The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,414 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 51% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 46% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 62
Highest review score: 100 Badlands
Lowest review score: 0 A Life Less Ordinary
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5,571 out of 10414
  2. Mixed: 3,736 out of 10414
  3. Negative: 1,107 out of 10414
10414 movie reviews
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  1. Serving Sara
    Misbegotten late-summer special.
  2. Godzilla
    While the special effects are impressive, countless films have already proven that if you sink enough money into a project, you can at least make it look good. Unfortunately, good looks are all Godzilla has going for it.
  3. Dead Man on Campus
    It's all handled so poorly that it comes off as more ghoulish than anything else, although those who find the word "bong" instantly entertaining and are easily distracted by the presence of flickering images may be amused.
  4. The Adventures of Pluto Nash
    A headache-inducing mess without direction or purpose.
  5. Poolhall Junkies
    Looks like a cheap polyester suit, an entirely synthetic composite of scenes from other movies.
  6. Lost & Found
    Spade proves that he's entirely capable of making unwatchable dreck all by himself.
  7. Gloria
    An inexplicable and disastrous mismatch of sensibilities.
  8. Meet Joe Black
    It's probably not the year's worst film, but it would be difficult to imagine three more interminable, snooze-inducing hours of film than you'll find watching this narcoleptic dinosaur.
  9. Detroit Rock City
    Such a stupid, painfully obvious, gratingly unfunny dud that it's unlikely to please even the most gullible and easy-to-please members of the Kiss army.
  10. Marci X
    The makers of “Bringing Down The House” should thank the gods of cinema for Marci X, which has relieved the Steve Martin/Queen Latifah hit of its status as the year's most misguided culture-clash comedy.
  11. Timeline
    Until Timeline reaches its flaming-trebuchet-siege finale -- which should impress anyone who's never seen "The Two Towers" -- it has the stirring production values of an episode of the Tia Carrere action series "Relic Hunter," but with only a fraction of the acting talent and intellectual heft.
  12. America's Heart and Soul
    Represents apple-pie mythmaking at its most insidiously thoughtless.
  13. Runaway Bride
    Another contrived, unconvincing romantic comedy that once again mixes stale sitcom humor with laughable attempts at pathos and emotional depth.
  14. Twisted
    Twisted marks a bottoming-out for pretty much everyone involved, particularly Judd and director Philip Kaufman, who should know better. The film is the creative equivalent of waking up naked in a puddle of cheap wine and vomit.
  15. A Night at the Roxbury
    Running a mere 83 minutes, A Night At The Roxbury still feels like an eternity spent in bad high-concept-movie hell.
  16. Scooby-Doo
    A work of Battlefield Earth-level miscalculation.
  17. New Best Friend
    A lurid, unsavory mix of Reefer Madness hysteria, drive-in sleaze, and the queasy morality of '80s slasher film.
  18. Envy
    In short, every element suggests Envy ought to be amusing, but the only comparably disastrous movie in recent memory involves Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, and a rapping retarded man.
  19. The Master of Disguise
    A film about as funny as a seeping wound.
  20. Kangaroo Jack
    Straight from the fiery, churning bowels of high-concept hell comes Kangaroo Jack, Bruckheimer's idea of kid-friendly fare, and some of the longest 90 minutes ever committed to film.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Lethal Weapon 4
    It's a dead end to a franchise that should have been put to rest two movies ago.
  22. Batman & Robin
    Clooney fails to make much of an impression as The Batman, but to make an impression amongst all the garish theatrics, he would pretty much have to shout his dialogue in rhyming verse, backwards.
  23. Van Helsing
    A work of staggering stupidity.
  24. Friday After Next
    Marginally better than its predecessor, but only because "Next Friday" lowered standards so far that only a homemade cockfighting video would have failed to surpass it.
  25. A Love Song for Bobby Long
    No movie that opens with the line "Time was never a friend to Bobby Long" could possibly be any good, and sure enough, A Love Song For Bobby Long lives down to its squibbed kickoff.
