It's hard to love and hard to hate.

If you’re interested in Williams and his music, this film is better than nothing — but not by much.

Footloose poses as a bold update, but it's shockingly out of step with the times.

In the end, audiences will be neither shaken nor stirred. Just bored and confused.

Here, the scattershot spoofery never rings true.

A Bigger Splash? More like a small trickle.

Once Upon a Crime could have been a boisterous slapstick comedy, but writing and direction reduce it to the status of the very ordinary. [12 March 1992, p.3E]

Brooks has his moments. His facial expressions and body language are often funny and his delivery usually impeccable. But as a director, he doesn't keep the pace even or achieve any semblance of balance between humor and poignancy. [27 July 1991, p.5D]

The problem with In Praise of Love is not that it seems to be possessed by a kind of free floating anti-Americanism. I'm not all that crazy about some of the things this country does, either, and I detest some of the big-budget movies Hollywood makes. The problem with In Praise of Love is that it never shuts up. [1 Nov 2002, p.E4]

Whaley has some ingenuous charm, and Connelly may have some skills, too. The script gives neither much opportunity. [2 Apr 1991, p.4D]

When a film is based on history, especially a moment in history that almost everyone knows, a built-in major problem is that there is no tension for the climactic scenes. To make it successful, the writer and director must find other places to insert drama, to create tension, to give viewers the unexpected. Maybe Roland Joffe forgot. [24 Oct 1989, p.3D]

Fast Five represents Yankee ingenuity of the brutally stupid kind.

The movie falters because Waters' screenplay is too shallow and brief to provide sufficient underpinning. [15 Apr 1994, p.3D]

Mostly "Hoodwinked Too" is playing to young video gamers, with overblown action sequences and slangy 'tude.

People over 60 are as sexual and complicated as their grandchildren, and there ought to be more movies about them, but only an audience as constipated as these characters could mistake this lukewarm stream of pablum for a hard nugget of truth.

Cutthroat Island ranks up there with other ill-advised movies such as The Scarlet Letter and Waterworld. At least the Harlin-Davis opus is meant to be fun. [22 Dec 1995, p.12D]

After a nifty setup, In Time mostly fails to deliver as it gets lamer by the minute.

Ultimately it's sunk by the hole in the middle: Paul Campbell (presidential aide Billy on "Battlestar Galactica") who substitutes smarm for charm as the archetypal player who gets played.

To paraphrase a classic of Reagan-era cinema, A Good Day to Die Hard is a bad day to stop sniffing glue.

Snark is not art. In the evolutionary spectrum of cinema, Natural Selection is like the duck-billed platypus, pretending to be warm-blooded but more than a little fowl.

Most. Depressing. Christmas. Movie. Ever.

By design it’s monotonous, and with so much clunky hardware, Liman can’t generate the same pace he produced in the “Bourne” movies. Edge of Tomorrow has neither an edge nor a vision of tomorrow that matters today.

It's hard to hate a movie that escorts us to such lovely locales, but instead of marking the territory as her own, Madonna has directed a potentially provocative story like a virgin.

Red is an insult to our memories and to our intelligence, an unfunny farce whose veteran cast is cashing a retirement check.

Damsels in Distress is shockingly tone-deaf. Stillman is still capable of a few amusing quips, but his storytelling is sophomoric.

So friction-free that it slips from memory before the credits fade.

In my old New Jersey public school, the first thing we learned was the smell of baloney.

This undramatic and flat peek “inside” the sewing rooms of Christian Dior holds little in the way of entertainment.

If Midler weren't involved, and if she weren't surrounded by a good ensemble, the whole enterprise probably would fall into a watery grave. But Midler carries off the role. [2 Feb 1990, p.5F]

We need to have a dialogue about the wages of war in the remote-control era. But it’s hard to spark a good dialogue with movies whose dialogue is so bad.

Proficient director Peter Berg ("Hancock") keeps the noise so deafening we can't think about how preposterous it all is.

The comedy is so lame that the whole enterprise comes across as depressing.

It doesn’t help that the characters caught up in this fact-based melodrama aren’t particularly engaging. Or that Téchiné doesn’t seem to have much of a feel for the material.

Parillaud is a pretty good actress, handling a comic line with aplomb and displaying a proper amount of je ne sais quoi. The movie, on the other hand, is overdone, overblown, overlong and last but certainly not least, over-gory. Michael Wolk's screenplay and John Landis' direction belabor the obvious and the bloody to the exclusion of all else. [25 Sept 1992, p.3F]

The flashbacks, which get almost as much screen time as the present day story, are far more compelling.

