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]