Phoenix goes off the rails in the second half when Kinberg piles fight scene atop CG-enhanced fight scene, backed by Hans Zimmer’s oppressive pounding score, until the picture devolves into a chaotic mess.

It's easy to see why the Rangers are popular. Even before they magically morph, the kids are sky-diving, roller-blading and living without parental authority. And they kick serious butt. But it's all done quite unhumorously.

Most of the picture plays like a collection of action-movie cliches, much like the facetious catalogue that Timothy M. Gray recently compiled in Variety under the heading "Blueprints for blockbusters: Let's go, c'mon!" [2 Aug 1996]

Unfortunately, Kevin Anderson, the former Steppenwolf actor who was so impressive re-creating his stage role in Alan Pakula's film of "Orphans" and impersonating Bobby Kennedy in "Hoffa," can do absolutely nothing with the braying, sexist yuppie who rents the apartment out to Broderick and Sciorra. [1 May 1993, p.C9]

It takes a special actor's grace to survive a script as lame as My Fellow Americans, and James Garner has it. Without appearing to break a sweat, Garner makes each grotesquely desperate attempt at humor look smooth and assured. In his hands, everything seems funnier than it is.

Neither Spader nor Amick can get past the generic nature of the characters they're playing, nor can they make up for Kazan's timid approach to their supposedly steamy love scenes. The nude Spader is so carefully draped and arranged that he could be posing for a soft-core parody, while Amick resorts to doing an impersonation of a haughty 1940s glamour queen. [6 May 1994, p.D31]

French Exit isn’t without its pleasures; but you watch it dreaming of the movie it might have been.

Nobody’s behavior here resembles that of an actual person, and the directing is often awkward.

Director Scott Cooper really lays it on thick. He brings no modulation to the horror elements in his frightfest. Everything is gloom, gloom, gloom. And doom.

I’ll admit to a weakness for this sort of thing (which Merchant-Ivory, a couple of decades back, made into elegant art), but even I couldn’t muster up much enthusiasm for this one, a tepid love triangle set in the Ottoman Empire in the early days of World War I.

By the time the big reveal comes along, it’s almost beside the point. The audience, so numbed by the gore, is likely to barely care who indeed did it.

The sweet-natured rom-com I Feel Pretty has a well-meaning message, but it gets lost in the telling.

This is a production from producer Michael Bay, master of the cinema of CG run amok. And all we helpless mortals can do is cower and duck as those 3D fists fly.

Even on its own merits this new Vanishing is a washout, a classic case of Hollywood studio compromise, in which almost everything that made the original effectively chilling has been tampered with and cheapened. [05 Feb 1993, p.03]

This “Naked Gun” tries hard, but the magic simply isn’t there.

It's a ridiculous premise, and the film works best when Badham seems in on the joke. By the time Harvey Keitel appears as a ruthless operative assigned to clean up a botched job, the film has reached its own point of no return, tipping over the edge into rib-tickling parody. Keitel is one of the few actors alive who can make you chuckle while disposing of corpses in an acid bath. [19 March 1993, p.16]

[Hillcoat’s] an expert in creating and sustaining gut-twisting tension. Good qualities all, but used here in the service of a story that is truly unappetizing.

Overlong set-piece action scenes pitched in the key of chaos, full of running and screaming and a whole lot of falling down, ultimately turn “Pikachu” into a wearying slog.

There’s nothing special about any of this, but as a generic thrill machine, Plane certainly delivers the goods.

Good fun, and all that, but its flawed central performance ultimately makes “Solo” a distinct disappointment.

Action scenes are so chaotically edited it’s often difficult to figure out who’s bashing and crashing into whom.

If Like a Boss had a decent screenplay, and was competently directed, it might have been pretty good.

Alice Through the Looking Glass isn’t without pleasures, but this empowerment-meets-fantasy mixture could have used a few more sprinklings of quirk.

