The script starts repeating its best gags about halfway through, and the direction gets ever broader as it goes along until the film finally loses all effectiveness as satire.

It's not sleepy, it's comatose, and writer/director Josh Sternfeld never wakes it up with anything as crass as a plot.

The result is a heartfelt film brimming with ideas and passion but hampered by a literal approach that douses the emotional heat.

So lame and Woody himself seems so worn down and the humor is such a pale shadow of the former Allen brilliance that -- despite a few chuckles here and there -- it's a considerable disappointment.

It's weird, clean, good-natured fun, and it's far too subdued for its madcap milieu.

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.

Pleasant viewing, but the unbalanced script and amateur performances keep it from being much more than a walk in the park.

The restraint so magnificently applied in "The Remains of the Day" has simply fallen into disconnection.

At 140 minutes, the film becomes a humorless, long-winded spectacle.

Attempts to do for "The Big Sleep"-type detective movie and film-noir genre what "Blair Witch" did for horror films.

The script is full of holes and the premise is not especially credible.

The curious character study is a comedy in a minor key, but for all White's fascination with Peggy, he brings little conviction to the healing message under all this creepiness and social awkwardness, beyond what Shannon brings to the role.

It's vintage Moore: on one level the courageous act of a gutsy journalist, and, on another, a callously unfair and self-serving spectacle that makes Moore seem like a big bully, and puts his audience into the position of a vigilante mob.

Will Statham make it as an action hero? Hard to say. His personality makes Vin Diesel look positively debonair.

It would have made for a cool fictional thriller, but The Mothman Prophecies' attempt to stick to true-life roots paralyzes it from being satisfying. It gives you the tingles all right, but they won't follow you out of the theater.

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

In the acting contest that ensues, each star comes off reasonably well, though, surprisingly, Lohan (who had well-publicized emotional problems on the set) wins out over Huffman's comic drunk and Fonda's leathery evocation of her father, Henry, in "On Golden Pond."

Even as the prosaic script gets lost in the intoxicating fantasy of the bloodless revolution, the hot heartbeat of the music drives the film with pure energy.

A fairly routine heist drama and a never especially believable puzzle film.

And Mackenize Astin (brother of Sean, son of John Astin and Patty Duke) is so likable in this part that his modest success here may represent the advent of a new acting dynasty in Hollywood. [14 Jan 1994]

It's an even more tedious storytelling mess, with a plot so muddled it's impossible to accurately describe, generating zero interest in its characters and grinding on for nearly three endless hours.

With such a good concept for a vampire movie, it's hard to believe it turned out to be this boring.

A competent concoction of familiar ingredients, smothered with gothic mood and served up with a generous helping of teenagers: skewered, slashed and stabbed.

Disarmingly funny in its own naive way.

Imagine Warren Beatty in "Shampoo" by way of a Jewish Rambo.

Wilson's shtick actually works better with Stiller than it did with either of his former partners, Jackie Chan and Eddie Murphy.

Apart from the gender twists, there is one notable difference between the traditional slasher flick and this gay take: Here, even the nice boy gets it on. And he doesn't even get punished for it.

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