Feels a little like the new "Pirates of the Caribbean" -- a similar wet fizzle of a sequel for sequel's sake -- but what do we know?

In dramatizing the rigours of the ghetto, Yakin stoops to hyperbolic plot devices that tend to erode the very empathy he's striving to create. Things are surely bad, but not that bad - unwittingly, he's demonizing people who deserve better, who are better. [02 Sep 1994]

The lively verbal sparring between the good and evil sorcerer-apprentice pairs sustains the movie, but, with a predictable plot, by-the-numbers action-movie jolts and no real sense of wonder, The Sorcerer's Apprentice is really just a pumpkin.

Gripping to watch but ultimately misses the target. [29 Apr 1978]

Theodore Braun's work may well reach and convert one thousand more Adam Sterlings. Here's hoping it does. There is, however, a difference between a worthy cause and a worthy film.

Our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to guess which gal became the wife, which gal should have become the wife and which gal is there just to play with our heads. It's exactly like that old shell game – mildly diverting, pea-sized and otherwise hollow.

Lush, loud and sparkling, and not nearly as innocent as you might imagine.

I can’t pardon Labor Day’s mush, not just because it’s mush, but because it comes with an unappetizing side order of condescension and contempt.

Unassuming only in its title.

As the middle part of a proposed trilogy, Tai Chi Hero may ultimately look better in light of its own sequel (which, based on the evidence here, will double-down on the steampunk stuff), but now, its pitched battle between silliness and solemnity feels like a split decision.

The script, despite doses of irreverent humour, feels manipulative, and the music is oblivious to nuance, with a spectacular misuse of Johnny Cash singing "Hurt."

Cyrano De Bergerac, the latest cinematic adaptation of the Edmond Rostand classic, is a lavishly appointed film, a decidedly handsome film, a film that wears its money on its sleeve, a film whose beauty is skin deep. The movie always moves, but it's never moving. [30 Nov 1990]

The pedigree is impressive and so is the start, but in the long run, White Men Can't Jump lives down to its title - it doesn't even get off the ground. [27 Mar 1992]

With its confined setting and its existential predicament, the picture owes an ostensible debt to the likes of Pinter and Kafka and Pirandello -- you know, Six Characters in Search of an Author, or, failing that, just getting the hell out of this weird place.

This is Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote territory. How are we to reconcile such images with righteous vengeance wreaked on a genocidal war criminal? Not even a busload of popes could make moral sense of this one.

Director Peter Hyams strives hard to maintain a light and entertaining touch, lifting Timecop slightly above its formulaic restraints. On the one hand, there's a pleasing freshness to the movie, thanks to lots of energy and a little playful wit. On the other, there's something deeply fatiguing about this picture. Maybe it's the formula, maybe it's all that time travel, but you just can't help thinking you've seen it all before. Must be deja vu. [21 Sep 1994]

Without a thin tether to credibility, this fussy, morbid fantasy simply slides off into the void.

Inspector Gadget may be a live-action movie, but at its heart it's more cartoonish than most cartoons.

Director David Dobkin, best known for comedies such as "Shanghai Nights" and "Wedding Crashers," demonstrates his serious intent mostly by paint-by-numbers psychology and a ponderous pace.

Sinbad lacks, alas, the sparkle and inventiveness of the stories that inspired it.

Actually, occasionally, does feel good. Now if only it had something to say.

As it glides along from one pretty picture to the next, Visitors starts to feel less like a singular artistic gesture than a compendium of quasi-experimental film clichés.

Lack of sparkling teen chatter prevent this movie from being a slam dunk.

To reduce Leonard to shtick makes about as much sense as using a scalpel for a butter knife — even when the job gets done, it's just such a dull waste of a sharp implement.

Gorgeously shot by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, who takes much delight in exposing the blinding sunlight and dusky interiors of old Hollywood, the film is lightly entertaining but largely pointless.

J-Lo, Ralph-Lower, Movie-Subterranean.

The Kingdom is a barely coherent compendium of Middle East fantasies, fears and doubts.

Yes, the Empire may be crumbling, and the natives getting restless, but it's all happening with such lyrical loveliness - even the corpses look good. Consequently, when the rains in Before the Rains finally arrive, there's nothing to cleanse, no real dirt to wash away - not with history already so neatly packaged and polished to a dull shine.

If nothing else (and there ain't much else), Everybody's Fine does prove one thing: Even an actor with the gifts of Robert De Niro can't make bland interesting.

Though credibly performed and photographed, it's hard to care about a film that proposes as epic tragedy the plight of a callow rich boy who is forced to choose between his beautiful, self-satisfied 22-year-old girlfriend and an equally beautiful, self-satisfied 18-year-old mistress.

Finally, a big and shiny studio-backed holiday movie targeted to queer audiences that is just as sappy, cheesy and predictable as the many groan-inducing films that have been chucked toward straight moviegoers all these years.

The music, at least, is welcome.

A big bloated bore-o. Think of a combination of "Wild Wild West" and "Spy Kids."