Made In America is yet another half-hour sitcom padded to accommodate a major star - in this case, the highly bankable, post-Sister Act Whoopi Goldberg - and a 110-minute running time. [28 May 1993, p.27]

It may take more than Caro Diario for Americans to acquire the Moretti taste. [21 Oct 1994, p.H42]

Like so many small-screen-to-big-screen efforts, Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie isn’t really a movie, just a stretched-out TV episode with a parade of cameos and boatloads of Champagne.

For his live-action debut, Knight slips into Bay boomboom mode.

It’s colorful. It’s predictable. And also quickly forgettable. Genuine wonderment is in short supply in Wonder Park.

A confused mishmash of plot elements featuring overwrought extraneous characters. Kids likely will love it. Their parents will just have to grin and bear it.

It’s fun to spend time with these performers, but you wish they were invited to a better party.

Last week, it was Ninja Turtles. This week, it's Ernest. And Ernest, quite frankly, is an improvement. It's more colorful, cartoonish, imaginative. And it feels like a movie, not just an advertising ploy. [07 Apr 1990, p.C5]

What a dynamite cast. What a savvy director. And what a soggy comedy they're all stuck in. [02 July 1997, p.E5]

Rodriguez does just enough to keep things mildly interesting.

Much as I’d like to love a movie that encompasses ballet, spectacular hotel rooms, a Mary-Louise Parker drunk scene, and Rampling standing grimly in the snow like an unbreakable icicle, the movie’s focus on sexual violence against Lawrence’s character ultimately feels repellent.

Mostly Next Goal Wins just plods along, agreeable and familiar and instantly forgettable.

While it's no breakthrough, this may be the best of Disney's popular Ernest comedies starring Jim Varney as an amiable moron in the Jerry Lewis tradition. [11 Oct 1991, p.23]

Despite this rich emotional material (not to mention some gloriously shabby drawing rooms), the film feels surprisingly dull and conventional — two things its heroine most definitely was not.

Fans of Crystal and Williams certainly will enjoy the pairing, but this is far from their most inspired work.

It’s a decent action movie that wears its influences on its sleeves. Some feel like intentional homages; others feed into the aforementioned identity crisis.

This sports comedy starts out as a rowdy delight in the tradition of "Slapshot," but it loses its sense of the outrageous and quickly turns ho-hum.

While Portman’s performance is skilled, she doesn’t have enough to work with — the character, as written, just isn’t there.

Hughes’ handling of the material is unfailingly serious but the picture’s tendency to stray into the ridiculous robs it of the majesty the director so clearly hoped to achieve.

With the dour drudgery of “Last Rites,” it has never been more clear that it’s time to move on from their story, even as the memories of better installments linger.

It’s a haunting, heartbreaking story, told by a movie that never quite makes a case for itself to exist.

A Walk in the Clouds suffers from an inferiority complex. This familial fable, rife with biblical references, overcompensates for its simplicity in story with aspirations of visual grandeur. [11 Aug 1995, p.E1]

They're obviously smart people, but they end up painting themselves into a corner with this cast. Stern, the hammiest of the lead actors, is allowed to dominate the early scenes, and he rarely lets go. His bug-eyed act is getting stale, as is Aykroyd's tendency to walk through roles like this. The freshest element here is Wayans, who gets top billing in the ads but somehow winds up seeming like a supporting player. [19 Apr 1996]

Despite all of the personalized Wenders touches, it ultimately resembles many a top-heavy, star-laden, special-effects-driven production from the major-studio assembly lines.

Presented as a Vietnam War comedy, Operation Dumbo Drop steadfastly refuses to be funny. [28 Jul 1995, p.D3]

n the hands of director Adam Robitel, The Last Key hits all the haunted house markers. Lights flicker, flashlights die at inopportune moments, floors creak, and shadowy figures scuttle across the background. But mood is all the film has going for it.

