TV Guide Magazine's Scores

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For 7,979 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 46% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 51% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 5.1 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 60
Highest review score: 100 Badlands
Lowest review score: 0 Terror Firmer
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,504 out of 7979
  2. Mixed: 3,561 out of 7979
  3. Negative: 914 out of 7979
7979 movie reviews
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    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Stöned Age
    Without sympathetic characters or laughs, THE STONED AGE has little to offer beyond a classic '70s soundtrack featuring Blue Oyster Cult, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Ted Nugent, and Foghat's "Slow Ride" (which was used over the closing crawl in the far more ambitious DAZED AND CONFUSED).
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cobb
    Tommy Lee Jones is superb in the title role, but writer-director Ron Shelton unwisely chose to structure the film as a two-character piece, thus placing undue attention on the lackluster character of Cobb's biographer, Al Stump.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Trapped in Paradise
    Though the premise has at least the potential to be funny, TRAPPED IN PARADISE is an indigestible blend of smart-ass TV sketch comedy and syrupy sentimentality.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle
    Director Alan Rudolph and producer Robert Altman combine forces to create a quiet, intelligent film about Dorothy Parker.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Junior
    Considering its queasy subject matter, Junior is surprisingly restrained, although it doesn't carry many laughs to full term.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Love and a .45
    Hemorrhaging enthusiasm, ruthlessly violent, and light-headed with its own hard-core grunge worldview, LOVE AND A .45 unmistakably positions director Carty Talkington among the many pretenders to Tarantino's throne.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Professional
    Luc Besson is a masterly director of stylish, thrilling, and humorous action set pieces, and this film's bravura opening and closing sequences are two of the year's best.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Swan Princess
    Of all the recent Disney wannabes, THE SWAN PRINCESS comes closest to capturing the ineffable magic of THE LITTLE MERMAID and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. With its scrupulous attention to background detail and buoyant song score, this animated delight is a children's film crafted with enough sophistication to weave a spell around cynical grown-ups.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Heavenly Creatures
    A disturbing, boldly conceived story.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles
    This darkly effective horror drama holds plenty of interest, even for those who find Anne Rice's gothic cult novels unreadable.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Santa Clause
    Nevertheless, The Santa Clause is a charming, if mild, fantasy, distinguished by a gentle directorial touch that strikes a deft balance between dramatic and fantastic elements.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Oleanna
    As a piece of theater, Oleanna's stylized dialogue and strict three-act schematic structure probably worked in the drama's favor; but on film, the techniques are jarring within the naturalistic settings. Mamet, who has written and directed three previous films, should have known better than to preserve the excessively theatrical aspects of his material.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Double Dragon
    While not as ponderous and overblown as STREET FIGHTER, another video game-based 1994 movie, DOUBLE DRAGON is depressingly lightweight, making constant and unnecessary concessions to youthful audiences at the expense of any real bite or impact.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Last Seduction
    A dark, expertly contrived display of paranoid nastiness; it's so gleefully mean that only the most tender-hearted viewer could resist going along for the ride.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Love Affair
    Beatty hired some superb talents to remake Love Affair, but many of them are dragged down by director Glenn Gordon Caron's velvety kitsch style.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Clerks
    Unlike his models, however, Smith hasn't demonstrated that his sensibility reaches much beyond bathroom humor and meaningless drift.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pulp Fiction
    Without its commitment to an idea of salvation, Pulp Fiction would be little more than a terrific parlor trick; with it, it's something far richer and more haunting.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Wes Craven's New Nightmare
    It should come as no surprise that Wes Craven's return to the horror series he created is the strongest of the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET sequels, but even his fans might not have expected the ironic depth and self-reflexivity he brings to this chapter.
  19. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
    Henkel's directing debut isn't incompetent: It's just derivative, pointless and tediously repetitive.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Dear Diary
    Charting a life in transit and barely sidestepping a tragic journey's end, CARO DIARIO proves that you never really know people until you travel with them.