Is briefly entertaining but shows mainly that sports films featuring women are no better than those featuring men. Much of the problem belongs to director Penny Marshall, who reaches for the cliche, and for the easy way out, each time the movie seems to be about to make a serious statement about women or about baseball. [3 July 1992, p.3G]

There’s a good movie to be made about the alienating effects of modern technology. In 2013, a little-seen indie called “Disconnect,” starring Jason Bateman, came closer than this well-intentioned failure, which has virtually no heart, humor, sense of place or central point of view. In trying to be a big, important movie, Men, Women & Children is about none of the above.

It’s hard to understand what went wrong — the cast couldn’t be more appealing, and the film is bursting with special effects. But as an emotionally satisfying experience, it’s a bust.

The way that Muppets Most Wanted grabs for the green is criminal.

This amiable, poky one-joke movie - Bill Murray is saddled with an elephant - gets brief jolts of comic energy when Matthew McConaughey shows up as a manic truck driver. Otherwise, it's got a few laughs, and could use a few more. [02 Nov 1996, p.51]

His (Eastwood) first boring film.

The latest Hollywood version of the Godzilla story is neither fun nor fearsome. It’s an empty spectacle in which the humans are as meaningless as the monster.

In the end, The Predator is a killer when it comes to action. But, when it comes to the script, it’s just dead on arrival.

Director Alan Rudolph and writers William Reilly and Claude Kerven don't play fair with the audience. They stack the deck and then deal from the bottom, and the result is such a surprise that I felt let down, even angry. I don't mind not figuring out who the murderer is, but Rudolph should show the viewer a few things along the way to allow it to be figured out. [19 Apr 1991, p.3F]

Technically proficient enough to keep us intrigued; but we shouldn't have to Google a movie to know if we were scared.

Letters to Juliet has about half as much Shakespearean content as "Shakes the Clown" and even less sincerity.

This movie comes from Disney and director Steven Brill, who brought you The Mighty Ducks. But Heavyweights has neither the action nor the emotional wallop of Ducks, though Ben Stiller tries so hard he's scary. [22 Feb 1995, p.5F]

Doesn't break any new ground, but it is a decent way to spend a girls' night out.

This time around, the story seems old and tired as well. The result is a routine space opera, an only moderately entertaining finale to a series that has had some great moments. [6 Dec. 1991, p.3D]

What it lacks is the human element. Charlie is more of a rat than a rascal, and instead of working hard to build and operate his robots, he's literally going through the motions.

This is the kind of film that makes moviegoers long for good, old-fashioned storytelling.

Would have benefited from the kind of objectivity that Bass -- as Sar's well-heeled sponsor -- was hardly in a position to deliver.

The movie would have been slightly better if the relationship had remained one of professional respect and personal friendship. But that would not have solved the problem with the movie's pace and suspense. Action-adventure movies should have, well, action and adventure. [12 Feb 1992, p.4F]

Genius, like most films about the literary life, has trouble dramatizing what’s involved and making us care.

On its own terms and against all odds, "Outrage" is adequately entertaining, with more than enough cringe-inducing violence and cruel humor to please the average American moviegoer. But true Kitano fans will find its title sadly ironic.

Despite the title, My One and Only is irritatingly repetitive.

Initially, the puzzle structure and a pair of Oscar-winning actresses distract us from the dark vacuum at the center of this enterprise, but when it implodes, it doesn't reverberate.

Young kids will like this movie but pre-teens and older will recognize it as a Free Willy ripoff. [17 May 1996, p.3E]

With such a thin excuse for a leading man, Arthur is a dud.

A so-so comedy that slows down considerably after the first half-hour and tries to hide its dull stretches by giving us lingering shots of the cute kid. [30 Jan 1989, p.6D]

Second verse, not as good as the first.

Everything about Trouble With the Curve is as streamlined and hollow as a Wiffle Ball bat.

Although it’s superficially grungy, this true story isn’t much more substantive than something that star Vanessa Hudgens might have made for the Disney Channel and considerably less shocking than her career gambit in “Spring Breakers.”

Congratulations, visitor. You have been randomly selected to beta test an entertainment-software product called “The Internship 2.0.”

War of the Buttons is handsomely crafted and it's touting tolerance, but as long as we open the gates to the Trojan horse of historical simplification, there's a danger that Hollywood could attack us with "The Goonies Go to the Gulag." Be vigilant!

Falls into that middling ground of horror film: neither scary enough to be exciting nor campy enough to be amusing.

Based on an acclaimed novel by Ron Rash, Serena is like a towering tale that’s been fed into a woodchipper.

