The resulting hodgepodge has the feel of filmmaking by committee, the look of last-minute reshoots and the whiff of desperation. Not even Braff's cartoonish smirk is distracting enough to hide that.

It wants to be a "Carrie" with a modern-day "Frankenstein" twist, but it lacks the smarts behind the weirdness.

An awkward and sometimes confused thing fraught with overwrought emotions and misguided ideals.

Semi-Pro is the perfect name for this movie, because it feels like a half-baked comedy made by semi-professionals.

Unremarkable sequel to the 1967 hit.

The movie is a misfire.

The film's first-time director, the TV-commercial-trained Marcel Langenegger, is out to emulate Hitchcock with dashes of "Vertigo," "Strangers on a Train" and more. But his homage is uninspired and disconnected, and his film is a bore.

The combined efforts of three novice screenwriters fail to give shape to a life that was, although devoted to a noble cause, unexceptional.

But the movie is mostly just bad, and probably the nadir of Pakula's otherwise distinguished career. As played by Kline and Mastrantonio, victim and wife here are just too dumb to be even remotely sympathetic; and the script is so predictable and yet so utterly preposterous every step of the way that it insults the intelligence of even the most undiscerning moviegoer. [16 Oct 1992]

As a thriller it's dull and incomprehensible; as a romance it's empty and emotionally uninvolving; and as a character study it's strangely repulsive.

Good performances are mostly wasted. Phoef Sutton's adaptation of the Abrahams' novel is poor, it works to an absurdly unlikely and dramatically dishonest must-hit-a-home-run conclusion, and - though it tries here and there - it has absolutely nothing new to say on the subject of fan obsession. [16 Aug 1996. p.30]

Lively but incredibly dumb.

As weak a star vehicle as Hollywood has cranked out this millennium.

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

Not a moment rings true in this sentimental drama.

The Man Without a Face also manages to be an expression of Gibson's well-known political and sexual conservatism. It goes to some lengths to pay homage to John Wayne (three times) while the anti-war left of the '60s is brutally caricatured as a bunch of effete snobs, and the women in this movie are just in the way. [25 Aug 1993, p.c1]

It all feels pretty empty.

If, like me, you haven't read this book, the movie makes little sense, and has zero inspirational kick. It's just a depressing parable about a fellow who sinks lower and lower in life until he figures out a nebulous new way to sell God to the masses.

Does have one saving grace, however. As Nick's long-suffering wife, Blanchett gives the movie some badly needed charisma, and its one point of sympathy -- even nobility.

No movie that stars Sean Connery can be completely worthless but Medicine Man comes about as close to it as anything the actor has done in a long time - probably since Meteor in 1979. [07 Feb 1992]

For 12-year-old boys, period.

Director Jean Stewart isn't merely clumsy with character; she hasn't the chops to show us the joy and exhilaration Christine feels in the freedom of solo runs.

I can imagine the pitch meeting: "It's 'Kramer vs. Kramer' meets 'Forrest Gump.' No, wait, 'Rainman' has a baby!"

It might be impressive as a made-for-DVD production, but coming from producer George Lucas, it makes for a cheap excuse for a big-screen spectacle.

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

Above all, Kranks lacks that basic kernel of credibility that even a goofy farce needs to work.

The film half-heartedly paints their actions as rebel-chic heroism even when it has all the integrity of tomcats spraying outside their yards, and it ends up just as confused as the characters.

The cast tries hard and a sprinkling of laughs results, but the project is defeated by a concept that is not very novel, a script that is not especially witty, direction that is neither sharp nor insightful and one-note characters that are simply not very interesting.

Like many video games, Resident Evil has a drearily long setup, then a lot of blood and gore, then an overextended ending.

The movie is sporadically funny in an anarchistic way. But Cho and Penn don't have the needed personality or comic identity to sustain a franchise and their non-drug humor is so crude and scatological that -- to say the least -- it leaves a very bad taste in the mouth.

Most of its characters come off as being one-dimensional and stereotypical, and the film's sensibility leaves a very bad taste in the mouth.

Tainted by cliches, painful improbability and murky points.

This is simply another in a long line of utterly unnecessary remakes that, having nothing new to say, clutch at crassness and dumbness.

A sloppily scripted film that contains a silly and superfluous subplot about a crooked cop.

The special effects display is so lacking in imagination it turns into so much noise, just a flashy distraction from the stiff, stock cliches of the by-the-numbers script.

At its best, it is self-effacing fun.But the cartoonish approach takes its toll: The random twists and contrived showdowns devolve into just so much abstract business, too silly to take seriously and too unmotivated to make sense.

The movie also has a supernatural element: the leader of the renegades (Eric Schweig) turns out to be a sorcerer with occult powers. It's very clumsy, and speaks to the pandering streak in Howard that has always prevented him from being a truly first-rate film artist.

It's the script -- by director Mark Fergus (who also wrote the adapted script for "Children of Men") and Hawk Ostby -- that lets everyone down.

Though First Daughter delivers a nice twist about midway through and Keaton lights up the screen every time he's on it, Holmes fails to deliver the kind of nuanced performance "Pieces of April" suggests she's capable of.

The jokes run dry, the situation is redundant, the cast becomes tiresome and the running time is interminable.

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 film never kicks in as a character study or a star vehicle.

One lousy little movie -- utterly devoid of any real originality or charm.

Smith has badly overextended his modest filmmaking gifts.

Apart from Jon Voight, slumming and turning in a rather droll, if lonely, performance as the German-accented villain, the movie amounts to cynical, cutesy claptrap.

