Guaranteed neither to offend nor delight.

The coolest-looking movie of the year is surprisingly lame.

Warning: If you are experiencing nausea, headache, fatigue or vomiting, you might have just watched Songbird.

After a car accident “aggravates an old skull fracture trauma,” Jane returns to the family-death-farmhouse, where she takes way too long to figure out the incredibly obvious person responsible.

Director Adam Shankman pushes together scenes with little rhythm or flow. Writers Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant ignore credibility, throw in pointless sight gags, treat humiliation as comedy and use tiresome ethnic stereotypes. In short, Diesel doesn't get the help he needs.

In concert with composer Bill Conti and scriptwriter Larry Gelbart, Neighbors has become a hyper insult festival in which four people pointlessly humiliate each other in a variety of increasingly vicious ways. Sample dialogue: "Leave that warthead alone. C'mon, we've got cesspools to suck." It's enough to make you nostalgic for the Shavian wit of The Gong Show, for the genteel grace of Saturday afternoon wrestling. [19 Dec 1981]

Make no mistake: Ron Howard’s Hillbilly Elegy is a bad film, inert and clichéd and largely devoid of cinematic imagination. But it is not a problematic film.

Sad to say, poor old Nightbreed fails even as failure - it's bad, but it's not memorably bad. The odor it emits is less the stench of an eternal hell than the stink of a passing purgatory. If nothing is forgiven by the time you've done your time in the theatre, all is certainly forgotten. [20 Feb 1990]

Though frantic from the get-go, A Previous Engagement rarely finds its feet. Devoid of the fine balance of grace and chaos necessary to any screen farce, the proceedings are slapdash, repetitious and badly overextended.

Alien Nation lives out precisely the fate of the alien nation it depicts - both full of potential, both hoping to please, and both immediately co-opted, enslaved by the same commercial forces that granted their release. [12 Oct 1988]

The movie's uninteresting characters, boneheaded dialogue and flagrantly nonsensical narrative detract considerably from the virtues of the visual design.

The picture is an inventory of film noir effects and attitudes, but Wenders has nothing new to say about the style, about the period, about Hammett or about the creative process. The Hammett case can be closed: a case of massive esthetic masturbation. [18 Sep 1982]

Lots of buildings and cars explode, but there isn't a spark between any of the characters.

The “new” film is firmly an artifact of the past. More specifically the imaginary era of Gotham that Allen has become a permanently unstuck-in-time guest of since "Annie Hall."

In today's cultural climate, any remake of Conan the Barbarian can only be considered (a) redundant or (b) a cruel case of rubbing salt in our cinematic wounds. Either way, it ain't a pretty sight – in fact, it's downright barbaric.

[Lange] does give the movie the only excitement it possesses -- the frisson of a hideous thrill -- but it's still an excruciating embarrassment.

Burns does make an appearance as God to give his fiendish lookalike the get-thee-hence treatment, but not even a miracle could save Oh God! You Devil. [10 Nov 1984]

Well-intended but maladroit, with a clever premise and cute animation that are undermined by the trite sci-fi parody plot and manic, unfunny banter.

A film willing to cheat whatever way necessary to scare you... The good news is that once you leave the theatre, you'll never think of Boogeyman again.

The Frisco Kid, billed as a comedy, is about a gentle Polish rabbi of 1850 who is instructed to cross America and become spiritual leader of an eagerly awaiting congregation in San Francisco. But the movie is propelled more by violence - in action, in dialogue and in editing - than by humor. No wonder there are so few good kosher westerns. [24 July 1979]

The Boys in the Boat is a film made with such a gently dull spirit that you cannot help but wonder if Clooney put himself to sleep during production. Someone get this man a Nespresso.

Fury is a war movie with balls of steel and marbles for brains.

By this point in his career, star Nicolas Cage does crazy like no one else, but his descent into insanity here – not too far from how his character acts at the beginning of the film, really – can't elevate Taylor's juvenile take on adulthood.

