A movie that features a cartoon rodent eating his brother's feces, and do you really need to know more about this update of Ross Bagdasarian's iconic musical creation?

The picture is a comedy. It's a drama. It's a romance. And it's a vampire movie -- it's definitely a vampire movie....But what it is most of all is a mess. A flat-out, flailing-in-all-directions mess. [26 Sept 1992, p.C3]

The emotional core of the movie, the relationship between Nicky and Jess, lacks impact, mostly because you can’t believe a word that they say, but also because Smith is not a strong leading man.

Instead of defining and spoofing its period, its attitude and its social barometer, Leave It to Beaver just stumbles about in a bland, irony-deprived suburbia that denies the movie any juice or bite and renders the Cleaver family even duller than it was.

Promised to be the season's thoughtful action picture, turns out to have few thoughts and no thrills.

I saw this movie in the middle of the day, having had a great night’s sleep, and I had to slap myself awake a few times.

Jaw-droppingly awful.

The film is obvious, weak and scattered and seems more like a practical joke than a work of genuine passion. It is without exaggeration one of the most blindingly boring films I've seen in years.

With words streaming out of their mouths instead of into bubbles, Ethan and his gang of past, present and future lovers sound laughingly unbelievable. They're on the road to inanity.

How can you screw up a movie that has Lady Gaga? Here’s how: Make it claustrophobic, with the first half a brutal prison picture and the second half an excruciatingly dull courtroom drama.

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.

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

Every instance when Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie feels like the worst movie ever made, some goofy little screechy moment involving the villainess, Divatox, saves it. So it winds up being nearly the worst movie ever made.

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

A rollicking comedy for the gay niche that rarely rises above the level of a high school skit, Phillip J. Bartell's sequel to 2004's "Eating Out" is loaded with silliness and eye candy.

"300" was an innovative and imaginative action film, but the follow-up, 300: Rise of an Empire, is nothing but a disappointment.

A discordant comedy that gives bad taste a bad name.

Has maybe a half-dozen moderately frightening scenes.

Don't invest too much in the word "Golf" at the beginning of the title. Golf in the Kingdom is arguably less of a sports movie than the first "Harry Potter." (At least someone won that game of quidditch ...)

The movie appears to be a contrived, poorly produced attempt to sell more of the author's books.

Not very good.

Butter is a misfire. At 90 minutes it feels inflated, and though clearly intended as funny, it's difficult to locate, except in the most general terms, the focus of the movie's satire, and there's not a laugh to be had.

Scorsese stuffs the film with heavy-handed art direction and piles on a ludicrously ominous soundtrack. The soundtrack is a constant reminder of the movie's importance and only highlights its unimportance.

Noirish thrillers live or die by their plot twists and dialogue -- talk literally being cheap compared to action shots. Unfortunately, the script by first-time filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson fails on both counts.

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.

The landscape shots are impressive, and it's fascinating just to look at the native people -- but after 10 minutes, you've had the experience. Connery is crusty, twinkling and attractive, but in reciting this ham-handed dialogue, the best he can do is be a good actor trapped in a bad film. [07 Feb 1992, p.D1]

All this could work, but Perkins never finds the proper tone in what is almost a spoof of the horror genre.

It’s a preening piece of work, aiming to flatter and please, while masquerading as something hard-hitting and daring. And because of all that, it’s a bore.