To be fair, this is hardly the worst gross-out comedy ever made; it's nowhere as misogynistic as, say, "Tomcats," and in the end, it probably won't leave you in a state of utter nihilistic despair.

There's so much less to the film than the novel: Nicholas Meyer's screenplay fails to capture the intricate subtleties of its subject and replaces Roth's moral scope with a moralizing tone.

It's hard to dislike so genial a picture about guys in gowns (although only Leguizamo would pass muster at a drag ball: Swayze seems to be doing a third-rate impression of Joan Crawford, while Snipes just comes off as a man in a dress); still, it's basically an elaborate denial of homophobia -- which is no help to anybody in a country where people get killed for cross-dressing.

He (Allen) seems to have forgotten that comedy is all about timing, letting individual scenes meander -- often to accommodate his own stammering monologues -- and giving viewers far too much downtime in which to consider the staleness of many of the film's gags.

Intermittently snappy and featuring slicker animation than its TV incarnation, this popular children's cartoon may satisfy its youngest fans, but it'll be a big snoozefest for the rest of the family.

You may give up on Ian Iqbal Rashid's feature debut long before things get interesting, courtesy of a distracting conceit that shatters whatever spell the hackneyed premise might cast.

This deliberately provocative story of deception and sexuality packs a punch that's undermined by the director's indulgence.

This unsubtle parody probably worked better on stage; its candy-colored artifice looks more than a little strained on film, and the actors are all trying really hard to be camp.

Ledger swirls his cassock glamorously, while Weller is clearly concealing cloven hoofs beneath his; Addy plays the fool and the one-note Sossamon is thoroughly annoying, as fey as Meg Tilly but without Tilly's redeeming faraway air.

Fatuous twaddle posing as a REALLY DEEP consideration of what's wrong with our crazy, mixed-up world, Matthew Ryan Hoge's slick but deeply dumb film unfolds in a picture-perfect suburb of Anywheresville, USA.

JAMAICA INN had many interesting incidents associated with it. Unfortunately, very little of that interest reached the screen.

The story's a bore; its arrhythmic stutter of humor and drama, tension and calm never builds into any coherent emotional arc.

For the terminally hip and/or terminally adolescent.

The real problem with Taking Care of Business is that it doesn't even get much mileage out of what it does have going for it. Grodin and Belushi have both done their best work in buddy-buddy pairings (Midnight Run and Red Heat, respectively), but while the two demonstrate some comedy chemistry here, they aren't brought together onscreen until the film is virtually over.

Not since Larry Clark's "Kids" (1995) has the threat of HIV infection been used so gratuitously, driving a narrative that ultimately has nothing to do with the AIDS crisis.

Bart the Bear shows more versatility in his gender-bending role than Lillard, who trots out his old, tired slacker shtick.

This broad, coarse farce is otherwise as insubstantial a piece of work as you could possibly imagine; in fact, a light breeze could blow it away.

Labored and dispiriting.

The not-so-incredible story of two girls in love.

The most impressive thing about it is that the actors manage to sound so earnest while mouthing the most shameless cliches imaginable.

This dogged journey of self-delusion is interrupted periodically by snippets of footage...that promise a dark revelation that would give an edge to the otherwise tedious goings-on but, sadly, never materializes.

This disappointing sequel to last year's horror sleeper gets trapped in the clichés it's trying to send up.

This feeble attempt to revive the characters from the popular TV series "Get Smart" copies the show, but without the sharp humor that made it so popular.

Ralston gets solid performances out of his cast, and the film has a surprisingly polished look. But in the end, there isn't much to it.

None of this is funny, the surreal touches are ridiculous and the final fantasy sequence, in which the nameless ghosts of the murdered Wiener family smile on Josef, is simply nauseating.

Despite Chantel's promise that she's letting us in on the "real deal," JUST ANOTHER GIRL ON THE I.R.T. is just another teenage pregnancy melodrama: remove the swearing and the hip-hop soundtrack and it would make a fine after-school special, complete with a smart yet sexually irresponsible teenager, a remarkably successful premature birth, and an uplifting ending in which the young mother goes to night school to finish her high school diploma.

Without an assured character at its center, the movie quickly collapses in a heap of moldy clichés and contrived (and not especially funny) situations.

