Land Ho! is a tepid little movie that goes almost nowhere, and if I had to sit in that rental car for one more boob joke, I’d rather jump into a volcano.

It requires a mild suspension of disbelief to accept that slacker David would suddenly intervene in so many lives, pretending to be a good Samaritan.

Sure, the movie causes a few jumps. But they are the cinematic equivalent of having someone jump out from behind a door and yell boo. [23 July 1999, p.E1]

Shakespeare’s play evokes the poetry of undying love, but this Romeo and Juliet is prosaic.

Savvy filmgoers will know they are getting a stale product as soon as they see the wrapper: one of those vintage muscle cars that screams “stakeout.”

A road-trip comedy that somehow renders both promiscuity and racism harmless. While we're soaking up the sunny surroundings, we're getting nowhere.

WATCHING Dennis Quaid as Jerry Lee Lewis is disconcerting, to say the least. Quaid mimics Lewis' piano playing in superior style, struts across the stage like the ''petty player'' of ''Macbeth,'' and shows all the right amount of arrogance, but his wide-eyed stare becomes extremely irritating. Great Balls of Fire, which looks at a small part of Lewis' life, offers a slightly uncomplimentary view, but it tends to trivialize his shortcomings, almost excuse them as boyish pranks. [30 June 1989, p.3E]

Admission is one film you may not want to get into.

Skyscraper clearly aspires to be a 21st-century update of “Die Hard” (1988), one of the best action thrillers ever made. Instead, it’s just another film that squanders the movie-star charisma of Johnson, who should consider lending his box-office clout to more worthy projects.

Wingfield's attempts to bring the movie to a smooth conclusion fail completely, and the weakness of the story undermines the smooth, careful direction of Robert Mulligan, a veteran with 40 years of movies like To Kill a Mockingbird to his credit. [15 Nov 1991, p.3G]

Amid other wedding movies crowding screens these days, not to mention Perry's "Madea's Big Happy Family," Jumping the Broom feels instantly familiar. And tired.

Its mean-spiritedness, stupidity and squandering of talent is uniquely Hollywood.

In Couples Retreat, it's Favreau, not Vaughn, who is wound up, and this vacation comedy goes nowhere.

There Be Dragons is tethered to the earth by a tangled plot, wooden acting and the heavy burden of healing old wounds.

Don’t get burned by Inferno.

This is a brutal and stupid movie.

The best indicator of whether you’ll like the film version of Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul is whether you think flying vomit is funny.

Whose story is this? There’s an old saying that history is written by the winners. The screenplay for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies must have been written by elves.

THIS may be movie-watching at its least painful. The characters are likable but flat, the script is snappy but shallow, the story is cute, the scenery pretty and the stars fetching. No brain food here. [1 Oct 1993, p.8EV]

In a small role as a self-absorbed film producer, Mark Wahlberg is touchingly effective.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is supposed to promote healing, but as they say in New York: close, but no cigar.

An ambitious movie, but ultimately there’s too much “artificial” and not enough “intelligence.”

Third Person doesn’t lack for ambition, and it’s nice to see Neeson in the kind of role that he excelled at before he morphed into an action star.

Austenland is as frustrating as a blind date with Almost Mr. Right. It’s impossible not to fixate on how close this was to being a lot of fun.

Further proof that likable actors have to take an occasional sick day.

It doesn’t help that Weisz and Claflin have zero chemistry, and both come across as miscast. She lacks the aura of mystery that her character requires, and he’s woefully low on the charisma required of a romantic hero.

The Glimmer Man starts out like Seven, but pretty soon it dwindles into nothing. [09 Oct 1996, p.5D]

Candy breaks out of his goofball mold and delivers a solid performance as a lonely Chicago cop who can't pull loose from his domineering mother. The major flaw in Only the Lonely is that the mother (Maureen O'Hara) is such a vicious, whining, manipulative bigot that it is hard to care about her when the inevitable turnabout comes, or see why Candy doesn't just pull out his service revolver and blow her away. [24 May 1991, p.3F]

Based on true events, 7 Days in Entebbe pulls off the difficult trick of making terrorism boring.

The elements never quite combine into a cohesive compound, and a lot of the dialogue - particularly Calamity Jane's - might have worked on the page, or even on the stage, but has a phony theatricality when uttered by people with cameras in their faces. [01 Dec 1995, p.3E]

Strives to be entertaining, but for much of its run time it is so emotionally uninvolving that even the smallest children might find themselves bored.

Fans of the franchise will greet Les Misérables as a feast for the senses, but the rest of us are left with crumbs.

John Avildsen directs from Robert Mark Kamen's elementary script with the simple understanding of the ancient battle between good and evil where the victor is never doubted - for long. [03 July 1989, p.3D]

Yet if you’re old enough to read this and you find yourself at a screening, try thinking about the munchkins who worked so hard on the psychedelic scenery.

The film is constructed from four flimsy vignettes that are artlessly overlapped.

Megamind falls flat.

Perhaps it’s time for a moratorium on road movies. Despite its strenuous efforts to come across as quirky and original, Boundaries goes nowhere.

Squeezes plenty of color and noise from a thin concept, then runs with it until non-fanatics can’t keep up.

The derivative script and skimpy effects don’t convey either the power or the problems of being a young witch.

A faithful remake of RoboCop would be timely. Instead, the producers of this new version have retreated back to the lab, concocting a creaky hybrid of “Frankenstein” and “Call of Duty.”

