Certainty, then, is the watchword, and you can be certain of three things: There will be plenty of juvenile energy to power the vehicle; there will be a few mild chuckles en route; there will be no reason to remember the ride the instant it ends.

The movie is nothing if not anxious to please. There's a big, diverse, celebrity voice cast – Maggie Smith, Hulk Hogan and Dolly Parton as well as Caine and Osbourne.

The result is that the particularly cruel delights of Pollock’s writing get lost in an adaptation that can never nail any of its sprawling cast of characters, or escape the Southern-fried clichés that the novel transcends.

Stay is all dressed up with no place to go, an eye-popping exercise in lavish style unattached to any discernible content.

If Jobs had been a producer on Jobs, he would have sent it back to the lab for a redesign.

If you call your movie this, you’re kinda asking for it. Some rules should apply. For example, characters should make a little sense, so when they behave in “unpredictable” ways, we can tell. But Warren Beatty, back in the director’s chair after 18 years, has gone rogue.

RSVP: Decline with regret.

Unlike the smarter "Maleficent," a revisionist Sleeping Beauty created by the same producers, what The Huntsman series lacks is any intriguing psychology.

Most of this is blandly palatable, at least for the first half. Cyrus, though she seldom strays from her two primary modes, pouting rebel or toothy girlfriend, has a winning on-screen presence, if only for her enjoyably abrasive edge in this deep well of pathos.

Halfway through, everyone starts drinking heavily and the film turns into agreeably sloppy fun. (Isn't that always the way – class reunions often perk up when someone spikes the punch.)

The Dark Crystal sees through a dark crystal: There is much to marvel at, but there is much that is obscure, and much that may not be there at all. [17 Dec 1982]

While Lawrence doesn't come close to the fireworks wit and satire of Pryor in his postfreebase-accident film, "Live On The Sunset Strip," his riveting story saves Runteldat from becoming just a routine slapped on the big screen.

So, fans, gear up for rock-em-sock-em action, yet don’t be disappointed if much of the goonery seems a bit tepid and, dare I say, staged.

OH DEAR, what grade to assign The Rachel Papers? Hmmm, seems this is a British coming-of-age flick that turns out to be a whole lot like the U.S. coming-of-age flicks we've seen a whole lot of. Sure, better cast, earthier language, niftier accents, but the same paint-by-number formula punctuated by the same tacked-on "be true to yourself" moral. Heck, let's be generous: passing, barely passing. [12 May 1989]

Director Carl Reiner has put it together so that the character (hardly) ever becomes boring, and the Martin-Carl Gottlieb-Michael Elias screenplay has just enough genuinely witty moments to keep the story rolling past its flat parts. What more can anyone say? If you like Steve Martin, you'll love this movie. If you don't, you'll laugh sometimes but wish you'd gone elsewhere. [17 Dec 1979]

Park is busy treating every frame like a runway model, dressing it up in self-conscious layers of cinematic haute couture. It’s gorgeous to gaze upon but otherwise dessicated – listless, juiceless and ultimately pointless. For all his exemplary camera work, there’s no motion, or emotion, in the picture.

This time, Tykwer somehow manages to turn Eggers’s attempt at an era-defining story into a weird little cross-cultural comedy with romantic overtones while remaining largely faithful to the original plot and dialogue. Here, globalization’s economic devastation is just a nice backdrop for some amusing – and, thankfully, inoffensive – observation of one American abroad.

The effect of so much pretension and so many lovely images eventually becomes soporific.

Though by no means a good movie, The Internship floats along for fairly well for about half its length, thanks to the easy interplay between the two stars and a certain melancholic topicality.

A so-so remake of the low-budget 2010 film "Ghost from the Machine" that comes off as run-of-the-mill paranormal thriller. No electricity, one might say.

Damned if this sugary confection doesn't come with a creepy crust. the odd sense that these aging boomers, ever eager to stall the march of time, are competing with their own daughter in the maternity sweepstakes - I'll see your child, and raise you one. [8 Dec 1995, p.C1]

The problem is not that the director is working but that his latest film is working too hard. Way too hard – this thing is melodrama running a marathon.

