A frustratingly toothless film whose heart is in the right place even if its head isn't.

Clunky and preachy, but Freeman's three robots - named Huey, Dewey and Louie - are adorable. [21 Jul 2011]

Skin Deep, the latest and 36th off the line, could sum up his whole checkered career - it's that good and that bad, by turns terrifically funny and terribly flawed. [3 March 1989]

Nothing in this explicit display is remotely engaging. That's because the sex is a metaphor here. In fact, most everything is a metaphor here. Or a symbol -- the picture is a veritable cacophony of jangling symbols.

Once Bullock's character clears her head at the top of the thrill ride, Premonition becomes inescapably dull because it is her mental health, not her purposefully dull husband's fate, that interested us.

The movie is, however, generous in its condescension: Given enough tolerance, cash and a good sex manual, it says, even the mentally handicapped can be just as middle-class and cute as you or me.

In the battle between dystopian science-fiction movies about butt-kicking young heroines, the new Divergent movie, Insurgent, is actually slightly more believably glum than the third Hunger Games movie, "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1."

Let's just say this: It's a lucky thing I wasn't shackled to my seat in the theatre during this movie. I'd be limping home.

Unfortunately, the script, based on Deborah Moggach's 2004 novel "These Foolish Things," might better be described as pure British stodge: high-starch English comfort food of more sentimental than nutritional value.

Next semester, the stars should drop Speech 217 and enroll in Chemistry 101 – they dearly need some.

Unfortunately, the team led by producer Ron Howard and directed by Matthew O'Callaghan has jettisoned much of the charm of the original books along with that politically touchy storyline.

As a movie trying to make the case for parental management of the education process, Won't Back Down, doesn't make an entirely convincing case.

When it's good, it's because it's imitating its predecessor (but it suffers from tired spilled blood) and when it's bad, it's because it's imitating its own imitators. [31 Oct 1981]

Except for The Fat Boys, who have some deft comic passes, nobody is required to act, or seems capable of it. But for what Krush Groove is - an unambitious film directed at a black teenage audience - it has its good points. [26 Nov 1985]

Have you ever seen a movie you half-liked a lot?

The movie blows, me hearties, but don't you dare miss it...Why? Johnny Depp, that's why...This has gotta rank among the weirdest performances in the zany annals of the silver screen.

What with two women sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court, you'd think that Hollywood would have graduated past the idea of a female lawyer being a "cute concept," but apparently not. Laws of Attraction is stuck in a time warp that pre-dates Doris Day and Sandra Day O'Conner.

With escape as its theme, this thin-plotted pleaser comes hard and goes fast, its rush premium but fleeting.

Thanks largely to Petersen, Manhunter does occasionally evoke the peculiar pleasures of Harris's novel, and it does get under the skin, but only because the picture amounts to an aural mugging: the soundtrack, credited to The Reds & Michael Rubini, is Tangerine-Dream-styled electronic offal cranked up to rock concert decibels. [15 Aug 1986, p.D11]

The so-so film’s soul and saving grace is Rossy de Palma, the Picasso-esque muse of filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, who steals the show and, as the family maid, the heart of a British art dealer.

The major problem with Around the World is that there's just not quite enough Chan, or at least the Chan we want to see, which is the acrobatic clown.

The Coen brothers have made the A-list of writer/directors with their big-budget replicants of Hollywood genres, but the wisecracking Hudsucker Proxy is all comic sound and fury signifying nothing All talk, no substance. [11 Mar 1994, p.C3]

The Year of Living Dangerously is chic, enigmatic, self-assured - and empty. [18 Feb 1983]

The third instalment of the Step Up dance-romance franchise shifts the action from Baltimore to New York, adds a D to the 3 and invades your space with bubbles, balloons and a whole lotta breakin'.

From a sympathetic perspective, let me say that sequel No. 3 shows how difficult it is to keep these franchises fresh while remaining true to their initial charm.

Much was made about how, with respectable director Sam Taylor-Johnson at the helm, Fifty Shades was going to be a legitimately good movie. It’s not, and it’s also not over-the-top enough to suggest future cult-classic status. What it is is a movie best saved for at home viewing, both because there is no compelling reason to see it on the big screen, and mostly because the pause, rewind and fast-forward controls are sure to come in handy.

White Chicks could and should be a much more mischievous movie. A half-dozen writers have managed to create a succession of thin sketches that add up to "Some Like It Warmed Over," with a touch of stink.

The longer I Am Greta goes on, the more clear it becomes that Grossman is content to just tag along for the ride, adding little cinematic depth or insight to the environmentalist’s trajectory.