First-time director Ted Demme (no relation to Jonathan), also of MTV ("Yo! MTV Raps"), displays little flair for comedy or storytelling beyond a sketch length. He also seems to have the sensibility of a dirty-minded eighth-grader. [11 Mar 1994]

It's an unenlightening film that proves youthful anarchy is just as dull as a midlife crisis, and sadly, as predictable, too.

By the time a member of teen-movie royalty makes a cameo in the film's finale, Not Another Teen Movie has long exhausted any hope of succeeding. Instead it becomes, well, just another teen movie.

Writer-director Bruce Robinson, whose credits ("Withnail and I") are all outside the thriller genre, has also chosen to throw a long, ponderous interrogation scene into the third act for no other reason than to give guest-star John Malkovich 15 minutes of hammy screen-time as FBI agent St. Anne. His movie is not only preposterous and dull, it's pretentious. [6 Nov 1992]

A sloppy, indifferent action movie with a sadistic edge and a sour hypocrisy.

The Sandlot is so exploitative of the myth of baseball and rings so false as a nostalgia piece - and is so unfunny as a comedy - that it makes "The Bad News Bears" look like "Pride of the Yankees." [7 Apr 1993]

A joyless amalgam of horror movie cliches, none used more exhaustively than the false alarm.

It is one of the more pessimistic and repulsive views of the war of the sexes ever put on film. [14 Nov 1992]

Most surprising (and disappointing) is the film's lack of humor. Scott, who has a huge following and has developed a lively comic persona, never seems in on the joke.

Surprisingly, first-time director and co-writer Andrew Scheinman relentlessly fails to find anything magical or especially funny here. Little Big League seems to have no sense of the absurdity of its situation and uses the premise mostly as an excuse for one more by-the-numbers competition movie. [29 Jun 1994]

There's no slow descent into ruthless warfare and we get neither the giddy charge of their bad behavior, nor the guilty sting of complicity in their ruthless desire. All that's left is an idea still in search of a script.

Doesn't even fall in the lowbrow-but-entertaining comedy category. It's unabashedly dumb and pathetically offensive.

The lapses in logic make a weak subplot about a serial killer on the loose just plain silly instead of provocative.

A screaming, silly cliche -- and somehow not a bit scary.

Assails with its in-your-face, repulsively compelling (like a train wreck) brutality.

How can a critic feel good about a movie that sets out to numb us with sheer gruesomeness; that embraces nihilism and sadism so enthusiastically; that offers no moral point of view or redemption in its characters, all while feebly aspiring to be a portrait of its generation? [09 Sep 1994]

Roman Polanski's English-language film released internationally two years ago also lays claim to being a kinky sex comedy, but the sex is predictably darker, and the laughs few and far between. [18 Mar 1994]

Unlike "Crying Game" (which, despite the gender confusion, definitely works as a love story for a general audience), the only emotion this movie evokes for its star-crossed lovers is an unpleasant sense of incredulity. [08 Oct 1993]

Crossroads may now fall into the same paragraph as "Glitter," Mariah Carey's disastrous star vehicle.

Yes, in this day and age, a tall man can pretend to be a very short man pretending to be a baby who uses his innocent disguise to molest women and whack men in the nuts. Isn't that funny? No, actually, not so much.

Popcorn is not scary enough to work as horror, not funny enough to work as comedy, not cute enough to work as camp, not skilled enough to work as a tribute to the bad movies of the '50s, and so indifferently acted by the cast (including Tony Roberts, Dee Wallace Stone and Ray Walston) that it just seems a waste of everyone's time. [01 Feb 1991]

Tepid and only sporadically amusing.

The humor is very broad, the occasional attempts at suspense are uniformly unsuccessful, and the script is a by-the-numbers collection of sci-fi movie cliches, right down to the - groan - lonely child who adopts a lovable and misunderstood alien. [27 Apr 1990]

Penn has overwritten the dialogue and, though the filmed-in-Nebraska movie has a certain gritty authenticity, it rings vaguely false. You sense he has no knowledge of the '60s, Midwestern angst or smalltown life. [04 Oct 1991]

Isn't merely bad, it's utterly flavorless and the filmmakers are either too lazy or too cynical to even pretend there's a story behind Lawrence's 21st century homeboy shtick in 14th-century garb.

If you loved the 1990 smash hit, Home Alone, you may have similar feelings about its inevitable sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. It's the exact same movie. And then again, you might feel cheated for the same reason - or at least wish you had rented the video of the old one and saved yourself the time, trouble and cost of a baby sitter. [20 Nov 1992]

A very good movie could probably be made about the black experience in the Old West, but Mario Van Peebles' Posse is not it.[14 May 1993]

As a matter of fact, so much of Pacific Heights is laughable, and the film is so preposterous as a premise and so clumsily directed and lacking in suspense, that it plays like a parody of a Hitchcock thriller. Or did I miss the point and this was Schlesinger's intention all along? [28 Sept 1990]