This is the first Focker installment not directed by Jay Roach, who did a good job balancing the yuks with the more outrageous gross-outs. That comic-revolting parity shouldn't be much of a challenge for "American Pie's" Paul Weitz, and yet the skeevier bits aren't especially funny.

Problem Child is a beautiful example of what junk entertainment can be with a smattering of brains behind it. While it hangs there as a monument to audience idiocy, it also lets you have a wallow in fun. You leave thinking there have been worse things on which to spend your time and money. [28 July 1990, p.C3]

Is it a home run? No. But at this point, comic fans are just happy to see Fox play error-free ball with their Marvel adaptations, and Fantastic Four mostly qualifies.

Not surprisingly, only Samuel L. Jackson seems fully to understand that he's in a bad movie, and he makes a virtue of it, using it as an excuse to hang loose, overact and ride the scenes for wherever they might go.

A bunch of gags, most of which you've seen in the trailer, strung together by any means necessary.

It's a dreadful exercise, tin-eared and sincere, bereft of any truth or inspiration.

It’s essentially an animated film, fronted by a live-action Downey and Michael Sheen’s one-note villain. Only Antonio Banderas, in a small role, truly seems to be having a great time.

The whole movie is like that: cute, dead and endless.

The Choice has a twist or two toward the end, and they’re about as cheaply maudlin as the movies get. The only choice is to make sure a barf bag is nearby.

Sadly, fun is a rare element on Pandora, as “Borderlands” trudges through its treasure hunt scenario and endless ripoffs of better franchises from “Lethal Weapon” to “Star Wars.” It makes you want to go home and blow up your Playstation.

10 stories are just way too many. Had producers cut it down to, say, the five most promising stories and fleshed them out a bit, the results might have been better. Instead, it feels just as you might be sucked into a story, it’s over.

Still, for much of “Madame Web,” even when it turns bad, it’s a pleasure to see Johnson in this kind of movie.

Has to go down as a failed comedy. It's just not enough of a comedy.

The sequel is one big tease.

A perfect vehicle for Robin Williams. He again plays the compassionate, manic clown that has been his main character throughout his movie career. And audiences love his wild end runs.

Unfortunately these characters are stuck in a picture that is little more than a gory mess, heavy on the smoke machines and thunderous sound track, but with no suspense and not much interest. Split Second is just a series of killings that come, one after the other, until the movie hits feature length, and then it's the bad guy's turn. Since these killings all consist of a heart being yanked out of a human body, Split Second isn't pretty. I've long since lost my weak stomach, but this movie is definitely not for the squeamish. [2 May 1992, p.C3]

Immediately shoots to the top of the list of the year's worst movies.

Zoom is a C-list production in every possible way, from the actors and the special effects to the music and the script. Even the product placement is completely third rate.

One could criticize A Night at the Roxbury for being a comedy that provides not a single laugh. That would be too easy.

Stevens, Fisher, Mann and Dench are all fine. All have good moments. The problem is the script, the script, the script.

While there's no blood to be seen in Supercross, the film is rated PG- 13, due to some crash scenes, a little strong language and some mild sexuality. That's a shame. This movie was tailor-made for 12-year-olds.

If Max and his "Hell" collaborators feel stymied by the summer hit "The Hangover," they'd be justified to scream to the bromance gods that someone stole their film's concept. But those guys did it the right way, bro.

You know how I realized I actually liked I Melt With You? I kept talking about it, and at one point, in the middle of mocking it, I accidentally referred to it as "a good picture." That's when I realized, yes, it really is good, albeit in ways that are different from other movies.

A horror movie that has the distinction of not even being scary... Although Koontz wrote the screenplay, the suspense for which he is supposed to be famous doesn't translate to the screen.

It's entertainment, but mild entertainment.

