Oh, it's perfect all right. In fact, The Perfect Score is a flawless example of the classic January movie release -- the kind of studio picture that even the studio loathes, and so consigns to the dumping ground of the year's frosty first month.

In the end, this musical is not a disgrace - Huston has too much experience to let the thing die. But he cannot summon the magic required to let it live. Watching Annie is like being buried alive in balloons. [21 May 1982]

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]

As a testimonial to the powers of creativity and the imagination, Barney's Great Adventure is pretty unconvincing. [03 Apr 1998, p.C7]

Reign of Fire never comes close to recovering from its demented premise, but it does sustain an enjoyable level of ridiculousness.

It's a colorless, poorly paced film in which the most interesting thing is McQueen's half-hearted struggle to create a saleable character. Most of the time, the calculation comes across as lukewarm Clint Eastwood, who is not a model McQueen should ever be reduced to imitating. [4 Aug 1980]

The Game Plan, created as a vehicle for Johnson, is a family comedy heavy on syrup and low on laughs.

Nowhere in Phantasm II is there the wit of Phantasm the first. [8 July 1988]

With barely a laugh to be found, Confetti takes the "mock" right out of the mockumentary, and you can guess what's left. Yep, a Umentary, a brand new genre best defined by what it's not -- not real like a doc, not funny like a mock, not this thing or that thing or much of anything.

The result is as off-putting as biting into a confection in which the sugar has been replaced by salt.

If you thought "300" was silly, think of 10,000 BC as 33.333 times sillier.

The new animated film UglyDolls is a lazy flip, its main intention to foster the toy-aisle bond between kids and its quasi-hideous title characters.

It isn’t hard to find all the many ways in which this film exhausts both itself and Lisbeth. It is time, already, to give this Girl a rest.

Kline and McCarthy are lovely in their few scenes together (they’re the reason for that extra half-star) and for those brief moments, you see the film the actors thought they were making.

The film sputters and stalls and winds up behaving like the worst sort of oldster – passing gas and pretending to be deep.

Though Silent Hill's shoddy dialogue and incoherent story constantly irritate, several sights and scenes possess a certain surreal grandeur...Sadly, that's not enough to compensate for Silent Hill's utter lack of tension, intrigue, character development or satisfactory explanations for what the hell's happening on the screen.

The only truly shocking thing about this new work, though, is the fact it took this long for von Trier to make a movie about a serial killer. For a man who loves blunt provocation, the subject should’ve been first on his hit list.

David Beckham may star in Goal II: Living the Dream but calling him an actor is like calling his wife a singer.

Strange Days, then, isn't nearly strange enough. Once the premise has lost its promise, and Fiennes's brave attempts at characterization are sacrificed to pseudo-dazzle, everything appears awfully humdrum and, yes, distinctly dated. So dated that in the crowded and pat climax, as the ball drops on the year 2000, all that's missing is Dick Clark himself - damn, it's out with the old and in with the older. [13 Oct 1995]

What Porky's II has gained in sophistication from its "expanded view" it has lost in raunchy, anarchistic energy. Who wants a socially respectable pig out? [25 June 1983]

The film has one sly, ominous touch Peckinpah would have liked. David is writing a script on the defence of Stalingrad, a battle that swallowed two million lives. Otherwise, the new version is a vigilante action film bereft of subtlety or restraint.

Can't find it in your vast collection of Fleming first editions? Not to worry. Seems the producers - a.k.a. the Cubby Broccoli Cottage Industry - have run plumb out of titles. And everything else too. [14 July 1989]

What My Blue Heaven has going for it: one funny premise and two earthly delights, in the comic persons of Steve Martin and Rick Moranis. What My Blue Heaven does not have going for it: anything remotely resembling a cohesive script. [22 Aug 1990, p.C4]

The appeal of the Jack Ryan character, at least on the page, was that he was always the smartest guy in the room. In Shadow Recruit, that doesn’t seem to be much of an accomplishment, because the movie around him is so dumb.

The results are so listless, dated and characterless.

And the living are pretty lifeless themselves. As led by the often wooden Tom Cruise playing the U.S. soldier who inadvertently wakes the dead, and directed by an indecisive Alex Kurtzman, the cast is offered some passable action sequences but struggles with weak dialogue and uneven comedy.

Like Mr. Magoo, after 90 minutes the audience still didn't see the point. [26 Dec 1997, p.C3]

A family-friendly adventure.