A strangely warm, affectionate look at bad behavior amid emotional damage and a stranglehold of identity issues.

It's all so visceral that it overwhelms the near-abstract story and smothers what passes for characters.

Director Martha Coolidge attempts to keep the film grounded in reality, but the movie flutters away from her control.

Has a good cast, a nicely sustained mood of paranoia and several genuinely creepy moments, but ultimately ends up being one more highly formulaic teen screamer.

It's a bright, swiftly paced story with some spirited humor.

It never quite adds up to anything. It's engaging enough while it's going on, but has little visceral impact or resonance.

It's never hugely engaging and it's instantly forgettable, but it has a certain goofy charm.

There are shocking facts and supportive images, but the film lacks investigative spirit.

Annoyingly shallow, filled with one-note characters, and not half as daring as it seems to think it is.

Anyone in the market for a bittersweet romantic comedy could do worse.

By the time we get to the unsurprising surprise ending, what seemed innovative and challenging in Taking Lives has lost its juice and reverted to formula form, and we leave the theater with that same old let-down feeling of having endured a ritual one more time.

While it displays precious little originality or ingenuity, A Guy Thing is less graceless than most of its ilk and benefits from a likable cast.

The movie is full of action and stunts, but after the gangbusters opening, it loses steam and imagination very quickly.

It's simply not a very good movie. Its story line is populated with so many characters and meaningless names that it's nearly impossible to follow, and its author's message doesn't amount to much more than a cry of despair.

Abigail Breslin, the preteen Oscar nominee for "Little Miss Sunshine" and the most effortless actress of her generation, plays the precocious little girl part without overdoing the precociousness.

Feels forced every step of the way. Ultimately it's the kind of under-inspired, overblown enterprise that gives Hollywood sequels a bad name.

I walked out of it feeling much the same way I did after "The Cat in the Hat" and "The Polar Express" -- jarred by its excess, undernourished by its lack of heart and bored by its lack of originality.

More silly than funny.

Its combination of maudlin sincerity, cruel slapstick, exotic romanticism and boogie-down dance sequences may befuddle more than it entertains.

So fluffy and sitcom shallow that it makes "Gidget Goes to Rome" and its other many predecessors in the young-American-girl-goes-to-Italy-and-falls-in-love genre look like high art.

Outside of a smart performance by Shawn Hatosy as Tim Dunphy, there just isn't much that's enlightening or new in this intimate recollection.

Writer-director Chris Columbus (Home Alone) never manages to make the mix of humor and pathos gel. The characters never seem as engaging as he wants them to be, the comedy is often forced, and scenes fall flat left and right. [24 May 1991]

It pales in comparison to its two classic predecessors, and also just generally feels like one too many trips to the well.

Ultimately emotionally flat and eminently forgettable.

Once we realize just how deeply hateful these two are, Samuell's free-spirited, romping visuals start to feel imposed on the film as a shameless "me too" ripoff of another, better movie.

It's an interesting experiment that doesn't quite work.

Not a bad movie, per se. It's just harmless and bland and dull and predictable, and sometimes that's worse than a bad movie.

The actors navigate tough characters through emotional mayhem with such intense determination it's a shame they're undercut by the intrusive voice-over.

There are too many unearned runs to fully embrace this underdog triumph.

Director Troy Beyer, who adapted the original screenplay, can't seem to decide if this is a morality play or a music-video fantasy.

It's a well-acted but rote and strictly by the book "war movie."

The movie is mainly an excuse to display special-effects gags in the form of the various miracles manifested -- some of which are highly imaginative, some of which aren't.

It's a moderately compelling sci-fi action movie with a handful of scary scenes -- though nothing at all special, and only a shadow of the original or even its 1978 remake.

While Keira Knightley brightens things up as Guinevere, the casting is otherwise lackluster.

Autobiographical or not, the frankness and family hysteria of this rolling therapy session gets awkwardly intimate and at times tough to endure, as much for its raw candor as for its confessional contrivance. Too bad the revelations of past mistakes are more interesting than the story played out screen.

