold you in its grip.

A thriller that presses all the buttons: parental love, childhood terror, fear of Vince Vaughn.

Nearly a scene-for-scene rip-off of "National Lampoon's Summer Vacation" -- where the only substantive change from the original is a reversed travel route.

Surprises you with heart.

Bleak.

A respectable and fairly decent movie.

Through a stellar effort by Jennifer Garner and some well-executed revenge sequences, Peppermint just feels good to watch.

Zellweger takes an otherwise passable mainstream comedy and all but ruins it with her lack of effort.

Clunky adventure story.

Attempts to convey emotional dislocation and passion at the same time. All we get is distance.

Even if his (Stallone) own star may be fading, the popularity of car racing is enormous. These fans are not likely to be disappointed by Driven.

The movie plays more like a WB network teen drama than something audiences should be expected to pay to see.

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.

Desperately wants to deal dramatically with the legitimate issues of homosexuality, tolerance, homelessness and drug use. But to do so, the movie, like Ethan, would first need to grow up.

The cheesiness has increased, but it's surprising how clever low-budget film makers can be when they throw every nut and bolt within reach into a film, and stir wildly with computer-generated images. [15 Jan 1996, p.E6]

An enjoyable movie not because of any special gifts by the filmmakers or emotional resonance in the script. It was more like destiny. Once someone jotted down the concept on a cocktail napkin and hired B-Boys who could actually dance, the movie pretty much had to turn out OK.