Morally simple, action packed and explosive.

The film suffers from a syndrome I'll call the Pop Princess's New Clothes. Hilary can't really sing, and neither can Terri, so you can't help but wonder, what's the big whoop?

The problem with Kidnapping Mr. Heineken, which is the second movie in four years about the sensational 1983 crime (the other was a Dutch production with Rutger Hauer as the dapper snatchee), is that it follows the kidnappers out the door instead of sticking with the coolly composed man behind it.

An Adam Sandler movie without Adam Sandler, it turns out, is not necessarily an improvement.

Those ghosts might want to find a new vocation, because their work here is done.

Try as I might, I cannnot activate your interest in this bloated excuse for a movie.

Director Marc Webb proved he could do youthful love and heartbreak as well as anyone in his debut feature (500) Days of Summer. Here, working with a script by Allan Loeb (The Space Between Us, Collateral Beauty), he puts all the pieces together, but can't make the magic happen.

The tuneful melodies of their favourite band grace the soundtrack, but let's not confuse this with a rock 'n' roll movie -- the music is just the blank canvas awaiting the higher art of the gross-out.

Bedtime Stories does divide into two types of comedy: There's the story comedy, in which Skeeter dresses in costume when he performs slapstick and insults people, and then there are the real-life scenes, when he does the same things in regular clothes.

A bunch of scenes in need of a tighter narrative and, more importantly, a raison d'être.

Instead of a madcap farce, the movie grinds along into a series of laboured comic bits.

It's all rather wacky and hard to follow or fathom, although maybe that's attributable to Virginia's schizophrenia veering off on its delusional phase.

The bafflingly unfunny and terrifically irritating new Disney version of My Favorite Martian is so empty that it makes the original TV show look like a lost work from George Bernard Shaw. [12 Feb 1999, p.D2]

Often funny, always telling, this is the kind of not- quite-successful comedy that is fraught with not-quite-intentional meaning. From the pun in the title to the echoes in the script, Class is a pop sociologist's dream. [22 July 1983]

Air America, starring Mel Gibson's big blue eyes and Robert Downey, Jr.'s big brown biceps, is bland and toothless. [15 Aug 1990]

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]

Ultimately the ham-fisted Outcast shares less in common with Eastwood’s "American Sniper" than it does with his "Unforgiven" from 1992 and that western’s regretful killers.

For a novel written nearly 300 years ago by a dour Irish cleric with a mad-on about the material world and a satiric mindset dark enough to flirt with misanthropy, it's amazing how well Gulliver's Travels travels. Even Jack Black can't ruin the thing, although not for lack of trying.

With a couple of more drafts to mend the plot holes and restructure the middle act, Awake could have been saved.

Overriding everything is a profound sense of laziness. Jokes do not land here so much as they ooze forth, slow and noxious.

Aniston's constituency will enjoy seeing her again in Love Happens . She's lovely and fun to be with, as always.

The children are engaging yet the script and direction are not, which leaves the thing to get all bogged down in its own derivative mechanics.

A shameless pastiche of Starman’s alien-on-Earth sci-fi, The Boy in the Plastic Bubble’s medical pathos and any number of young-lovers-on-the-run stories, The Space Between Us may set back the Earth-Mars relationship light years.

Joe Pytka does display an occasional nice touch with mood and atmosphere - at its infrequent best, the humor here is almost wry. But his editing is as jumpy as a mare in heat. [19 Aug 1989]

Yes, Virginia, there is a poop fairy, which is why studio heads persist in tucking the likes of RV under their pillows, confident they'll awaken Monday morning to find all that brown turned straight to green.

A Canadian-made werewolf thriller, Skinwalkers occasionally rises above its station as a standard-issue horror flick to deliver some enjoyably cheeseball thrills.

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.

Of the movie’s dozen musical numbers, only three are relatively unmangled versions of their predecessors.

A sustained if wildly uncoordinated assault on our senses, complementing those feverish jump cuts with a cliché of equally stunning proportions

Puerile and idiotic it may be, but Superhero Movie is nonetheless smarter than most of its lowbrow brethren in the Hollywood sub-sub-category known as the spoof movie.

When Uptown Girls isn't trying to play up its wacky high jinks -- and those tend to be so weak they can't possibly float the film -- it stoops to the kind of psychological character development films this shallow should really avoid like the plague.

While Mindhunters aspires to be a psychological thriller, it's really just mindless entertainment.

What makes it downright offensive are all the romance-novel flourishes that Leonard and the melodramatically inclined director James Foley, also new to the franchise, bring to glittering three-dimensional life in Fifty Shades Darker.

The Super Bowl MVP is awarded a trip to Disneyland. Maybe in the future, he should be awarded a part in an Adam Sandler movie. There is no bigger male fantasy land.

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.

