In the new Clash of the Titans, the effects are computerized, the hero is questionable and, instead of an owl, we get a turkey.

It's more like a shelved episode of "Touched by An Angel." The sappy script is a disservice to the naturally effervescent Efron, whose character is so mopey he makes Robert Pattinson seem like a song-and-dance man.

FOR ABOUT a half-hour, Troop Beverly Hills brings a lot of funny situations and funny lines. Then it's time to finish the popcorn and settle down for a nap. [24 March 1989, p.3F]

Anyone old enough to have read Jules Verne or seen the way his work was successfully adapted in the past will suffer worse than the kids in the audience who just came to laugh.

It’s preposterous schlock masquerading as art.

If instead of story and characters, your movie wish list includes projectile vomiting and erection gags, this lump of coal has your name on it.

Obviously this movie is too dense for most kids under the age of about 8 to follow. Even if you're over 8, way over, the plot still seems overly complicated. [23 Mar 1993, p.3D]

For sheer waste of talent, if not money, The Burbs deserves to be ranked with Ishtar. A routine slapstick comedy with no cutting edge, and not nearly enough laughs. [21 Feb 1989, p.6D]

Kingsman is like a high-speed collision between a Jaguar and a jaywalking soccer hooligan. It’s ridiculously out of balance, and when you’re stuck in the middle, it doesn’t seem so funny.

PRESUMABLY this zombie flick is supposed to be funny, since it's about as scary as "Little Women." [18 Jan 1995, p.6F]

A turgid, overlong comedy. [19 July 1996, p.3E]

With this unfunny fourth installment, the "Ice Age" franchise has skidded so far into kiddie land that adults who tread there risk extinction.

The message that needs to be posted at the theater door is "No trespassing."

The cheap, indifferent, teen-alien thriller I Am Number Four delivers none of the spectacle of a competent sci-fi film, none of the emotion of an effective teen romance and none of the giggles of a kitsch fiasco.

If cranking out this kind of mediocre, head-scratching blarney is the only option available to Hollywood veterans like Reiner, we have some friendly advice: Open a haberdashery.

This toothless attempt is just dead on arrival.

This movie bogs down under heavy-handed, simplistic preachings about the environment and numerous scenes of utterly gratuitous violence. [23 Feb 1994]

Given the creator and the cast, "Morgans" is as drearily predictable as a plague of locusts.

Reeves seems less blissed out than conked out, as if he had sustained a heavy blow from a loose surfboard. [27 May 1994, p.3H]

Sadly, The Last Song is badly out of tune with real filmmaking.

Such a sorrowful attempt to resurrect the marketing magic of "Twilight" that it ought to be titled "Career Eclipse."

The result is more like a long commercial than a cohesive movie, and the omissions are glaring.

Loud, incoherent and unfunny, Here Comes the Boom is the sound of American culture imploding.

This world is divided between the makers and the takers, and after just a few minutes of Red Dawn, you'll realize there's not much more you can take.

In trying to lift this lame schtick, De Niro, Douglas, Freeman and Kline are stand-up guys, but Last Vegas is a case of erectile dysfunction.

Eastwood also directed, in a plodding, heavy-handed style that leaves little to the imagination and less to the sense of humor. Every scene is as predictable as the chase that precedes or follows it. [07 Dec 1990, p.3F]

This dead-on-arrival ’toon is some of the worst p.r. for rodents since bubonic plague hit medieval Europe.

There is nothing in Walas' directorial style to raise the movie above the level of a routine gross-out horror movie. Good makeup, though. [19 Feb 1989, p.14H]

Painfully dumb. [21 Feb 1989, p.5D]

Loosely - very loosely - based on the classic Jonathan Swift story, "Gulliver's Travels" begins promisingly but quickly loses its way.

Directed by Stiles White, whose credits lean more heavily in the special-effect arenas, Ouija is bland, safe horror for those who like their scares nonexistent.

Sorry, Keanu, but you stole my time and you murdered my brain cells. By the sacred oath of WHOA, there will be blood, and this time it’s personal.

Tickets to Pacific Rim Uprising should come with a package of aspirin.

There is a lot of sex along the way, but I found very little of it exciting, or even sensual. Madonna never seems to be having any fun, nor do her sexual partners, either in action or when they talk about it later. [15 Jan 1993, p.3E]

Annabelle is so lazily coat-tailing on Roman Polanski, they should have called it “Rosemary’s Barbie.”

