So badly plotted and written that it rarely makes much sense, even with the elementary story line.

It comes out less like a spoof than a smart-aleck remake of "Meatballs," minus the energy of Bill Murray.

This is one of those capers doomed to unravel in comic chaos, but it finally plays less like a con gone wrong than a long, lazy, insubstantial shaggy dog story coasting on nothing but charm.

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

Its overall effect is distinctly underwhelming.

Though it's ostensibly a thriller, Trade constantly works against the conventions of its genre in a rather audacious way -- finding, for instance, surprising moments of humanity in even the most monstrous of its villains.

A mildly amusing but forgettable and way-too-scatological black farce.

It's a violent, R-rated action piece, but well directed, rather lavishly produced, filled with imaginative stunts, and it doesn't have a dull moment in it. [17 May 1991]

Strikes a universal chord, no matter what rung of the popularity ladder we were on in high school.

A straightforward, no-nonsense, agreeably old-fashioned historical action movie.

For all its energy and inspired moments of giddy goofiness, Psycho Beach Party gets stuck in the sand.

Grant's timing is flawless, his delivery is perfection, and he once again demonstrates himself to be the movies' unrivaled master of sophisticated verbal comedy.

Definitely still beating a dead dinosaur here, but the film is leaner, more exciting and superior in every way to the last outing.

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.

Finally becomes a somber, sentimental and rather profound romantic fantasy that is more true to the spirit of the Golden Age of science-fiction writing than possibly any other movie of the '90s.

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.

The most insipidly innocuous film ever made about facing mortality and living it up before passing away, The Bucket List has as much poetry and poise as its clumsy, clunky title.

Overall the movie is a mess, with a mixed-up mythology at its core. It may not be a new holiday classic, but at least it's funny.

It's Shakespearean in its political machinations and closer to "Saving Private Ryan" and "Starship Troopers" than to "Dracula" or "The Howling."

The movie undeniably comes alive and brings down the house every time it goes into one of its many outlandish, Mad Magazine-style spoofs of television commercials. [11 Apr 1990]

It's a superior film in every way to its predecessor "Kiss the Girls."

Iliadis is more visually sophisticated than Craven was in 1972 and works hard to sustain the mood and tension while still hitting the audience with blunt scenes of wincing violence. (It gets grisly and grotesque enough for gore hounds.)

As a thriller, Next goes a certain distance on Cage's sad-sack charm and sense of humor, but it does nothing with its intriguing premise, and it's mostly just one more tedious and progressively dumb collection of Hollywood action clichés.

This film is satisfied merely to wallow in women in peril, cinematic sadism and the spectacle of violent death and dismemberment.

Not only does it steadfastly refuse to condescend to its young viewers (it may actually be too scary for very young children), Carlei carries us along with his strong story sense, and pulls an unusually satisfying plot twist in his final act that elevates the movie, and cleverly turns it into an unexpected moral lesson. [02 Jun 1995]

Though the cast is talented, the script is a mess. It's essentially a collision of missed opportunities.

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

A bland Bond.

The film's deliberate pace, its constantly confusing structure, its thematic vagueness and its clumsy and often embarrassingly amateurish Garden of Eden sequences combine to make The Loss of Sexual Innocence at best, a tough sit; at worst, a self-consciously arty parable of a self-indulgent filmmaker. [30 Jun 1999]

It's hardly original and rarely laugh-out-loud funny -- the filmmakers constantly fall back on the sight of bounding balloon Jimmy squeezing his way out of one situation after another.

It's very slick and small children will enjoy it, but it has little of its model's special magic.

The film lacks the nerve for any genuinely nasty fun or comic bite.

The results are moderately entertaining, but the humor is broad and shallow; the film has none of the irony, bite or wit of its predecessor; and the script (by Glenn Gers) seems so calculated to appeal to every conceivable female demographic that it always feels contrived.

After its midway mark, just lumbers until it fizzles out.

Its one saving grace is Godzilla himself, the James Bond of giant monsters.

Producer Barker (who is only credited with the story idea for the original), director Bill Condon (filling in for the original's Bernard Rose) and his writers have crammed this movie so full of killings and razzle-dazzle MTV imagery that it has very little of what made the first Candyman so effective: genuine suspense. [17 Mar 1995]

The story -- something to do with an ancient evil returning after 3,000 years -- plays like a multi-episode story arc of the TV series.

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

More than painful to behold, it's simply insincere in a film determined to undermine gay stereotypes.

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.

Splashy and sweetly romantic, if hopelessly unimaginative.

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

As a goofy little fantasy, however, this film has loads of charm.

As has been the case with most of Shepard's plays, transfer to the movies spells doom.

Everything in Agent Cody Banks, from tacky special effects, inscrutable action scenes and drab visuals (including substituting Vancouver for Seattle), panders to its audience.

Many regular moviegoers will be appalled by its gleeful crudity and saddened by the spectacle of three icon stars mugging through a farce that's not that many notches above "Jackass: The Movie."

This shambling mess -- offers nothing but a lesson in how not to make a movie.

Yet for a film so affectingly steeped in loss, resignation and the ghosts of memory, the revelation that pulls it all together, while satisfying and even touching, lacks emotional resonance.

This thing is a mess.

The soundtrack is a mess, with period music out of sync with the period, as when the 1967 song, "White Rabbit," underscores a 1965 acid trip.