As far as story is concerned, the whole thing feels like a rerun of a raucous Saturday-morning television show aimed at hell-raising five-year-olds.

Mainly, this movie chatters when it should sing.

Not a moment lasts longer than itself - even the jokes have no resonance, and certainly nothing other than the jokes has consequence. Running Scared is a mediocrity from any angle, but it serves quite well as a prototype of the new Hollywood product. [27 June 1986, p.D5]

This mix of titillation and sentimentality can pass as family entertainment because 17 Again is so weightless, a succession of one-liners, sincere monologues and logical absurdities.

Despite its half-decade worth of aspirations to be something, Scoob! is a middle-ground of nothingness. Toss it a bone, if you wish – just know that your stay-at-home kids will be fighting over other, more interesting scraps soon enough.

Ghostbusters for the pre-teen set, a cartoon of a cartoon. Is there some residual charm? Not much. Are the special effects special? Not too. [19 Aug 1987]

There is nothing worse than a thriller that doesn't play fair... The Forgotten is just a big, fat, obvious cheater.

Between its steroidic CGI and emotionally vacant plot line, the movie is all flex, no muscle.

The technical packaging of his picture is terrific - with its high-tech Manhattan and its split screens and slow motion, Dressed to Kill is - but the goods it opens to reveal are shoddily second-hand. [26 July 1980]

Emmerich succeeds only in making his previous venture, the marginal Stargate, look positively inspired by comparison.

Like "Little Miss Sunshine," the movie stars Toni Collette and Steve Carell in a story about a dysfunctional family trip, though like "Adventureland," it’s really about a teenager finding acceptance at a local theme park.

What big ambitions you have, Grandma. And what a disappointingly modest follow-through.

Mini-gems of comic editing grace the narrow, claustrophobic world created in Manhattan Murder Mystery. It's a safely escapist film that's vintage - albeit mid-level - Woody Allen. [20 Aug 1993]

The Loss of Sexual Innocence is not bad, as in the sense of inept; it's artful enough to show how truly trite it is.

Three words: Late Woody Allen. In the autumn of his career, toiling exclusively in Europe, Woody is like an aging cabinet maker still blessed with craft but grown erratic in design.

The last thing I want is this: Yet another instance of black culture diluting itself by imitating a white model. Hell, Honey is hip-hop by way of Andy Hardy.

The challenge of watching Fatherhood is that it’s tough to make out what sort of a narrative it’s trying to tell.

Of course, given the abundance of voice-over, Nic Cage is unburdened from any great need to act. But he narrates splendidly, delivering the stuff with an unrepentant glee laced with liberal doses of irony.

Magic it ain't, but competent isn't far off the mark. Neither is hum-drum. [28 Oct 1994]

Like a smart-ass student clever enough to see through everyone but himself, Art School Confidential falls victim to the very clichés it wants to puncture.

The initially cynical Naim suggests Tal's project is insignificant, nothing but a bottle of hope bobbing about in a sea of enmity – and so too this film.

Max Payne, game or movie, has precious little to say.

Perhaps the young performers are in such a good mood because they're liberated from having to play straight-as-a-ruler teen melodrama.

The Time Traveler's Wife slips the romance cards into a stacked deck – read 'em if you will, but no need to weep.

Clarkson is fascinating to watch, but the denouement is quick and flat. A storm blows over unexcitedly, as does this film.

It's all picture and no motion, as wooden as its framing. Lovely and lifeless, the result is a traditional portrait of two defiers of tradition.

The art of the classic Hitchcockian thriller is about style, pace and misdirection – and though Unknown is occasionally baffling and involves running and car chases, the film rarely manages to thrill.

For devotees of the genre, the bad news is the best news: Bond is back and nothing has changed except the stuntman's canvas - it's bigger than ever, duly pumped up to Schwarzeneggarian standards.

[A] bafflingly unbalanced film by American auteur director Alex Ross Perry.

This is a picture with a perfect sense of proportion: There's a mini-Hanks, a mini-Spacek and a mini-Kasdan in a mini-comedy that's minimally entertaining.

Pimenthal's script consists of the scantiest storyline, framed around a succession of strained Farrelly Brothers-style gags that feel as though they were peeled off the floor of the editing room for "There's Something About Mary."

Between a string of post-Friends dismal rom-coms, Aniston has succeeded in these kinds of grownup roles every few years. Here, she negotiates the character’s quirks and contradictions competently, but nothing short of a rewrite from scratch could make Cake palatable.

Like a skill player who just can't score, The Damned United is all dazzle and no finish and, ultimately, damned frustrating.

Aside from Jones’s broadly entertaining performance as the egotistical Supreme Commander, the movie, directed by Peter Webber (The Girl with the Pearl Earring), is a dud.

John Carpenter, unable to decide what kind of movie he wants, alternates between his thriller-hardware mode (Escape from New York) and his touchy-feelie mode (Starman). The result is that adults may fall asleep in their seats during the dreary chase sequences, while children are going to holler "Ick!" and escape to the candy counters during the mushy stuff. [28 Feb 1992]

Say this for I Am Number Four: It's blessedly free of any original sins. Instead, they're all copied. Here a little "Superman," there a bit of "Spider-Man," now it's "Twilight" with aliens, then it's a spaghetti western with trucks – this thing borrows more heavily than an investment bank in an unregulated market.

