The stylistic cleverness of the opening minutes settles into a self-satisfied flair.

Mystery Men must have seemed magically goofy on storyboards, but has somehow turned into unappealing mush by the time it made it to the screen.

Ponderously plotted, poorly cast, visually undistinguished and devoid of any real verve or charm.

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.

Resembles nothing more than an overstuffed, undernourished "Brady Bunch" episode, only not as funny.

Ferrell, of course, has his moments. But he doesn't have an engaging "center" as a comedian.

Willis and Breslin are stuck in a charmless, predictable picture they can't escape.

This collision of popular Emmy-winning TV shows is strangely uninspired and, well, a bit dull.

It is relatively suspenseless and often distastefully crude.

Bad animation and casting make Moses movie a zero, not a Ten.

Did it move me? And the answer is no. I thought it has a certain ghoulish, voyeuristic fascination, but I found it strangely remote and uninvolving on both emotional and spiritual levels.

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.

The air of deja vu is thick as molasses in Glory Road, a lively but overly slick and grindingly predictable sports drama.

Racing Stripes is oddly torn in tone: is it an old-fashioned family drama, a coming-of-age story or a crass comedy? Live action or animation? Unlike "Babe," it fails to integrate its conflicting personalities.

One more bloated effects-o-rama lumbering through a formula plot (super-villain out to rule the world) without much zest, imagination or awareness of its own absurdity.

It's so irrelevant, unambitious and lazy it almost seems to be thumbing its nose at the daring filmmaker Woody once was.

Far from the worst movie of 2006, but it may be the most disappointing. It should have been wonderful -- a delicious tribute to classic Hollywood -- but it simply doesn't come off.

Hunt and Johansson, two usually good actresses, are vapidly awful, teetering out of their elements in this shakily drawn period piece.

Ashton Kutcher wants to be taken seriously so badly it hurts. So does this metaphysical mess of a movie, a pseudo time-travel drama so complicated it takes more than half an hour just to establish the gimmick. And a gimmick it is.

The real problem here is that director Krueger has no flair as a writer or a director for inspired screwball comedy.

Feels like nothing less than Dana Carvey's desperate bid for his own "Austin Powers"-like franchise, but with a harmless humor far less crude. Carvey favors whoopee cushion punch lines to toilet gags and references to big butts over sexual double-entendres.

Judd Apatow brings no cleverness or wit to his one-joke situation, and he can't give it the kernel of credibility that even a low comedy needs to sustain itself for a feature length.

Whether or not Garden Party is an accurate portrait of the shadow L.A. culture where the young, pretty and desperate can find quick rent money, this low-budget production never engages with its characters or stories enough to make you care either way.

It is not giving away much to say that everything ends as expected, just not soon enough.

Truly, this is a bad script.

The bad news is that Ferrell's modestly likable performance is the ONLY good thing about this misguided comedy that's so tiresomely written, badly acted by a stellar cast and ploddingly directed (by art-house whiz Marc Forster) that it just never quite gets off the ground.

As hard as it tries to capture that blend of domestic comedy and paternal angst that made its predecessor a classic, it is still a pale shadow and a barely passable Steve Martin vehicle. [20 Dec 1991, p.10]

By the film's interminable, unforgivably embarrassing third act it sinks in a sticky swamp of sentimentality.

For those whose idea of hilarity is an adult and a kid throwing fireworks at each other, then getting stoned and playing piggyback in the mall, this movie should be a refreshing tonic.

Farrell is badly miscast as an ethnic Italian with an inferiority complex, the star-crossed love story has very little emotional pull, and even the (heavily CGI-enhanced) period atmosphere ultimately seems rather forced and self-conscious.

Three movies gasp for life inside the clumsily titled Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing & Charm School.

It's an original and rather clever premise, but first-time director Chris Koch doesn't do anything with it.

It's not terrible, but it's mediocre and not much more than a string of cheesy sex gags.

Not only did it not engage the adults, its lackluster story line didn't spread much illusion or magic over the kids in the audience either.

Drowns promising ideas in a sea of missed details and unconvincing motivations.

