Veteran TV director Michael Lembeck slides the movie into a sitcom mode that only further deadens the thin material. While Vardalos and Collette shine in the musical numbers, why didn't he bother to give the musical sequences a bit of pizzazz?

Plenty of salient points to make in this satirical cautionary tale, there's still not enough to sustain the expanded running time.

Ends up committing the spoof genre's worst crime: becoming a tired parody of itself.

David Lynch probably should have let Laura Palmer stay dead. Twin Peaks -- Fire Walk With Me, a feature film prequel to the much-discussed, much-admired TV series by Lynch, is a wearing experience that apparently intrigued the director as little as it inspired him.[28 Aug 1992]

Tries to be too many things, none very convincingly: plea for tolerance, docu-style character study, old-fashioned weepie.

A crass, clumsily constructed romantic comedy.

Beckinsale delivers even if Underworld doesn't quite manage to follow through on its initial promise.

There seem to be some impressive performances here, though it's not always easy to tell because director James Cox is always feverishly cutting away to something or other.

Even assuming the best possible motives by its makers, Beyond Borders runs the risk of making human suffering exotic while glamorizing white disaster relief workers in the Third World.

Dolls soon becomes overloaded with symbolism, and consequently suffocates the audience.

Moore stays "on message" here from first shot to last. There is no debate, no analysis of facts or search for historical context. Moore simply wants to blame one man and his family for the situation in Iraq the United States now finds itself in…So the real question is not how good a film is Fahrenheit 9/11 -- it is undoubtedly Moore's weakest -- but will a film help to get a president fired?

Even those who have never been exposed to the considerable charms of the Masayuki Suo original will likely find Peter Chelsom's all-American version of Shall We Dance? to be a dishearteningly sullen, lead-footed misstep.

A misfire. The film that wants to be lighter than air instead crashes to earth with the swiftness of a concrete parachute.

A Christmas comedy where laughs and even Christmas joy are in short supply.

Nothing un-beguiles a fairy tale more than forced whimsy and labored magic, which is precisely what plagues Ella Enchanted.

Assembling this vehicle for his young clients, music producer/manager/video director Christopher B. Stokes has attached an anemic plot to a series of dynamic hip-hop dance sequences.

What might have proved reasonably compelling onstage comes across as forced on film, with credibility taking a back seat to contrivance.

Unfortunately, Twohy has tried to turn the Riddick enterprise into a sprawling, Tolkien-powered epic, jamming the screen with too many historical parallels and a confusion of new characters.

Generally succeeds -- in hit-and-miss fashion -- at bridging the gap between unlikable jerk and misunderstood good guy, though it's still something of a leap to leading-man territory.

It's disappointing the film is so sketchy and underdeveloped. The filmmakers may have sold their story short.

Emerges as a lackluster and nearly charmless affair.

Compounding the sense of predictability and deja vu is the presence of well-known TV actors portraying the sorts of characters they've perfected on the small screen.

First-time director Paul Abascal brings no style or personality to this B-movie exercise. Except for Farina, the actors go through the paces as if they too lack conviction in the proceedings.

While the likable Seth Green, Matthew Lillard and Dax Shepard are definitely up to the comic excursion, the picture charts an uncertain course between wild and mild, eventually running aground in a pile of male-bonding muck.

Unlike that widely appealing picture with the giant green ogre, this one's strictly for the kiddies.

Anne Hathaway's charms barely rescue this exercise in lame comedy and romance.

George Clooney is the best reason to submit yourself to From Dusk Till Dawn, an exceedingly grotesque thriller-horror-comedy that fails to live up to the promise of its opening reels.

A picture that clearly aspires for more ends up with considerably less.