Everything about the remake is inferior to the Hitchcock classic. [01 Dec 1980]

The Paperboy is southern Gothic wallowing in the swamp of low camp. And if the wallowing were deliberate, this might have been hugely funny.

Without either the effect of a full concert spectacle, or up close and personal backstage intimacy, This Is It is neither one thing nor the other.

The problem lies with Williamson's script, which feels as if it has been torn from different places and glued back together like a ransom note.

Like its predecessor, Grown Ups 2 is proudly retrograde, both in its relentless deluge of toilet humour and the way it bear-hugs some good old-fashioned conservative values.

This is a dumb action flick that pretends to have a brain, a spot of affectation that plunges the audience into double jeopardy -- forcing us to traipse through not just the standard litter of bloody corpses but (oh, damn) the added trash of bloodless ideas.

But, if you want a treat, keep an eye out for Joan Plowright's turn as Mrs. Wilson. It's a classic example of how much a great actor can do with a tiny part in a nothing film. [25 June 1993]

The appeal of the Friday the 13th cycle is difficult for any one who has not seen the movies on a Saturday night in a packed theatre to understand: they are an exercise in collective adolescent camp. As each victim falls to Jason's wrath, the kids cheer and laugh, and the gorier the death, the better. By the standards of that audience, part four is perfection: there are more gruesome homicides than Pauline had perils. [17 Apr 1984]

All of which is to say that Dumbo feels totally consistent with Burton’s late-period slump. Abysmally scripted and hammily acted – and not, for the most part, in an interesting or ironic way – Dumbo recasts Disney’s animated classic in the trappings and suits of Burton’s pinstripe-and-pinwheel upholstery.

The difficulty with the film starts with the amount of improbability one must swallow. [24 Dec. 1998, p.D10]

Pandora’s Promise is less an exploration of the subject than a well-constructed sales pitch.

From the script to the title character to the direction, the watchwords here are three: Play it safe. The whole thing reeks of the formulaic.

The obvious problem with The Whole Ten Yards is that it begins with the wrong kidnapping. Instead of taking Oz's wife, the criminals should have grabbed the authors of the original movie.

Brüno is likely to be the funniest thing you'll see on a screen this summer. Which is precisely its problem: it's a thing , not a movie – if, that is, you believe a movie should be more than an accumulation of prankish set-pieces flimsily strung over 80 skimpy minutes.

The word "arachnid," as it's said so contemptuously in the movie, begins to sound suspiciously like "Iraqi," and indeed, we soon see the elite bugs are hunkered down in their desert fortress, resisting the mighty air assaults of the Federation. The conclusion of our story involves unearthing the chief bug.

It's not so much a movie as a joint promotion for the National Basketball Association and teenaged rap and adolescent poster-boy Lil' Bow Wow.

By the time the movie actually arrives at its finest moment – a nearly two-minute single shot from the Mustang’s hood as it chases the villain’s van through dense traffic – you’ve become so numb to speed and sensation that you may barely notice.

Keen to be both really romantic and romantically real, the movie is neither, and falls between the cracks of its twin-ambitions. The result? Call it l'amour phooey.

When I walked out of the movie theatre screening Padmaavat, I was shaking in rage.

But the stuff looks like what it is -- trite imagery grafted over the narrative barrens, like a bad weave on a balding pate.

To their credit, both Meirelles and his cast infuse as much realism into the artifice as they can muster, but it's not nearly enough. The too-neat script boxes them in, and leave us out. In that sense, 360 doesn't so much connect our shrunken world as strangle the life from it – the circle feels like a noose.

The film is, true to Sorrentino’s style, breathtakingly shot. It is a vibrant, arresting love letter to Naples complemented by the choices of costume artistic director Anthony Vaccarello for Saint Laurent. Every shot is intentional, every close-up serves a purpose. The problem, however, is that the purpose is as surface deep as the characters Parthenope consistently reckons with.

The plot is rich, the execution poor.

In a wink to Canada, the most urgent emotion is a throwaway bit in the movie when they bicker on whether to call the board game’s plastic scoring piece a wedge, cheese or pie, an indelible argument for the ages.

Rather than invoke sympathy, the technique creates annoyance with Harris's writing: Sure, these characters may be clichés, but haven't they suffered enough?

Yes, Final Destination 3 is a roller-coaster ride of a movie from start to -- well, only about 10 minutes later. The fun part is over and we settle down to watch a sadistic assembly line of characters making premature exits.

An ambitious, if uneven, experimental sci-fi romance that is less a thought-provoker than a dazzling juggling act.

The Two Jakes itself is less tragic than petulant, mired in a self-pitying remembrance of things past. [10 Aug 1990]

The pilgrimage is still long but, even with the crosses they bear, these are pilgrims lite – perhaps it's the modern way.