As action movies seem to get more complicated and convoluted with international conspiracies and technological concepts, the "Transporter" franchise is refreshingly simple.

There's simply nobody beneath the derisive attitude worth caring about.

It's more ambitious and passionate than thoughtful. Singleton is better at criticizing than understanding, and he leaves too many characters lacking a legitimate voice.

As this all plays out -- and basically segues into "King Kong" -- the movie wins its biggest gamble: its entirely computer-generated monster works.

The unchecked enthusiasm of McGinley as the touchy-feely renovation guru gives slow-burn Cube the perfect foil and mellows the malicious comic tone. The rest is pure slapstick.

The film's creepier moments are pathetically weak, and its thematic update fails to attain the minimal credibility that even a wild farce needs to sustain itself.

It is long, mediocre and rather pointless. [07 Apr 1995]

It's hard to know what to make of the thing, though it has a sleazy charm, it's never boring and it goes a certain distance on Samuel L. Jackson's conviction.

A kind of "Seabiscuit"-lite.

Mr. Deeds, is -- perhaps predictably -- pretty much of a disaster. It's a bit like someone scrawling a mustache on the Mona Lisa.

Takes itself awfully seriously. It feels a bit like a grudge piece, laboring to grasp at large themes, but it is as trivialized as the capricious world it explores.

While all the "Mission" plots are convoluted and slightly preposterous -- the keyword in the title is "Impossible" -- the latest is just this side of insultingly stupid. The longer you think about it, the less sense it all makes.

It's a lifeless little caper piece that never develops the magic and intellectual fascination it needs to bond with an audience.

A heady, impressionistic mixture of biography, fantasy and social history in which it isn't always clear which is which.

Anyone in the market for an overblown and totally mindless adventure-comedy will certainly get his money's worth.

Wonderfully cast but underwhelming and never especially believable.

Has almost none of the nail-biting suspense and fascinating character interplay that made the original so authentically terrifying.

Perhaps, like Al Gore's lecture on global warming, the force of its argument will stir some of those who see it to further research the subject.

Fortress is as harrowing a cat-and-mouse game as the conflict between Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones in "The Fugitive," and the new arrival also offers the perk of being about ideas bigger than mere pursuit. [3 Sept 1993]

Seeks to shock and to outrage, and so far it's done both quite nicely.

The affair of the necklace itself is so complex and many-sided that it would take a Sidney Lumet to do justice to it on film.

It's bright, colorful and udder-ly unmemorable.

Well-intentioned but not very well directed, it makes for a better psychological profile than a film.

The Program has little bite as satire or as muckraking. It doesn't really want to offend anyone very deeply (perhaps because it was filmed with the cooperation of nine separate college athletic departments). If you read the sports pages, you could devise your own script and it would be twice as devastating.

It's an interesting and likably ambitious movie with an ensemble of mostly engaging character vignettes, but, sadly, it misses its mark.

It's mostly forced and predictable, too much of the physical comedy falls very flat.

There's a gripping thriller between the gaps in logic. Director Florent Siri has a tough style and an unforgiving attitude, but it drowns in the queasy blood lust.

Maybury's attempt at a more mainstream movie is really just a simple love story cloaked in a lot of metaphysical mumbo-jumbo.

Each star has his moments, and the supporting cast is good, especially Walken, playing one of his less extreme characters; Jane Seymour as his promiscuous wife; and the stunning Rachel McAdams as their daughter and Wilson's love interest.

The warmth of Baker as the cuddly nature boy (another idealized image, certainly, but a romantic one) and the intelligence and fire of Lathan give the lesson, and movie, just enough heart to make it enjoyable.

But a movie is only as good as its script, and this one is labored, predictable, sexually unimaginative (despite its salacious poster, and Eszterhas' reputation), surprisingly abrupt (only 90 minutes) and strangely inconclusive. [13 Oct 1995]

While young Coppola is a pro with her camera, she'd be wise to brush up on her storytelling skills.

The movie has a suspenseful moment or two, and it's never hard to watch, but it's ultimately one more totally forgettable Hollywood thriller.