  26. The Cat in the Hat
    The ongoing cinematic desecration of Dr. Seuss' legacy continues with The Cat In The Hat, a clattering abomination that makes it depressingly likely that an entire generation of reading-averse children will know The Cat In The Hat as that obnoxious character Mike Myers played in that horrible movie.
  27. Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Movie
    Impossibly dull form of niche-marketed entertainment.
  28. Darkness
    It's not even bad enough to be any fun.
  29. Flubber
    Like everything else in this needless remake—from a heartless performance by Williams to the patented kiddie-sadism of screenwriter John Hughes—it's sloppily grafted onto a skeletal version of the original, with scenes lifted from the source and reinserted in a manner that doesn't make sense.
  30. Hoodlum
    A conclusion featuring a dizzying string of betrayals that leads to a confusing anti-climax robs the film of even cheap action thrills, making Hoodlum an almost thoroughly forgettable experience, albeit probably the only film in history to unite Queen Latifah and The Mod Squad's Clarence Williams III.
  31. Ever After
    It's... directed by Andy Tennant ("It Takes Two") with all the flair of an episode of "7th Heaven", making it that much more worth avoiding.
  32. Games People Play: New York
    Sets a new nadir in the reality genre's race to the bottom. The price of sacrificing dignity for the amusement of the general public gets lower every day.
  33. Into the Fire
    At least Into The Fire can't be accused of misleading audiences. From its overwrought opening narration to early shots of an empty Ferris wheel, it promises to be a dour, pretentious, humorless time-waster, and it doggedly makes good on that promise.
  34. Super Mario Bros.
    Super Mario Bros. devotes half its run time to lumbering exposition, yet still makes no f.cking sense. Seldom has a film done such heavy lifting to such meager effect.
    • 8 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Transylmania
    Transylmania is so inept that it even fails as an adolescent breast-delivery device.
  36. AVPR: Aliens vs Predator - Requiem
    A tasteless, witless, mindlessly perfunctory bloodbath that has the discourtesy to take itself seriously. Pitting aliens against predators may be the height of frivolity, but God forbid anyone have fun with it.
  37. All About Steve
    How do you make a movie about a protagonist so profoundly irritating that even her loved ones barely tolerate her? And how do you avoid annoying audiences to the point of distraction in the process?
  38. I Hate Valentine's Day
    An unspeakable nadir in the career of its writer-director-star.
  39. Are We There Yet?
    All too effectively conveys the claustrophobic horror of being shackled in a small space with two whiny, hateful children.
  40. Son of the Mask
    No doubt extensive market research shows that there's an audience out there for movies like Son Of The Mask, but it's too depressing to speculate who that might be.
  41. Nowhere Man
    Cheap and ugly in every sense--morally, cinematically, creatively--Nowhere Man accomplishes the seemingly impossible by dragging the seedy revenge genre to a horrific new nadir.
  42. Monster-in-Law
    It's not hard to imagine the militant Jane Fonda of 1972 angrily denouncing Monster-In-Law as insulting Hollywood claptrap trafficking in regressive, reactionary, blatantly sexist gender codes. And she'd be right.
  43. Date Movie
    It's kind of amazing that a joke-a-second comedy like Date Movie doesn't contain a single laugh.
  44. Epic Movie
    It's an ersatz comedy filled with unconvincing celebrity look-alikes and tone-deaf parodies. Only the desperation and cynicism feel authentic.
  45. Norbit
    There's enough material here to add another hour to Spike Lee's "reel of shame" in "Bamboozled," but hideously offensive black stereotypes are merely the tip of the iceberg.
  46. Daddy Day Camp
    A generic time-waster powered by a lazy, cynical combination of scatological kiddie humor and maudlin sentiment.
  47. Sydney White
    What's the excuse for dumbing down Snow White to moron level? Are there really people out there who thought the original version just didn't have enough toilet jokes?
    • 9 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Meet the Spartans
    Meet The Spartans gamely alternates between unfunny gay jokes and violent pratfalls for a good 80 minutes, finding time for not one, but two musical dance numbers set to "I Will Survive."