One part satire, two parts allegory, and several parts dreary sermon on the pernicious effects of America's gun culture.

That there are no surprises (jumps, yes, surprises, no) should surprise no one – Will Smith movies must uplift the human spirit and reaffirm our best instincts while reassuring us that our ticket money has been well invested.

Strictly a middle-aged comedy, which consists of more easy lobs than sharp smacks, but manages to get the job done.

C'mon, in matters of haunted-house inhabitation, settling into an ex-mortuary is like renting above a dentist's office -- ashen faces and ghastly screams come with the territory.

In an era when the words "President" and "penis" can occupy the same sentence and prompt nothing but yawns, this picture actually manages to surprise, to startle, yes, to administer a series of small but genuine shocks.

Within this bloated fantasy hodgepodge, there are few grace notes: In the role of the creepy fortune teller, Madame Dorothea, CCH Pounder is evil fun. And a few special effects, including a Rottweiller who turns into a skinned hellhound, leave an impression. Otherwise, Mortal Instruments manages to occupy 130 minutes of frantic, numbing, activity.

Laugh? Well, once.

In lieu of a movie, we get a series of car chases rudely interrupted by the occasional smattering of dialogue.

The latest offering from the serial scribe who scripted Showgirls has another femme with an overactive libido and not much else. [13 Oct 1995]

Topical ideas on humanity, mistrust and alien-as-immigrant metaphors are a plus, but a laughable romance and a ridiculous wrap-up render the film as only a staging ground for the next two parts of the trilogy to come.

There are easily 54 reasons to dis 54, but let's start and finish with the obvious: The script plays like a proud offering from the lead hand at the Cliché Factory.

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.

As coy sleaze goes, the new Olsen twins' movie doesn't match Britney Spears's "Crossroads," but it comes close.

A third of the way into Soul Plane, maybe earlier if you're in the right mood or with the wrong company, you might actually start to enjoy disliking the movie. Like, say, Prince's "Purple Rain," certain Joan Crawford movies, and Leslie Nielsen at his best worst, the film inspires cathartic ridicule.

Think of Sleepover as a girl gang movie with training wheels.

Being Human is just that, and it's a profound delight. [06 May 1994]

Eventful, polished, and knuckle-bitingly dull, the 10th film adapted from a novel by Nicholas Sparks, combines fate, bull riding and some powerful Hollywood bloodlines among its young cast.

The best moments of Like a Boss are just that – moments. The film has an obvious deficit of story – instead of any sort of satisfying sense of development, the audience gets 83 minutes of the same problem repeated over and over.

A sloppy, unremarkable rockumentary drearily narrated by the nearly literate Police guitarist, who, perhaps at someone else’s insistence, reads passages from his 2006 memoir "One Train Later."

At least Adams and Goode are always watchable, even when you occasionally feel embarrassed for them.

Spoof chokes on the impossibility of ridiculing what was already ridiculous. [1 Nov 1993]

An overemphatic revenge fantasy devoid of even a trace of excitement or wit.

Only the comedy is successful, and only intermittently. [14 Jan 1989]

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.

It is not simply that this film is utterly unrealistic – perhaps that can be overlooked; it’s a fable of sorts, set in a scrupulously neutral pan-European setting. What is unforgiveable is that Langseth’s approach to complex emotional issues is unsubtle at best and untruthful at worst.

Imagine, if you dare, the outtakes from all those merely bad romantic comedies. Now further imagine that these discarded bits, the stuff that failed to make even the failures, found their way out of the waste bin and into a splicing machine and onto a projector. Do that and you're inching toward a full appreciation of this particular barrel, and the bottom it so brazenly scrapes.

There is no getting these boys down. They are just like Lloyd and Harry in the Farrelly brothers' breakthrough 1994 hit, "Dumb & Dumber." Except that they are never, ever funny.

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."

Everything about Michael Bay’s fourth Transformers movie is too much. Its 165 minute running time. Its convoluted plot. Its deafening score. Its product placement. Its never-ending action scenes. Its swooping camera work. Its overwhelming stupidity. Well before it finished I was numb from its bludgeoning excess.

Hart’s irritating character desperately seeks approval, but his idiocy is too much. The comedian makes Jerry Lewis look like Benedict Cumberbum – and if you think that line is funny, Ride Along 2 is your kind of jam.

The laughs just keep rolling as 'Weird Al' makes a movie. Overheard from a still-convulsing woman after a recent screening of Weird Al Yankovic's UHF: "I'm sorry, but that's funny." I'm sorry, but she's right. Yuks you feel obliged to apologize for are yuks nonetheless. And UHF prompts a lot of apologies.

The movie feels like something parents want their kids to see. Harold and Kumar wouldn't want anything to do with Beth Cooper or Denis Cooverman. You're probably not going to like them much either.

