A fine, solid cast and fully exploited settings cannot make up for the by-the-numbers screenplay, which is filled with all-too-convenient plot points.

After six years in development, this comedy starring and produced by Adam Sandler feels as slapped together one of the comedian's live-action buddy movies.

Where this PG-rated adaptation of a hit Broadway show, adapted by Adam Shankman falls down is by being far too mild for its supposedly outrageous subject.

This is regurgitated shoot-’em-up nothingness fetishistically dressed in the cosplay of equality. The women are not characters to care about, but props to kill and be killed.

The story is shockingly ordinary. The movie plays like an extended mediocre episode of the X-Files TV show or, for that matter, even a contemporary crime series such as CSI.

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.

A feature that suffers from the rarity of its wit yet benefits from the briskness of its pace.

Ten minutes in, and the verdict is already clear: This is a flick that goes both ways. It's funny, then it's not; it's cooking, then it isn't; it's different, then it ain't.

Rousing? Sort of. Never before, one feels, have so few given so much for so much real estate.

Who really wants to go to an escape movie and have to work this hard to figure it out?

In the shock department, the ante has been upped, way up, and a mere kitchen knife through a shower curtain just doesn't cut it any more.

As anodyne as it is, Timothy Green may represent the last gasp of a genre, the live-action family fable, that has been an entertainment staple for a couple of generations of moviegoers.

Come to think of it, Ferrell is to the sports comedy what the Toronto Maple Leafs are to the hockey biz: Hard-core fans are sure to show up and find reasons to be amused. The rest of us can only hope for better days.

Even Dan Aykroyd and Kim Basinger together, acting their hearts out, can't move this turgid script to liftoff velocity. [15 Dec 1988]

Here's a vote of gratitude for Samuel L. Jackson, who has become a specialist in making mediocre movies far more entertaining than they should be.

The Returned can’t transcend its packaging as a genre piece: It swaps out an entire set of horror-movie manoeuvres for trite, TV-style thriller tricks.

Admittedly, Home Alone is a tough act to follow, but the Columbus-Hughes aura will probably need vigorous polishing after Only the Lonely. [25 May 1991]

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]

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.

National Lampoon's European Vacation is directed by Amy Heckerling, whose career began with the spunky if not inventive Fast Times at Ridgemont High and continued with the inventive if not spunky Johnny Dangerously; this time, she's responsible for a picture that's neither inventive nor spunky. [29 July 1985]

It’s a shame that both Umair Aleem’s script and Cedric Nicolas-Troyan’s (The Huntsman: Winter’s War) direction ultimately feel rote because both Winstead and Martineau’s performances are fun to watch. Their playful, natural chemistry keeps the film from dragging on and lends a necessary levity and wit to the movie’s 106 minutes.

The experience of watching this new Shazam! is akin to watching an exceptionally wealthy but ultimately sweet and innocent child smash their toys together for 130 minutes. There’s little point in it all, but hey, at least the kid is happy.

Not much flair to this vehicle. [26 May 1989]

The creative and experimental use of sound and photography are a big part of what makes November an intriguing film.

Sounds promising. What a disappointment then to report that Just Like Heaven is more like purgatory, a sweating, straining attempt to marry the wisecracking fury of the modern sitcom to the classic Rock-Doris, Cary-Kate romantic comedy.

There is precious little story. Instead, there is a promiscuous profusion of images, a rant of optic free association that makes Ken Russell's Tommy appear a marvel of well-rounded narrative... A trip movie, in the old sixties sense, but it's a bad trip, a numero uno bummer. [17 Aug 1982]

It may be charming and unpretentious, but the script of this little film could have used more attention. [18 Nov 1992]

SOMEWHERE in the muddle that is Mr. Jones, there's a good movie trying to get out. And somewhere in the actor that is Richard Gere, there's a good performance hatching a similar escape. But, all tied up by an erratic script, spotty direction and a Hollywood ending, neither makes it, leaving us with the cinematic equivalent of the high-school underachiever - loads of potential, none of it realized. [9 Oct 1993]