If you have kids who are easily frightened, bring them to Alpha and Omega, a 3-D movie with training wheels. Kids may not like it, but they'll never fall off the ride.

It’s ultimately difficult to wade through the muddled plot line, or plot lines, rather, as there are so many disparate storylines contending for top billing in this movie.

This is the reliable raunch-plus-sweetness comic formula that goes back through the Farrelly brothers, Adam Sandler's comedies, "Revenge of the Nerds," "Porky's" and "Animal House."

Unfortunately, The East is not a very good movie, hobbled by an excess of plot, a lack of believability and big gaps of logic.

A tart-coated sugar pill of a movie.

Call the film sensitive or tender all you want, but one thing it doesn’t have is nuance

Washington's take on the seductress is so saucy, so unapologetic, such a brash blend of insouciant charm and raw sex appeal, that she swipes the picture from right under its nominal star. The only problem is that her theft inadvertently tips the balance of the moral dilemma, shifting it seismically all the way from "He'd be a fool to succumb" to "He'd be a coward not to."

This material might make for a sly, subversive take on the genre, but writer-director Tyson Caron positions Dash as the hero of his story, a fatal flaw.

It is a paint-by-numbers Holocaust movie, scrupulously balanced, always cautious, occasionally clichéd, often sentimental.

Jawbreaker breaks ground in one way. The movie is notably unpleasant, not just because it's morally offensive, but because it strives for this arch, artificial John Waters tone without any accompanying pay-off in wit.

This entry has been described as a “cousin” to the other movies. Specifically, The Marked Ones is a Hispanic cousin, customized for Latino audiences in the United States where the series is particularly popular.

A splatter of scenes that relocate the funny-bone in the lower anatomical regions -- sometimes hitting the mark, occasionally a glancing blow, often missing completely.

Guy Ritchie's Holmes reboot feels both too complicated and too elementary, dear Watson.

It ain't hell and it ain't heaven; it's just, more or less, another two-star movie. [4 March 1994]

While it’s fine for a director to explore his childhood inspirations, you hope he would bring something a bit more personal to it. Instead, Jack the Giant Slayer, while well-crafted, feels entirely generic.

It’s been not so much remade as restrained – tamed and dumbed-down and with any sharp political edges safely filed off.

What they've created is a movie that, lacking any resonance, is a soulless clone of a more vibrant original. [04 Feb 1994]

While Tom Tykwer's lavish and lively screen adaptation of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is certainly not a stinker, there is something decidedly off about it.

Runaway Train, which could have been Kurosawa's Wages of Fear, has been re- written by a committee and does not explore the theme so much as hold it up for ridicule: Runaway Train is an also-Ran. [23 Dec 1985]

It definitely seems attractive on paper, what with a sterling cast to gaze upon, a script by none other than the late and legendary John Cassavetes, along with direction courtesy of the legend's son Nick. But up on the screen, under the glare of the lights, the film never really captures our eye or our interest. [29 Aug 1997, p.D3]

More than merely stale and dated, Hollywood Ending seems lazy and careless -- the structure is loose to the point of crumbling.

In its component parts, then, Love Liza is essentially a battle between opposing clichés.

Lewy’s script doesn’t cop out with any sentimental redemption, but neither does it establish why the self-destructive Lachlan deserves our sympathy.

As a statement on capitalism or anything else, Capitalism: A Love Story is often embarrassingly simplistic, self-contradictory.

A football story that deserves a penalty flag every other play for piling on the sentiment.

If the title is half-familiar, the contents are wholly surprising. Happily, all of the bitterness is gone. Sadly, so has most of the humor. What remains is a conclusion startling but unmistakable - Woody Allen has grown bland. [16 July 1982]

Perhaps a first-time director can be forgiven, like those teenage puppeteers, for not knowing how to get a message across without wearing it on his sleeve.