Any chance the film might have had is trashed at the outset by Chase's disengaged style of non- acting and blas approach to pants-dropping. [28 Dec 1981]

It’s a chase film, it’s a buddy film, it’s a ridiculous, loud and often offensive romp. Witherspoon’s character is cornball and annoyingly adrenalized – what was she thinking?

The direction is similarly yearning; practically begging for admiration. A sequence in which Hemsworth swishes toward the camera, piece of pie in hand, grooving to the strains of Deep Purple’s Hush, is so desperate in its attempt to appear iconic that it becomes difficult to watch head-on.

When a movie ostensibly on a serious subject is so God-awful silly, is it impossible to be offended, or impossible not to be?

A more inspired director might have salvaged something else, but Dante's point-of-view camera and consciously quirky angles just don't cut it. His horror-genre shots are stylized but not stylish, a by-the-numbers parody without any redeeming individuality. [17 Feb 1989]

Nice try, spermatozoa. You look forlornly out of place in this make- believe version of reality, where pregnancy intrudes on those well placed to cope with it, and moral issues are fudged wherever possible. [15 Jan 1988]

Despite the strength of the cast, Demon Knight stumbles over its own indecision. It's a scream, up until the laughing stops.

If laughs are the currency of any comedy, then this one pays minimum wage and, worse, makes you work damn hard even for that pittance.

Overboard is overdrawn and overblown: a lean romantic comedy has been enveloped in obesity. Garry Marshall's direction is worthy of a not very good television sitcom and John A. Alonzo's appalling cinematography gives the picture the appearance of having been shot through a cloud of mosquitoes. [18 Dec 1987]

Like a two-bit philosopher working the wrong side of the stone, Howard has managed to turn gold into lead.

Representation is the crutch this latest limp and derivative comic-book movie leans on – a reason for critics and audiences who want to champion diversity to simply overlook how dull and hideous-looking this latest franchise (of many) is.

George Huang's Swimming With Sharks purports to give us the goods on the big bad egos who run Hollywood, but it lacks both credibility and coherence. [06 May 1995]

Add up these three intentions – the down-and-dirty tone, the tender and uplifting message, the starring vehicle – and the math ain't funny. Bottom line: This movie is a whole lot less than the sum of its parts.

One smart thing Green's character Ezekiel does is split from Sex Drive as soon as his two scenes are over.

The original Oh, God was a one-note joke that the irresistible George Burns managed to turn into an engaging film. However, even Burns' charm is insufficient to sustain that note through the inevitable sequel. [07 Oct 1980]

What's up with director John McTiernan? The man has got to get a career of his own -- sponging off the pale leavings of Norman Jewison just won't do.

Forgettable.

The resolution of that conflict is dishonestly implausible, thus ruining a perfectly mediocre movie. The worst of it is that Fred the one-eyed cat was probably winking at us the whole time.

Despite some clever, winking nods to the original, including appearances by Cook herself and Matthew Lillard, He’s All That fails to deliver on what She’s All That did so well: a sweet, lighthearted romance that hinges on the chemistry between its two leads.

Instead, you get a nominal character study that boasts a single mighty performance and one nifty scene; alas, both performance and scene exist in a narrative vacuum - the plot is non-existent and the pace makes the ice age seem hasty.

Ver Linden has the potential to twist and upend expectations – to play with genre and character in a way that reworks and remixes both film history and storytelling. Instead, she spends the majority of her film’s runtime vaguely approaching those intentions rather than actually materializing them. It is a tiring series of runarounds that viewers will lose patience for.

Unfortunately, Siemaszko's performance is less tour-de-force than schtick-de-sitcom.[9 Oct 1987]

The dramatic justification for all this careless maligning of gypsies and lawyers remains as enigmatic as the film's title. The only sure thing about Stephen King's Thinner,in the end, is that Stephen King's bank account is fatter.

Erased, I predict, is a word that will be used to describe what happens to your memory of this cloned facsimile of a movie immediately after watching it.

