The script and direction by Irish filmmaker Mary McGuckian is just deadly.

Bad animation and casting make Moses movie a zero, not a Ten.

His characters and his situations all ring false, and his movie just seems painful and pointless. [12 Jan 1996]

Definitely deserves points for trying to be something thought-provoking and different, but it doesn't really stand up to analysis and it comes off as a pretentious mess.

A bafflingly unfunny comedy.

So poorly constructed and so elementally banal that it's a shock the script was written by the same guy (Nicholas Kazan) who wrote such taut thrillers as "At Close Range" and "Reversal of Fortune."

Works best of all as a vehicle for Richard Gere, who has simply never looked better or held the screen more securely.

The slapdash comic flailing of screenwriter and TV scribe-turned-director Ed Decter is only compounded by a script so disconnected you have to wonder if pages were lost on the way to the set.

Though he tries hard for bravado, hero Edward Burns is terminally wooden.

An excruciating rehash that has virtually none of the wit and charm of the original.

Cohen drives the film at a galloping pace, but it's not fast enough to outrun its absurdity.

It has absolutely nothing to say -- no redeeming commentary about nihilistic, narcissistic society and its appetite for instant gratification -- which would have made it sociologically interesting, or at least sort of Faustian in theme. Instead Sex and Death 101 is as empty-headed as its protagonist.

The movie around Stallone is fairly dreadful, so overly stylized and poorly written that it's always a struggle to stay oriented.

Mr. Deeds, is -- perhaps predictably -- pretty much of a disaster. It's a bit like someone scrawling a mustache on the Mona Lisa.

A girlie romantic comedy with tired slapstick pranks but not an ounce of self-respect or intelligence.

Director Jesse Vaughan keeps the ball in play through the aw-shucks lessons in humility and generosity, but the teamwork is shoddy, the plays lack surprise and, finally, Juwanna Mann misses more than it hits.

It's hard to believe that five different writers took credit for this feeble story and script. Who says failure is an orphan?

It is relatively suspenseless and often distastefully crude.

To its credit, the film has an engagingly bleak and minimalist look, and a brisk pace. But the chills are few. Every step seems contrived, predictable or unintentionally funny.

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.

Not that there are any actual jokes to be had. The film simply jumps to the punch lines, a non-stop barrage of crude dialogue and vulgar sight gags that passes as humor among adolescent boys. Who exactly is the audience for this R-rated film? The terminally immature?

Stephen Brill's flat-footed script begins as an idiot comedy with the gross-out gags of a Farrelly brothers film.

Outrageously confident and wearing a kilt through the mayhem, Jackson proves once again that he has few equals in bringing off a broad, over-the-top lead.

A sloppy, indifferent action movie with a sadistic edge and a sour hypocrisy.

Redfield's fans will rejoice, if only to see the beloved novel illustrated on the screen, no matter how tediously. The rest of us probably should stay away.

In the end, dark comedy drives the film, but it's overwhelmed by a desire to be liked, really liked.

A joyless amalgam of horror movie cliches, none used more exhaustively than the false alarm.

The film has good design, effective animation and generic if endurable songs, but Sandler wants to slam his sentiment and wallow in it too, and he compromises with the worst of both worlds.