DeVito definitely has a gift for absurd black humor that kicks in here and there, but Adam Resnick's script is slavishly mean-spirited.

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

Martin, who hasn't really clicked in a movie in years, hits the target this time with an Inspector Clouseau who is even more relentlessly annoying (and strangely endearing) than Sellers managed to be in his last several outings.

Quaid and Russo outshine the script with their presence and chemistry alone.

The humor is very broad, the occasional attempts at suspense are uniformly unsuccessful, and the script is a by-the-numbers collection of sci-fi movie cliches, right down to the - groan - lonely child who adopts a lovable and misunderstood alien. [27 Apr 1990]

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

Cage is more endearing than usual in his usual philosophical slob routine and Jackson is likeably long-suffering as the Spike Lee of the Theater. They click as a cinematic odd couple. [05 Mar 1993]

Dracula, who, as played by Dominic Purcell, has all the dark charisma and burning threat of a baked potato.

Little Nicky will please Sandler's fans and likely won't win any converts.

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

A series of Grand Guignol skits played for mean-spirited laughs.

Kassovitz directs with an unrelenting intensity that helps you to suspend disbelief almost all the way to the credits.

There is such a joy of play in the film that it's easy to overlook the overdone performances and the lazy script shortcuts.

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.

He's (Affleck) vaguely likable, but he's outshone by his co-stars and never particularly believable in his role.

The underdog story doesn't miss a cliche, even though it never figures out whether it's a boxing picture or a military drama.

The minor pleasures of P2 lie in the simple effectiveness of the sleekly unshowy direction and the clean, unadorned script, which pares away extraneous distractions like motivation and complicated back stories to get on with the mechanics of tension and the obligatory jumps and startles (which stand in for genuine scares).

The film, despite the occasional gross-out joke, can't disguise the fact that it's a sweet old sappy -- even dated -- love story. Only Molly Ringwald is missing.

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.

John Travolta is nothing if not cool as Chili Palmer.

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

Refreshingly old-fashioned.

Staggeringly awful.

Has to be one of the most absurd of all big-budget action movies, and that's saying something. It's just a blink away from over-the-top self-parody, and I'm pretty sure it's not trying to be.

You'd hope God would think bigger for His divine intervention in American politics.

By most of the ways movies are usually judged, pretty much of a mess. The camerawork is jerky and distracting, the dialogue is cliched and the story makes so little sense that the script seems to have been improvised by the actors as they went along.

It's all too much and too little: a history lesson in institutional racism that falls into character cliches, a human drama that gets lost in melodramatic detours, a war movie put together by a fan rather than a filmmaker.

The film was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Joel Schumacher, and reflects the worst of their shallow styles: wildly overproduced, inadequately motivated every step of the way and demographically targeted to please every one (and no one).