The film's last 20 minutes devolve into a tedious slog through the kind of pointless, predictable running and screaming that give horror movies a bad name.

The verdict: More thoughtful than Harlin's version, but hardly the invigorating mix of shocks and metaphysical horror needed to revitalize the Exorcist franchise.

This strictly paint-by-numbers effort is further sabotaged by the grating, so-called punk rock performances--actually heavy metal--that pad out the running time.

Just like many real-life holiday get-togethers with the family, this comedy starts out pleasantly enough but degenerates into awkwardness and furtive watch-checking to see how much longer you have to suffer before you can leave.

This forced comedy feels too long, although John Candy's unique manner sometimes overcomes Carl Reiner's flat direction.

Good-natured but overstuffed sequel.

Too bad the film isn't nearly as elastic as the miraculous green goo: It can barely contain all the flubber-induced chaos and still make sense, but the filmmakers don't quit till they've run out of funny things for flubber to do.

The result isn't very funny: There are clever bits, sure, but they're embedded in long, painfully obvious sequences built around one-shot gags.

Plagued by cliched characters, ridiculous situations, and a bombastic John williams score, SPACECAMP is just not a very good movie. All the stock shuttle footage or good looking special effects proffered can't disguise its tired treatment of well-worn ideas. SPACECAMP is just a conglomeration of overworked notions, coupled with a wholly unmemorable ensemble.

Dave Collard's preposterous script relies heavily on fortuitous coincidence... and thoroughly stupid behavior.

The story is treacly sweet, told in a simplistic animation style that has lamentably become an industry standard. Kids will enjoy the events, however, and parents might be mildly amused by the cast of famous voices. But at close to an hour and a half, MY LITTLE PONY pushes the limits of a younger child's attention span.

The first-act crash is admittedly spectacular and the ending adequately suspenseful, but what comes between is disappointingly routine and completely lacks the kind character complexity that made the original a thrill every step of the way.

Bloodsport is strictly for martial arts buffs; little is offered here in the way of plot, dialog, or acting.

The big surprise is so obvious that it makes the deliberate pacing seem painfully slow, and Kidman's prissy accent and tight-lipped performance are more than a little grating.

Directed by John Glen (For Your Eyes Only), this movie has all the standard Bond components--beautiful women, picturesque locales, thrilling chases--but the time-tested formula is more than a little threadbare here. Moreover, Walken doesn't have the lines, the strength, the presence, or the dastardliness required to be a top-notch Bond adversary.

Largely vapid, borderline homophobic, and surprisingly treacly.

Goofy and surprisingly slow-moving.

The story and pacing of this offbeat comedy wear thin after the first 20 minutes.

There's nothing blatantly wrong with it (except perhaps the red-assed baboon ex machina), but it's 100% shock-free and coasts to a formulaic conclusion.

John Cleese supplies the voice of George's brainy and terrifically tolerant sidekick, a very unconvincing animatronic gorilla named Ape, but even he can't raise the level of humor above the harmlessly goofy.

Director James Bridges fails to instill much life into a narrative peopled with vapid characters.

Some good lines notwithstanding, this is a real disappointment.

The real problem with the new film, however, is a certain lack of chemistry between the leads; Wilson is game, as always, but his part is seriously underwritten, and while Murphy raises trash talking to the level of a fine art, he seems to be operating in another movie altogether.

This could have been a sweet, charming little romantic comedy, but it is ruined by excessive vulgarity and gratuitous nudity.

Ostensibly an "adult comedy" about serious things, screenwriter Richard LaGravenese's disjointed directing debut rings profoundly false, a story about class distinctions and suffering conceived and executed in privilege.

Frantically busy, largely laugh-free.

The last of seven "Road to" pictures and an awkward attempt at re-creating the fun of the previous films, this one has a few funny moments, but it's so filled with inside jokes that a lot of it will be lost on anyone who hasn't seen the other six movies in the series.

As with many Hollywood films before it, TRUE COLORS is a film with no discernable reason for existence, apart from the sheer joy of the filmmaking process itself. Far from being its own reward, however, the film is a dull, unreasonable cypher.

The film benefits from an appealing cast, though neither Slater, Tomei, nor Perez is called on to stretch very far. Though actor-turned-director Tony Bill has proved himself adept at character-driven dramas like MY BODYGUARD, the material he's working with here is simply not up to scratch.

Every aspect of WILLOW seems as if it were written in stone before a shot was filmed. The plot grinds on inescapably to its predictable climax, with the viewer fully aware of what awaits long before the events unfold.

This tale has been told and retold; the races and rackets change, but the song remains the same.

Director Abrahams, working on his own for the first time, has some problems with pacing and with sustaining an essentially one-joke premise that never arrives at its big payoff.