In matters of personal taste, there is no right or wrong, so if erasing brain cells is your idea of a good time, That's My Boy could be your cup of turpentine.

It's supposed to be sweet, but Hop is a headache waiting to happen.

Despite its intriguing premise, the film amounts to little more than tedious, clichéd melodramatics.

Like the middle-aged dads in this flaccid fiasco, Hall Pass is a decade behind the curve of what's happening.

Freelance is this incredibly goofy jumble of tones, a movie that doesn’t know what it is or what it wants to be, flailing about as it far overstays its welcome.

This amateurish action flick is so lacking in personality or punch, it ought to be titled "V for Video Store Discount Bin."

The Son of the Pink Panther is little more than a mess. Roberto Benigni, a funny-looking Italian actor, has his moments. [31 Aug 1993, p.3D]

Whether you're betting on action or laughs, this is a lose-lose scenario.

Here most of the punishment is inflicted on the audience, which gets nailed to a cross of boredom.

Kids are too smart to fall for it, and any grown-up who thinks that The Odd Life of Timothy Green is funny or heartwarming has a head made out of cabbage.

McCarthy and first-time director Falcone must have assumed that tossing a drunk and a dunce into a Cadillac would negate the need for a motive or even a script.

Young children will be entertained, but for the rest of the audience, pretty colors just aren’t enough.

Comedies about privileged princesses and unsuitable suitors come in all colors, but Peeples is only palatable on a double bill with pink antacid.

The baby sitter isn't the only thing dead in this movie - the plot also suffered a massive coronary while being scripted. In fact, the only life breathed into Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead is the light comedic performance of Christina Applegate (Married . . . With Children), with an assist from Keith Coogan. [13 June 1991, p.6E]

If The Virginity Hit had been filmed as a straightforward sex comedy, it could've been a riot.

An utter shipwreck, a would-be adventure with meager rations of magic and a listless crew.

The best thing you could say about Happy Feet Two is that it doesn't have any product placements or potty jokes. Other than that, this charmless Antarctic cartoon is what it looks like when hell freezes over.

Tamra Davis, directing her first feature, is so caught up in the sex-and-violence aspects, and bolstering the body count, that she forgets to keep her story at all credible, and lets gunshots take the place of conversation. [19 Feb 1993, p.3G]

The good news is that Ed Helms doesn’t wake up in a Tijuana brothel with an amputated leg and a donkey in the room. The bad news is that you’ll wish he had.

The romantic relationship between the two stars is mishandled, and neither is given sufficient funny material. [16 June 1992, p.4D]

In short, "Fallen" hits the halfway point, it goes down and can't get up. [16 Jan 1993, p.E3]

SHAQUILLE O'NEAL: Don't give up your day job. After a lackluster outing as a genie in "Shazam," the LA Lakers star does little to put any shine on "Steel," a movie that draws its laughs from lots of rock-em-sock-em pyrotechnics and comic book visuals.[15 Aug 1997, p.3E]

Cinderella is so scrubbed of personality, it’s not even worth calling a mess.

Kids between the ages of 5 and 10 probably will enjoy this one, and there isn't much (some mild bathroom humor) that parents will find terribly objectionable, except its stupidity. [12 Aug 1994, p.3H]

The comedy waffles between nonsensically heightened and realistically grounded, often alternating between the two modes at random, never landing on a tone.

Estevez couldn't decide what he wanted: a doofus comedy, a serious political statement, a mystery, a Bowery Boys' knock-off. The result is sophomoric. [27 Aug 1990, p.5D]

Nothing more than uninspired mushiness.

Disney’s gimmick of naming movies for its theme-park attractions crashes and burns in Tomorrowland, a here-and-now caper that will confuse children, bore adults and offend anyone who’s ever taken a science class.

In this year's stupid sexy screamer, Sliver, [Stone] tries to reveal some of her character's mind. But there's nothing in there but cotton candy and foggy images from old soap operas. [23 May 1993, p.12C]

The trailers for the Reese Witherspoon-Sofia Vergara comedy Hot Pursuit hint at a movie that’s unfunny, insufferable and obvious. You can’t say you weren’t warned.