  21. Ed Wood
    Delightful, off-the-wall, and ultimately moving.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    My Summer Story
    The sequel retains only vestiges of the charm and bizarre humor which made the original a surprise cult favorite.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The New Age
    Michael Tolkin's THE NEW AGE is something new, a comedy of horrors that's brittle, hypnotically hip, and so cool it almost freezes the audience out.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Quiz Show
    It's a blessedly old-fashioned, well-made and well-acted narrative.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Next Karate Kid
    Overlong and utterly predictable, The Next Karate Kid offers little excitement, even in its culminating fight sequence.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    A Good Man in Africa
    The film is brought down by stereotypical characters and a curiously dated view of Africa.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Arizona Dream
    Lewis is only slightly awful, and he and Depp have a nice rapport; Dunaway gives a particularly juicy performance; and Taylor is simply amazing, seemingly able to transform herself physically for every role she plays.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fresh
    Fresh sounds like another slice of low-life, a study of an intelligent but fatally disadvantaged ghetto child's inexorable descent into criminality. But if the situations are (at first) familiar, the characters aren't; they may look like the same old junkies and dealers and whores and gangsters, but first-time director Boaz Yakin invests all of them--particularly Fresh (Sean Nelson)--with a subtle, complex life that's both painful and exhilarating.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Shawshank Redemption
    A crowd-pleasing story that has little to do with the messy complexities of reality.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Killing Zoe
    Violent, kinetic, and occasionally clever, KILLING ZOE is no match for either RESERVOIR DOGS or PULP FICTION, but it's a zoned-out rollercoaster ride of the first order.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Natural Born Killers
    Wildly unconventional, corrosively satirical, savagely violent and vulgar, Natural Born Killers is more self-consciously radical (in form, if not necessarily in content) than any other major studio release in recent memory.
    • 11 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Police Academy: Mission to Moscow
    Since all these revisited series have run out of steam, this sorry sequel is only recommended for aging nostalgists.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    It's Pat: The Movie
    The opening half-hour, as Pat and former music video director Bernstein conspire to keep the secret while depicting the banal existence of this truly irritating character, is reasonably entertaining. The remainder of the film has some amusing moments, but the story goes nowhere, and if the film ran longer than its 80 minutes, it would have become too tedious to tolerate.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Color of Night
    [A] sleazy, generally embarrassing Hitchcock knock-off.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
    The script is spiked with cheeky, occasionally hilarious encounters, like the trio's stroll through a lazy Outback town in flamboyant space-age drag, or Bernadette's deliciously unprintable riposte to a hostile woman in a bar.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Airheads
    Airheads commits the cardinal sin of satire: it's not sure what it's making fun of.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Little Rascals
    An unsatisfactory feature treatment of beloved characters from the world of television.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Clear and Present Danger
    The storytelling is livelier and more engaging than previous adaptations of Clancy's turgid techno-thrillers.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Eat Drink Man Woman
    A remarkably assured comedy-drama of domestic life in Taiwan, Ang Lee's EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN explores how families use meals and other rituals to appease their hunger for love in stressful times.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    It Could Happen to You
    Entertaining as it sometimes is, IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU has such a puppy-dog determination to be liked that you want to get it off your lap.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    True Lies
    On the surface, True Lies is an affectionate homage to James Bond movies, ratcheted up to meet the action/adventure expectations of today's audiences.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Spanking the Monkey
    Unlike so many other recent youth-oriented independent efforts, it takes on difficult, even impossible, issues with genuinely astonishing results.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Angels in the Outfield
    This remake of the 1951 family fantasy is strictly minor league, struggling mightily to balance heartwarming sentiment with sporty sight gags, yet never getting beyond second base.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Forrest Gump
    Clearly a great event, Forrest Gump is not, however, a great film. It has the form of an epic without real depth or resonance; the trappings of satire without a coherent attitude; and the semblance of historical revisionism without a critical sensibility.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Shadow
    THE SHADOW is the worst kind of homage, recreating childhood enthusiasms in a manner so clunky and unsophisticated that it's actively off-putting, while entirely missing their essence.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    That's Entertainment! III
    The documentary is undeniably entertaining, but it suffers from an uneven selection of clips, sloppy historical research, and, ultimately, an overabundance of riches.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Little Big League
    For once in a kids' sports picture, the child actors don't grate or get sticky, and the adults aren't crotch-grabbing, swaggering, overgrown delinquents. More important, Little Big League makes some very nice emotional points along the way to a satisfying end, suggesting that America's rocky romance with baseball is alive and well.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Wyatt Earp
    Most damaging to the film, however, is Costner's dull, listless performance as Earp. He simply lacks the gravity and stature necessary to handle the mythic baggage of this emblematic American role.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Getting Even with Dad
    A smug comedy about a precocious child who teaches his deadbeat dad about the true meaning of family, GETTING EVEN WITH DAD is only occasionally funny and commits every sin in the sitcom lexicon.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Lion King
    The film has some of Disney's most spectacular animation yet -- particularly in the wildebeest stampede -- and strong vocal performances, especially by skilled Broadway comedian Nathan Lane. However, it suffers from a curiously undeveloped story line.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Speed
    Acclaimed cinematographer Jan De Bont's directing debut is a mindless, implausible, and thoroughly gripping adventure movie.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly's Gold
    This amiable comedy has laughs, but can't compete with the warmth and charm of the original.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Renaissance Man
    Renaissance Man is an exceptionally unoriginal comedy with a heart-tugging streak as big as Fort Bragg, but it succeeds perfectly well on its own unambitious terms.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Fear of a Black Hat
    Borrowing intelligently from This Is Spinal Tap, writer-director-actor Rusty Cundieff has crafted a mock music documentary that is as irreverent, hilarious, and tough-minded as its model.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The Flintstones
    Rarely has more high-powered movie technology been deployed to achieve such frivolous ends. Kids seem to love it, while sophisticated viewers may find it enchanting, appalling, or both.