The Connery-Bardot pairing that Shalako offers simply can't pump much life into this otherwise typical big-budget western set in 19th-century New Mexico.

A minor disaster. Director Michael Mann presents a fantastic-looking movie, filled with great production values and lush cinematography. Unfortunately, these are combined with a totally incoherent narrative, punctuated by incredibly inept performances from usually fine actors.

Though the film springs an okay twist at the very end, there's a good chance you won't be awake to see it.

She's Having a Baby could have been a fascinating and funny look at the conflict between marriage and personal ambition had its writer-director probed more deeply into the subject. Hughes instead falls back on the easy jokes, hip music, and superficial character studies that have obscured the basic viability of all his work.

Children may delight in some of DROP DEAD FRED's fanciful effects sequences, but they're likely to be bored by Elizabeth's grown-up problems. And adults may identify with its self-help message, but the rest is squirm-inducing.

While in her earlier movies Jennifer Love Hewitt made an impression by spilling out of her tops, in this one she spills out of her clothes at both ends. This could, if one were feeling charitable, be construed as a broadening of her range.

Tepid action picture that fails to live up to its interesting premise.

The heavy-handed score by notoriously heavy-handed James Horner is often the only indication that there's supposed to be a point to this showcase for Gooding's relentlessly adorable mugging.

Gotcha is a hopelessly shallow film, serving up a good deal of hokum in the ridiculous plot. It's a contrived idea to start with, and the script goes through predictable twist after twist until the inevitable conclusion.

Mimics the kind of comedy that doesn't date particularly well to begin with.

Obviously, gags rather than plot are central to a movie like LOADED WEAPON, but even so, neither the writing nor the acting is strong enough here. Estevez and Jackson are adequate as deadpan actors who remain oblivious to the chaos around them, but they lack the super-straight persona that makes Leslie Nielsen so effective as a dimwitted cop in the NAKED GUN movies. Often the jokes seem to barely squeak over their heads when they should fly.

Shot in shades of steely gray and streaked with near-constant rain, this gloomy revenge thriller is a sadistic cartoon.

This is a psychological study that rejects psychology, an erotic drama of surpassing coldness, and a story of amour fou in which the madness is calculated and the love frozen.

Gordon makes the mistake of preserving Bradfield's highly idiosyncratic dialogue -- dazzling on the page, deadly in any actor's mouths -- and the otherwise talented Lloyd is miscast.

It's painfully corny and surprisingly vulgar, but this embarrassing attempt at a father-son heart-warmer just happens to feature two Hollywood legends, and they're both in terrific form.

The generally competent B-list actors are hobbled by cliché-ridden dialogue but do their best to react in remotely plausible ways each time the script nails them with some new melodramatic contrivance.

A couple of good jokes and a superior performance by Martin are all that distinguish this feeble attempt at capturing the same audience who loved Newman in BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID. Rosenberg's direction is pedestrian.

A genial and instantly forgettable sports comedy.

There are some amusing moments early in the film, as Lattanzi's friends try to teach him about sex as only teenaged boys can.

Weber's losers really are losers -- envious, spiteful, complacent, mean-spirited and ultimately boring malcontents pickled in their own poison, and they drag his film down with them.

In a year that saw everyone from Burt Reynolds to Michael J. Fox to Schwarzenegger himself handcuffed to six-year-old sidekicks in high-concept cartoons, one could do worse than to exploit the image of a professional wrestler forced to play mom. That said, Mr. Nanny is of little interest to any audience other than pre-teens of all ages.

The material is familiar, and doesn't have anything new to say about the ways men and women wound each other.

An underdeveloped script, anemic direction and pacing, uninspired production design, and miscasting of the two lead roles undermine some intriguing ideas and characters in Millennium. Despite its many deficiencies, however, this sci-fi brain teaser with love story elements is not entirely without interest.

Be warned: The end credits contain a particularly nauseating image you'll wish you could delete from memory.

Director Rowdy Herrington lives up to his name: once he's seen to it that all the conventions of the western are in place, he presents an all-out brawl on the average of about every 12 minutes or so, and the battles quickly grow tiresome. Swayze is up to a part that requires him merely to show his muscles and dexterity, but Gazzara is trapped in his hopelessly evil caricature, leaving Sam Elliott (in a too-limited role) to provide the film's only real charm.

Douglas's Chief Executive is no vote-getter; he's a charmless, irritating boob who can't even order flowers for a woman. With friends like Douglas and Reiner, Clinton doesn't need Rush Limbaugh.

It never actually coalesces into a movie.

Uneven and inaccurate as it may be, it's hard to wash out entirely with a movie that explores as neglected an aspect of classic gangster mythology as this one; at the same time, you can't help but wish it did so more successfully.

In spite of its harmlessness and enjoyable supporting cast, Oscar is irrefutable evidence of the cynicism and insularity of Hollywood power brokers and hack filmmakers.