What might have seemed like a lively idea -- an all-star roundelay about love in Los Angeles -- is as fossilized as the wooly mammoths in the La Brea Tar Pits.

James Bond might as well be any of a dozen movie cops. For whatever reason, writers Michael G. Wilson and Richard Maibaum have given us a hero without the suavity, the urbanity, the sophistication of the James Bond who set these particular movies apart. And when Bond is just another hero, the result is just another action movie. It's sometimes exciting, but it misses all the lovely touches that previous films in the series have provided. [14 July 1989, p.3E]

The only edge in the movie is represented by Russell Brand, who actually lived the lifestyle, but he's muzzled by a bad Liverpool accent and a gay subplot that's as insincere as the swaggering anthems by fatuous hacks like Foreigner, Starship and Journey.

Pine and the always-watchable Banks make the best of a bad screenplay, but People Like Us gives us nothing that we can relate to.

30 Minutes or Less could have been a guilty pleasure, but the crusty caper is half baked.

This action comedy, with not much of either, was written and directed by George Gallo, who wrote a much better movie in "Midnight Run." It's an original, but it seems like a remake. [02 Dec 1994, p.3F]

Pasek and Paul’s songs end up having to do much of the emotional heavy lifting, and the rest of the film feels cobbled together from random parts scavenged from other kids’ movies and pop culture ephemera.

Although it's stuffed with subplots, gadgets and bad guys, this tinny contraption is half-hearted.

Unfortunately, not enough sequences work well enough to sustain interest. At its best, "Menace" is a searing parody of both stereotypical filmmaking and American race relations. [18 Jan 1996, p.7F]

If this movie wanders into your neighborhood, the only watch that will hold your attention is the timepiece on your wrist.

The fatal flaw of this screenwriting term paper is that Cooper's character is a boring jerk we're supposed to regard as a nice guy who made an honest mistake.

The documentary Live from New York is a separate thing. It doesn’t try to be wild and crazy, and it can’t be comprehensive. Like a land shark, it’s an uncomfortable hybrid that bites off more than it can chew.

As usual for the comedies he produces, Sandler keeps pooping in the sandbox, and he expects the audience to give him a cookie for it. It’s a shame that he forces Barrymore to get soiled too.

If you're a zombie purist or a fan of "The Walking Dead," Warm Bodies is not for you.

Saint Laurent was a truly mythic figure. It’s a shame that Bonello’s film doesn’t do him justice.

A superficial glimpse at the man who symbolizes some of the most heroic and shameful aspects of Western heritage. Depardieu is fine as the explorer, and Weaver, Armand Assante and Fernando Rey are solid in support. But the writing never surpasses average and the exchanges on the above-mentioned issues come off sounding like a junior-high debate class or, worse yet, 15-second sound bites from political candidates. [09 Oct 1992, p.3G]

A competent but hardly exhilarating crime flick that is definitely not for the squeamish. [07 Oct 1994, p.3G]

An inconsequential mess.

Inspired by a true story, Gold is a major disappointment — a film of admirable ambition but woefully underwhelming execution.

Mired in phoniness up to its neck. And above that, there's nothing.

IF SINCERITY were the basis on which movies were judged, The Power of One would be a great one. But real movies, like real life, have to provide satisfaction over a wider range, and this long, dry, coming-of-age tale about South Africa falls short. [29 March 1992, p.12C]

As a melodrama, Brothers is passable entertainment. But the film squanders the opportunity to meaningfully portray the impact of war on American lives.

Episodically structured and lethargically paced, the new film attempts to convince us that there's something incredibly charming about an old guy who makes a habit of ogling young women. Actually, the whole scenario is pretty creepy.

While the cast is filled with award winners, writer-director Daniel Barnz is a dunce who can't construct an argument without employing flimsy logic and cardboard characters.

As in the mindless Man on a Ledge, the hero is never really in danger, we're the ones who are trapped.

In the end, the movie is still a poetic injustice.

For his complex portrayal, Day-Lewis is likely to have roses thrown at his feet, but for the dreadful film in which he's enslaved, emancipated onlookers will reach for the grapes of wrath.

It’s downright depressing to see Oscar winners Hunt and Hurt struggling to make something meaningful out of their superficially written characters.

Red 2 is not just a bad movie, it’s bad karma. And the target audience of adult moviegoers who respect the names in its once-vital cast have a bull’s-eye on their collective cranium.

Laggies is the kind of indie film that gives the genre a bad name.

Strick and Joanou have made this one so convoluted that interest falters, and the lack of a truly sympathetic character doesn't help. [7 Feb 1992, p.3F]