Whoopi (a beleaguered figure these days) single-handedly cranks up the volume now and again, earning a chuckle or two, but then settles lazily back, apparently content to bank on the formula and imagine the box- office. [10 Dec 1993]

Before I Fall takes the premise of Harold Ramis’s rom-com and drains it of soul, soft touches and humorous pathos, plodding through its message of being a better person with all the sprightly grace of a sedated subterranean rodent being dragged out of a pretend hibernation den.

As it giggles away at its campy self, at least you can groan along with it.

This story, like many of Towne's own, does not come with a happy ending. Or beginning, for that matter, because it's almost immediately clear that Ask the Dust bites the dust -- his dream movie is stillborn.

Rambo's return is thick with usual thrills. [26 May 1988, p.C1]

Filled with visual potential, yet Levinson can't tap it. He's just a whole lot more comfortable trying to tame the human software than the technical hardware.

For faithful and faithless alike, The Shack may seem stupid, laughable, blasphemous, poorly acted and totally banal. And yet there are probably worse things then being told it’s righteous to forgive and that love is good.

A plot so thin you could filter coffee through it.

It's a jumbled mess, to put it mildly.

If that wasn’t enough, there is something even more dispiriting about Doctor Strange beyond its halfhearted visual and narrative ambitions – an issue that made a brief blip on the cultural radar when the film was first announced but has distressingly gone unheard of since: This is a movie that revels in whitewashing.

It’s hard to argue with the title here – Safe Haven, indeed. This is all about safety in the Hollywood workplace. Why make a movie when making a Hallmark-card-with-dialogue is so much less risky?

Baby Boom has the fluffy amiability of an innocuous sitcom. In their rightful place on the shrunken sets of the small screen, its teeny characters would seem comfortably at home. But blown up to feature dimensions, they betray their flimsy origins, looking thin and transparent, just a bunch of under-considered ideas decked out in over-sized finery. [10 Oct 1987]

I confess to a deep uncertainty about whether this can be rightly called a movie. A bunch of scenes, maybe... I confess to a cynical belief that Lola isn't actually a role but just a succession of costume changes.

Had the film version of Pet Sematary, adapted straightforwardly by King himself from the novel, and directed with horrifying ineptitude by Mary Lambert (Siesta), been any good, it would have been a sizzling shockeroonie, in that it deals, to borrow King's italicized style, with things best left undealt with, notably resurrected murderous children and the terrors instilled by terminal illness. [24 Apr 1989]

A lazy Melissa McCarthy vehicle that relies on relentless potty-mouth moments.

Just because Body could be made doesn’t mean it needed to be.

Vacation Friends could’ve been the fun, lackadaisical resort comedy it wants to be. Our ensemble has considerable chemistry and are all charismatic performers in their own right. It’s fun to watch Cena in goading jock mode, until Howery jumps off a cliff with his glasses still on. Unfortunately, Tarver’s film soon veers hard on its cinematic jet skis, and falls flat on its face.

All would be forgiven if Peter were worth believing in. Instead, the boy who wouldn't grow up comes off like a shrill, obnoxious little drip. Shrek should give him a right pounding.

I also appreciated the film’s quick glimpse of Hell itself, which Lucia is plunged into as a warning to whose who won’t accept salvation. With its cheap CGI demons and soundtrack of wailing souls, it was unintentional comedy of the highest order. If you need me, I’ll be laughing all the way to Hades.

Sure, the food looks good and the prayers are worth hearing, but there just isn't enough wine in the world to tempt the prophet Elijah into dropping by this household when this is the company he'll get.

The high point might be the opening scene, before the stars arrive on screen.

One of those purposefully glum studies in alienation that Hollywood occasionally produces as blue-state specials for disenchanted liberals.

Basic Instinct 2 is double trouble -- the femme is to die for, the film is to die from.

The intriguing thing about The Peaceful Warrior is that nothing else in the movie feels haphazard.

Despite their hackneyed characters, Smith and Lewis create a tiny spark and add a little humour. Without them, Catch and Release would be totally dead in the water.

Isn't so much a movie as a 90-minute Trivial Pursuit contest to name bit players from TV's distant past.

Since the movie has so little conviction, or personality of its own, it's a walk you can easily forget.

