It's an out-of-control movie from an out-of-touch director/screenwriter; too frenzied to make sense, and too awful to tear your eyes away. [01 Dec 1995, p.12]

Victor Frankenstein is misshapen as the bad doctor's creature itself, straining without wit or viscera to be a devilish horror romp.

The pleasures of Allegiant are unintended, those little bits of business taken so seriously that serious viewers must laugh.

Stargate is a time-warped implosion of baffling space mysticism, a costume budget gone mad, and too much sand for any movie short of Lawrence of Arabia. It's pretty, vacant and pointless; an interactive computer game with which we just don't feel like getting involved. [28 Oct 1994, p.10C]

Wonder Wheel is one of Allen’s worst movies.

The only thing Black or White adds to the discussion of race relations is another one-sided argument.

Under Siege 2: Dark Territory is the sort of movie that would give sequels a bad name, if they didn't already have one. [16 July 1995, p.2B]

Fantastic Four is so mediocre that its title seems like a violation of truth in advertising laws.

Hop is harmless, which is the worst best thing to be said for any movie. It never decides whether to be a kiddie flick or a grownup lark and winds up as neither. As Roger might say: "Puh-puh-puh-puhleeze, don't waste your time."

The central mystery has been drastically altered to fit Julia Roberts, its most telling clue diluted, and a signature sequence that made soccer exciting now makes baseball duller.

Machine Gun Preacher comes alive only when Sam is pulling a trigger, which is most of the second hour. You can find the same thrill from watching a grindhouse descendant like "The Expendables" on cable TV.

Our Family Wedding should embarrass Whitaker and each of his co-stars, perhaps except Carlos Mencia, whose chief attribute as an actor is that he's a so-so standup comedian.

Yes, there is a hell, and this movie is showing at its local multiplex.

The Boxtrolls is a visually repellent pile of stop-motion animation, populated by grotesques and filmed in the palette of an exhumed casket's interior. It can frighten small children and bore anyone, with its cracked, cackled British wit.

This movie never realizes how ridiculous anything it does truly is, right up to the last-second promise of another sequel.

There came a time, during a screening of Eric Schaeffer's romantic comedy, when I knew exactly what would happen for the rest of the movie, and knew it wasn't going to get any better along the way. The depression was compounded when I realized If Lucy Fell had another hour to go. [8 March 1996, p.10]

Metro is the kind of movie an actor makes when he's either coasting on a reputation or scrambling to recover one. The kind of movie that Murphy doesn't need to make after hitting big again with The Nutty Professor, and the kind we don't need to pay theater prices to see. [17 Jan 1997, p.9]

There are cheesy pleasures found in Left Behind's ineptness.

Moviegoers know exactly how these children feel awaiting the conclusion of The Baby Sitters Club, a dull, superficial adaptation of Ann Martin's popular book series that gives new meaning to the term "growing pains." [18 Aug 1995, p.8]

Return To The Blue Lagoon is as pretty as a travel brochure and just as thin on substance and entertainment value. [02 Aug 1991, p.13]

Back To The Beach, starring the early '60s most popular teen-agers, Frankie and Annette, combines the campiness of a college reunion, the corniness of a high school musical, and the values of Mister Rogers. The film's only redeeming quality is that it knows it … and manages to laugh at itself occasionally. [10 Aug 1987, p.1D]

Dante's movie is so helter-skelter, that he can't generate the uncomfortable mood the moment requires. It's the balloon principle. The 'Burbs is so full of hot air it simply blows up in its own face. [17 Feb 1989, p.6]

The Wizard does have a half-baked germ of a story at its center, but it's never developed because director Todd Holland turns his movie into one long commercial whose climax is the unveiling of a new Nintendo game - just in time for Christmas, boys and girls. [15 Dec 1989, p.7]

Neophyte Joanou's camera is airborne so often it gives the impression Three O'Clock High was filmed between traffic reports by Chopper 8. It's an example of virtuoso film making solely for the sake of virtuosity. [9 Oct 1987, p.3D]

Director Roth, working from a screenplay by Dan Guntzelman and Steve Marshall, makes this material about as interesting as a dirty joke told v-e-r-y slowly, in pidgin French. [13 July 1987, p.1D]

Aside from a few nifty computer-generated "trip" sequences and a foul-mouthed nun (Amanda Plummer) who advises her torturer to turn the other cheek before flattening him, Freejack has little to recommend it. [18 Jan 1982, p.1D]

Funny Farm is one of the dullest, most predictable movies in Chevy Chase's and director George Roy Hill's spotty careers. It's on par with Chase's Modern Problems and Hill's A Little Romance. This picture is not destined to be fondly remembered in their memoirs. [3 June 1988, p.8]

Hardware runs more precisely, it crawls aimlessly as the robot, pieced together from household appliances, attempts to slice, dice, drill and saw Jill to death. There's no tension, no suspense, no climax. [14 Sep 1990, p.7]

Extreme Prejudice is an exceptionally bad movie, despite a powerful introduction in the tradition of Hill's bloodiest ventures, Southern Comfort, The Long Riders and 48 HRS. [24 Apr 1987, p.1D]

Project X is a predictable, sappy Save The Monkeys movie. [17 Apr 1987, p.1D]

Fire Birds is Top Gun without wings. Without personality. Without sex appeal. Nicholas Cage is no Tom Cruise. Sean Young is no Kelly McGillis.