Queen Latifah's energy may be winning and her self-reliance message righteous, but Last Holiday grossly overextends her credit

The film is primarily an excuse for Chase to demonstrate that though he may be a movie star he has yet to learn how to create, let alone sustain, a character, and for director Harold (Caddyshack) Ramis and screenwriter John (National Lampoon's Class Reunion) Hughes to demonstrate that some movie stars get the colleagues they deserve. [2 Aug 1983]

If you're looking for a screwball comedy about bipolar disorder -- and who among us is not? -- then this picture fits the bill fine. However, if you're picky enough to want a good screwball comedy about bipolar disorder, well, I'm afraid the wait continues.

The movie never actually gets to winter: The title is just a clumsy play on the family's surname.

Yes, it's up to the older generation to provide the comedy here, and they do it fairly consistently, with the delicious Christine Baranski carrying most of the movie as Amy's mom.

Director Rob Reiner is betting that their star power alone will blind us to the holes in this cheesecloth of a script. It proves a fool's bet – no star shines that brightly.

Conducting another symphony in action, Spielberg seems a bit bored – always competent but never inspired – and who can really blame him? He tries to fire his interest by swiping a few tropes from the fifties pop bin, not-so-sly allusions to teen-trash movies and those McCarthy-era horror flicks. After that, there's really nowhere to go but inwards, which is when Spielberg starts looting Spielberg.

In what's meant to be a French take on "The Big Chill" - comedy meets pathos as friends gather at a country house in the wake of a tragedy - writer-director Guillaume Canet has wrought a meandering script that exercises everything except restraint.

Speaking of funny things, director Todd Phillips has been down this path before in "Road Trip." There, toiling in the same lame genre, he actually showed a hint of comic ingenuity. Here, the hint has dwindled to a hoarse whisper.

Housebroken and prettified, this boxed version of White Fang comes ready for prime-time - safe enough for the living room, docile enough for the couch. But don't let your guard down: it just might gum you to sleep. [25 Jan 1991]

More ambitious, but also much harder to swallow than the average Hollywood hack effort, In the Cut is a muddle of thriller and art-house phantasmagoria.

The movie is like a glass of Sprite that has been left on the counter too long: transparent, sweet and flat.

To her credit, Nadda is a solid actors’ director – the performances here are competent even when the writing isn’t. The exception is South Africa which, although a logistically necessary shooting location, ain’t much of a thespian.

It's an action-comedy. It's in 3-D. There's a video-game tie-in. Throw in a fluorescent Slushie from the candy counter and your eight-year-old will be in heaven.

This is a flick whose failures are at least as interesting as the successes.

Even though William Safire doesn't fit in the target demographic, Stick It is more valuable as a survey of modern American teen argot than as a movie.

Owen Wilson cries, but audiences will more likely roll their eyeballs at writer-director Stephen Chbosky's outrageous emotional manipulations.

One wishes the makers of Pride had stuck with non-fiction, because their movie reduces Ellis's story to the level of generic sports-flick hokum.

A furious 90-minute trailer of a movie that exceeds the speed limit for action films established by Quentin Tarantino's recent "Grindhouse."

It Chapter Two is a film in need of a good ending. How badly it needs that ending is never in question, either. Hell, the movie cries out for help on the subject.

Periodically, thanks to the 3-D, a long and pointy object emerges from the screen, threatening to impale the viewers through their eyeballs, enhancing the movie's guilty pleasure by reminding us that we, too, are made of vulnerable flesh and bone.

The plot is squeezed dry in this bloody Valentine from Hollywood and becomes annoyingly predictable. Thriller stumbles on its own success

For those who are looking for a Capracornish sentimental tale about the Christmas spirit lost and re-discovered in the harried modern world, this holiday film is far too acerbic and frantic to play the heart strings. [22 Nov 1996, p.D6]

There’s plenty of shimmying here, maybe too much, and lots of spin moves, but it’s missing on-the-field results.

As beautiful to look at and as emotionally disconnected as its central character.

