It must be the only movie ever made in which the hero's immediate goal in life is to wrestle in a different weight class. The film treats this event with all the fake reverence tabloid feature writers use to describe disabled people who learn to paint with their feet or mother dogs who swim across lakes to rescue endangered litters. [15 Feb 1985]

Call me Grumpy, but this seems less an adaptation than a random assault.

As you watch -- no, endure -- this flattened-out spectacle, there's really nothing worth pondering save for a single thought: What a difference a director makes.

A vigorously cross-marketed product, with comics, collectable cards, games and a television series.

Ye gods, there's a lot of hacking and many seismic eruptions in The Wrath of the Titans, the latest 3-D action film that treats the Greek gods as action figures.

The director's approach is far too ham-fisted and erratic to bring Four Brothers up to the level of enjoyable trash -- it's too crummy to earn that distinction.

The plot's not so hot -- it feels like it was jotted down by someone on an after-dinner napkin.

As Alice, Wasikowska, who has lost the injured look that made her so effective the first time out, creates a character who is fundamentally sweet, likeable and loyal.

This is a movie which makes its viewers feel ripped-off just for expending a snicker. Camp, satire, sci-fi all have their own rules, rigorous ones at that, but Night of the Comet violates even the codes of trash. Point of view shots point to the wrong views, the cutting is as blunt as stone and the way Eberhardt bleeds the sex appeal out of the sex is the film's only real vision of the end of the world. [16 Nov 1984]

The problem with the taboo-busters is that they feel calculated - in the past, Lynch's creepiness seemed casual and natural - and they take Wild at Heart so high it can't come down; the picture repeatedly jacks itself into frenzy only to crash into lethargy.

With some movies, though, it's just the opposite. Like this one. It's a whole lot easier to forget than to forgive.

Beerfest is safety-by-numbers comedy. A troupe, as opposed to a single comic star like Adam Sandler, shares the comic load and, well, at least the film is funnier than "Click."

You might believe that a movie comedy requires no visual rhythm, and that entire scenes -- especially those big set-pieces -- benefit greatly from a shooting style devoid of imagination and unremittingly flat. If so, A Guy Thing is surely your thing. Enjoy.

In its nearly two-hour running time, in its always lugubrious pace, in its almost complete absence of laughs, The Prince & Me is a comedy that plays like a tragedy. No stricken bodies, though, unless you count the ones in the audience slumped back in their seats -- perchance they slept.

An overemphatic revenge fantasy devoid of even a trace of excitement or wit.

Considering that the original story managed to be scarier without people's hair spontaneously restyling itself into dragons, it's worth asking why this kind of film has become the norm. Is it because filmgoers demand it, or is it because filmmakers leaning on technological crutches can't be bothered to learn their craft? More and more, I'm leaning to the latter. [23 July 1999, p.C3]

I won’t presume to understand what passes for popular taste. But seeing an audience in the tens of thousands lose their mind for Hart’s jokes about hating his family and the hypothetical perils of dating a woman with only one shoulder, I can’t help but feel skeptical.

It takes a party pooper to point out that it's not very good. But this is one party that people familiar with the play - especially people familiar with Heath Lambert's memorable performance in the title role - would do well to pass up: every addition to the original results in subtraction. [19 June 1987]

There is a familiarity to its characters and story, which doesn’t do much at all in terms of reinventing the genre, but very much meets its own expectations.

To divulge the plot would spoil the experience -- you'll be shocked to discover, and maybe even surprised to learn, just how lame the damn thing really is.

There is, admittedly, something splendidly subversive about putting the movie's arch-villains into a children's theme park - the ultimate symbol of both apple-pie family values and the whole U.S. entertainment industry. There are no real worms in this apple, however; like most flicks conceived as marketing vehicles, it's hollow at the core. [27 May 1994, p.D3]

Serving Sara, which often feels more like serving time, is one of those tortured Hollywood romantic comedies that starts with a passable premise and turns into an inventory of flat gags and weak lines set against a travelogue backdrop.

Air America, starring Mel Gibson's big blue eyes and Robert Downey, Jr.'s big brown biceps, is bland and toothless. [15 Aug 1990]

You leave Stolen Summer with the feeling that you have watched acrobats stumble on a tightrope with no net below. Not a great show, but at least nobody got badly hurt.

Call it Nancy Drew and the Case of the Confused Adaptation.

A shameless pastiche of Starman’s alien-on-Earth sci-fi, The Boy in the Plastic Bubble’s medical pathos and any number of young-lovers-on-the-run stories, The Space Between Us may set back the Earth-Mars relationship light years.

There's not a scrap of imagination in the script.

While the monster Wilde is scary enough, the directing and writing is lazy, relying on “boo!” tactics and insinuating a religious subtext by cutting to close-ups of crucifix jewellery. The ending is slapdash.