Director Marshall ( Pretty Woman) has created a comic drama so confused in tone, the actors often seem to be acting in different movies.

Forget about "Saw," "Hostel" and all the other films in the new, notorious torture-porn genre. If you're looking for a really sick movie, check out License to Wed.

At the end of The Comebacks, Coach is offered job with a college basketball team called The Sequels - a joke perhaps, but all too horrifying a prospect after watching this dull fumble.

The film's putrid sexism is subverted in a series of sharp and funny scenes that at least raise Sorority Boys to the level of "American Pie."

Lutz and fellow operative Carano are as warm and responsive as Ping-Pong paddles, batting lines back and forth lifelessly.

Would-be horror film has little upstairs. Warped and wilted in the attic. [25 Nov 1987]

Mainly, you have to wonder why Allyson doesn’t just hire a nanny, find a job and get out of the house. Ah, but this is a Christian movie, and once it stops pelting an audience with comic incident, it begins preaching.

A Cinderella Story has little of the smarts that distinguished this spring's big teen hit, "Mean Girls", which starred Duff's arch-rival, Lindsay Lohan. Whereas that film presented a genuinely complex and enjoyably snarky portrait of modern teen life, this effort is content to be another candy-coloured fantasy.

In the case of When in Rome, oh to do what the Romans used to do: Toss the bloody thing to the lions.

A few early laughs scattered around a plot as thin as it is repetitious. There's talent in this picture, both before and behind the camera, but virtually none of it gets on the screen.

The whole mess turns nuttier by the second. A black comedy, you ask? I wish. There are plenty of laughs here, but nary a one is intentional.

This time the action takes us out of the usual campgrounds and girls in underwear into the realm of outer space, where no one can hear you screaming "Enough already."

Dragonfly has more plot than a figure-skating competition, and just about as much credibility.

Wilder's created world is alive with his erudition, his sympathy for his characters in their loneliness and flawed goodness. This film doesn't do him justice but it's a gesture in the right direction.

Pretty much everything about Rings is incoherent. And the most incoherent thing of all is the film’s arrival a decade and a half after Verbinski’s original remake (if such a term even makes sense).

Yes, it's all quite mad, Max, with a shaggy-dog ending to boot. But this giddiness, its go-for-broke/what-the-hellness, also is the film's strength.

The bottom line for this genre is that the guys are goofy and likable, the pacing is quick and there are a lot of laughs. In a dumb-California-kids movie, that's all you really need. [25 May 1992]

There's nothing even mildly intriguing, or remotely galvanizing, about Showgirls.

An awkward, painful mash-up of horror and comedy that induces all the wrong kind of squirms.

Taylor Lautner puts the abs in Abduction, but not much else.

When a movie ostensibly on a serious subject is so God-awful silly, is it impossible to be offended, or impossible not to be?

The Family is running from The Hun (Malcolm McDowell). The Family is not running as fast as I would like to have run from The Passage. [29 Mar 1979]

It’s all quest, flash and high action.

TARZAN The Ape Man, in which Bo Derek (the 10 of 10) is Jane to newcomer Miles O'Keeffe's mute Tarzan (his chests are bigger than hers), takes 45 minutes to get to the reasons the film may have attracted an audience. As nearly as I can figure, based on the soft-core porn of the advertisements, the reasons are three: two belong to Miss Derek, one to O'Keeffe. But although Miss Derek's reasons do receive screen time (O'Keeffe's reason remains unviewed, to the vocal scorn of women in the audience), this topless Tarzan is not soft-core porn, which might justify, on a utilitarian basis, its existence. It's not that good. [25 July 1981]

If physical appearance creates its own class system (in high school and beyond), then Qualls is perfect for this proselytizing role. He has that rarest of movie-star faces -- one that over comes the tyranny of beauty.

As Playing With Fire progressed, it became increasingly clear that the target audience was not respected. This was made by people who seem to think kids are stupid.

This one is a big, big disappointment. [27 July 1987]

The tedious, tortuous storyline and lifeless cast are two larger problems.