  49. The Hottie & the Nottie
    How is Paris Hilton in her first starring role to receive a national release? Pretty bad, actually. She's limited to a single, all-too-familiar expression of smug self-satisfaction, and she delivers her lines in a tone somewhere between "seductive" and "dish-soap commercial."
    • 17 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Witless Protection
    Larry The Cable Guy is a cancerous boil on the ass of comedy, but it's still sort of shocking how little effort he puts into his movies.
  51. Chapter 27
    Perhaps the harshest criticism that can be directed at Chapter 27 is that it's awful even for a late-period Lindsay Lohan movie. It might even be bad enough to inspire "Catcher" author J.D. Salinger to break his decades of public silence to speak out against this high-camp fiasco.
    • 20 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
    Surely there's a more nuanced argument to be made in favor of ID than pinning the old "bad as Hitler" canard on pro-evolution scientists?
  53. Fireproof
    Cameron acts like a childish jerk, even in the reconciliation phase, and the underlying reason is that he--and the movie--hates women.
  54. An American Carol
    Great satire never fits neatly within an ideological box. Attention, the ghosts of H.L. Mencken, Stanley Kubrick, and Jonathan Swift: David Zucker could use a visit.
  55. Soul Men
    For all its crudeness and desperation, Soul Men can't scare up a single laugh.
  56. Fired Up!
    On the off chance that anyone out there would want to spend time with guys like this—and would appreciate a bonus plug for Staples' recycled paper products, too--this movie has been made just for them.
  57. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
    The problems with Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun-Li began with the casting of dead-eyed, sleepy-voiced, charisma-impaired automaton Kristin Kreuk.
  58. The Stepfather
    Walsh is just a dumb bully who can’t see more than one or two steps ahead. He’s doomed to generic slasher villainy, and the film thoughtlessly obliges.
  59. The Real Cancun
    Save for the diminished allure of drunk, naked hotties, there's nothing of worth in The Real Cancun.
  60. Virus
    This suspense-free, originality-deprived mess will likely be a major contender for the title of 1999's worst film.
  61. Simply Irresistible
    Somehow both formulaic and bat-shit insane. It's sort of a given that films in this genre won't be rigorous cerebral exercises, but Simply Irresistible is almost hypnotic in its unyielding stupidity.
  62. The Mod Squad
    Bound to wind up as one of 1999's worst films.
  63. 200 Cigarettes
    More of a throwback to a period in the '70s when big-screen comedies like "FM" and "Thank God It's Friday" seemed to take all their cues from bad sitcoms, putting rice-paper-flat characters into vibrant settings and giving them nothing to do but exchange faux witty dialogue without the much-needed cues of a laugh track.
  64. All the Queen's Men
    Stultifying.
  65. 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag
    Zany antics of the most painful sort.
  66. You've Got Mail
    Takes almost two self-infatuated, smarmy, condescending, cringe-inducingly sentimental hours to reach its pre-ordained conclusion.
  67. Sorority Boys
    A shockingly inane college comedy that accomplishes the nearly impossible feat of being far worse than it looks.
  68. The Other Sister
    Contrived, clueless, reprehensible.
  69. 8MM
    That 8MM fails miserably as a psychological thriller is forgivable. The fact that it is nearly as creepy, sleazy, and manipulative as the pornographic films it so cluelessly and hypocritically condemns is not.
  70. The Avengers
    It's almost fascinating to witness just how lousy The Avengers really is.
  71. Baby Geniuses
    A horrible, horrible film that wears out its welcome before its opening credits.
  72. From Justin to Kelly
    More than anything, From Justin To Kelly needs Simon Cowell, the fork-tongued Idol judge who gives the show its only sliver of tension.
  73. Bruce Almighty
    Even the most narcissistic jerk, like the one played by Jim Carrey in the loathsome comedy Bruce Almighty, would be expected to dream up untold pleasures for himself, acting as a self-serving genie with infinite wishes.
  74. Kung Pow: Enter the Fist
    Does this even count as a movie?
  75. Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2
    The most perversely unnecessary sequel in recent memory.
