As hard as it tries to capture that blend of domestic comedy and paternal angst that made its predecessor a classic, it is still a pale shadow and a barely passable Steve Martin vehicle. [20 Dec 1991, p.10]

It is preachy, didactic and heavy-handed as only an Oliver Stone movie can be. And yet ... and yet... despite all this, the film has an undeniable cumulative power. [20 Dec 1991]

The film has a gorgeous, Grant Wood-ish visual style - it was photographed by Freddie Francis and designed by the late, great multi-Oscar winner Gene Callahan (to whom the film is dedicated) - and there are a smattering of effective scenes and ingratiating performances to go with it. [04 Oct 1991]

A pathetic sports comedy that aspires to be a college-football version of "Major League" and doesn't even get close. [27 Sept 1991]

Penn has overwritten the dialogue and, though the filmed-in-Nebraska movie has a certain gritty authenticity, it rings vaguely false. You sense he has no knowledge of the '60s, Midwestern angst or smalltown life. [04 Oct 1991]

The movie whips itself into being a surprisingly effective love story. [16 Aug 1991]

By most of the standards by which we judge movies, Jungle Fever is pretty bad. Scenes seem structured solely to provide an excuse for characters to deliver speeches, everything seems heavy-handed, obvious and didactic - and false. [7 June 1991]

The movie is basically a piece of fluff, not always coherently directed and almost too consistently somber for a movie that wants to be a romantic comedy. Still, it comes together with considerable emotional impact, mainly on the strength of the stars. [24 May 1991, p.14]

Writer-director Chris Columbus (Home Alone) never manages to make the mix of humor and pathos gel. The characters never seem as engaging as he wants them to be, the comedy is often forced, and scenes fall flat left and right. [24 May 1991]

Truth or Dare (the title comes from a game she plays in the final scenes) is actually most revealing when it is not trying to be. It gives us a good sense of the pressured life of a big concert tour, as well as how demanding and unbalancing it must be to have a star of Madonna's magnitude in the family. [17 May 1991]

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]

Above all, the film suffers from a lack of originality. The premise of Goodbye Charlie was at least something new in 1964, but Switch comes at the end of a long cycle of body-switching comedies that ran out of steam more than two years ago. [10 May 1991]

The good news about Alan Rudolph's new film, Mortal Thoughts, is that it is dramatically engrossing, brilliantly acted by its big-star cast and filled with the touches of a virtuoso director at the top of his form. The bad news is that it leads us to one of the worst shaggy-dog endings of any mystery story I can remember. It's so totally unsatisfying, in fact, that it almost spoils all the good scenes that have come before it. [19 Apr 1991]

When it's good, there is no more riveting movie genre than a courtroom drama, and Class Action is one of the best in ages - perhaps since "The Verdict" in 1982. [15 Mar 1991]

The film is not very convincing as sociology, but it is mildly amusing as comedy, has an unpolished charm to its visuals and performances, and showcases so many rock songs on its soundtrack that it qualifies as a musical. [19 Apr 1991]

An excessive, expressionistic, agreeably nonjudgmental period biography that carries with it an enormous emotional wallop. [01 Mar 1991]

Despite Sheen's earnestness - and despite the movie's obvious good intentions - the script is confused and unfocused, and clumsily borrows elements of movies like From Here to Eternity and Bridge Over the River Kwai without any of those classics' higher meaning. [18 Jan 1991]

Popcorn is not scary enough to work as horror, not funny enough to work as comedy, not cute enough to work as camp, not skilled enough to work as a tribute to the bad movies of the '50s, and so indifferently acted by the cast (including Tony Roberts, Dee Wallace Stone and Ray Walston) that it just seems a waste of everyone's time. [01 Feb 1991]

This great Elizabethean masterpiece comes alive in a rich cinematic version that proves the past 400 years have done nothing to dim its uncanny power to mirror the human condition. [18 jan 1991]

The film is a charming little romantic comedy based on a high-concept premise - one of those fraudulent marriages whereby an alien marries an American citizen to get his green card, or permanent residency. [11 Jan 1991, p. 6]

While careful not to denounce the religion, the film fires a powerful broadside at fundamentalist Islam in general and revolutionary Iran in particular. [11 Jan 1991]

As directed and produced by Steve Miner, the film is gory (eyes gouged out, a tongue bitten out, children murdered), but it also features better than usual actors (including Richard E. Grant as a 17th-century warlock-hunter who also jumps into the future) and has such a giddy sense of humor that it's hard to ever get too indignant about its splatter violence. [12 Jan 1991]

Arnold Schwarzenegger's enjoyable but not hugely special Kindergarten Cop - has a whole roomful of the little tykes making genital jokes and constantly having to go to the bathroom. [21 Dec 1990, p.7]

Director Fred Schepisi has done an admirable job of making all the characters and their various interests clear, and he gets a fine, deglamorized and convincing performance from Pfeiffer as Connery's love interest. [22 Dec 1990]

Awakenings, directed by Penny Marshall, is a curiously engaging, genuinely haunting movie that rises above some dubious handicapped jokes and strange casting decisions to be truly special. [11 Jan 1991, p.5]

There's no denying that Eating is a significant achievement: a movie that explores one of life's most important subjects in an intelligent, entertaining and original manner. [29 Mar 1991]

The old formula is showing its age. The movie just doesn't deliver the emotional highs that addicted millions to the Rocky cycle. For the first time, one does not leave the theater floating on air. [16 Nov 1990, p.8]

Jacob's Ladder is also undeniably spooky. It creates and maintains a mood of paranoia, its special visual effects are original and nightmarish, and it has at least three sequences as haunting as anything I've seen in some time. [2 Nov 1990, p.9]