The casting is so strong and the overall filmmaking flair of the movie is so captivating that it basically works.

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.

Falls disastrously flat.

The cumulative effect of the movie is repulsive and depressing.

Loaded down with credibility problems.

Writer/director Wayne Kramer's approach to storytelling is to withhold any information that might give away the plot.

The few genuine moments of connection -- are as refreshing as they are out of place. They only highlight how false and affected the rest of the film is.

Neither clever nor heartwarming, Four Christmases is the coal in the stocking of holiday movies.

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

Overlong, unscary, poorly paced and banally written.

This emoting doesn't mix well with the comedy and action, of course, and the best that can be said of the film is that it's marginally entertaining, and (for Murphy) reasonably inoffensive. But he's competent enough to make us suspect he might be surprisingly good if he ever did get a real Denzel Washington part. [17 Jan 1997]

If only Outlander was as fun as the premise makes it sound on paper.

Williams' self-conscious and rather bland performance never comes close to bringing his character to life.

A beautifully drawn film and engaging story marred only by its vague character development and mediocre voice-overs.

All about the thrill of the chase, and Friedkin challenges the antiseptic spectacle and fantasy flamboyance of computer-enhanced blockbusters with a lean, mean manhunt thriller and gritty, hard-edged style.

A wide-ranging, disturbing look at our obsession with our looks.

Diaz is quite believable in the part, and gets solid support from Brewster, who is even more appealing as the adoring, wounded and somewhat vacuous younger sister.

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

There are a handful of funny moments, and the top end of the cast comes off rather well. Duchovny has some of that same easygoing likability that made Glenn Ford one of the biggest stars of the '50s.

The curiously stylized piece, shot in a muted palette with performances to match (the cast is perhaps too restrained given the theatrical framework), is dramatically colorless, but the moods and moments are crafted with kinky grace.

Flat-out one of the more exciting and original gut-busters that Hollywood has produced in many a month. It's virtually all action, but the action is never mindless and it is full of marvelous surprises every step of the way.

The best thing about The Power of One is that it works as a history lesson. Avildsen and his writer, Robert Mark Kamen, have managed to simplify and sort out the players and their points of view in a way no other film about South Africa has done. It makes painfully clear just how deep the problems run, and how their solution will invariably require an almost evolutionary change in everyone. [27 March 1992]

Too bad Igor didn't jolt the film to life with his Frankenstein shenanigans.

Every swing of its plot is preposterous, it stumbles to a trick climax that any regular moviegoer will figure out in the first 10 minutes, and the ending is so absurdly unmotivated that it plays like a slap in the face.

Piñero never comes close to convincing us that this guy is worth a movie at all.

The biggest failing of the film is that it's the lamest possible excuse for a whodunit. [17 Apr 1998]

Lawrence uses the stand-up forum less as a weapon to blast us with his incisive, razor sharp insights into life, sex and ethnicity than as a pulpit or confessional to chronicle his rehabilitation and reformation.

It's a parade of insanity, murder, suicide, arson and crimes of passion; delivered in a style as sardonic and tongue-in-cheek as a Vincent Price monologue; complemented by deadpan narration that keeps injecting inappropriate bits of civic boosterism.

In the end, it trivializes the psychological complexity of the girl's post-traumatic stress and betrays a game group of actors who struggle to find balance between the alternately dark drama and the silly, over-the-top melodrama.

The cast is good, the score is sublime, the visuals are sumptuous and it speeds along with a delirious romantic power that, if you let it, can sweep you away.

Selick proves a clumsy director of live-action scenes and never overcomes the muddled, half-baked script or the scatological gags.

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

The film is stylish, the compromising elements that usually junk up a Hollywood "date movie" are nowhere to be seen, the ensemble of supporting actors is strong and, despite a certain woodenness, Hartnett is appealing and mostly very believable.

It's done with an agreeable confidence and flair, the actors all fit comfortably in their roles and the effects are fun.

It's boldly acted, absorbing and satisfying as a history lesson and chock-full of extravagantly brutal battle sequences.

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.

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

This a rapid-fire romp through "War of the Worlds," "Saw," "The Grudge" and "The Village," cut up into skits and pieced back together in some mutant jigsaw puzzle with a few pieces missing, delivers a barrage of low-minded gags with high-spirited energy.

Too dumb and improbable to even go into.

Pitches itself somewhere between "Bound" and "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels," trying to add a feminist twist to the spate of Britain's bloody gangster thrillers and never quite succeeding.

Another gutsy, big-budget movie that dares to say something new and optimistic about our messed-up times. And it almost, but not quite, brings it off.

An exceedingly dull retro-weepie.

There are some surprises to be had amid the cruelty (inflicted by both Jigsaw and his test subjects), but this time around the ordeal is less grueling than simply distasteful.

It's a strange and strangely unaffecting little drama -- but played very flat, with no particular emotional impact sought or achieved.

For all its improbable characters, wretched dialogue and stock situations, the movie has an earnest dumbness that sneaks up on you to be surprisingly entertaining.

The movie's problem is that it's a cartoon, offering no emotional involvement with its characters and no dramatic imperative.

Surprise! The remake is not a heresy. It's a decent enough stab at being what the old movie was to its time, following the same basic plot, full of respectful references to its model, updated with a gallery of fairly imaginative special effects.

Visually impressive but exceedingly unpleasant little nail-biter.