The Karate Kid is too long and lyrical, with several tedious scenes between Macchio and Morita as youth and experience. Avildsen is sometimes unsure whether he wants to be tough or forgiving, and the film has a big build-up for the fight scene, but an ending so abrupt it downplays the outcome. [22 June 1984]

So if you're in the mood for a scary flick, the kind where people can't resist going into the huge hole in the wall where the family Pekinese just disappeared to the sounds of being masticated, this is the one.

Without warning, the picture falls hard into the very trap it had so studiously avoided, the one marked Expensive Gimmick... The same feature that begins like no film you've ever seen ends like every cartoon you've always avoided.

Like Frankenstein's monster before the lightning strikes, it's all recycled cold flesh and bolts, without a twitch of originality.

To wit, stick that camera down an aquatic cave, wrap a paper-thin plot around it, slap the whole thing up on an IMAX screen and call it a movie. More truth in advertising: Call it a lame movie.

Director Joel Schumacher has pulled no mawkish punches, wringing every drop of emotional potential from the script (adapted by screenwriter Akiva Goldsman from John Grisham's popular novel) down to the last manipulative glance and close-up. Call it A Time to Overkill.

Approximate time spent laughing: 30 seconds or fewer.

As with so many movies where the script constructs experiences that are contrived and off-putting, you hope the actors can capture the emotional truth of some scenes, even if the entire apparatus feels bogus.

Why so serious, Phillips seems to be saying, in this follow-up. Relax, it’s all entertainment. The challenge, however, is that Joker: Folie à Deux is more ponderous rather than acting as a riposte. It has its moments of movie magic, but they largely get overshadowed by the weight of this redemption endeavour.

And despite the technically impressive quality of the soundtrack, the movie, directed by Karel Reisz, misses the music. [4 Oct 1985]

Like a tone-deaf singer at a benefit concert, John Q. is a bad movie appearing on behalf of a good cause.

Piranha 3D is more funny than disgusting, even when screen fills with half-nude swimmers, bobbing like human dumplings in a roiling vat of borscht. This isn't just sick, it's clas-sick!

Miss Fonda has thought to make a thriller out of that unthrilling process. [12 Dec 1981]

There is certainly much to celebrate and remember about the former U.S. president’s tenure, but Souza, and Porter, don’t seem much interested in anything approaching nuance.

Fans of Allen, the comedian, will be glad to hear there are more chuckles here than in his last film, "Bullets Over Broadway." Fans of Allen, the plot craftsman, will find a lot less discipline and imagination in the writing. In truth, Mighty Aphrodite is mighty slight.

It is almost as if Gibson is daring his audience to turn away from his opera of barbarity – but perversely, his violence is the only compelling element of Hacksaw Ridge. Perhaps ironically for a war film, the rest of it is mostly a draw.

Friedkin has huffed and puffed and blown up a single chase sequence into the whole damn movie. You got your hunted, you got your hunter, and away they go. And go and go.

As angst-filled as if it were "Amadeus" and "Lust for Life" rolled into one.

French Girl’s crude and at times infantile slapstick humour is offset by livelier beats between the cast, whose cross-cultural banter is littered with flashes of genuine wit.

The real weak point is Reiner's listless direction, with too few scenes that almost gel and too many that fall flat.

The film’s middling but good intentions might be enough for the work to skate by unnoticed – but then Leder constructs an unforgivably sentimental finale that builds to a cameo from Bader Ginsburg herself. At that point, we must object.

The first half of Firstborn is a first-rate domestic melodrama, faultlessly acted by all concerned, though you may wonder if the interactions would not have been a bit more compelling had the invading force been a bit less obviously, obnoxiously evil. The second half goes over the edge into a Hollywood hell. [26 Oct 1984]

History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce, Karl Marx said. That might explain the possibility of even making a movie such as Stuck.

Near the end of the movie, Django jokes that, after the protests, people may still not know what the WTO is, but "they know it's bad." That's a fair summation of how much insight Battle in Seattle provides for its viewers.