Then it raids "GoodFellas" and "The Godfather" for most of its material, before winding up as the same old ultraviolent schlock. [13 Apr 1991, p.C5]

The real criminals here are writers William Davies and William Osborne (obviously pseudonyms for Beavis and Butt-head), who have concocted a derivative, imbecilic anything-goes premise serving only to provide random opportunities for the CGI wizards to strut their stuff. [31 Dec 1993, p.C14]

Exposure to Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip may result in the dislocation of eyeballs in viewers over the age of 7 due to uncontrollable rolling of the eyes at the sight of the idiotic antics committed on screen. To avoid eye strain, which is to say, eye sprain, avoid this movie at all costs.

Offering only an atmosphere of deepening gloom and a premise of utter hopelessness, Man Down is like movie antimatter: It repels interest.

Fire Birds reduces it all to kiss-kiss-bang-bang, and the implication that a few theater-rattling explosions will turn the enemy to toast forever. The only blessing is that it runs less than 90 minutes.

The Museum of Modern Art has committed Tobe Hooper's original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) to its permanent collection. This spin-off, which has none of that film's brutal energy, won't be joining it. The state of Texas ought to sue the makers of Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III for defamation of character. [13 Jan 1990, p.C5]

Maybe there's a serious movie to be made about professional soldiers who can't thaw out now that the Cold War is melting. But The Fourth War plays like Laurel and Hardy's Tit For Tat in slow motion. [23 Mar 1990, p.24]

Blind Fury is cheerfully stupid, deliberately cartoonish and always self-mocking. [17 Mar 1990, p.C5]

It's so much a Wayans vehicle that at times it seems like one long close-up of his gold-tooth grin. [24 March 1995, p.H24]

Maybe the Arthurian legend is unfilmable. There has never been a successful cinematic adaptation. There still isn't. Bad films are forgivable. First Knight is not. [07 Jul 1995, p.H3]

The sexual sadism that ruled in the first Hellraiser has been largely replaced by tiresome confrontations between the toymakers and Pinhead, who responds to their sputtering oaths with the most sensible line in the movie: "Do I look like someone who would care what God thinks?" [9 March 1996, p.F3]

Representationally, Clika is an important and worthy film. Cinematically, it unfortunately can’t find the beat.

What say we tiptoe quietly away and pretend this movie never happened?

By any sensible standard, and from any ethnic perspective, this is juvenile trash of the lowest order. Never rising above its own crotch-obsessed level of would-be satire, it fails to examine the social issues that give rap music its aggressive vitality, and completely misses every opportunity for intelligent comedy that lies neglected beneath the surface of its imbecilic, gutter-minded excuse for a plot. [12 Mar 1993, p.3]

Mr. Nanny is certainly harmless, even though Hogan acts as if he's stumbled onto the set of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. But only the most gullible 4-year-old will get a rise from the lifeless direction of co-writer Michael Gottlieb, whose earlier Mannequin provided a similar dose of moviegoing torture. [09 Oct 1993, p.C3]

This wildly overpraised Belgian mock-documentary might have been a lacerating 10-minute Swiftian satire of the media's never-ending thirst for blood. Instead, it's a 95-minute reiteration of the obvious that manages simultaneously to offend and bore. [11 June 1993, p.24]

It manages to combine the least appealing qualities of several previous Hughes productions - the obnoxiousness of the central character in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," the tedium of the teen-age confessionals in "The Breakfast Club," the gimmicky plotting of "Home Alone." And it has nothing fresh to add in terms of casting, storyline or the kinds of comic insights about suburban life that sustain Hughes' best scripts. [30 March 1991, p.C5]

It’s all very bizarrely, pointlessly complicated.

The dialogue is so insipid, the jokes so sophomoric, one gets the feeling Saget called in a favor to the Olsen twins on a day the pair were feeling particularly naughty. [15 Jun 1998]

Screeching, screaming, bouncing around the galaxy. Insufferable. And seemingly interminable.

Cameos by Mel Brooks and Whoopi Goldberg add nothing, and there's not much of a storyline to stitch together the gags. [05 Aug 1994, p.E3]

With scenes of epic destruction uncorked with numbing frequency, the picture drags. It’s two hours and 10 minutes long and you feel every last second.

Director Renny Harlin and his writers, Robert King and Marc Norman, appear to have spent many hours watching bad pirate movies, and they seem determined to repeat every pieces-of-eight cliche. [22 Dec 1995, p.G8]

The plot proceeds at a punishing clip but there’s a tediousness to the proceedings, even at a rather tight 97 minutes, because no dramatic weight is given to anything that unfolds.

Imagine the worst costume epic imaginable. Imagine no more. It exists.

The jokes are labored and rarely clever, the narration is self-consciously cute and the pace, under director Charles Martin Smith, is that of the snail. "Boris and Natasha" should have been as fast, funny and clever as "SCTV" once was. Instead, "Boris and Natasha" looks more like a Saturday morning kiddie cartoon than a comedy show for grown-ups. [16 Apr 1992, p.E6]

A thriller that fails on every level, it doesn't even make you want to find out what happens next. [26 Apr 1991, p.20]

One doesn't expect much of Bosworth or Seagal, but Don Johnson and Mickey Rourke have, on occasion, been mistaken for actors. That becomes increasingly difficult to remember as this expensive, interminable vanity production waddles toward its predictable conclusion. [24 Aug 1991, p.C5]