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.