Unfortunately the pacy humour of the first half soon dwindles to a weak climax, and Pryor hams shamelessly, yet again proving that he's best in serious parts or as a stand-up man. Enjoyable, nevertheless.

A wanton, playful film, belying the stated despair by its boiling energy.

Visual sensualities will have a feast, but you'll have to read Whitley Strieber's novel if you don't want to emerge with a badly scratched head.

Ultimately, though, it's an uneasy blend of horror and whimsy, with the allegory being hammered a little too hard for comfort. It's also marred by some dreadfully tacky special effects and set designs.

At once maudlin and doggedly sarcastic, the film gives you the uncomfortable sensation of being condescended to by an idiot; it is, transparently, a product of the advanced technology it purports to despise.

Both flap their eyelashes and flash their toothpaste smiles, but are insipid and boring as they go through the motions of nude swimming, clinging wet T-shirts, shared bubble baths and lyrical love scenes. Puerile dross which dares to speak with feeling of the value of sex while making such an obvious play for the soft porn market.

As senseless violence goes, this is very senseless and very violent. Norris is a Texas Ranger, Carradine an oily Senator smuggling weapons to 'Central American terrorists', but the storyline has more non sequiturs than bodies, which is saying something.

A bizarre, often hilarious melee of weird drugs, weird sex and off-the-wall camp.

However one rates the bosom as an erogenous zone, it takes the talents of a Russ Meyer to make it interesting for eighty minutes. Watching the unflagging, unfunny efforts of five callow youths to see the homecoming queen's breasts, one only wonders if ever in the field of endeavour so much has been done by so many for just two.

Race fans won't be disappointed, but the real bonus comes from a perfect performance of tough understatement from Bonnie Bedelia as the three-time winner. The wheel may be a flash chrome slot-mag, but the heart is gold.

Lightly likeable, but the kids at whom it's aimed would probably rather be leaping in the aisles to Duran Duran, while their parents would opt for a rerun of Rebel Without a Cause.

There is absolutely no feeling for the period, and the actors make no attempt to rise above the script's feeble idea of verbal sparring. But the Yugoslav locations are scenic, the aerial stunts are efficient, and there's an explosion every time interest starts to flag.

Mixing early-’80s nostalgia with mild social anthropology, the film successfully crystallises the optimism and vivacity of the early New York hip hop scene and suggests that film and TV portrayals of the Bronx as a savage and inhospitable hellhole were perhaps greatly misjudged.

For all its simplicity, this is bold, heartfelt filmmaking. A masterpiece.

Of course the film raises more questions than it comes near to answering, but its faults rather pale beside the epic nature of its theme, and Kingsley's performance in the central role is outstanding.

The show is strewn with throwaway sight gags absent from the stage version which, while mercifully never quite sliding into camp, serve to apply a much needed cattle prod to Messrs G & S. The sets are superb.

Local Hero, which concerns the frustrations of a Texas oilman's attempts to buy up an idyllic Scottish village, ranks as a lyrical anti-urban comedy in the great tradition of films like I Know Where I'm Going and Whisky Galore!; and its essential triumph is to prove that comedy can still contain a gentle, almost mystical, aspect without necessarily being old-fashioned.

The Entity doesn't emerge quite as one-dimensionally nasty as its synopsis suggests. The film's men are so uniformly creepy, and its heroine so strong and sympathetic, that apart from a couple of unpleasant moments the story often seems less like horror than feminist parable, especially when Hershey (giving a fine performance) is reduced to a laboratory object with her home recreated in the psychology department.

If Jaffe's previous production credits aren't sufficient warning that this is one for Sensitive Drama suckers, the opening shot's a giveaway.

Rosman's debut movie was a pretty fair show-reel promising, falsely it seems, more and better to come.

Farmer, as scripted here and played by Lange, unsurprisingly remains something of a cypher.

Henson, creator of the Muppets, has put all his energies into creating a spectacular range of live-action creatures who prance and gobble their way across the screen with an unprecedented conviction.

Admittedly this is a legal "Rocky, convincing rather than realistic, witty rather than analytical, but it amounts to a far more effective indictment of the US legal system than ...and justice for all, and is the first courtroom drama in years to recapture the brilliance of the form.

The script is sharply written, while Jewison is a lot more sensitive to the material than he was on that earlier Levinson-Curtin effort, And Justice For All. But though engaging and agreeable, the film is never wildly funny.

The tone is quick-witted and appealing, with some of the smartest dialogue this side of Billy Wilder, and a wonderfully sure-footed performance from Jessica Lange (as her/his girlfriend). But the film never comes within a thousand miles of confronting its own implications: Hoffman's female impersonation is strictly on the level of Dame Edna Everage, and the script's assumption that 'she' would wow female audiences is at best ridiculous, at worst crassly insulting to women.

The whole thing veers wildly in quality, and no Eastwood-hater should go within a mile of it; but few lovers of American cinema could fail to be moved by a venture conceived so recklessly against the spirit of its times.

Played straight, this could make some quite serious points about the predicament of the unemployed (Pryor as prostitute), but the film finds it easier to opt for cheap laughs.

Rather groovy little fable, based on Peter Beagle's fantasy about a unicorn's search for company.