But Medak never finds his groove in "Romeo." Every scene smacks of deja vu, the cynicism and irony become smothering, it's never funny or exciting enough to hold our attention, and it finally just collapses into the same pointless violence of "Gunmen" - including a scene in which a character is buried alive. [4 Feb 1994]

See "Freaky Friday" for convincing cross-generational female bonding. Despite it's elegant style and uptown milieu, this film is a cheap imitation.

There are a handful of laughs, and maybe three solid scenes. Otherwise, it's an unfunny, relatively charmless, ultimately grueling excuse for a comedy that often plays like a 105-minute public service ad on why it's not a good idea to have children. [20 Dec 1996]

This ill-fitting Tuxedo is strictly off-the-rack.

The new parody from the comedy troupe Broken Lizard, takes another swipe at the corpse armed with the same old weapons. This time, rigor mortis has set in.

Although set 10 years after high school graduation, Just Friends is a dumb teen comedy.

The filmmakers have wildly miscalculated the chemistry these real-life lovers generate on film.

This is still Reiner's worst movie since 1994's "North." Wilson is lackluster, the film's depiction of the collaborative process is (unlike "Adaptation") tortuously false, and it's so disrespectful to the realities of writing and publishing that it has no satiric bite.

An intriguing concept, a storybook vision life in the great age of trans-Atlantic travel, a fine Ennio Morricone score and a credible performance by Roth.

Most of the publicity for Cold Creek Manor seems to imply that it's an occult thriller, specifically a Stephen King-ish haunted house movie. But no. This is a severe case of mistaken identity: In fact, there's not a supernatural bone in the movie's body.

It's very flimsy, the harrowingly unoriginal screenplay rings false in almost every dialogue exchange, and first-time director Lesli Linka Glatter paints her scenes with the broadest of strokes and a clunky, heavy-handed, TV sitcom sensibility. [20 Oct 1995]

Has neither the raucous energy and impudence of "Animal House," the defiance of "If ...," nor the grace and wit of "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle."

To its credit, the film has an engagingly bleak and minimalist look, and a brisk pace. But the chills are few. Every step seems contrived, predictable or unintentionally funny.

A redundancy, and a bore. The characters are harrowingly unsympathetic, the action sequences are by-the-numbers, and Carpenter's usual saving grace -- his sense of humor -- is nowhere in evidence.

It's an abysmal movie.

It has a frenetic, unsettled edginess that chafes against its serene, woodsy, upscale private school setting.

It simply isn't that funny or clever. For a comedy, that's about the worst that could happen

In this brand of comedy, nothing succeeds like excess, and this film is seriously deficient.

It becomes simply another banal gang film so familiar and predictable you have to wonder why so much potential is wasted on such a confused dramatic mess.

This retread has been bloated far beyond its B-movie origins, beefed up with more characters and an all-star cast, stripped of any real suspense and loaded down with music cuts and one-liners aimed at pleasing a crowd of rowdy male teenagers.

It's a by-the-numbers action affair, and one that is considerably more mean-spirited and humorless than the norm. [4 Aug 1995, p.29]

The film is a dud in the tradition of such weak horror sequels as "Exorcist II" and "Dracula's Dog."

There's not an authentically scary moment in it.

The gags on which it rests its laughs have been lifted from every other raucous comedy, campus-oriented or not.

For a film so intent on the rules of engagement, this is hardly engaging drama.

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

As usual, Albert Finney gives a towering performance in his new movie, "A Man of No Importance," and, as usual, the movie around his performance is not much. [03 Feb 1995]

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

Between Stallone's soap opera of a script and Renny Harlin's speed-obsessed visuals, we're never really shown much more than fast cars and obsessed drivers.

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.

Prinze and Forlani coast on charisma alone, but even their charms can't coax magic from the prosaic dialogue and romantic clichés that clog this listless comedy.

There are cute flourishes, but much of the cleverness is smothered by tired dialogue and doughy animation, which gives the animated characters the personality of mannequins and the look of cheap merchandising knockoffs come to life.