An old-fashioned dinosaur opera, in the worst sense of the term. An obviously formulaic effort, designed more as a cash machine than a piece of cinema.

The kind of film only a mother could really love.

Despite the participation of Moonstruck screenwriter John Patrick Shanley, a fine cast, and director Pat O'Connor, The January Man is a disappointing movie that plays like something that had languished at the bottom of Shanley's desk drawer since his student days.

Overall, the film is occasionally interesting but essentially unpersuasive, a footnote to a still evolving story.

There's no getting past the shockingly poorly dubbed voice work of the English speaking cast; Meyer's voice is particularly shrill and grating.

Would be too long even if it were twice as funny. And that about sums up the movie.

Each new installment has become like a visit with old friends who are often annoying and frequently boring, but are missed in some strange way when they're not around.

A clumsy, calculated attempt at warm-hearted, populist entertainment.

Shot through the bars of a barbed-wire topped cage and staged to a pounding soundtrack, the fight is quite a spectacle, but it's ultimately an empty one.

Not much acting is on display, the dialog is simplistic, the story is superficial, and the direction is faceless, but true fans won't care. Others have been warned.

If your idea of a good time at the movies is watching two grown men go at it with fists and shivs and nasty wilderness booby-traps, then you're in luck.

Improbable as are all the Dirty Harry films, The Enforcer is crammed with action and spilling over with violence. The photography is fine, but the gore is as repugnant as Daly's overacting.

A slow-moving, dramatically slack film.

The occasional amusing one-liner can't compensate for the broad caricatures and awkwardly structured story.

Turturro's sweaty, lumpen Cain is a profoundly disagreeable guide down the rabbit hole of hallucinatory paranoia.

Demonstrating just how different literature and filmmaking can be, filmmaker-turned-writer-turned filmmaker Dai Sijie botches an adaptation of his own best-selling short novel.

Screenwriters Maibaum and Mankiewicz attempted to downplay the gadgetry this time around, but their attempts at adding more humor hinder plot development. The film's pace lags until the climactic finale.

A rapper doesn't make the story fresh.

It's not nearly as funny as "The Waterboy" and has little of "The Wedding Singer's" goofy charm, but die-hard Adam Sandler fans -- whose numbers are legion -- will find plenty to laugh at.

Witless comedy.

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).

The mere sight of strapping men in micro-mini skirts suffering the indignities of thong underwear, catcalls and pushy pick-up artists is good for a couple of lowbrow laughs, but they're buried pretty deep in dreck.

The story is moving, and the animation includes some powerful images, although some of the early scenes depicting the suffering of the mice in Russia may be too frightening for younger viewers.

Ridiculous haircuts and clothes can't compensate for the absence of real characters, which consigns much of the cast to cameo-like performances.

Though Dylan shuffles through the dramatic sequences like a dessicated mummy, the music sequences are strikingly vibrant -- he's never looked worse or sounded better.

Kudos to writer-director Eric Schaeffer for doing a sexually graphic romantic comedy about fiftysomethings without being patronizing or cutesy. With both heart and guts, he honestly depicts how that moony-eyed, falling-in-love rush of endorphins is the same at 55 as it is at 15.

Mediocre documentary squanders a terrific subject.

The film delivers a few slick thrills before beaching itself on an ending that would be chilling if its depiction of unimaginable horror's lingering legacy weren't so muddled.

A clear, unbiased documentary examining of the UNSCOM debacle would benefit anyone attempting to make sense of the dire situation. This, unfortunately, is not that documentary.

It careens from coarse comedy to smart-ass stylization to vicious violence without ever becoming convincing on any level.

Although SWAMP THING was definitely aimed at a different audience than THE HILLS HAVE EYES, Craven fails to capture the gothic quality of its comic book inspiration--which had some genuinely frightening and grotesque moments. Instead, the whole thing is merely silly and not much fun.

While Aiken couldn't be cuter or more-well suited for his earnest role, the script is utterly predictable and often falls into the saccharine trap. The pooches add a little life to this otherwise lackluster effort.

Exceedingly well-shot (by Jack Cardiff) action film that will evaporate from the memory shortly after the end credits roll.

Director Forest Whitaker, who appears to have been typed as a female-friendly director in the wake of "Waitinh to Exhale's" runaway success, drags out the already painfully slow proceedings with syrupy dissolves, slo-mo sequences and redundant flashbacks, underscoring it all with an intrusively obvious country soundtrack that matches lyrics to emotions with cringe-inducing exactness.

