It is strangely paced (especially in the beginning), always confusing to follow, and extremely awkward as a romance.

The restless, selfish, unfriendly people created by Lachow as protagonists only make the movie hard to warm up to. It's more akin to fingernails scraping a blackboard than an updated morality play.

The film is dominated by computer-generated effects and they're most of its problem -- they don't give us anything to emotionally attach to or invest in.

Just another low-budget effort from filmmakers who mistake cleverness for smarts.

Purely an easy-to-digest testosterone flick anyway, with standard bikini babes, roaring engines and bikers who circle each other slowly in the dust before they rumble.

For anyone looking for something as real or engaging as Biggie's music -- or a good introduction to it -- will be disappointed by this mediocre celluloid life-after-death.

Director Takashi Miike's dish of sukiyaki spaghetti ala Sergio Corbucci is badly seasoned with scraps of reservoir dogs.

It's kind of like "Tootsie," only without the drag. Or the class. Or the laughs.

The numerous plot elements don't come together in the end. Even though we are gradually expected to sympathize with the plight of the murdering vigilante cop, the whole vigilante theme is suddenly dropped midway through the film. It seems to have no real place in the larger story, except as a clumsy and purposeless O.J. Simpson parallel. [26 Apr 1996]

To be fair, Clockstoppers isn't a bad film, merely bereft of creativity and personality.

It wears thin, but also provides some insight into how comics interact and view their craft. At the very least, it confirms all suspicions that they have way more fun than you.

A fairly depressing experience.

A fumbling attempt to create the European equivalent of a Japanese manga thriller in the conspiratorial mold of "Akira" and "Ghost in the Shell" has a stunning look.

It's a formula job all the way, filled with pratfalls, flying food, much male incompetence in the face of child-rearing realities, and a cast of violence-prone children on sugar highs who somehow turn into angels by the film's last sappy moments.

Feels the scratches of too much time and tinkling and is as disjointed as a dislocated shoulder.

The Will Ferrell comedy engine is running on empty in Step Brothers.

If you're in the market for a whimsical, incorrigibly weird movie that basically goes nowhere, try "Arizona Dream." But if you have little patience for self-indulgent movies that substitute scatter-gun blasts of surreal black comedy for dramatic structure and realistic characterization, steer clear of this curiosity from noted Yugoslav film-maker Emir Kusturica ("When Father Was Away on Business"). [9 Sept 1994]

The contrast of the naive assurance of youth with the confusion and ambiguity of adulthood is sweet but simplistic and the wandering script hasn't much else to offer.

Flies coach instead of first class, despite a charismatic cast.

Though a hypnotically beautiful film, it's dramatically listless and dull, and completely lacking in passion.

By no means a good movie. Although based on a true story, the mathematical error that led to Daniel and Susan's predicament is handled with such dramatic slovenliness that the viewer is apt to be confused as to what actually happened.

Director Wayne Wang stumbles through the awkward script without finding its shape or its tone, steering it toward maturity while the script falls back into slapstick sports gags and adolescent social politics.

The new production is handsome and offers a few riveting moments, but it's basically a botched job that misses all the impact of both the original movie and the 1946 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Robert Penn Warren that inspired it.

This harmless but mediocre enterprise was doomed to failure from the start. Hollywood magic can do a lot, but it can't raise the dead.

The script consists largely of goofy little scenes in which various groupings of the four characters banter in that nervous, Woody Allen-ish, never particularly funny or endearing or believable dialogue style of the '90s dating movie.

Baldwin and Broderick each click in their roles and consistently rise above their material in every scene. But the movie around them falls flat and can't begin to sustain its premise.

It’s a comedy, a romantic star vehicle, a thriller, a horror movie and a quasi-environmental parable that's calculated to appeal to all demographic groups. It's not enough of any one of these things to be particularly engaging.

Too bad the film, which Kennedy spun from a stand-up skit, remains as blissfully unaware of its possibilities as B-Rad is of his absurdity.

Basically lives up to the old adage that the final work in a trilogy is invariably the weakest.

It is a fairly routine exercise in New Millennium movie mayhem.

The whole thing feels like watching somebody else play a video game. Director Michael Davis obviously was more interested in crafting a series of gunfights than a coherent story arc.

