Paula Patton, playing a half-orc, half-human female warrior, is the most sympathetic character and actually gives something approaching a fully fledged performance, but for the rest of it … ugliness as far as the eye can see.

What a pestilential little picture is Fist Fight.

It's neither scary nor original. In fact, it's something of a chore to sit through. [27 Oct 1990, p.C3]

Gringo has no spark, no fizz. Its scenes sag like overstretched taffy. Flavorless taffy.

There is absolutely nothing new under the many suns in Besson’s universe. This is a voyage not worth taking.

The director, Jon Turtletaub, completely misses the character-driven appeal of the Karate Kid series, and there's no Macauley Culkin in this cast. The movie is saddled with a junky visual style, haphazard editing and occasional out-of-focus shots. Much of it looks like very bad television, although the toilet jokes and a running gag about laxatives and instant diarrhea may be a little raw for the Disney Channel.

Steven Seagal should go into a seven-year coma more often. It suits his acting ability. A coma is what happens to him in Hard To Kill, his latest hard-to-swallow and dull-to-sit-through formula vigilante movie. [10 Feb 1990, p.C7]

The first creature feature of the new decade is here, and boy is it dumb.

The film is ponderous, the performances mostly subdued.

All things considered, this pitifully plotted Belgian-French production represents the nadir of animated movies released so far this year, a farrago of frantic action and mindless cacophony.

Blank Check will get a few big laughs from kids, but that doesn't stop this vapid, morally bankrupt and wretchedly written Disney comedy from being genuinely disgusting. [11 Feb 1994, p.D28]

As skiing comedies go, this one is no easier to endure than Hot Dog - The Movie or Snowball Express. Maslansky instructed his writers to come up with a script to go along with the title he'd dreamed up, and every character, comic twist and plot development seems tortuously manufactured and insincere. [10 Feb 1990, p.C7]

With his inspiration trapped in a time warp two decades old, Brooks' humor reminds you of the annoying uncle who would repeat ancient jokes at family gatherings. You smile politely, but you wish he'd just go away. [28 July 1993, p.E5]

The Glimmer Man is just as foolish and formulaic as it sounds. [05 Oct 1996, p.C3]

One might have hoped for some semblance of vitality and ingenuity in this, Jason's ninth and final solo killing spree, but it's a retread to its rotten core. [14 Aug 1993, p.C3]

The year is still young, but it's not likely to yield a more profoundly vacuous movie than Wild Orchid. [28 Apr 1990, p.C5]

This isn't a B-movie, a C-movie or even a Z-movie. In fact, there isn't a letter far enough down in the alphabet to cover Popcorn. [01 Feb 1991, p.22]

The Phoenix Incident is an indigestible mess.

Prince's onstage performances are less fun than they've ever been. He's smitten with the idea of himself as a holier-than-thou rock icon. Day recycles his two jokes from Purple Rain - combing his hair and looking in the mirror - while ogling every chick in sight. This is stale stuff.

Lambert relies so much on gore and mean-spiritedness that the actors can't help looking glum; they're clearly being ignored by a director who seems to have lost touch with all the human elements in the story. The movie is ultimately as lifeless as most of its characters end up being. [28 Aug 1992, p.28]

A colossal waste of time and the moviegoer’s dollars. That’s the bottom line of Daddy’s Home 2.

Despite claims to the contrary, Van Peebles has no apparent desire to accurately reflect history. Instead, he caters, with an ugly lack of integrity, to a twisted perception of "popular taste," spinning an ego-trip that steals a numbing variety of Western cliches while betraying them with contemporary flavoring. [14 May 1993, p.20]

Director Corin Hardy lards on the frights so relentlessly that the moments don’t build to any sort of sustained narrative momentum.

The only thing original in Dr. Giggles - about a psychotic doctor (Larry Drake) who escapes a mental institution to resume his belovedly departed father's explicitly unhealthy rampage of serial killings - is the freakish instruments that the pun-filled physician totes around in his bag of dirty tricks.

xXx: Return of Xander Cage is the movie equivalent of cotton candy: all empty calories. Excessive consumption of this product is likely to give a body the queasies.

No child should be exposed to this.

If ever there was a movie that should never have been made, Bad Santa 2 is that movie. It’s vile, like something written by a pen dipped in bile.

The best thing about The Greasy Strangler: that title. The worst thing about The Greasy Strangler: everything that follows that title.