There are times when it appears that Solarbabies might be sending itself up. All of the time, it's an embarrassment.

An American Tail looks good but the tale itself, as conceived by David Kirschner for the screenplay by Judy Freudberg and Tony Geiss, is witless if well-meaning. It's mostly bland, though every now and then it rises to express its own brand of kiddie-bigotry.

Mr. Cassavetes is effectively black-hearted, and makes a striking figure, and Randy Quaid does a lot with the underdeveloped role of a local sheriff. Mr. Marvin directs at a brisk pace, but his screenplay, though lively, seems to be written in an alien language.

It stars Chuck Norris in what his associates describe as ''the first comedy role in his action-packed career.'' How can they tell? Certainly not from the film, which is lightweight without being lighthearted.

This film's very lack of surprise and sophistication accounts for a lot of its considerable charm.

Mr. Arcand's dialogue is not didactic. It's spontaneously funny and rueful and full of oblique revelations. Though highly intelligent, his characters are prone to self-delusion. They're nothing if not civilized, but they don't hesitate to lie and cheat in their own interests.

Tom Hanks is utterly out of place in the Israeli romance Every Time We Say Goodbye...for at least two reasons: because there's something so innately comic about him, even in solemn surroundings, and because he has so much more energy than the film does.

Something Wild is often "Something Wrong."

Sid and Nancy doesn't try to win its audience's sympathy in any conventional way, which is just as well, since that would have been a losing battle. But it does succeed in offering bleak, nasty and sometimes hilarious glimpses of life in the punk demimonde.

Too often, Betty Blue has the posturing good looks of a fashion spread and nothing more.

ELMORE LEONARD'S thrillers leap so easily to the screen that it's astounding so few of them have gotten there. Even with the kind of slapdash, unsightly production that's been given 52 Pick-Up, Mr. Leonard's stories make terrific, unself-conscious B-movies of the sort that are more and more rare.

It may not be your glass of tea; it's a tall glass, through which events are seen murkily. Those who stay with it, however, may find rewards in burst after burst of beauty and even a glimmer of meaning.

A singularly lumpy sort of movie. The film's most riveting sequence comes at the very beginning, when we see a crucified Jesuit missionary being tossed - cross and all - into the river and carried over the spectacular Iguassu Falls. Nothing that follows, including more pretty scenery and quaint costumes, comes close to equaling the drama of that one sequence - about a character who remains forever anonymous.

It has a breezy, unapologetic manner. And it also happens to be funny, which goes a long way toward making up for any underlying obtuseness or insensitivity.

It's genial, not too frightening and even rather sweet.

The symbolism here is dream-book basic.

''The Color of Money'' isn't ''Mean Streets'' or ''Raging Bull.'' It is, however, a stunning vehicle - a white Cadillac among the other mainstream American movies of the season.

Most of the time, Peggy Sue Got Married is either underdeveloped or simply not thought through. The way the film gets Peggy Sue into and out of the past is no less lame than the explanation for Bobby Ewing's recent resurrection in "Dallas." So much key information is missing or left uncertified or undramatized that the film appears to have been edited by termites.

True Stories may well appeal more to those who don't know much about Mr. Byrne's music career than those who do. The soundtrack songs have the catchy simplicity of Talking Heads' most recent and least demanding compositions. And the film's imagery, expertly captured in bold, bright colors by Ed Lachman, will be even more striking to those who find it novel.

Deadly Friend is stylish and sardonic enough to offer horror fans some knowing laughs and a pleasant relief from shrieking.

Watching Children of a Lesser God, the screen adaptation of Mark Medoff's 1980 Broadway play, is like being on a cruise to nowhere aboard a ship with decent service and above-par fast-food. Everything has been carefully programmed so that there are no surprises, no discoveries, nothing to do except to sit -with eyes propped open - and applaud the crew's efficiency.

The director, Jeff Kanew, does not have as steady a hand as the old-timers. What he does have is sense enough to let our memories of all those Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas movies work on us.

The screenplay, by Mr. Tavernier and David Rayfiel, is both rich and relaxed, with a style that perfectly matches the musicians'. Some of the talk may well be improvised, but nothing sounds improvised, but nothing sounds forced, and the film remains effortlessly idiosyncratic all the way through.

Paul Hogan is a delightful Crocodile Dundee. He has an easy, extremely likable screen personality -a mixture of warmth, sex appeal, disarming innocence and dry humor.

Sympathetic account of a sort of human frailty that is not easy to talk about, much less make a movie about.