Splashy and sweetly romantic, if hopelessly unimaginative.

For an ostensibly personal film, this plodding portrait of the self-involved flailing for meaning in a mercenary world has little of Soderbergh's insight, empathy or generous personality.

It feels like a peek into the closet of a pedophile and it's genuinely discomforting.

Think of it as a buffet of romantic comedy comfort food: the good old American standbys complemented by bland international dishes.

The only real difference between this and the handful of other Happy Madison flicks is that James (executive producer, co-writer, star) has made this Sandleresque movie family-friendly, with very little swearing, no nudity and all the edginess of a "King of Queens" rerun.

It's a colorful and exuberant but by-the-numbers and fairly charm-free concoction.

There's no conviction among these self-involved folks who sidestep commitment with a quip and a grin.

A forgettable waste of time.

Scott, whose sensitive turn as a priest inspired by Ralph's conviction and commitment gives the film a touch of grace at the cost of revealing McGowan's drab direction of every other actor.

The Black Dahlia, looks so terrific and is filled with so many imaginatively showy sequences and masterful directorial touches that you almost don't notice that, in every other way, it's just not a very good movie.

Moormann's reverential documentary, seven years in the making, is most successful as a self-narrated autobiography. It fails, however, to deliver a balanced portrait of the man's life and work.

Edgy, hard-boiled crime drama that is very much in this Tarantino-esque tradition.

A thoroughly ordinary drama of temptation, dubious redemption and easy revenge.

Offers precious little inspiration, and the only irony it manages is surely unintended.

As a sports documentary, Murderball is tame and uninvolving. It does however, offer a hard-edged and unsentimental portrait of strong-willed people.

You can feel the debt to Sidney Lumet's '70s studies in police corruption and cop brotherhood, but O'Connor never captures the edge of danger, anger and moral stands being ground up in compromise.

Reportedly, Lucas has been tinkering with this "director's cut" for nearly two years, so its sound and visual elements -- which were fairly impressive to begin with -- have been markedly enhanced, while new digital backgrounds give the film a more epic scale. Still, it's an extraordinarily unengaging and tedious affair.

How strange it is to see a film that's supposed to be all about the burning passion and unquenchable exhilaration of true love, and yet is rather passionless and unexhilarating.

The unlikely marriage of Murphy and Craven is indeed strange, and it results in what often seems to be two diametrically opposed movies in one. Still, it's not quite as bad an idea as it sounds, and the movie is passably entertaining. [27 Oct 1995, p.30]

Certainly, it's mediocre, but no more so than half the comedies that are wildly promoted by their studios these days.

Washington's fire and righteous anger can only do so much, and the token grit amounts to a few grains of sand in the sentimental machinery.

Yet for all the debauchery, there's a juvenile candor in its knowing embrace of teen sex comedy cliches, as if the entire film is just one of Scott's fantasies. You half expect him to jolt awake at the end, and why not? The film fades just like a half-remembered dream.

Sure-handed actionmeister Donner keeps the pacing breathless, and gives his actors plenty of room to do their thing. [15 May 1992]

Not as funny as the original, not nearly as funny.

The most interesting moments in the film are the videotapes sent back and forth between the parents and students, as they communicate the sadness of children separated from their distant families.

Such an air of dumbness hovers over the movie, and it's all played so broadly that nothing about it is remotely believable.

The script is soggy and sloppy and Waters is no master of suspense, but he does have a pair of engaging stars flirting in a world of chic New York glamour.

Nothing at all special. It's one more cheesy, broadly played, poorly paced, instantly forgettable August action movie.

A diversion so soggy that even the few combustible comic disasters fail to light a flame under the lukewarm laughs.

The film works up to a totally conventional ending: It's never much of a comedy or an exploration of the phone-sex phenomenon, and it often seems to be just an excuse for Madonna, John Turturro, Quentin Tarantino and other Lee pals to make cameo appearances and mug for the camera. [22 Mar 1996, p.24]

For all the color and lively music, it's an overlong, messy labor of love built on a sense of personal betrayal that rings hollow.