For all of its good-natured guff, Jersey Girl chooses uncomplicated sentiment over the messy complications of real life.

So slight that it barely qualifies as a movie, 10 Items or Less squeaks by on the charm of its leads.

Does nothing so much as stir up a pining for the show in its prime -- a darkly imaginative and wonderfully weird thing -- though it is always nice to see old friends, however mellowed by age they turn out to be.

Hodges cuts the film like a diamond, but it's just an exercise in cut glass, an impressive surface that only looks tough.

The concert footage, which is exceptionally well photographed and recorded, offers clips of varying lengths from a wealth of songs. The rest of the film glimpses the stress disorders that can develop when average people with problems become popular celebrities.

The film ultimately has no contrast and we can't figure out whom to like or dislike.

One of the strangest things about J.L. Aronson's often fascinating film is the presence of Sufjan Stevens, who recently has become a star in his own right, as Smith's bandmate and protégé. One can only wonder what Stevens, who possesses a pleasant voice and a solid grasp of song craft, found in such a mentor.

Although Bynes exudes a devil-may-care attitude that is fun to watch, the formulaic movie ultimately falls apart around her.

By most of the ways movies are usually judged, pretty much of a mess. The camerawork is jerky and distracting, the dialogue is cliched and the story makes so little sense that the script seems to have been improvised by the actors as they went along.

It is preachy, didactic and heavy-handed as only an Oliver Stone movie can be. And yet ... and yet... despite all this, the film has an undeniable cumulative power. [20 Dec 1991]

There are more laughs to be wrought out of Myers' militant flight-attendant training school, and they're just not there.

There are some ingratiating moments in "Heart and Souls," but the comedy is mostly a misfire - derivative and emotionally calculated and never as cute or funny as it wants to be. [13 Aug 1993]

The underdog story doesn't miss a cliche, even though it never figures out whether it's a boxing picture or a military drama.

It's just one more competent but routine, midlevel ($70 million) late-summer action movie filled with the usual explosions, shootouts and male bonding.

It lacks the invention of Pegg's comedies with Edgar Wright, which buzz and crackle with ideas and energy. This one simply plods through, just like Dennis. Only Pegg's doggedness gets this effort across the finish line.

There is a lot of history to be learned here, but the teaching is so slow paced that the most alert student may fall into a stupor by the end of class.

I can't imagine how Smith can capture a big enough audience to pay off this private joke, but the inner geek in me had too much fun to care.

Michael Winterbottom's erotic drama isn't so much a story of a love affair as an anatomy of a sexual relationship.

The movie itself cannot begin to match its delicious high concept. It's offensively funny in places but it can't sustain itself for a feature length running time and it's not nearly as clever or as fun as it should be.

Surely played better on the page than on the screen. What's left is the same old drill driven by brutal master race fervor.

Deyfus' haphazard filmmaking dissipates a potentially fascinating mystery into one long diversion.

With a title like Chaos Theory, one might expect a little runaway energy or a dash of wild spirit under the antics, but there's little punchy anarchy in this controlled experiment.

Too dumb and improbable to even go into.

The script (by Cheryl Edwards, who wrote "Save the Last Dance") is shallow and dumb, the conflict (success goes to Jackie's head) is especially unconvincing, and director Charles S. Dutton shamelessly allows his own small part (as Jackie's mentor) to hog the camera.

The film is your basic sensitive young people coming-of-age in the '60s formula piece. [29 Apr 1995]

It's routine, TV sitcom fodder, but the supporting cast is better than average.

Predictable and agonizingly politically correct.

Definitely deserves points for trying to be something thought-provoking and different, but it doesn't really stand up to analysis and it comes off as a pretentious mess.

Opens on a display of humiliation and human degradation at its worst and then rewinds, like a video surfer zipping back to replay a favorite scene, to the nominal beginning of the spiral.

Some of it works, most of it doesn't. But the real problem of the movie is that it's so utterly lacking in freshness and originality. This is exactly the kind of formulaic indie gay comedy that was so overdone in the '80s and '90s that it became a film festival cliché.