Burns' trite talk and familiar romantic conflicts doesn't do any of the characters any favors. Everyone comes off flat and forced, with one notable and lovely exception: Dawson.

An uneasy mix that's too long, too confusing and too undramatically paced to be consistently gripping, and so blatantly panders to teenagers.

The film is a shapeless mess and about as convincing as a cartoon, the usual mix of slapstick, doofus humor and raunchy sex jokes lacking even the bite or attitude to make it adventurous.

To be truthful, the movie is not much, even by the limited standards of the genre. It's played almost too broadly for its own good. [07 Nov 1992]

This vampire story is as soulless as they get.

The result of this blender mash of exotic horror isn't much of anything at all, neither suspenseful, terrifying or inventively gory: Turistas is dead on arrival.

Love of dogs is key, because the amateurish acting, writing and production values in this independently made film feel more like the stuff of home movies than Hollywood.

This thing is a mess.

MTV offers an airbrushed portrait that does nothing but perpetuate the myth of an "angelic" hoodlum.

Sandler and Barrymore generate some believable, if low-voltage, chemistry: they're both so shallow and conceited and dingy that you think -- yes! -- in real life, these two people probably would go for each other in a second.

All processed sugar and artificial flavor, right down to the sticky but tasteless happy ending.

At its best when exploring grieving and loss and anger, but Shear turns it into spiritual shock treatment.

Takes itself seriously enough to pull off a clever bit of sleight of hand, but doesn't have much to offer once the twist comes out of hiding.

Doesn't have any of the creepy suspense that graced the first "Friday" movies, and very little of the Daliesque dream imagery of the early "Nightmares." It's just a slam-bang succession of gross-out mutilations, played for giggles.

So full of limp slapstick silliness and stock characters that it's hard to stay awake through it.

All the jazzy effects and jumpy editing merely move us quicker to an otherwise predetermined tragedy.

Most of this is harmless enough, but Kasdan's Hollywood logic is simply too implausible.

A mystery that isn't mysterious, a thriller that's barely thrilling.

Dempsey also needs some fashion advice. As always, he sports his trademark five o'clock shadow in every scene (which in itself is excessive). But with Dempsey at age 42, it's beginning to make his face look more sinister than sexy, less Dr. McDreamy, more Richard Nixon.

This belabored summertime sequel is moderately less vulgar, certainly less expensive and, if possible, even less funny than its forerunning bomb, "Daddy Day Care."

For fans of Rosie O'Donnell, Another Stakeout is also noteworthy as the first real starring vehicle for the fast-rising, dead-pan comic. But she seems awkward as a lead and never very funny. You get the sense that her considerable talent might be better suited to television, stand-up comedy and supporting roles. [23 July 1993]

Loses focus of whom the film is honoring.

The two central performances are competent but uninspired -- and annoyingly mannered. Pearce's Warhol is a one-note, irresponsible villain and Miller's Sedgwick is a shallow, pretentious party girl who chain-smokes her way through every scene.

Director John McTiernan is normally a competent director but he's simply not at his best here. He shows little flair for comedy, his performances are one-dimensional, and his action sequences are predictable and sometimes amazingly sloppy. [18 Jun 1993, p.5]

Fairly incompetent as a musical and rather silly as a drama.

The movie around Stallone is fairly dreadful, so overly stylized and poorly written that it's always a struggle to stay oriented.

All these good elements have resulted in a movie that is not so much awful as mediocre, disconnected and ultimately incomprehensible.

New director John Moore just doesn't have original director Richard Donner's filmmaking flair, so the same scenes done the same way on phony-looking Prague locations without the benefit of Jerry Goldsmith's Oscar-winning score just seem terminally slow and flat.

The concerts themselves are only exciting when Young is at center stage. Although a balding millionaire in his 60s, he retains the ragged energy of a rock 'n' roll road warrior. Not so with the other members, particularly Stills.

A monstrous disappointment.

An undistinguished treasure-hunting epic that rips off the 1977 movie, "The Deep," in virtually every frame. It's pretty to look at, but so low-voltage and instantly forgettable that it's hardly worth anyone's time.