Neither does it help that, despite the wit and literacy of Enough Sad, its form is straight out of a teen romance: A cool kid starts dating someone less cool, and then engages in some elaborate deception that, if found out, will threaten the progress of young love. The funny thing is, if Enough Said were converted wholesale into a high school romance, the characters' behavior might ring more true.

About as loony and soapy as a movie can get. In other words, it's about as loony and soapy as the novel, and I say this as one who obsessively consumed all four installments in Stephenie Meyer's mega-selling series.

Too lackluster to be praised highly, yet too benign to be excoriated, “Rock Dog” is the perfect family film for a rainy day with no other options. It does not deserve mention in any animation history book; and yet it’s completely satisfactory in the moment.

The film's aim -- to dazzle and inspire -- is sapped by Cruise's vein-popping, running-the-marathon performance.

It’s hard to dislike a film where almost every character, no matter how small, brings something to the screen, and because of that, Wilson World is worth inhabiting for a few hours.

There is a built-in pleasure in seeing Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen, Jane Fonda and Mary Steenburgen in the same movie. We’re used to them. We like them. We like being around them — but not so much that we can’t notice that Book Club is a pretty strained affair, not especially funny and weirdly off key.

The result is a movie that one watches with the sense of pushing it up a hill.

Offers some memorable stories, but it simply tries too hard.

An elegant-looking picture, carefully made and beautifully put together, but when the gloss wears off, you're left with an experience that doesn’t quite satisfy. [5 Oct 1990, Daily Datebook, E10]

It could have been something special, but two things drag it down to mediocrity -- director Clare Peploe's misunderstanding of Marivaux's rhythms, and Mira Sorvino's limitations as a classical actress.

Too labored and cliched to incite passion in an audience.

After a promising opening, with Jason on a rampage and a cold, peculiar bounty hunter (Steven Williams) on Jason's trail, Jason Goes to Hell switches focus midway to the young couple, and from there things go downhill. Still, the film has its moments. [14 Aug 1993, p.F1]

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

At times, the story seems like a side-show, and at other times, the serious information just seems discordant. However, to the movie’s credit, none of it is boring.

You know what? The whole thing is harmless.

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

It’s competently made but boring — and desperate.

Suffice to say that McNeil plays it way too safe. Trying to have it both ways, he satisfies no one.

Like its protagonist, Ceremony is as smart as it is exasperating.

A film one watches at an emotional remove, but from that distance there are sights and moments to appreciate.

Cold Comfort Farm may be hysterically funny to regular readers of Hardy, Lawrence, Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, but it won't ring many bells for the rest of us.

In making the movie, writer-director John Ridley had to negotiate with the Hendrix legend — that is, reality had to accommodate audience expectation. In that sense, Jimi: All Is by My Side does a reasonable job.

The premise of Jason X is silly but strangely believable.

The movie tries to make up for its lack of propulsion through various means, with mixed results.

Benefits from Smith and Lawrence's chemistry. As long as they're on screen together, things breeze along. But when they're apart, the movie flounders.

Perhaps because Jenkins can’t translate to the screen the incisiveness and music of Baldwin’s prose, he brings on real music from other sources. Over and over, and increasingly as the movie wears on, Jenkins drowns his film in mirthless jazz and pop interludes to the point that the action feels stuck in cement.

It’s obvious that this is a well-intentioned, sensitive labor of love, and Hooper’s strategy of keeping it safe is bound to bring in folks who might otherwise avoid such material. For the rest of us, we must settle for a film that is solid but never quite soars.

Well, there’s one way for a biopic about a self-loathing, self-aggrandizing, self-pitying and self-involved music star seem different: Make him an ape.