Cheesy.

If only it weren't based on a true story. It might have been a good movie.

The movie doesn’t just suffer by comparison to “High and Low” (itself adapted from Evan Hunter’s novel “King’s Ransom”); taken by itself, its pace drags, its tone staggers and its ideas are muddled.

De Palma plays both sides against the middle, and eventually the thing collapses. Instead of simply pursuing what seems to be his vision of the story, about a flawed but decent man getting martyred to a corrupt system, he tries not to offend and ends up making empty and confusing gestures. When at the end of this remarkably cynical movie, Morgan Freeman, as a principled trial judge, stands up and makes a speech about decency -- ''Decency is what your grandmother taught you'' -- it's hard not to laugh out loud. [21 Dec 1990, p.E1]

Hellion is so sincere and so dull that some might mistake it for a true work of art.

The movie is a mess.

Too bad the movie is spoiling the view.

Here, where even the stepmother has a backstory, Cannon seems intent not just on trying to blot out the original’s sexism but also its mystery. In trying to be safe and copacetic with modern sensibilities, this Cinderella neuters itself.

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.

The film's overburdened, silly plot renders it a disaster.

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

Lacking the velocity and excitement of an action movie and the reality of good drama, The Mother is the worst of both worlds.

As writer and director, Cronenberg devises for himself a compelling situation, but a situation is not the same as a story. Within 20 minutes, Cronenberg has written himself into a hole, one populated entirely by passive characters who do nothing but get cut up or watch other people get cut up.

In King Arthur, everything goes wrong. The film combines the plodding sincerity of a Ph.D. dissertation with the brains of a high-concept Jerry Bruckheimer- produced blockbuster (which it is), and no one benefits.

Surprisingly, the results are embarrassing. As puppetry, Team America is stilted. As satire, it's gutless and lazy. And as comedy, it barely delivers laughs.

Morgan Freeman's voice is heard as the narrator, which is in itself the stuff of parody. Then we listen and get lost within two sentences, because the narration is so poorly written that Freeman himself probably didn't know what he was talking about.

If nothing else, Fitzgerald has demonstrated how huge a challenge the AIDS epidemic is on a worldwide scale, and how it will take a concerted, intelligent effort to solve it. It'll take a lot more than throwing money around.

It's a bomb - not the usual bomb, but a time bomb, despite a 20-minute stretch at the beginning that goes along nicely. [17 May 1991]

The best thing you can say about this “Moment” is that, at a breezy 92 minutes, it’s a brief one.

One more small thing: Every other scene in Saw IV starts and ends with a potential victim pressing "play" on a tape recorder, to the point where it's almost funny.

The movie's excruciating length is without dramatic or thematic justification.

Not only not funny, it's unfunny. It kills humor. Sit in a room by yourself, look at a blank screen for 90 minutes, and you'll have more of a chance of laughing at your own thoughts than you will at this movie.

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

Metro, the new Eddie Murphy cop picture made in San Francisco that opens today, goes beyond cliched: It's shameless. The relationships, plot turns -- even the action sequences -- are trite and uninspired. Murphy is fresh, as usual, but "Metro" is not.

Self-serious, pointless and silly.

Even when it tries to be funny, there’s never any point of connection. The emotions in White Noise are neither real nor meant to be real. The audience is always watching from a distance — until, finally, it starts wondering why it’s watching at all.

This is a sloppy hash of a movie, poorly directed and plotted in a way that looks as if it were improvised on the spot.

Knows its audience and doesn't stint on the flatulence jokes, poop jokes, leg-humping dogs and moments of homo-panic.