The movie is full of the kind of atmosphere that can be created by elaborate sets, dim lighting and misty landscapes, though it has no singular character or dominant mood.

The excitement of Down by Law comes not from what it's about. Reduced to its plot, it is very slight. But the plot isn't the point. The excitement comes from the realization that we are seeing a true film maker at work, using film to create a narrative that couldn't exist on the stage or the printed page of a novel.

As fascinating as it is freakish. It confirms Mr. Lynch's stature as an innovator, a superb technician, and someone best not encountered in a dark alley.

Now and then, there is some horseplay involving the whole group or an angry exchange between a couple of them, but mostly we're watching a set of shticks, some amusing, some not. It's like being at an Actor's Studio showcase.

Comprised of so many derivative bits and pieces that it's not surprising the movie has too little narrative coherence or momentum to keep us going, and no characters we care about enough to root for.

One of the few things this listless bore of a film makes clear is that Mr. Penn, ever since his hilarious performance as a stoned surfer in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, has been greatly overrated.

What matters in movies like this is that, with only hours, then minutes, then seconds to go as the murderer waves a knife in the vicinity of the blind woman's throat, the good guys are closing in, and Mr. Mann builds to his climax with considerable force.

Some of their horsing around, 1950ish style, is comical, but too much of what they do is only too plainly imposed by the movie makers. Rob Reiner's direction hammers in every obvious element in an obvious script.

No matter how adeptly Chainsaw 2 was put together, it would remain just another exploitation flick for fans who get a tingle from watching blades slash into flesh and innards peep out.

Beyond it's obviously derivative inspiration, the film shows a fair ability to create suspense, build tension and achieve respectable performances.

The publicity release describes it as ''an outlandish action parody.'' But for those among us who don't get a kick out of seeing young girls branded with hot metal, beaten by rubber hoses, terrified, brutalized and driven to suicide, the movie isn't exactly a thousand laughs.

THE smashing, crashing, thrashing battle between Farrah Fawcett and James Russo that takes up about half of Extremities leaves the contestants in a state of exhaustion -and the movie along with them.

A film that tries to be too many things at once - funny but not campy, sad and scary, a horror story and a human tragedy

If the very sight of John Candy, the outsized comedian, strikes you as a hoot, then perhaps Armed and Dangerous is for you. It is difficult to imagine who else this latest movie about a pair of bumblers could be for.

A gentle and affecting film that ought to charm older children while also holding their parents' interest,

The film is so successful at turning your brain into something resembling mashed potatoes that it is not clear when you'll be able to respond to intelligible stimuli again.

These people are not victims of blind forces; they make choices, defend them and grow in understanding, not always happily, as a result. Their story would be more enjoyable in a more polished film, but it has a power that is not dissipated by this one's weaknesses.

Mr. Edwards, who on happier occasions gave us the Pink Panther movies, piles on the pileups until you may suspect that he is trying to distract the audience from the absence of a diverting story or dialogue.

These robots transform in a flash; the colors are shocking pinks and electric greens; the film is packed with one-to-one combat, large-scale battles and exploding planets. Despite these improvements, though, the movie is not for anyone too grown-up.

[Somai’s] exquisite visual compositions (of lonely bedrooms, concrete piers, and nocturnal courtyards) infuse even the film’s racy images with a somber sense of longing and introspection, finding beauty and humanity in the midst of the macabre.

Howard the Duck' begins as a mild satire about a duck who fell to earth, but midway through, the star is upstaged by horrifying demons and dazzling light shows.

Flight of the Navigator may not have the originality of a true classic; and while its special effects provide some dazzling moments, they are not quite fresh enough to be brilliant. But the film is so absorbing, such constant fun, that it may well be the best family film around.

Despite a few lighter touches, the film is still a gory waste of time that plays its murders for all the blood and guts they're worth. There are plenty of cliched reaction shots of faces in terror, more than enough frames filled with bloody knives and severed heads. There is not, however, any suspense about Jason or his victims. He stalks, they scream, he kills. None of it is enough to make you jump out of your seat, though it may be enough to make your stomach churn. [2 Aug 1986, p.9]

As long as the story stays with David's wooing of the big Colonial Airlines account and the company president's tough-minded daughter (Sela Ward), a good time is to be had. But in the last half-hour, everybody starts to slobber.

For the most part, [King] has taken a promising notion - our dependence on our machines - and turned it into one long car-crunch movie, wheezing from setups to crackups.