  76. A Life Less Ordinary
    At the very least, this film should hush those who insist that Diaz has talent beyond visual appeal, but it's unfair to single out her relatively minor offenses when there's so much else to hate about A Life Less Ordinary, an embarrassment for all concerned.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Speed 2: Cruise Control
    But like De Bont's awful "Twister", Speed 2: Cruise Control somehow manages to fail in every way.
  78. Jonah Hex
    Every once in a while, a film limps into theaters so stitched together, it's a wonder it doesn't rip apart in the projector. Jonah Hex is such a film.
  79. The Ten Commandments
    It fails on every conceivable level.
  80. The Last Airbender
    The Last Airbender isn't that much different from the rest of this summer's generally dire multiplex fare-from "The A-Team" to "Jonah Hex"... But it is remarkable in one respect: It's the worst of them.
  81. Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore
    And it's still, in the spirit of the original film, an unbelievable piece of sh--.
  82. Flipped
    This results in a film that spells everything out visually, then further elaborates through groaningly obvious dialogue, then drives every point home for slow-witted audiences via shameless narration.
  83. Apollo 18
    Unpleasant when it isn't dull, Apollo 18 never sells the lost-footage illusion, and never compensates for it with scares. Jolts, sure. Like so many lazy horror directors, López-Gallego knows how to startle, but not how to frighten.
  84. The Darkest Hour
    Not since Mark Wahlberg trembled in fear beside a menacing houseplant in "The Happening" has a film tried to provoke terror with such an unlikely object of menace.
  85. Shark Night 3D
    Shark Night 3D barely bothered to show up, let alone deliver the minimal goods.
  86. The Devil Inside
    The hilariously convoluted thriller contains all the elements for a wacky parody of exorcism movies, except a sense of humor about itself: The Devil Inside never acknowledges its innate ridiculousness, so the laughs are unintentional.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Reagan
    For a movie about a man who puts himself at the center of a world apparently on the brink of annihilation, Reagan lacks any drama at all.
  88. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
    It will always be "too soon" for Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close, which processes the immense grief of a city and a family through a conceit so nauseatingly precious that it's somehow both too literary and too sentimental, cloying yet aestheticized within an inch of its life.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    October Baby
    This is no mere tale of redemption or reaffirming of faith; this is a film with an extreme agenda.
  90. Battle of the Year
    Too incompetent to work as an underdog dance flick, but not nearly weird enough to qualify as howling camp, Battle Of The Year is destined to please only bad movie buffs desperate for a fix of awful dialogue, blatant product placement, and clunky exposition.
  91. Mansome
    If Spurlock had simply followed Waters around for 80 minutes, the result would be more entertaining than Mansome. Hell, 80 minutes of John Waters sleeping would be more fun than Mansome.
  92. Atlas Shrugged II: The Strike
    The specific problem with Part II is that a second act of huffery and puffery don't get it anywhere.
  93. A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III
    It isn’t a movie so much as a feature-length perfume commercial for a Charlie Sheen signature cologne with gorgeous packaging and absolutely nothing inside.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    The Nut Job
    The most egregious problem with The Nut Job is how shamelessly it fills in the gaps left by expanding Lepeniotis’ short with generic and tedious rogue-to-hero cliché.
  95. Best Night Ever
    Likely to be appreciated only by homeless viewers who need a quiet place to nap during the cold months of winter, the movie has more awkward dead space than jokes.
  96. London Has Fallen
    Perhaps the movie’s politics—which range from tone deaf to irredeemable—would be more of an issue if it weren’t so inept.
  97. America: Imagine a World Without Her
    Graced with a hilariously definitive title, America is astonishingly facile, a film comprised entirely of straw man arguments.
  98. Atlas Shrugged III: Who Is John Galt?
    It’s a movie where everything, from the sets to the cast and crew, is an unconvincing, low-cost substitute for something else.
  99. The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence)
    The gross-out gore scenes and poop jokes are there, too, as is to be expected. The direction is bad, the acting is worse, and it’s lit to mimic the soap-opera effect on a poorly calibrated HDTV. Basically, The Human Centipede III is an unsexy "Ilsa" movie, and it’s just as impossible to sit through as that sounds.
  100. 11 Minutes
    Almost paralyzingly dull until its last few minutes.
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