Truly raunchy but it's more sweetly stupid and silly than anything.

It's not the direction that feels flaccid in this film. Surprisingly, it's the stories themselves, which provide a bit of a giggle but little else.

Non-cultists should enjoy this engaging and well-acted retread -- a film that develops its own charm as it goes along.

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.

An almost documentary reality and voyeuristic appeal.

An incomprehensible mess -- so boring and numbingly unworkable that it's hard to imagine what he could have been thinking.

More intelligent and thought-provoking than the usual dumb and dull-witted fare for children.

I haven't been so captivated, chilled and surprised by a movie in years.

A highly original, often hilarious, what-if farce about Watergate.

But the movie's vital signs improve remarkably in the second half, and especially in the last act. The proceedings suddenly pick up some screwball charm, the writing improves (with several truly inspired one-liners tossed in here and there) and the secondary characters begin to click.

Often as stillborn in pace as it is conceptually compelling.

So uninvolving as basic storytelling that it quickly becomes boring.

It lacks, despite the remarkable techno effects by wizard Stan Winston, originality and charisma.

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.

A comic, loving, affectionate glimpse of the '80s, its music and fashions, and most of all at that hard-to-find thing called true friendship.

Whatever it is, it's totally Kubrickian: Its scenes have both an edge and an extraordinary visual perfection that could come from no other filmmaker.

As amateurish and fumbling as it is in every department, the sum total of the movie is pretty darn scary.

It’s a comedy, a romantic star vehicle, a thriller, a horror movie and a quasi-environmental parable that's calculated to appeal to all demographic groups. It's not enough of any one of these things to be particularly engaging.

A clumsy and incompetent thriller for nine-tenths of its length, but it has an ending so clever and that goes so wildly against expectations it almost exonerates the film.

Idiotic.

The movie is reminiscent of the films of Claude Sautet but it has a grittier, more youthful appeal. Still, it's just as nuanced and rich in all its messy revelation. [21 May 1999]

Lee's control and storytelling flair have never seemed more assured and there are moments so powerful and thrilling we feel we're in the hands of a master filmmaker at the peak of his powers.

The movie's problem is that it's a cartoon, offering no emotional involvement with its characters and no dramatic imperative.

Ok, I admit at first I was just laughing at the sheer gutsiness of South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. But after 10 minutes, I was laughing at the script.

If not cinema magic, The Dinner Game is still a workable screwball comedy.

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

It's a buoyant, often thrilling piece of animation that more or less does for the Central African rain forest what "The Lion King" did for the East African savanna.

So bloated, self-righteous and exploitative, it's hard to imagine anyone staying to the end, much less demanding a sequel.