Episode number five of the APES series, is the last and least of the bunch, with a juvenile script and parsimonious production values more befitting the various APES merchandising tie-ins (including toys, comic books, and action figures) than the fourth sequel to one of the finest science-fiction films in history.

The music is surprisingly good and there's a skateboarding bulldog that you've just gotta see to believe.

Episodic, pretentious, and more than a little silly.

It's merely glum when it should be bracingly grim.

To make the package look fresh, there's a pile of complications.

Directed by Steve Miner, who got his start working on the Friday the 13th films, Warlock aspires to more than many genre movies, though it actually achieves very little.

Unfortunately, it only hints at the real fire the purple one brings to his shows.

The script quickly runs out of gas thanks to the one-joke story line and Blake's uninspired direction.

Adults -- even the die-hard dog lovers -- will just have to resign themselves to being bored silly whenever the cartoonish Cruella is absent from the screen.

The filmmakers seem to have meant to offer up a spiritual message about community and faith, but it's muddled and hard to find with romance, comedy and phenomenal gospel performances all fighting for the spotlight.

A pastel-pretty and oh-so-dull coming of age tale.

Thoroughly preposterous on every level.

Sprawling, gooey and profoundly juvenile, this derivative thriller piles on the cheese: aliens, male bonding, psychoanalytic gobbledygook, childhood secrets, military black ops, gross-out special effects, explosions, bodily function humor and a retarded boy with special powers.

As the Bond series moves deeper into the 1970s, the emphasis moves away from the inventive scripts that made the best Sean Connery films fine examples of the spy genre and toward the kind of feats of daring and visual spectacle that abound in The Spy Who Loved Me.

The sequences are handsomely designed, but frankly, you might as well be watching someone play a video game.

Though more coherent than the disastrous Hellraiser: Bloodline, this psychological thriller with demons gets bogged down in too many "Is it real or just a nightmare?" sequences, and Sheffer's typically wooden performance as Joe makes it hard to sympathize with his travails.

Whaley's determination to immerse you in sheer, unrelenting wretchedness is exhausting.

A straight-faced throwback to the glory days of mutant wildlife on the rampage.

Ultimately Stokes remains true to his music video roots and relies on the film's flashy voltage dance scenes and frenetic pacing to keep viewers' attention from wandering.

The superficially cheery “Boogie Nights” is infinitely scarier.

A feeble attempt at comedy in the Damon Runyon mold (although based on a Louis Bromfield opus), this is a hit-and-miss affair with some offbeat casting.

A cheesy romance tricked up in cheap sanctimony.

While the film's erotic symbolism is surprisingly obvious -- all those trains and tunnels! -- it's otherwise bafflingly vague.

While there is some imagination behind the destruction of the title abode, the film quickly grows into a tired repetition of one long joke.

In the end it's the same old blood pudding.

The limp thriller plot Deery constructs to frame his theological inquiries is both artificial and not very interesting, a lethal combination.

A genuine oddity, the film is exceedingly well shot by cinematographer Alfred Taylor and has a creepy PSYCHO-like feel about it as well as some nightmarish surrealism.

Unless you grew up in an Italian-American neighborhood like the one featured in this contrived but pleasant enough comedy, you might not know that "chooch" is slang for jackass, a likeable loser who can't help but screw up.

A meandering mess of violence and aging stars who've seen much better days, all buoyed up by an in-your-face soundtrack that never lets up.

Director Blake Edwards takes a sitcom sketch and blows it up into a witless feature film that relies on pratfalls and slapstick.

Utterly predictable, noisy and stupid.

There's less than meets the eye in this tricky psychological thriller, one of a long line of mess-with-your-head brain ticklers in which all is not as it seems.

A likeable, if somewhat whitebread, farce in the Woody Allen mode about love in the big city.

The sequel retains only vestiges of the charm and bizarre humor which made the original a surprise cult favorite.

Production-designed within an inch of its life, this remake's best conceit is the casting of Crispin Glover as its socially maladroit rat fancier.

A lifelong baseball enthusiast, director and co-producer Mike Tollin -- persuaded many real-life baseball figures to make cameo appearances.

So formulaic it starts to fade from memory before the last punch is thrown.