    • 16 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Beverly Hills Cop III
    Beverly Hills Cop III is a flat-out action comedy in which the action is unimpressive and the comedy so mild it seldom hits the mark; for a series only into its third installment, Beverly Hills Cop III is shockingly toothless.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Little Buddha
    Although the search for enlightenment may not have much in the way of high-concept appeal, the film should satisfy adventurous moviegoers as well as the large number of adults already intrigued by eastern religions. Children with open minds will also find much pleasure in the characters of the children and the kindly old monk.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
    No one seems to be having any fun, including the normally masterful Van Sant, whose direction is unstructured, confusing, and lackadaisical.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Maverick
    Cynical and bloated, Maverick is a comic western whose high-powered cast does very little but looks damned fine doing it. Even fans of the vintage TV show may find it trying.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Crooklyn
    While Lee fails to impose sufficient structure on his material, expertly drawn performances help vividly to evoke the family and street life of an era untroubled by crack or drive-by shootings.
  61. Being Human
    Bill Forsyth's films are always idiosyncratic, but Being Human is so steeped in the director's interior dialogue with himself as to be incomprehensible to anyone who doesn't happen to be Bill Forsyth
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead
    This entry has more overt humor than the other PHANTASMs, and some of it strays too far on the goofy side, but Coscarelli keeps the key plot and its attendant horrors anchored in commendable seriousness.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    3 Ninjas Kick Back
    You don't have to be aligned with the forces of evil to despise this infantile, obnoxious sequel to 1992's surprisingly enjoyable 3 NINJAS.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dream Lover
    Kazan is particularly good at balancing the incongruously sunny surface of the Reardons' privileged lives and the growing sense of darkness seeping out from every unsealed corner of what is apparently a picture-book existence.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Favor
    Ultimately, aside from the valiant efforts of pros like Elizabeth McGovern and the effortless Bill Pullman, The Favor is virtually indistinguishable from recent direct-to-video exploitation comedies
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    PCU
    A spoof of "political correctness" on campus, PCU is a sanitized rip-off of NATIONAL LAMPOON'S ANIMAL HOUSE that's neither smart enough to qualify as satire nor offensive enough to entertain.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Chasers
    Dennis Hopper's knockabout direction makes CHASERS an engaging action farce; his intelligence and sensitivity make this modest military comedy more memorable than most.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Surviving the Game
    Ernest Dickerson, formerly Spike Lee's cinematographer, continues to show promise in the director's seat with this solidly made, well-acted survival thriller that is unfortunately limited by its overworked premise.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Serial Mom
    John Waters's film about a suburban mom turned serial killer lacks the bite it would need to be subversive, despite a few moments of vintage Waters tastelessness.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Red Rock West
    Red Rock West is the tale of a hapless drifter caught in a web of corruption in a remote western town. It offers suspense, wit, genuine surprises, and a trio of top-notch performances.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Cronos
    An offbeat and in some ways, more daring variation on vampirism
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult
    Of the Naked Gun films, 33 1/3 is the most successful in capturing the breakneck genre parody that marked the short-lived but critically acclaimed Police Squad TV series (which won Nielsen his only Emmy). Taking broad pot shots at everything from Thelma & Louise to The Crying Game, and culminating with a breathless swipe at the sacred cow of the movie industry, the Academy Awards.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Paper
    Director Ron Howard attempts the Great American Newspaper Picture and mostly pulls it off. The film's greatest weakness is that he and screenwriters David and Stephen Koepp (the latter a journalist himself) love those scrappy newshounds too much; THE PAPER doesn't even try for the appropriately acid bite of, say, any version of THE FRONT PAGE.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Bitter Moon
    BITTER MOON is entertaining, but in the manner of ghastly car crashes and legendary theatrical disasters; you can't take your eyes off it, but you often want to.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Guarding Tess
    In its small way, however, it succeeds, thanks to director Hugh Wilson's light touch and the chemistry between leads Shirley MacLaine and Nicolas Cage.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Hudsucker Proxy
    A lavish parody of/homage to Hollywood big business comedies, The Hudsucker Proxy is gorgeous but lifeless, a very small joke writ very large by the talented but perversely insular Coen brothers.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Sirens
    SIRENS is a rare, genuinely erotic film that's a pleasure to watch even when its characters are fully clothed.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Ref
    If THE REF lived up to its early scenes, it would be a very funny movie indeed, but it soon sinks into a blandly commercial rut that slowly drains away what bitter energy it has.