Despite the considerable creative and technical talents of those involved, Fat Man And Little Boy is slow, stilted, and stultifying.

With friends like these, the poor guy took what he probably thought was the easy way out.

An amazing artifact; the decor and lighting mix '70s tackiness with odd '50s touches, the sound design is elaborate.

The screenplay relies heavily on movieland cliches about the mentally ill being saner than the rest of us, while Kagan's direction is unimaginative and made-for-TVish. Still, appealing performances by Winkler, Field, and Ford nearly compensate for the lack of inspiration behind the camera.

So outrageously, unregenerately stupid that you might be tempted to think it's smart. But it's not: It's as dumb as Georgia dirt.

McTiernan's extensive action background is nowhere evident in the murky, all-but-impossible to follow battle sequences.

Should please undiscriminating fans. But it in no way improves on the clichéd formula.

The film's secret weapon is its kicky soundtrack.

For all its tongue-in-cheek toying with images, it doesn't reward attempts at serious intellectual analysis. It has the air of a surprisingly juvenile lark, a pop-influenced prank whose charms are immediately apparent and wear thin with repetition.

By the film's big finale, the whole thing has begun to feel distinctly ridiculous.

What begins as an entertainingly contrived lark soon feels like a poorly plotted muddle.

Cowriter and director Joel Schumacher keeps things moving, skipping adroitly from one narrative thread to another. Well he should, since it's unlikely any of the subplots could have stood on their own, and very few penetrate deeper into the human condition than the average magazine advertisement.

Just because it was written and directed by a woman doesn't mean the title isn't exactly the vulgar double entendre you think.

Under direction that can only be described as scatterbrained by choreographer-turned-director Kenny Ortega (NEWSIES), HOCUS POCUS runs off in so many directions at once that it keeps tripping over itself behind a plot that doesn't make the slightest bit of sense.

For all the tear-jerking plot twists, it's a glumly dry-eyed affair.

The effectiveness of this kind of issue-driven give and take relies heavily on casting, and Ritchie puts himself at a disadvantage: Madonna looks terrific in a bikini but she can't act, and the younger Giannini is stunt casting.

An empty reshaping of Grand Hotel, held together by disaster in the sky. Airport will be remembered as the trailblazer of the disaster epic, one of the most trivial genres in the history of motion pictures.

It seems the children's grim purpose on earth is to be destroyed in a violent manner, enabling fearful, warlike, and ignorant modern man to learn a valuable lesson about himself.

Normally, this situation comedy would provide its own built-in laughs, but here the situations are dominated by Pryor's forced, manic behavior, which removes him from empathy and offers the subservient story nothing more than casual interest.

The good news is that Fishburne also stars, and has recruited a talented group of actors to flesh out the cast; the bad news is that no one seems to have been on hand to help out with the rest of film.

The talented Bettis works her heart out, but McKee apparently directed her to play May as a quivering crazy from the start.

Unmotivated, often plodding, and singularly without humor, this film could have been terrific.

[A] sleazy, generally embarrassing Hitchcock knock-off.

No amount of style or good acting can disguise the fact that this downbeat Israeli comedy is little more than a sudsy soap-opera with a distinctly unsavory aftertaste.

The film is a gorgeous nocturne of surprisingly little substance, a sleek advert for youthful anomie that never quite equals the sum of its pretensions.

Acouple of well-earned laughs but ultimately overstays its welcome.

Long sequences of Stone in risque sexual situations do little to counteract gratingly bad dialogue, identikit characters, and Phillip Noyce's by-the-numbers direction.

The story's self-conscious seaminess cries out for the ministrations of a filmmaker like direct-to-video auteur Gregory Hippolyte.

Inferior retread.

If it weren't for the running flatulence gag, the whole silly business might be mistaken for slight, clean, fast-moving fun.

A sloppy, self-indulgent valentine to the theater, delivered with all the grace of a letter-bomb.

Though occasional flashes of the radiantly bi-cultural romp that might have been peek through, writer-director Deepa Mehta's hybrid is strangely clumsy, given that she's an experienced filmmaker familiar with both Hollywood and Bollywood conventions.

Pure trash, based on a trashy book, filled to the brim with trashy performances, now becoming a trashy cult film.

A dreary, turgid melodrama.

Maybe such cloddish sight gags as dipsomaniac priest chug-a-lugging from the communion chalice or an apparently straight-laced yuppie in full S&M drag just aren't very funny.

This story, directed and cowritten by Joan Rivers, had been done before and somewhat better by Frenchman Jacques Demy in the 1973 film A SLIGHTLY PREGNANT MAN.

Though there are a few chuckles, the presentation is predictable slapstick and takes much longer than need be to get to the main point.