Brick Mansions is a non-starter: It chokes on its déjà vu, the hyperactive Mixmaster editing is exhausting and the characters’ banter is so leaden it might violate federal emission standards.

Pitched Squarely to the teeny set, Can't Buy Me Love tacks a grade-school moral onto a high-school tale: be yourself, kiddies; don't follow the trendy crowd; popularity ain't what it's cracked up to be. Of course, it says all this while trying desperately to be the most popular flick since box met office. [14 Aug 1987]

When the plot isn't lagging, it displays holes sufficiently gaping to accommodate a whole squadron of Firefoxes. [19 June 1982]

Yes, from "Blonde" to "Bunny," it's abundantly evident that the two scribes have mastered, truly mastered, the serious art of self-plagiarism.

Perhaps the major disappointment of Silver Bullet is that it never gets as bad as the beginning promises. From playing on the precipice of so-bad- it's-good, Silver Bullet bobs up to the level of conventionally mediocre- bad, and remains there until the closing credits. [12 Oct 1985]

Herbie without the herb has never been my cup of tea.

The Golden Child is certainly not a Michael Ritchie movie - the talented director of Smile and The Candidate is never more than a referee in the war between the special effects and the star. The special effects win, which is no victory, but the star is not knocked out. [13 Dec 1986, p.F5]

The result is a curious mix - a picture that simultaneously seems meanderingly loose, affording the cast plenty of performing space, and suffocatingly tight, choking off the audience from any interpretive engagement.

With its latest, The Quiet Ones, the company continues a tired trend, choosing the trite over the terrifying. The stale tone is struck from the outset with four simple words: “Inspired by actual events.”

The relationships between the characters are designed to climax in the slaughter, but by then the static images, the lack of rhythm and the paucity of intelligence (Heaven's Gate is simultaneously without subtlety or clarity) have taken their toll and the movie is unsalvageable. [21 Nov 1980]

Using Dass’s theory that one is only free once they become nobody, the film will undoubtedly resonate with anyone who exists on the same spiritual plane or hopes to transcend to it.

A few striking images keep our attention – like evil warrior Rain (Michelle Rodriguez) seated menacingly with an assault rifle on a playground swing in the 'burbs. But the film's title promises payback, without offering ample compensation.

Meant to explore anger, all this picture does is manufacture it.

Flashy Talk Radio offers little but babble: A mindless, hollow look at a sad symbiosis. [21 Dec 1988]

It is a disappointment - just intermittently engaging, and lacking the cohesion of his best efforts, it seems less a fully realized feature than a film-school foible. [30 Aug 1996]

There's a risk of taking The Brady Bunch too seriously but, please, let's not think of it as funny, then or now. [18 Feb 1995]

A cheap, lazy exercise in myth-making. The goods, as it were, will have to be found elsewhere.

The result is a small independent film suffering from a severe case of Hollywood-itis. A cautionary tale minus the caution, Just a Kiss is just a cop-out.

This is an Affair to forget. [21 Oct 1994]

The most disturbing aspect of Cold Creek Manor -- a predictable, disjointed "Cape Fear" knockoff -- is that a script this disjointed and unoriginal could actually get the Hollywood green light.

That plot gets lost in these desaturated Wicked movies. They look less like The Wizard of Oz and more like Fruit Loops that had been left sitting in a bowl of milk for too long – those bright solid colours bleeding out and leaving nothing but a soggy mess.

The film's putrid sexism is subverted in a series of sharp and funny scenes that at least raise Sorority Boys to the level of "American Pie."

The only memorable facet of The Blue Lagoon (at the York) is the visual prowess of the great cinematographer Nestor Almendros - but here the photography, unlike his work in Days of Heaven or Kramer Vs. Kramer, is too great. It's all there is, and its monumental beauty overwhelms the fragile orchids-and-jockstraps pastoral of the narrative, with its faux naif philosophy. [12 July 1980]

Pretty much everything about Rings is incoherent. And the most incoherent thing of all is the film’s arrival a decade and a half after Verbinski’s original remake (if such a term even makes sense).