Unhappily, the movie begins to show signs of wear even before the marriage does.

Richard Tuggle's new film wants to be a realistic thriller, but it merely acts out kids' fantasies of heroism and adventure, with drugs and rock music thrown in for a contemporary twist.

Humor and horror make an uneasy combination.

The first hour is given to aimless glimpses of aimless existences, and the second, in which Colin finds a sort of deliverance, is contrived in concept and awkward in execution.

Under the direction of James (''The Terminator'') Cameron, [the special effects team has] put together a flaming, flashing, crashing, crackling blow-'em-up show that keeps you popping from your seat despite your better instincts and the basically conventional scare tactics.

Pirates is a Roman Polanski grossout. There's a rat in the soup and urine in the bath water and corpses all over the place. There's slipping and sliding and colliding, stabbings, bludgeonings and tumbles from the mast. Nothing is left underdone except the hilarity, the one good excuse for such low-jinks on the high seas.

It's very easy to make it sound funnier than it ever is. Like ''Caddyshack'' and ''National Lampoon's Vacation,'' which Mr. Ramis also directed, and like ''Animal House'' and ''Ghostbusters,'' which he also wrote in part, Club Paradise is full of funny ideas that are never adequately developed. The best it can offer are successful one-liners....The movie is painless, and everybody associated with it is good company, but considering the obvious effort and the expense that went into it, the result should have been much, much better.

You've a right to wonder why anyone would want to work so hard - with such an expenditure of imagination - to transform a play with such a distinctive voice into a movie that sounds like any number of others.

What matters is the stunts and the spirit, and this latest set of exotic exploits of an indomitable hero (Kurt Russell) and a spunky heroine (Kim Cattrall) gives good value.

Unlike most sequels, which seem to get bigger, fancier and emptier the further removed they are from their source material, Psycho III has a lean, serviceable, stripped-down quality to it.

In The Great Mouse Detective the Disney formula is used undiluted, and that is how it works best. The heroes are appealing, the villains have that special Disney flair - humorous blackguards who really enjoy being evil -and the script is witty and not overly sentimental.

For all those out there who can't get enough of Prince, Under the Cherry Moon may be just the antidote.

Labyrinth, a fabulous film about a young girl's journey into womanhood that uses futuristic technology to illuminate a mythic-style tale, is in many ways a remarkable achievement.

THE most irresistible thing about the characters in Ruthless People, a conspicuously overconsuming, Beverly Hills update of O. Henry's classic Ransom of Red Chief, is that they all try with such earnestness to live up to their ruthless reputations. It also has a uniformly splendid cast of comic actors - the best to be seen outside of any recent Blake Edwards movie. Its screenplay, by the newcomer Dale Launer, is packed with wonderfully vulgar, tasteless lines that perfectly reflect the sensibilities of Sam and Barbara Stone.

Still another, thoroughly depressing demonstration of the extent to which television now dictates the style and the manners of so many of the movies we see in theaters.

Even as sequels go in this era of movie mega-series, The Karate Kid Part II peters out faster than most.

Though publicized as a breakthrough into adult comedy for Mr. Reitman (''National Lampoon's Animal House,'' ''Meatballs,'' ''Ghostbusters''), this new film is less a true adult comedy than a teen-age comedy populated by adults who are functioning in an adult world.

The film is a good-natured potpourri of gags, funny bits, populist sentiment and anti-intellectualism.

Mr. Brickman, who directed the film and wrote the screenplay (with Thomas Baum), has a real gift for eccentric comedy and characters. The Manhattan Project, with its vaguely populist leanings, isn't crazy enough. Mr. Brickman fails to make big issues comprehensible. He just makes them small.

NEIL JORDAN'S Mona Lisa is classy kitsch. It's as smooth and distinctive (and, ultimately, as insubstantial) as the old Nat (King) Cole recording of the song, which gives the film its title and a lot of its mood. It's also got high style, so you needn't hate yourself for liking it.

In this film [Hughes] has created a character who is every teen-ager's fantasy, but in the process he has lost some of the authenticity of his other films - leaving several slow transitions or awkward moments.

Though the language is vulgar, the macho posturing absurd and some of the plotting inscrutable, Raw Deal has a kind of seemliness to it. It delivers every punch it promises.

The outcome is pretty predictable, but it's done well, and the actors do a good job of transforming general types into individuals whom we grow to like. It is also hard to resist Jinx, the funny little computer responsible for all the trouble.