Two fresh performances slip through the cliches of this hockey-player-meets-figure-skater romantic comedy. But for some viewers, that may not be enough. [27 March 1992, p.24]

Ultimately, Argylle is mostly bad CGI, action sequences that go by so fast you wonder what Vaughn is trying to hide, and a lot of strange tangents.

The film’s bleached colors and Reeves’ trademark woodenness add to its emotional remoteness, though Basso, Zellweger and Belushi create a convincing family in crisis. Zellweger, especially, delivers a fascinating, complex performance as a damaged survivor.

A strangely inert film that is leisurely enough in pace for Seagal to conveniently foil one bad guy at a time until everyone has been disposed of. Ultimately, we're left to rely on pyrotechnic razzle-dazzle to thrill us, which, until the final train debacle, is modest in scope as well. [17 July 1995, p.E3]

The special effects are quite impressive for a low-budget production, although the classiest thing about it is the voice of Welles, whose verbal dramatization of the Martian invasion still chills. [27 Apr 1990, p.20]

Unrelentingly bleak, somewhat pretentious and rather too long, Sean Penn's feature debut as writer-director nevertheless shows some promise. [04 Oct 1991, p.28]

Perfectly harmless fluff. [15 July 1994, p.D28]

MTV veteran and first-time director Jim Yukich makes the most of the flashy if uneven visual effects, which usually have a state-of-the-art quality but occasionally look as phony as matte paintings in 1950s biblical epics. [04 Nov 1994, p.I39]

Powell’s charm, along with some fun rich-person interiors (there’s a library near the end that gives a stellar performance), does a lot to get “How to Make a Killing” to the finish line. But you may well lose interest, as I did, before the murder countdown concludes; this one feels more like a rough draft than a truly well-thought-out movie.

The Aspern Papers, brief as it is, needed more of a lightness of touch; if you weigh down melodrama too much, it dies.

If Verbinski could have trimmed about an hour from the film (which weighs in at a portly 146 minutes), he might have had something.

Horror comedy, alas, is a tricky balance, and making a movie dance on a unicorn’s horn is trickier still; this one clearly needed a little more unicorn dust.

The film is a loving tribute from a son to a father figure, but perhaps Deen is too close to the story to have much perspective on it. We’ve seen this story before and Brave the Dark doesn’t shed new light.

Much of this is amiable in the moment, but the movie lumbers from set piece to set piece with only the barest of plausible connecting threads. The film’s sense of physical comedy is woeful, relying more on the suggestion of humor than competent blocking or editing.

"Metro" could easily have been subtitled "Beverly Hills Cop 4."

If you want a quick diversion, take a trip to Fire Island — but don’t go looking for something that will last.

Awkwafina and Cena, who gamely tolerate everything this movie throws at them, deserve better. Would somebody please make them a smart rom-com, soon?

The Lodgers is never particularly scary, or even logical, but it’s always gorgeous to look at; you can see where it’s going, but you might not mind watching it go there.

Only Omar Epps ("Juice") locates substance in his role as the freshman underachiever who must fight for his starting position, but even he's in service to the uninspired "Program." If someone wanted to make a good, exciting, serious film about the ups and downs of college football, why didn't they just make a documentary about the Huskies? [24 Sept 1983, p.D19]

As a vehicle for Grammer, the movie seems a comfortable fit. But why bother with a big-screen part if it can't match what he's been doing for some time on Frasier? [01 Mar 1996, p.F3]

Very, very late in ECCO’s two-plus hour running time, answers come. It’s a long wait for clarity. From the viewer, much patience is required.

How many dead spots does it take to kill the genuinely funny moments in a romantic comedy? This question gets a severe workout in writer-actor-director Eric Schaeffer's second film: an alternately charming, predictable, hilarious and tedious exercise that holds your interest for about an hour. [8 March 1996]

As these things go, this is a painless and breezily amusing variation on the theme.

