Can't spoil the ending, except to say that it spoils itself.

The overstuffed farce remains, but the caustic leanness and meanness of the original are gone with the Mississippi wind. That leaves us to settle for occasionally funny moments in an otherwise uneven picture.

All costume and scant drama, the result is a curiously flat spectacle, neither offensive nor compelling.

If family is everything to the Fast & Furious films – as lead lunkhead Vin Diesel would surely posit – then Fast X is a nuclear family reunion that goes atomic.

In truth, you just can’t wait until the wicked Jolie returns to the screen. Whether a malevolent twinkle illuminates her beady eye or a heartbreaking tear rolls down her alabaster cheek, she is the film’s power.

That it all works is a tribute to Stu Silver's gaggy but never vulgar script and to DeVito's imaginative direction, but the movie would be unthinkable without its trio of funny folk. [11 Dec 1987]

Simply put, Touch dies, with nary a resurrective hand in sight. [14 Feb 1997, p.C5]

For all of its intermittent, crowd-pleasing charm, oenophiles (and cinephiles, for that matter) might be better off putting their money toward a good bottle of Robert Mondavi.

Shag bounces through elements of farce and satire, music and romance without straining too hard and with a few more laughs than one would expect from a picture that seems patched together from such a wide variety of genre films. Like a perfect Southern belle, Shag is smarter and funnier than you expect it to be, but never smarter and funnier than it has to be.[21 July 1989]

The movie made me so happy, and here I am back on the subway with Nerdo, and there's this jerk across the aisle who's like ancient, 30 at least, and he's got the nerve to look right into my see-through Madonna lace outfit. And he winks. Oh, barf- ola.

It’s bloody, brutal, stupid fun – until it isn’t. Either running out of ideas or running into budgetary problems, Carnahan slows things down about halfway in, stopping the madness in its tracks to give Roy some humanity (not needed here, but thanks!) and to give audiences some yadda-yadda villainy from a bored-looking, here-for-the-paycheque Gibson (also, no thank you!).

No, there isn't anything wrong with comfort entertainment. Then She Found Me could have, should have been something special - a "Knocked Up" for weary boomers. The only hitch is that it isn't all that entertaining. Nor comforting for that matter.

When one of the most enlightening moments of a film comes during the postscript (black holes!), you know there’s a problem – one that has nothing to do with math.

Ghostbusters II is a comfy experience for all concerned - easy bucks for the producers, easier yuks for the consumers; nothing ventured, money gained. [19 Jun 1989, p.D9]

Presented with every opportunity to say or do something remotely new or compelling, Wright, typically a talented stylist, elects to shrug his shoulders, delivering a wafer-thin confection that is aggressively disinterested in both ideas and action.

As box-office packages go, My Girl may well become a big hit. The wrapping is colourful, even charming in spots, and that circle of black ribbon is a gravely clever touch. Get closer, though, and it's like those Christmas presents stacked around the department store tree - apparently real but really empty. [28 Nov 1991]

There's plenty here to keep summer comedy fans satiated, if not entirely satisfied.

Not even Pacino can save it.

In his directorial debut, comedian and Flirting with Disaster star Ben Stiller struggles to filter out a coherent story line around a fibre-optic-thin plot line and the expansive, anarchic comic talents of Jim Carrey. Too often the movie ends up lost in the snow and static between two films fighting for the same bandwidth. [14 June 1996, p.C1]

Even though Frank Marshall's latest film Alive is based on a true story of survival, it lacks the very qualities it means to celebrate - spark, imagination and spirit. [16 Jan 1993]

If his direction is erratic, the script he wrote with Annie Mumolo (Bridesmaids) has gaps you could drive a truck through and dialogue filled with painfully obvious exposition of plot, motive and theme.

The result, which could be entitled There's Something About Curly, is an unabashedly moronic celebration of slap shtick.

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]

Glamorously tragic, Betty Blue is sensually shot and persuasively performed, but a solitary thought dropped into boy genius Beineix's colorfully bedecked wishing well of a movie would echo emptily into eternity. [12 Sep 1986, p.D1]

Summerland may not be the greatest show on Earth, but it is firmly Arterton’s show – and deserves more attention than most anyone on these shores will likely give it.

Just as the promising parody of prison films begins to catch fire, Friedman and Poitier douse it with a bucketful of realism. [13 Dec 1980]

Everything Terms of Endearment's detractors accused Terms of being: a synthetic, manipulative tragi-comedy with performances more appropriate to a proscenium arch - or to a drag show - than to the wide screen. And yet, there are moments in the movie of high comedy and sequences of searing truth. At its worst, Steel Magnolias is vastly inferior to Designing Women; at its best, it brings to mind (but never equals) Tennessee Williams. [20 Nov 1989]

The heavy-handed score, narrow performances (Nicole Munoz as the repeatedly terrified daughter; Laurie Holden as the dense mum) and weak dialogue all fail to justify a provocative ending that overturns the exorcising conventions of the genre.