The monster is kind of cheap looking and not particularly scary, the gore is non existent, the acting is variable and the characters tend to make boneheaded decisions. Yet, for all of that, Shortcut does sport a certain moody charm, and at least it has the good sense, at a brisk 80 minutes including end credits, to not wear out its welcome.

Filth & Wisdom is dead in the water, an excruciating bore even at a compact 84 minutes.

Cynical to an extreme, it doesn't illustrate its points but blasts them at us -- in italics, boldface and capital letters.

This is a pretty good action movie with the added kick of Liam Neeson in the lead role.

Best of the Best is the wrong title. Worst of the worst would be more like it for this movie. [Nov 13 1989, p.F4]

Save the price of admission to this dull retread and go have your hair done.

As a stand-alone vehicle, the sensual and atmospheric Innocence is interesting enough to hold your attention to the end credits. But when you consider the source material, the film's flaws become too great to ignore.

The fifth entry in the John Rambo series is called Rambo: Last Blood, and we can only hope that’s a promise.

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

Gutter romance meets metaphysical thriller.

Late in the picture, Sobieski has some line-readings that are so emotionally full, strange and truthful that really nothing more need be said.

It's called One, and the hemorrhaging begins with the so-called story, which doesn't quite add up to one.

It presents a mostly sympathetic portrait of Mildred Gillars, the American actress who made propaganda radio broadcasts for the Nazis during World War II. Not an impossible task, but a tough one that the best efforts of producer-star Meadow Williams and director Michael Polish couldn’t make persuasive.

It's a movie packed with so many idiot characters that Rob Schneider is cast as the cool guy -- and sort of pulls it 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.

A pile of junk.

There's bad, there's awful and there's horrible, and then somewhere beyond that, in its own Kingdom of Lousy -- where all the milk curdles and the jokes aren't funny -- is License to Wed, the latest ghastly exercise starring Robin Williams.

This plot leaves ample room for viewers to sweat the small stuff, like whether Trevor Nunn's score is more Marines ad or deodorant commercial.

A funny comedy for about 90 seconds. Then Bette Midler goes off a cliff.

Earnest and well-intentioned, The Identical is based on a "what if" that straddles the line between ingenious and loopy.

This comic gem is as delightful as it is derivative.

Jessica Tuck gives an emotionally raw performance as Morgan’s mother, and Amanda Plummer’s turn as a trailer park resident sheds more light on Jordan than all the other scenes combined.

All the brains, heart and courage in the world can't save a movie that doesn't have a third act.

The best bits come in the first few minutes -- or maybe the jokes just seem fresher then.

Billed as a comedy, it's draped over dreary gags and irritating manic overacting on the part of its co-star, British comic actor Rik Mayall. [24 May 1991, p.E7]

That's a few too many agendas for one film.

It's not a terrible movie, just a disappointingly pleasant one.

It boasts only loose ties to the 1954 romance "Three Coins in the Fountain." And it's best not to even think of "Roman Holiday," the gold standard for hanging, and driving, and doing as Romans do. Rent that instead.

At best this is a film for the under-7 crowd. But it would be better to wait for the video. And a very rainy day.

What we have is the case of a movie with a straight man (Jason Lee) who really is funny, but with a comic (Tom Green) who sadly isn't.

You'll feel so much better just sending your $9.50 to the Red Cross then catching "I Know What You Did Last Summer" one more time on television.

Just awful. But uniquely awful -- awful in a way that might just attract a cult audience. [3 Sept 1993]

The premise of Jason X is silly but strangely believable.

Meandering and inert. Yet as an etching of an emotion and a vehicle for Costner, the movie makes a case for itself.

Credit to Hart, though, for trying to make every scene, comic or sentimental, as strong as he can. He reads each line that’s supposed to be funny as if it is, locates Sonny’s emotional truth no matter how ridiculous the scene is, and never lets his signature energy sag.

