The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,422 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: 5,575 out of 10422
  2. Mixed: 3,739 out of 10422
  3. Negative: 1,108 out of 10422
10422 movie reviews
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  1. Dopamine
    The issues Decena raises rarely get treated on any but the most superficial of levels, and the flatly realized characters make it difficult to care what becomes of them.
  2. The Emperor's Club
    The film is an old-fashioned morality play writ extra-large, applying a heavy, austere tone to a sequence of events that can't bear the load. The burden falls mostly on Kevin Kline, who trades in his lithe, expressive comedic gifts for a dramatic role that fits him like a straitjacket and a pair of lead shoes.
  3. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later
    The story is thrown together in the most perfunctory way possible, and director Steve Miner's ("Friday The 13th Part 3: 3D," "My Father The Hero") idea of a scary moment is having things spookily jump out of the blue.
  4. Prey for Rock & Roll
    An actress of magnetizing screen presence whose inability to land choice roles can only be attributed to her post-TRL age, Gershon easily identifies with her character, giving her performance an edge that this lazy, punked-up melodrama otherwise lacks.
  5. The Santa Clause 2
    Despite the obviously mercenary nature of this sequel, there's a thimbleful of clever ideas at work here, most notably in the way Allen's RoboSanta begins to turn his toy factory into a tiny dictatorship.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Object of My Affection
    The film is being marketed as a romantic comedy, but it's neither romantic nor funny.
  7. Together
    Miles away from "Farewell, My Concubine" in form and function, with thinly defined characters and unreflective attitudes about urban values vs. country values, the film would be impossible to identify as Chen's if his name weren't in the opening credits.
  8. Life
    Sluggish, laugh-free comedy (or is it an ineffectual drama?).
  9. Frankie and Johnny Are Married
    A vanity project about a vanity project.
  10. Frailty
    When the twists arrive, they feel like much of the film: creepy and cliché-free, but still terribly wrong.
  11. Better Luck Tomorrow
    Perhaps the worst thing that could be said about Better Luck Tomorrow is that, on a slow night, it's easy to imagine these delinquents wanting to rent a film just like it.
  12. The Sea Is Watching
    Though the episodic, low-key action bears a resemblance to Kurosawa's Madadayo -- his little-seen, underrated final film -- neither the characters nor the plot lend it even a hint of dynamism.
  13. Agent Cody Banks
    The generic intrigue and chase scenes take over, leaving poor Muniz at the mercy of stunt doubles and chintzy special effects.
  14. The Transporter
    If anything, The Transporter isn't ludicrous enough; only one scene (a hand-to-hand showdown in the middle of an oil slick) reaches the inspired, delirious comic heights of the best Hong Kong movies.
  15. Psycho
    Hitchcock's Psycho had a lot more than watchability going for it. Van Sant's film impresses only on the level of a cinematic parlor trick, and while that makes it an interesting curiosity, the world doesn't need it.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Real Blonde
    Unfortunately, this slight, dull film would have benefited from a bit more style, as well as substance, as its lame characters and obvious observations never rise too far above the soap operas DiCillo parodies.
  17. Life or Something Like It
    A banal message movie.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Romy and Michele's High School Reunion
    Kudrow and Sorvino aren't really given a script to work with; most jokes consist of the two women being vacuous together.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    G.I. Jane
    If you're looking for a film that addresses a woman's place in a combat unit, keep waiting. If you want a film where a woman can get big muscles and shoot guns and have her husband still love her, here you are.
  20. Orange County
    Ultimately it lacks even the conviction of its own nastiness.
  21. Cold Creek Manor
    In one of the most laughable confrontations between humanity and nature since Elisha Cuthbert stared down the cougar on "24," Quaid's family runs amok in the house, as each member simultaneously discovers a carefully placed snake meant to scare them off the property, almost as if the snakes were working off a timer system. The film never recovers.
  22. Mambo italiano
    If Gaudreault's 90-minute pilot ever makes it to television, French-Canadians can look forward to their own Italian version of A.K.A. Pablo.
  23. Wrong Turn
    Lacks the creepiness and craft of the films that inspired it.
  24. The Guru
    It's refreshing to see an American movie with an Indian protagonist not played by a white actor in makeup, but it would be a lot more refreshing if that actor (Jimi Mistry) were given a character to play, not just a comic conceit and near-toxic levels of enthusiasm.
  25. Jason X
    Feels like it was written as a fairly straight horror/sci-fi movie, then script-doctored by a comedy writer intent on satirizing the original script. As a result, the film's intentional and unintentional laughs mingle so freely that it becomes difficult to differentiate between the two.
  26. Practical Magic
    Its flat whimsy, VH1-ready musical montage sequences, and less-than-magic magic realism will probably not be enough to hold the attention of all but the most undiscriminating fans of witches and Stockard Channing.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Waterboy
    A mess of bad timing, bad jokes, and bad ideas so lame that even Sandler's idiot man-child mugging can't enliven the proceedings.
  28. Six Days Seven Nights
    Not especially funny, romantic, or exciting.
  29. Nicotina
    Nicotina's lack of originality ultimately proves forgivable. Its glib, heartless nihilism doesn't.
  30. Deep Blue Sea
    It's every bit as silly as it sounds, sillier really.
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