There is action galore (the deaths, by my rough count, may run somewhere in the triple digits). It's very cartoonish and not upsettingly explicit. But it's all so predictable and pointless that it quickly becomes monotonous, lulling the viewer into numbness, apathy, and perhaps even a peaceful sleep. [20 Sep 1996]

For film buffs who want to see what's hot in Germany, Bandits is probably worth the price of a ticket. Those looking for action, drama, or rock 'n' roll may find the mix less than satisfying.

If Irwin is your bag, then this is your film. Otherwise, Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course is dumb, mate. Real dumb.

A new millennium version of "A Hard Day's Night" without any wit to balance the silliness.

It has its charms, but fails to strike a similar emotional chord.

Even though the supporting cast is likable and the film hits all the beats of its formula, it's weak, as if everyone has been to the well one too many times.

The script is fatally stupid, most of the gags fall flat, the secondary characters add little, Hudson fails to make anything interesting out of the exasperated heroine, and the endless references to McConaughey's sexual prowess finally become revolting.

The movie is all action. But there's no pacing, no suspense and no vulnerability for the protagonist so it all soon gets numbingly tiresome.

If "Splash" was a movie for grownups and "The Little Mermaid" was a film for kids, it's safe to say that the latest flick to feature a mermaid is aimed directly at those who are neither adults nor children, but rather lost somewhere in that awkward middle zone in between.

Fairly good- natured and not as awful as it sounds, but it lacks distinction.

Utter lack of irony and curiosity.

Fun-enough teenage adventure suitable for the whole family.

This is a familiar journey and director/co-writer Todd Phillips sidesteps every opportunity to inject a little edge or originality into it.

Harmless and thoroughly unmemorable: colorful, cute, fast paced, and about as involving as an amusement park ride.

Failing to make a lick of rational sense, Silk grasps at poetic straws.

The finished film, while competently acted and staged, has missed the high mark Spacey set for it. It's self-important, tedious and ultimately pointless, with absolutely none of the sardonic wit that remains the most memorable feature of "American Beauty."

For a film that uses race, class and sexual stereotypes as the starting point, this is disappointingly skin deep.

The repulsive turn of events erased all my good memories of the first half, and makes the movie hard to recommend to a normal human being.

The truth is this is an amateurish student film, marred by poor sound recording, stereotyped characters, heavy-handed direction, a mild racism (the two white characters - a shallow yuppie and an insensitive Jewish teacher - are harsh caricatures), and an unconvincing, tag-on happy end. [16 Apr 1993]

As fresh as a highlight reel of day-after replays, Mr. 3000 is a case of major-league talent stuck in a minor-league story.

For all of its admirable intentions, the awkward melding of movie-of-the-week tragedy, non-denominational salvation drama and teen sex comedy mistakes banality for conviction.

Smokin' Aces isn't a story, it's a premise with a madhouse of characters flung into a collision course that ends at the same finish line.

Rock Star roars to life with a promise of something inspired and inventive whenever Wahlberg leaps onstage. Offstage, however, even he can't breathe life into this same old song.

Not as cool as the first.

When Plympton's freak flag flies, Hair High delivers the same whacked-out weirdness of his shorts. The rest of the film simply stretches out the simple premise and marks time between his ideas.

There's not a vaguely sympathetic character in sight; Kureishi ultimately seems prudishly disapproving of his heroine's last gasp of sexual adventure; and what another writer might have found liberating and healing, he finds distasteful and destructive.

Cohen drives the film at a galloping pace, but it's not fast enough to outrun its absurdity.

There's not an original idea rattling around in the empty-headed but gorgeous-to-behold period film.

It's never consistently funny enough to work as a comedy and never forthright enough to be a successful relationship drama. And, like a lot of films made by directors whose apprenticeship was served in shorts, it is so slight it never quite feels like a feature, more like a half-hour film that has been padded out to fill a feature length. [02 Mar 1990]

A pedestrian movie with a predictable romance at its heart.

The results are shapeless, excessively lurid and often unpleasant, with Argento shamelessly vamping the white-trash junkie mother and truck-stop hooker. She apparently forgot whose story she was telling.

Even with the good performances, the paces are just agonizingly familiar. [24 Oct 1997]

A clumsy, heavy-handed and unnecessarily sordid occult thriller that somehow has managed to generate a big pre-release buzz.

More mediocre than magical.

There isn't a spark in the familiar emotional situation or a reason to care how these amiably bland characters end up.

Low octane comedy running on fumes.