This shrill caper is more like a blind date between fingernail and chalkboard.

CLICHE - in words, music and pictures - soars to new heights in A Walk in the Clouds. [11 Aug 1995, p.3E]

Hallstrom (“Chocolat”) makes the mishmash palatable, and romance mainstay Duhamel provides some sweet-and-salty charm, but there’s not much they can do with Sparks’ canned dialogue and Hough’s undercooked acting.

More scenic than scary.

Count Black Nativity as a more noble than notable effort.

The man is bound to special effects as if they were Siamese twins, and while fancy stuff helped a lot in Who Killed Roger Rabbit? and all the Back to the Future movies, it doesn't do much for Death Becomes Her. But Zemeckis insists on emphasizing them over script or cleverness or even acting, and he hammers a viewer into surrender, rather than excitement. [04 Aug 1992, p.4D]

Closed Circuit is not a tense thriller about the new era of surveillance — it's a tepid thriller about the old notion that no leader can be trusted.

Terminator Salvation is a tale told idiotically, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Be prepared to think, talk and no doubt argue about the movie after seeing it. Is that what Mamet intended? Maybe, but does that make it worthwhile? [11 Nov 1994, p.3E]

If you don’t crave the taste of motor oil on your popcorn, Furious 7 can’t end fast enough.

For the screen version, Baldwin is back, along with Meg Ryan, and there's less chemistry than in a high-school laboratory in July. [10 Jul 1992, p.3G]

You ought to have a movie that's both smart and sexy. But Jennifer's Body is neither. Most damning of all, it's not scary.

This movie is Denzel Washington stopping a speeding train devoid of subtext, blunders and earth-shattering revelations about the human condition. It is precisely as entertaining as it sounds; no more, no less.

Valerian has some cool visuals. But there’s more to science fiction than pretty pictures.

A highly sensual but not very believable love story between a 43-year-old woman and a 27-year-old man, and not much else. [19 Oct 1990, p.3F]

Clearly, this is a star vehicle — and the eminently likable Johnson is unquestionably a star. Through sheer force of personality, he elevates Rampage into something reasonably entertaining.

This film might give you the urge to check out a comic-book movie.

The script is standard sports movie fare without much subtext — in the mouth of anyone other than Harbour, some of these motivational lines would be real clangers, but he sells the material with his rugged soulfulness, and there’s true chemistry between him and Madekwe, as the unlikely sports star and his demanding coach.

The film is flat and lazy, and the audio mix is so low it sounds as if the audience is barely laughing. His cable comedy specials have better production values.

Rooted in empty materialism, but it never evokes the heady rush of a guilty pleasure or the precipitous payback of a thriller.

a horrific misstep in the branding of Robert Pattinson. The erstwhile teen vampire, who daringly portrayed gay surrealist Salvador Dalí in last year's "Little Ashes," lurches backward into a pile of romantic rubbish.

"Star Trek V'' begins and ends well, but is something of a muddle in the middle. [9 June 1989]

It's as if there's a missing reel of film that could tie the story together and give it the emotional impact it takes for granted.

There are good movies to be made about romantic obsession, but the premise doesn't work if the crazy stalker isn't juxtaposed with a sympathetic victim.

This time, the results are only fair. [13 Jan 1989, p.5G]

Pretty good entertainment, but not an outstanding time at the movies. [17 Aug 1989, p.6E]

As the movie gets longer, Romero's hand gets heavier and heavier, and by the climax he can barely lift it to hurl another cliche. The movie ends in the usual way, with lots of blood and Satanic special effects. [23 Apr 1993, p.3G]

There are a few beguiling moments in Holy Motors, particularly a martial-arts sequence and an erotic dance while Mr. Oscar is dressed in a motion-capture body suit, but the road between those moments is so strewn with stalled ideas that audiences who care about character and plot are liable to take the exit to a movie that makes sense.

If you can’t guess that the whole thing ends with a big dance number, you’ve been snoozing in your samosas.

In this flick, the dark side is as bright as a cruise-ship showroom, where the singing and dancing would fit nicely, while the jokes are as dull as Disney sitcom throwaways.

For the hour or so it’s on screen it’s a harmless, little chiller that doesn’t scare much but serves as a holdover until something truly scary comes along.

Ender’s Game is a blandly sanitized spectacle.

Imagine if the "Godfather" saga had been told from the point of view of Talia Shire's character. The perspective of a don's daughter could produce a compelling movie, but The Sicilian Girl isn't it.

This mash-up movie is like a greatest-hits collection for obsessive collectors. On its own terms, Terminator Genisys makes virtually no sense.

Exorcist III asks for the dark recesses of your imagination. It's not an intense stomach-churner, but is more menacing to the mind of the beholder. [18 Aug 1990, p.1D]

I liked the first film. I found it imaginative, and I thought Paul Verhoeven's direction was fascinating. Robocop 2 is just another sequel. [22 June 1990, p.3F]

Director Melanie Mayron (Melissa of thirtysomething) has created a relatively winsome movie specifically targeted to a long-neglected group of youngsters. That said, Baby-sitters isn't great stuff, and adults might find themselves annoyed at the obvious plot holes and questions. [18 Aug 1995, p.3E]

Rookie of year strikes out in the laughs department. [09 Jul 1993, p.3D]

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.