Zentropa seems like the work of a precocious child who's been given too many expensive toys. [10 Jul 1992, p.24]

As it is, Tommy Boy is funny enough, but with Farley in the spotlight you shouldn't settle on playing it safe. [31 Mar 1995, p.G25]

In the central role, Miles Teller is impressively bulked up, but there’s a flatness in his performance. It’s a dogged, rather than an inspired, portrayal. The best work is done by Aaron Eckhart, who plays Vinnie’s trainer, Kevin Rooney.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 gives us a lot to look at, and Hathaway and Blunt in particular are a pleasure (they have a scene together, late in the film, that’s almost worth the ticket price right there), but it’s flat Champagne: maybe worth drinking in a pinch, but unsatisfying.

Good intentions are famous for paving the road to hell, but more often they just lead to well-meaning tedium.

This final installment finds Soderbergh and Tatum toying with audience expectations to disappointing results. There are a few flashes of the original magic, but it’s lacking in the energy that made the first two movies a thrill.

The script resembles an especially anemic Afterschool Special. [12 Oct 1990, p.22]

Jade is sharp enough to keep you focused, but as usual Eszterhas is more interested in cynical titillation than in making much sense or (heaven forbid) exploring a substantial theme. [13 Oct 1995, p.F3]

Even Deutch’s charming radiance (she never entirely sells Sam’s nasty side) can’t quite get us through the slog of this plot.

Like its predecessor, this new screen version of the book may work well enough for those happy with a simple story, simply told. But for Golding fans, it can only feel like another opportunity missed. [16 Mar 1990, p.3]

The script by Liu Zhenyun becomes ponderous and redundant, kept on oxygen by its lead actress’s complex performance as a child-woman with enigmatic wisdom.

Dog Days is in some ways a very strange movie, in the way it straddles the worlds of weirdo comedy and family-friendly fare. But ultimately, it’s the pooches who steal the show.

The Charnel House is watchable, even if you can tell very soon what’s really going on behind mysterious doings.

As written by David Koepp, this familiar and pokey plot respects the Shadow mythos while draining its vitality, until it becomes just another tiresome action flick and a further reminder that Jurassic Park, which Koepp co-wrote, was also a poorly written movie bolstered by awesome special effects. [01 Jul 1994, p.D3]

The casting was spot-on in “Dollhouse”; here it seems haphazard.

Kids will certainly enjoy the basic idea, and pre-teens will clearly relate to Nicholas, whose awkward puberty - complete with vocal cords warbling from soprano to baritone - is just right for the role. But even he is ultimately annoying, leaving only Busey's laid-back, natural performance to hint of what this film could have been in more confident hands. [07 Jul 1993, p.E3]

Franco makes the most of his showy scenes, and Garrett Clayton (known for “Teen Beach Movie” and other shows from the Disney Channel) is a convincing hunk. But only Christian Slater’s lonely voyeur suggests what “King Cobra” might have been.

The Perfect Weapon is functional, but as formula-bound as they come. [16 Mar 1991, p.C5]

By the time Donner crowds his climactic poker game with a bevy of veteran Western character actors, decades of movie tradition have been reduced to window dressing, and Maverick leaves you hungry for the real thing.

My Father the Hero can be enjoyed as a travelogue (cinematographer Daryn Okada makes the Bahamas look especially seductive) and as the blandest, most nonthreatening kind of date movie. [4 Feb 1994, p.D19]

Bacon’s performance as well as Finn’s detailed craft manage to hold tension, and the audience’s attention, for the hour and 55 minute runtime of this horror curio, which is as opaque and somewhat silly as the smiles that drive it.

Consider your multiplex choices carefully as Valentine’s Day approaches; you might find yourself weeping tears of relief when the credits finally roll.

The Huntsman is a flabby mess — yet another sequel with no reason to exist.

Zombies. Nazis. Clichés. Insane violence. Overlord delivers a whole lot of much too much.

All of it feels warmed over, reprocessed … and, yes, confused.

A chaotic, juvenile slag-heap of semi-futuristic action that should make at least a few Hollywood idiots think twice about adapting another video game.