Darkman is a spectacularly ill-conceived combination of Batman and The Phantom of the Opera. [24 Aug. 1990, p.6]

She-Devil is insipid. It is a hustle-bustle comic fantasy that insists on shoveling forced humor down viewers' throats. The movie is devoid of charm. [8 Dec 1989, p.6]

Ricochet isn't worthy of Lithgow's or Washington's talents. But having committed to the movie, these actors have gotten what they deserved. [05 Oct 1991, p.3D]

Even an ear-splitting sound track of gunfire, explosions, rock 'n' roll and revving engines can't drown out one noise that should deeply disturb film fans the sound of Butch and Sundance spinning in their Bolivian graves. [27 Aug 1991, p.3D]

Raising Cain is monumentally bad. It is De Palma's Howard the Duck. [07 Aug 1992, p.10]

It's appropriate that Men at Work's writer, director and co-star, Emilio Estevez, has cast himself as a garbage collector. His new movie is trash. [25 Aug 1990, p.1D]

Mannequin may be loosely described as a variation on Ron Howard's Splash, but with none of that film's charm or wit. [14 Feb 1987, p.5B]

This is summer entertainment at its mindless, violent worst featuring plenty of squishy, crunchy sounds and sickening makeup X effects to satisfy undiscerning blood-and-guts audiences. Moviegoers looking for pacing, character development or delightful thrills must seek shelter elsewhere. [11 July 1992, p.3D]

Revenge, adapted from Harrison's novella, is the sickest of male bonding movies. It is about friendship and betrayal, and how men must uphold their dignity at the expense of all else. Particularly women. [17 Feb 1990, p.1D]

Rarely has a children's picture been so stagnant, so bereft of passion. [18 Dec 1987, p.8]

A disastrous follow-up to Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show, one of the seminal movies of a generation. [28 Sep 1990, p.7]

Perhaps the NCAA should investigate how Necessary Roughness ever made it to the big screen. The movie-making team that fielded this fiasco would receive more sanctions than the universities of Florida, Oklahoma and Houston combined. [27 Sept 1991, p.13]

There's a lot of money in the sets, costumes, cinematography and soundtrack of The Big Town, but the movie has no soul. [29 Sep 1987, p.4D]

Most annoying is John Carter's scarcity of action. This much buck should buy more bang.

Niccol fashioned an uninspired and downright dull sci-fi gimmick and doesn't even explain how it happened.

It's sad to see mercurial talent unused, and even more disheartening to see it completely wasted. Color of Night, the first film in 14 years from director Richard Rush, is a dreadful miscalculation of a comeback; a sexual thriller equally lewd and ludicrous. Rush has already disavowed the reworked version opening nationwide today, promising his original vision will be available later on video. [19 Aug 1994, p.7B]

Everybody's cyber-pal Ashton Kutcher is perfect casting for Killers, since the screenplay is shallow as a Tweet and the movie appears to have been shot with a Nikon point-and-click camera he plugs on TV.

It's difficult to not be cynical and redundant to declare this sequel needless for anyone except accountants, considering the studio involved. But this ranks among Disney's most shameless shirkings of its responsibility to creatively entertain, in order to pursue profits.

The Next Karate Kid is equally pointless; a fourth installment of a series that stopped kicking and started creaking in round 2. [11 Sep 1994, p.18C]

For the love of movies, stay away.

Final Analysis is overwrought, overwritten, overscored pseudo-Hitchcockian drivel. With more twists than Lombard Street has curves, this San Francisco-set psychological thriller is the biggest disappointment of the new year. [8 Feb 1992, p.3D]

It's amazing how much slobber $ 20-million will buy. [28 July 1989, p.6]

There are some laws of nature we might as well accept: Gravity exists, the world is round, and movies with Pia Zadora, Robin Leach, Dr. Joyce Brothers and Annette Funicello are not funny. [24 March 1989, p.7]

The Last Airbender makes the cartoon version with its ratchet-jawed characters and clunky animation seem like a Pixar classic.

It's too easy to say that only fans of Adam Sandler and Damon Wayans should consider seeing Bulletproof, since it would be excruciating to anyone else. It's also unfair, because those fans would be better served to respectively watch "Happy Gilmore" or "The Last Boy Scout" another time than suffer through this latest - and possibly all-time worst - entry in the buddy-action-comedy genre. [7 Sept 1996, p.2B]

Shore's new "comedy" Son-In-Law proves without question that this MTV maniac is one of the most tedious one-note performers in any branch of show business today. Considering that his brain-addled manner serves as a role model for many teenagers is more offensive than his lack of talent. [2 July 1993, p.9]

This messy mix of sci-fi horror and post-Superbad raunchiness didn't make me laugh once. Not a single snicker, chortle or smile.

A comedy abomination, tasteless and useless to a stunning degree, with storied actors smugly collecting paychecks for sullying their careers.

A wheel-spinning homage gone terribly awry.

I'm Still Here is amateurishly shot and edited, as if ineptness equaled some higher level of veracity. Ironically, it's the only Joaquin Phoenix movie anyone has cared about in years.

Doremus captures each insipid moment with hand-held camera urgency and clumsy jump cuts.

Who's That Girl is a stern test of your MQ (Madonna Quotient). It is quite possible to hate this movie before the animated credits sequence is over. [10 Aug 1987, p.1D]

You don't need to watch National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon I to understand what a sloppy comedy concoction it is; just listen. What you won't hear is laughter, even in a crowded movie theater. I haven't experienced such a silent audience for an alleged comedy since last year's horrid Stop, Or My Mom Will Shoot.

End of Watch is a repellent movie, first for its shaky-cam conceit rendering much of the action incomprehensible, and finally for seeking to entertain viewers through the thuggish execution of a police officer.

The Change-Up is the "Human Centipede" of gag-me comedies.

Save the money you might spend for a ticket to see For a Good Time, Call... and just read a dive bar's restroom wall for free. That's the sub-level of comedy here, with a litany of crude sexual euphemisms and phallic images passed off as jokes.

It's all megalomaniacal junk from Snyder, but that isn't his most offensive move.