Call it "Alexander the Grate," because, over the marathon of its three-hour running time, this wonky epic really does get on your nerves.

The first hour of Club Paradise is enjoyable and more or less adult, thanks in large part to the comic contributions of Williams, O'Toole and the SCTV alumni. But he has not learned structure. Toward the end, the island having been tossed into a civil war invented solely to give the movie one of the helter skelter farcical endings Ramis and Reitman regularly affix to their films, Club Paradise falls apart like a piece of cheap luggage. [4 July 1986]

A plot so preposterous it could only have emerged from the underground comic world.

There's a scientific law to be discerned here that producers would be well to heed: Mediocre movies start to drag as soon as the action speeds up; when the explosions start, they fall to pieces.

Writing, casting and pacing are vital. Scary Movie 4 doesn't let any gag get stale. It's rapid-fire, hit-and-miss and hit-and-strike comedy.

An intermittently watchable movie. Not because the plot is any less silly, or the theme any more mature, but for the simple reason that, on the margins of this marginal picture, there are several wonderful faces -- sometimes belonging to actors who know how to use them, and sometimes attached to folks who merely inhabit them. In either case, however, the visual result is an incongruous slice of vintage Americana pared off the usual slab of Hollywood mediocrity. [9 Sept 1997]

Coming from writers responsible for such material as "Snow Dogs" and "The 6th Day," National Treasure is not so much a no-brainer as a brain-stunner, so audaciously ridiculous you are initially intrigued, then soon irritated by its incoherence.

No one knows why bad things happen to good people. But we do know why bad things happen to good film ideas. They get ruined by poor scripts and indifferent direction. The evidence desemaine– Shrink.

Just a guffaw here, a chuckle there, ho-hum, and that's all, folks. [27 Jan 1989]

It’s all in good fun, but it also wants to engage with children beyond hollow gags and pop songs, which are there, but kept to a tasteful minimum.

There is the overwhelming sense that Domino was not directed by any one person at all, but rather spliced and diced by committee into something barely watchable.

Aloha is a marshmallow of a film: soft on the inside, soft on the outside and wholly devoid of substance.

Continuing directly from where 2010’s "Insidious" left off, Insidious: Chapter 2 follows the further misfortunes of the Lambert family with diminishing insidious rewards.

They’re back for an entertaining enough 3-D sequel to their 2014 franchise revival, and so is the rest of the cast that includes foxy Megan Fox and her ability to wear a naughty schoolgirl outfit.

There’s a modern noir story struggling to get out of Wild Card, just as there was in "Heat," and you can feel it every time Statham – a fine actor even when he’s not rearranging people’s skeletal structure – has to sit down, stare into yet another tumbler of vodka rocks and contemplate the miserable life sentence of his habit.

Still, the thing is almost watchable until a ridiculous reveal spoils whatever chances this film had at succeeding.

What Death Hunt is a piece of is neither entertaining nor educational. [18 Apr 1981]

A View to a Kill is much too long (nearly 2 1/4 hours); it cheats (a subplot involving the KGB comes and goes at leisure); and it has yet another extended section full of dumb cops and smashed cars. [24 May 1985]

It is a film that skips the huge dance numbers but not the dewy closeups; a film that can countenance premarital sex and doesn’t end in a wedding, but dissolves into melodrama nonetheless.

As long as it remains within the carefully constructed, peaceful and innocent cosmos of its opening, it's nonpareil. When it goes to war, it goes to hell. [18 Dec 1992]

A beautiful muddle.

The new Jason Statham movie Homefront aims to be retro, greasy comfort food but despite its lowly ambitions, there’s barely enough spice here to merit a decent burp.

The 355 is enjoyable, go-lady nonsense that eventually exhausts itself with its ambitions to be more. It’s like watching a woman have a furious argument with herself about a man who doesn’t love her enough, only it’s about spy movies.

Don't look for logic here. But if gore is your game, a motherlode awaits.

This film is a dud all on its own, a watered down Woody Allen facsimile that is long on F-bombs and short on wit, with an internal logic that falls apart with barely a half-cocked glance.

At almost two hours, the film is a solid 20 minutes too long. [6 June 1986]

The refined taste insists on risibly bad, on hysterically bad, on poke-your-seatmate-in-the-ribs bad, and this falls well short of that hallowed mark -- it's just routinely bad.

Director Gary Sherman, a special effects maven who also co-wrote the movie, soon gives in to heavy-handed cliche.