  79. Four Weddings and a Funeral
    With grace and cleverness, mixing romance and comedy in a genuinely delightful way.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    What's Eating Gilbert Grape
    The film is heavy on character and atmosphere and light on action, though what does happen is so bizarre as to verge on the ridiculous.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sugar Hill
    Intended as more than a simple genre flick, SUGAR HILL aspires to something like classical tragedy, but it's weighed down by its sense of self-importance.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Blue Chips
    A good concept fails to become a good movie in this predictable tale of corruption in college basketball, featuring the ubiquitous superstar and corporate pitchman Shaquille O'Neal.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Reality Bites
    In fact, it's often genuinely funny--but it's still an establishment picture pretending it's not.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    On Deadly Ground
    Loud, stupid and clumsy.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Getaway
    Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger step into the roles originally played by Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw, but their attempts to inject steamy romance into the action are undermined by indifferent direction.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
    Ace Ventura: Pet Detective marks the ascendance of a new star in film farce, as Jim Carrey elevates this stupid, suprisingly shoddy picture into the comedy stratosphere, mainly thanks to his Gumby-like ability to contort his face and body in the most amazing ways.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    My Father the Hero
    Its real star is the picturesque tropical scenery.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Romeo Is Bleeding
    Mona Demarkov may not be a convincing woman, but she's an awe-inspiring embodiment of the female principle at its most devouring, Medusa, Kali, and praying mantis all rolled into one frilly, garter-wrapped package.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Scent of Green Papaya
    As an evocation of things past, THE SCENT OF GREEN PAPAYA is a remarkable and modestly enchanting film.
    • 10 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Car 54, Where Are You?
    CAR 54, WHERE ARE YOU? adds nothing to the police comedy genre that another POLICE ACADEMY couldn't provide.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Death Wish V: The Face of Death
    Although this entry is competently directed, the series seems to have lost the zip and flashes of wit that made the first Death Wish so memorably repellent.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Body Snatchers
    Although Body Snatchers is a competent genre piece with Freudian fillips, there's little there to justify another go-round for what is by now very familiar material.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Iron Will
    So pleased is this film with its own sanctimony that children forced to sit through it may end up joining gangs, defacing the walls at Bible school, and questioning their parents' sincerity.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cabin Boy
    Fans of unashamedly low-brow comedies may well be amused by the eccentricities of Cabin Boy, but more conventional viewers should probably beware.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The War Room
    Veteran documentarians D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus make fine use of traditional verite techniques--hand-held cameras, extended long takes--to create a compelling, dramatic portrait that should appeal to anyone with even the slightest interest in the political process.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    In the Name of the Father
    Though the facts have been manipulated in the interests of drama--Gerry and Giuseppe were never imprisoned together, etc.--this has been done in a brave and responsible way, shedding light on an important episode in recent history.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Ghost in the Machine
    The special effects are good, with some nifty computer-generated animation, but they're an empty, ineffective crutch on which to support an entire film--and besides, better visuals had already appeared in THE LAWNMOWER MAN.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Grumpy Old Men
    All things considered, Grumpy Old Men might have fared better re-worked as a domestic drama that took full advantage of its talented cast, with the lame funnybone attempts left, like the ubiquitous dead fish, buried in the backseat.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tombstone
    Though apparently conceived as a revisionist Western, Tombstone falls prey to the cliches of the genre, and its last third is a muddle.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
    There is much to admire here. A surreal battle between Batman and the Joker amid skyscrapers and elevated trains in a miniaturized Gotham City stands out, as does an extended sequence in which our hero is hunted by police SWAT teams. The most impressive piece of animation is the opening credit sequence: a stunning two-minute, computer-generated 3D flight through Gotham City. This absorbing adventure should resonate with those who take the notion of heroism seriously--especially adolescent boys.
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