A harried, screechy film that goes nowhere at a breakneck pace, full of sound and furious slapstick overkill but devoid of wit.

An exceedingly dull retro-weepie.

The film may be like looking through a stranger's scrapbook. With sketchy and didactic scenes lacking narrative cohesion, it is a collection of often strong images that fail to come to life.

It's hard to imagine how anyone could sit through this thing except squirming critics and violence addicts in need of a particularly gruesome fix.

All told, this thing has to be one of the dullest caper movies ever made.

When a film has to blare its racially and incendiary stance as obviously as Lakeview Terrace, you know it's trying too hard.

Progressively sabotaged by poor technical quality, terrible plotting, a glaring lack of directorial skill and finesse, scenes that have no credibility and/or motivation and an astounding sloppiness to its historical detail.

Somehow the screwball concoction does not jell. The stars are pleasant but unexciting, the goofy ensemble has a few moments of hilarity but never catches fire, the laughs are very scattered and the film's title is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The movie is just grindingly by-the-numbers: an uninspired brew of all the clichés of the kidnap-thriller genre, liberally seasoned with brutality, stirred at adrenaline-rush speed by a director with a heavy hand and very little imagination.

Though it does present the facts of Susann's life, it skims them so quickly and with such glorious glee that we never get a sense of who this woman really was.

Time travelers, hobbits, ghosts? Those I can buy. The impossibly quaint world of small-town innocence and Hollywood harmlessness in Win a Date With Tad Hamilton? Now that demands a serious suspension of disbelief.

Numbingly predictable and repetitive non-stop action.

In the end, there's also something distinctly distasteful about a movie in which the central figure casts himself as noble martyr while character-assassinating his parents.

The vapid plot line follows the same narrative arc as "Tootsie" but hasn't the heart or purpose of that film.

There's every reason to believe the creators stopped taking it seriously a long time ago. What's bothersome is that they don't take the audience seriously enough to deliver an actual movie.

Quickly becomes an endurance test: like watching an old Carol Burnett skit that's not working, or a high school play that's trying to be bad.

A resounding dud.

If you're a Toronto native or a big-time hockey geek, there are enough little in jokes to probably carry you through the leaden pacing and barrel-scraping gross-out humor, but it's an awfully dull ride for the rest of us.

When, in its eventful final act, Merhige finally reveals what this thing is REALLY all about, it comes not with any blissful storytelling satisfaction but a grinding sense that this strange movie is a structural mess.

The script sounds like literal diary transcripts, the camerawork tests the limits of eyestrain, and the soundtrack bleats with mediocre pop songs by unknowns.

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

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

A botched job: the various relationships and personal histories of the characters are never made clear, the last act is glaringly disjointed, the writing and direction are all over the map.

Like too many films of faith, it mixes its message, proclaiming that a life given over to God is a reward unto itself, and then handing over victories to its faithful like some overtime bonus.

For all the hot air expended, this film ends up all smoke and no heat.

This sci-fi film noir craves a passionate center, an intoxicating core or some pulse that makes us want to keep taking that first step into dark waters, but it leaves us drowning in its quiet tedium instead.

The cumulative effect of the movie is repulsive and depressing.

Is Queen of the Damned worthy of its hype or should it have a stake driven through its dark heart? The answer lies somewhere in between.

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

But the main reason you might find the film a bad trip is that its 30-year-old Holden Caulfield-type hero is so harrowingly unsympathetic: unpleasant, unappealing, self-pitying.

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]

Not extreme enough to skate the edge of tasteless farce and not straight enough to play the material for edgy satire, The Ringer is a cheat right down to the final stretch. Breaking the rules should be more fun than this.

For all the bludgeoning insistence of Kramer's contrived plots and blunt direction, there's not much conviction to the outrage.

Don't watch this film unless you have a high tolerance and an undemanding appreciation for penis jokes and humor based more on a capacity to disgust than to surprise.

A stiff of a supernatural comedy.

A poorly written collection of comic-book movie cliches that offers nothing new to the genre, generates very little in the way of action thrills and plays like a self-important, humorless rip-off of "Kill Bill."

A bafflingly unfunny comedy.

Starts slowly, takes a turn for the better for a couple of reels and then, not having much to say or anywhere to go, flatlines into something akin to "American Idol."

Johnny Suede seems in every way a pale imitation that is so vacuous and self-consciously hip that it just fades into nothingness. [13 Nov 1992]

The official R rating is for "strong language, sexual content, drug use and some crude humor," but the MPAA is just being polite. It's all crude.

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.

Pretty silly stuff, designed to appeal more to older kids and adults than the toddler brigade.

Plays like a feature-length sitcom with gay double entendres.

Kilner and crew cough up a mish-mash of contrasting tones and tempos and wind up a rather odd, misshapen curiosity that wavers into too many styles to avoid a slow death by overkill.

The film's technological selling point -- having a computer-animated Scooby in a mostly live-action world -- is strangely unimpressive. In fact, it's virtually unnoticeable: a testament perhaps to the audience's increasing knowledge that in today's CG-driven Hollywood, all movies are cartoons.

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

A sad, sad, sad, sad rip-off.

Every frame of the way, it's eminently clear that Primer is the work of an engineer, not a film- maker.

Von Trier is far more hypocritical than his straw-figure characters, and he's simply too cynical and insincere to be provocative.

The masochistic brutality it's selling still seems glaringly out of step with the current mood of the country.

Legends of the Fall is one of those movies that is so sloppy and so poorly written and so clumsily directed that every dramatic scene seems to either insult your intelligence or come off as being unintentionally hilarious. [13 Jan 1995]

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.