Encino Man is so puerile and sophomoric that, by comparison, ''Fast Times at Ridgemont High'' is ''Our Town,'' and ''Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure'' is ''Gulliver's Travels.'' For that matter, Pauly Shore makes Wayne and Garth, the two cable TV rec-room rockers of ''Wayne's World'' fame, seem like they belong at the Algonquin Hotel round table. [22 May 1992, p.D3]

Well acted, well crafted and might have been a truly searing drama if it weren't so simplistic, pat and predictable.

The movie's onslaught of psychobabble is the annoyance most likely to ruin your evening. Imagine getting stuck on a ski lift with Dr. Phil for nearly two hours.

What's completely baffling is that everyone in the film thinks Nomi is one heck of a dancer, even though her one move -- throwing her arms out stiffly -- is straight out of "Dr. Strangelove."

Decidedly lowbrow.

The plot movement feels very much like an unpleasant formality, shoved forward by tiresome devices.

It's the most tension-producing movie out there right now -- in the best way, it's almost unbearable.

It's forgettable matinee fodder.

Gods of Egypt is an epic — an epic disaster.

Turns into one long wallow.

It plays like a string of cliches linked together to form a movie with not a single moment of surprise or originality.

Lame, haphazard teen comedy.

If London were a comedy, it just might work. Instead, it's a dead-serious marathon of angst from cool kids old enough to know they're mouthing cliches.

An old formula made fresh.

This movie is so horrible that it actually spends some time in "so bad it's good" territory, before getting significantly worse.

Lacks the clever twists and turns that made the original such fun. The sequel has exactly one twist, and it's not very clever.

So inept it's almost entertaining.

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.

This noir mystery is murkier than it needs to be, through no fault of Stallone's.

A stink bomb of a movie.

The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, is a stiff, guaranteed to disappoint just about everybody, except those rooting against him. [11 Jul 1990, p.E1]

If you came to see two pretty girls in wedding dresses wrestle, you won't be disappointed.

It's so low it scrapes through the barrel and deep into the earth's core. It's the lowest piece of garbage to hit screens in months.

Dirty Work was directed by Bob Saget, who always seemed slightly embarrassed by his enormous success as the host of America's Funniest Home Videos. Now he's got something else to be slightly embarrassed about.

Women had to struggle for years to launch their own basketball league; it's a shame that the first movie to address their success is a drag comedy, and a lousy one at that.

Has a shameless B-movie exuberance.

Brutally dumb canine comedy.

Original enough to come up with new ways to go wrong. For one, the film is a blatant showcase to promote O'Neal as a rap artist.

This may be hard to believe, but there's not a single moment of drama or tension in any of the action sequences. And the film is made up almost entirely of action.

Regardless of how one might feel about its inherently icky subject matter, Dark Crimes needs more narrative momentum. The cast is game, the production design is impressive and a few surprises await — but even as things heat up, the film somehow remains cold.

Works better as unintentional comedy than horror.

In Godsend, we have the spectacle of three good actors tied to the mast of a sinking premise.

Might be a blast of ridiculous fun -- the way truly bad movies tend to be -- if it weren't so noxious and reprehensible.

A disappointment, but it's not a disaster, and that's at least something.

The Virtuoso covers well-worn territory — the assassin story is almost a genre unto itself — and director Nick Stagliano, hampered by a predictable script, can’t bring much new to the game.

It's an uninspired and instantly forgettable film. But it completely succeeds by its own standards: an 87-minute rainy-day distraction that will probably make a zillion dollars.

Director David Kellogg tries to inject energy into the picture with speeded-up sequences and smash-bang cutting, and the art direction is bright and eye-catching. But it's just gourmet dressing on dead lettuce. The movie is unable to balance Ice's aspirations to genuine adult-level coolness in a story clearly designed to appeal to the sensibilities of pre-teenage girls, and the result is bland and often absurd. [22 Oct 1991, p.F1]

It's a movie that scrounges so desperately for laughs, it features both a flatulent moose and a flatulent train.