The director, Tobe Hooper, who honed his scary craft on such films as ''The Texas Chain Saw Massacre'' and ''Poltergeist,'' knows how to construct a horror film so it builds to a screaming pitch. He shoots many of his images from below, to give the view a child might have, and deftly manipulates the audience to feel the growing menace. He is helped by an excellent cast.

All this may be enough to keep 3- to 7-year-olds entertained for an hour and a half on a hot summer's day, and there is certainly nothing in this sanitized fairy tale that will frighten or alarm them unduly. Unlike the great Disney classics, however, there is also nothing that will move them - and there are very few bones of wit thrown to the poor parents who will have to sit through the film with children of this age group.

Most of the possibilities for humor or tension, either sexual or dramatic, are badly botched by the flat performances of the other lead actors and the consistent bad timing of the director - everything misfires or misconnects, leaving too many long, dead moments that prove that even an adventure film with lots of running and shooting can be boring.

It possesses high points you simply don't find in lesser if more consistently funny movies.

All the people and places in Demons seem imported. The dialogue is spoken in colloquial American and matches the lip movements, but it sounds dubbed. Nonetheless, there are some apt observations.

A disturbing movie from many points of view: disturbing for the violence it portrays, the ideas it represents and the large number of people who will undoubtedly go to see it and cheer on its dangerous hero.

The excitement is switched off on landing. Once Top Gun, which opens today at Loews Astor Plaza and other theaters, gets back to earth, the master of the skies is as clunky as a big land-bound bird.

A cheerful, inoffensive fantasy in which such attractive live actors as Steve Guttenberg and Ally Sheedy play second fiddle to machinery that, in this case, means No. 5, designed by Syd Mead and engineered and realized by Eric Allard.

The karate blows sound good but never seem to make contact. But then nothing else makes contact either. The advice from this corner: Retreat.

Blue City is full of unbelievable, ineptly staged action sequences. It's most offensive, however, for its dialogue, and for the frivolous way it debases the shock value of obscene words. If, in 10 years, we wind up with an utterly colorless language, movies like this will have been at least partly to blame.

Jo Jo Dancer is a far from great movie. However, there's something revivifying about seeing Mr. Pryor take this flyer in writing, directing and acting in his own work.

It's full of film knowledge and is amazingly elaborate for a low-budget movie. The only problem is that it's not funny. One smiles at the inspiration of the jokes, though not at their execution.

Three Men and a Cradle is almost totally charmless. It's funny in the way of someone who, in attempting to explain a joke, thoroughly destroys the humor, which, I assume, is mostly the fault of Coline Serreau, who wrote and directed it.

HOW did Eight Million Ways to Die commit suicide? Let us count the ways.

The main characters tend to be either grotesques or stereotypes, who keep getting into incoherent arguments, composed largely of variations on America's favorite epithet...For a movie with pretensions to laying out political realities, the colorful Salvador is black and white.

Mr. Cruise goes through all this nonsense gamely, as if it were an initiation into a fraternity he wants very much to join.

At Close Range is never boring. There's something bold about the film's wealth of imagery, but it also so overstates the material of the screenplay that it eventually annihilates both it and the story, which might possibly have been moving and terrifying. This just looks like fancy movie making.

Looking through these layers of time, this flashy, extravagant rock musical, which opens today at the Ziegfeld, elevates style to a symptom and cause of social change. And though it aims for more coherence than it delivers, it has endless flair with no self-importance...For all its unevenness, Absolute Beginners is high pop culture.

From its cartoony credits to its knish-and-cannoli close, Wise Guys is one funny movie.

The Toxic Avenger may be trash, but it has a maniacally farcical sense of humor, and Tromaville's evildoers are dispatched in ingenious ways. One is dry-cleaned to death, another made into pizza, a third partly french-fried.

It's commercially calculated to have something for everyone - suspense, humor, even a bounty hunter from the krites' planet who poses as a rock star. Unfortunately, the film doesn't have the humor or the budget to match any of these goals.

The rest is mainly whack, splat and kaboom, with fast cuts to a rock beat. Miami vise.

My Beautiful Laundrette has the broad scope and the easy pace that one associates with our best theatrical films. It puts its own truth above the fear of possibly offending someone. Without showing off, it has courage as well as artistry. A fascinating, eccentric, very personal movie.

As Lucy Honeychurch, Miss Bonham Carter gives a remarkably complex performance of a young woman who is simultaneously reasonable and romantic, generous and selfish, and timid right up to the point where she takes a heedless plunge into the unknown.