In the hands of some Eastern European masters, stop-motion animation has created some fine adult animated films, like Jan Svankmajer's spooky version of "Alice in Wonderland." But The Nightmare Before Christmas is basically a charmless and muddled tale that aims at a target somewhere in the vast gulf between Franz Kafka and Walt Disney and hits nothing. [22 Oct 1993, p.3E]

A bland family-feud potboiler with no sign of the cook.

A soulless, overblown bore.

This party is a dud.

Suffering through this felonious farce could only inspire a prison riot.

Where the original play "La Ronde" was a social satire about the transmission of venereal disease, 30 Beats is a sickly stepchild.

That can’t disguise the script’s complete lack of wit or originality, though, or the generally wooden acting.

This droll, leisurely paced movie might alternately be titled "The Only Good Man in Africa." [09 Sep 1994, p.3F]

A disgrace and a waste of the talents of Oscar winners Keaton, Fonda and Steenburgen and Emmy recipient Bergen. Obviously, the film is intended for an older audience. But is this anemic, feature-length sitcom really the best that Hollywood can do?

For anyone expecting the second coming of Clouseau, Johnny English Reborn is a karmic catastrophe.

With movies like this, Lopez might want to start leaving low-end romantic comedies alone and look at her movie career's backup plan.

The film makes a few starts in many directions but doesn't go very far in any, and that's disappointing to those of us who thought so much of Soderbergh's previous effort. Oh, well, everyone's entitled to a clunker now and then. [7 Feb. 1992, p.3F]

On Stranger Tides has the fishy smell of something washed ashore and sold as new. But this shipwreck isn't worth a wooden doubloon.

So stupid and hateful, it needs to have a stake driven through its heart before it can spawn a franchise.

This is Bay’s world, and when faced with the end of the world, there’s only one message to be gleaned from this supposed finale of the “Transformers” franchise: The Mack trucks and the muscle cars will outlive us all.

As in the first "Sherlock Holmes" movie, there are plenty of pratfalls and bare-knuckle brawls but no sleuthing for us to share.

The spectacular collapse of Green Lantern is bound to be blamed on Reynolds, but the villainy has its origins in an injustice league of TV-trained screenwriters and tin-hearted studio suits.

Long before you’ve gotten a nickel’s worth of entertainment out of this dumb, unfunny flick, you’ll be wishing for the flashing sign that says “Game over.”

The overt sexuality of Madonna's stage show, particularly the lengthy exercise in self-stimulation called Like a Virgin, as well as the sometimes startling bluntness of her talk, keeps the movie from being totally boring. But this kind of trash can only sustain itself for so long - for most of us, about as long as it takes to get through the line at a supermarket. [17 May 1991, p.3F]

The overall feel is less of a cohesive documentary and more of a slapdash scrapbook of facts, historical information and name-dropping.

Ted does not only break before it ends. It snaps back so violently that it very well may knock out of your mind any recollection that the movie is fairly entertaining for about 30 minutes.

Oyelowo and Mara achieve terrific chemistry. Perhaps they’ll work together again — in a better film.

In Secret is so stifled, it makes “Les Misérables” look like “Amélie.”

One has to wonder why the film was even made if it had to be so disastrously compromised. Chekhov would be appalled.

It’s nearly tragic to see America’s Greatest Living Actor on the guest list for The Big Wedding, the latest limp comedy about seniors behaving badly.

Old Dogs is so oafish, when it tosses us a biscuit, it feels like we've been smacked with a newspaper.

The problem with Mel Brooks these days is the same one Woody Allen would have if he kept making Bananas over and over. [30 July 1993, p.3F]

Working from a lackluster screenplay by a squad of writers, director Taylor Hackford (“Ray”) delivers a film so low in energy that it’s almost as if it was made to assist airline passengers in falling asleep.

Superb actors and the best special effects money can buy can only go so far when you have a second-rate script sprinkled with unintentional laugh lines. [07 July 1995, p.3E]

Dare we say it? Even the acting is atrocious, with pop-eyed Pacino chewing the scenery like a geezer gumming his oatmeal.

With the overlong, limp and lazy Spy, Feig has lost his mojo.

The things that made "Wayne's World" work at all - freshness, spontaneity - are missing from this losing sequel. [10 Dec 1993, p.3F]

Channing Tatum is a lot of things, but he’s not a stoic Superman like the role he plays here, which is made more laughable by prosthetic pointy ears.