A nice little dream, too, hardly epic but weirdly satisfying, the kind you wake up from and dearly want to re-enter, just for another drowsy moment or two. [3 March 1989]

A perfunctory gore fest and quite possibly the year's worst date movie.

There’s a scene in a members-only club where Wyatt and Goddard meet, giving the two veteran actors the chance to go eyeball to eyeball for a couple of minutes of barbed dialogue. It almost makes the movie worth it.

The film, as entertaining as it is, doesn’t exactly further a genre that has been stale since the success of 2013 rom-zom-com Warm Bodies.... What’s promising about Scouts Guide, though, are its unlikely heroes.

One of the most aggressively stupid blockbusters ever made, a painful exercise in Hollywood greed and artistic incompetence on every level.

The plot feels both familiar and far-fetched.

There are people who find treasures in celebrities' garbage cans so it's a reasonable gamble they might want to buy tickets to watch their throwaway home-movie projects as well.

The Santa Clause 3 is a colourful jumble. (But quite a bit better than Jungle 2 Jungle). Nevertheless, whether parent or elf, You might laugh when you watch it in spite of yourself.

A slasher movie about gay panic, a nasty piece of homophobic angst for the age of AIDs. [25 Feb 1986]

The performances of Travis Fimmel, Toby Kebbell and Paula Patton as the warrior Lothar, the orc hero Durotan and the half-orc/half-woman Garona, all awakening to the evil forces around them, are meaty enough to hold attention.

It is the best anti-cat propaganda in the world. It could make you hate Garfield. Because the biggest sin of Cats, other than all its writhing sexuality and the heinous hairball filmmaking, is that it is supremely boring.

After 90 minutes of diligently searching the premises of ACB2, no evidence of mass entertainment can be found. Recommend cancellation of all future similar missions.

The mould for all these stories of hot lust and burning cities, creamy-skinned rich girls and their bitter lovers is that grand and grotesque cinema monument, was "Gone With the Wind." You can't go there again and you shouldn't want to.

Land of the Lost is one of those films so caught up in its concept it has forgotten its audience.

Wildly energetic performances could perhaps disguise some of these problems – or at least keep an audience entertained during a slow ride – but Priestley does not draw from his performers the work we all know they can do.

For all its shocks and wannabe-disturbing imagery (trapped Bible-thumpers being mauled by rats etc.), nothing in Sinister 2 comes across as believably scary.

Well, the Hood would never stand for it and neither should you. Defy authority and watch this movie on a plane instead.

Watching inept American actors and wishing they were badly dubbed into Japanese isn't any fun at all.

The contrived script is stretched to the breaking point by Reiner's listless direction.

Director Guillermin has got a film that's alternately cloying and crude, sometimes needlessly violent (Kong still kills in self- defence, but now he breaks human victims in half). It's even less suitable for kids than for adults. [24 Dec 1986, p.D5]

Anyone interested in the contemporary debate between atheists and religious believers will gain nothing of value from the documentary The Unbelievers.

Occasionally a movie comes along that’s such an awkward compilation of ideas it fascinates: The Forger, a Boston-set melodrama involving cancer, Impressionist art and deadbeat dads, is only about half that good.

Chetwynd fumbles the job badly. [2 May 1987]

For all its high-speed car chases and extravagant stunts, director Camille Delamarre’s reboot of the Transporter franchise is as punctilious as Frank himself – glossy in finish but a little uptight.

The Viral Factor is deliriously far-fetched. And one wishes director Dante Lam (The Beast Stalker) could have at least had some giddy fun smashing all his toys around. But his new film is tediously overwrought and drably made, with scenes punctuated by synthesized drums out of eighties American TV drama.

Nothing - not great actors, brilliant direction, splendid costumes or beautiful people - could boost Troop Beverly Hills over the obstacle presented by its screenplay. [22 March 1989]

Okay, one kind word: Bill Nighy is clearly enjoying himself playing a New York businessman whose caviar restaurant improbably becomes a beacon for a host of impoverished ne’re-do-wells. But that is the only nicety I can muster for this otherwise cartoonish treacle.

A funereally unfunny comedy.

While the punishments and triumphs are absolute, the entertainment value is highly equivocal. This ultimately relegates Untraceable to the ranks of so-so thrillers with legitimate but half-developed intellectual aspirations. And since you inspired the movie in the first place, part of the responsibility rests on, well, you.

It is, from beginning to end, a paint-by-numbers movie. There's a mildly entertaining climax, but most of Showtime is a layering of tired pop-culture tropes by actors who are not especially interested in what they're doing.

Not without charm, Unfinished Business mixes the cute with the raunchy. Penises adorably happen. But besides the schlongenfreude, there’s a subtext about how-did-I-get-here lives, and righting oneself before it’s too late. Is the star himself listening?