TV Guide Magazine's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
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 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:
7979 movie reviews
    • 25 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    It waffles constantly, and we never know if the creators are for or against gambling.
  1. As bad as the title, and much longer.
  2. The first fruit of wunderkinder Alicia Silverstone's First Kiss Productions, this muddled thriller-cum-romantic comedy of errors suggests that she might want to lay off the producing for a few years.
    • 9 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Attack of the Killer Tomatoes employs calculatedly bad acting, ridiculous special effects, and inane dialog. Though it succeeded to some degree in achieving its goal, it's a thoroughly dull, unfunny effort.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 20 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Farley -- one of the few comedians who could ever be justly accused of debasing the pratfall -- has made a film that's tantamount to watching an overweight man slip on a banana peel for nearly 90 minutes.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    An $18 million, star-studded disaster film, which in itself is a major disaster.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    It's still trash.
  3. Lame, derivative comedy.
    • 14 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    During all of this tediously staged action, the virginal female heroine, Rennie Wickham (Jensen Daggett), suffers hallucinations about the young Jason. Not surprisingly, these scenes — which feel as if they belong in another movie — are among the most effective in the film, a welcome distraction from the mundane mechanics of the rest of this predictable effort.
    • 4 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Even the most ardent Cheech and Chong fans will have a hard time finding much to enjoy in this pathetic showing from the drug-oriented comedy duo.
    • 16 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    A dreadful remake of the French farce LE JOUET (1976), THE TOY is poorly written, over-directed, and filled with sophomoric attempts at humor. Only Richard Pryor's personal energy manages to save it from being complete rubbish.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    There isn't one laugh in this so-called comedy...The resulting situations are so moronic that the movie is unwatchable.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Although the premise of getting or not getting a first driver's license is a solid-enough base for 90 minutes of teenage comedy, License to Drive misses the point on all counts.
  4. Utterly amateurish.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    While doing nothing to dispel the stereotype that skateboarding is the sport of brainless jackasses, Casey La Scala's directing debut does feature some nifty boarding action.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Though it is silly, sleazy, and graphically violent, The Toxic Avenger does hold a bit of warped charm for fans of this sort of thing.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The old talking-animal routine gets a bit of an update in that this time the animal is vulgar and profane in a way Mr. Ed or Francis the Talking Mule would never have been. But that's about the extent of the inventiveness in this unfunny comedy.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Blake Edwards's obssessive concern with cross-dressing and sexual role switching has hopefully been purged in SWITCH, an obvious, dim-witted rehash of GOODBYE CHARLIE, saved from total failure by Ellen Barkin's bright, energetic slapstick performance.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    This could have been trashy fun, if it had moved along briskly a la CLASS OF 1984. But it's self-important and dreary, marred by murky cinematography and painfully unconvincing pauses for character development.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Daisy Miller as a book is a good read, but the film by Bogdanovich is truly a dud in spite of handsome sets and an intelligent writing job.
  5. The truth of the matter is that, given the thoroughly manipulative, red-herring plot twists that get her to the happy ending, most audience members will have ceased to care about whether she lives or dies long before the matter is settled onscreen.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Unfortunately, Petrie's idea of dramatic tension is to expose more boyish flesh as the movie progresses. And as more and more lumpy young pectorals are flashed, more and more people and objects are exploded. All this is accompanied by a persistently obnoxious soundtrack that features patriotic fanfares. And as the four different plots bump into each other like blinded laboratory animals, we begin to feel empathy if not pity for everyone involved.
  6. Pokey, blood-spattered, cheap-scare-larded prequel.
    • 17 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Another worthless sex comedy.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    While Lynch ladles on the random weirdness around the edges, it is Lee who keeps the film centered, with a harrowing but poignantly sympathetic portrait of a woman's descent into horror and madness.
  7. Think "The Lion King" redone for horses, with fewer deliberate laughs, more inadvertent ones and stunningly trite songs by Bryan Adams.
  8. Crass, trashy and none-too-funny comedy.
  9. In the hands of a more gleefully provocative filmmaker, this variation on the standard erotic-thriller stew of sleaze, tease and murder, this ludicrous farrago might have been tawdry fun.
  10. The spectacle of the near-naked Ricki (Lopez) striking sexually provocative yoga poses while floridly extolling the virtues of female genitalia is particularly mortifying, but it's only one of many horribly miscalculated scenes.
  11. This new SAW film is so utterly unimaginative it doesn't even count as hommage; it's just a smudgy copy of a still chilling original.
  12. Formulaic hodge-podge that trades on a certain demographic's affection for the bogeymen of their formative years.
  13. This amateurish comedy features some amazing sequences shot in Moscow. But everything else about it is second rate.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Contrived, slapdash and utterly false, this action thriller with a cynically soft center exemplifies the worst end-product of contemporary Hollywood formulas.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The title duo serves up more idiocy, this time by dispensing drugs from an ice-cream truck--a concept that will appeal to few these days. The failure to come up with a strong script, character development, plot, authentic humor, or basic entertainment doesn't improve matters any.
    • 15 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Even the special effects are lame in this one, offering a latex shark that is about as realistic as a fake goldfish. Poorly directed by Joseph Sargent, who relies heavily on blood and fast editing to create tension since there certainly isn't any written into the script.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Director Damiano Damiani occasionally conveys a few genuine chills between bouts of unintentional laughter, but overall the film is a failure.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Unfortunately, the filmmakers here seem to lack any notion of how to create a well-crafted vehicle, and the whole thing comes off as an uncertain, shoddy attempt to wring box-office dollars from sniffling audiences.
  14. Even Spade's most dedicated fans would probably be better off staying home and watching a "Just Shoot Me" rerun.
  15. This is sorry stuff.
  16. There's at least one ending too many, Union regularly vanishes for long stretches of the movie, and director Michael Bay's unmitigated pandering to viewers who whoop with glee whenever someone gets it between the eyes is genuinely distasteful.
  17. It's hard to imagine who would find this funny.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Women are treated with little respect by director Wilder, while men are portrayed as bad little boys who mean no harm. The so-called farce is just degrading prattle that drags on much longer than it should.
  18. Juvenile and pointless.
  19. An excruciatingly unfunny comedy.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Director Richard Fleischer demonstrates a keen understanding of the potentials of the 3-D gimmick here, but there is little else to recommend this dull retread.
    • 10 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The film is so dark -- literally -- it's often hard to see what's going on.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    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.
  20. Director Jamie Blanks "Urban Legend" appears to be carving himself a career making slasher movies for a new generation; unfortunately, he's in no way improving on the originals.
    • 16 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The film should have featured more absurd and nonsensical elements. Certainly the plot is ridiculous, and so completely illogical that to see it fall by the wayside in favor of some inspired lunacy would not have been a loss.
  21. That rare, unfortunate thing, a total misfire of a movie.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    While the master is at work, there are laughs galore, but the film nonetheless constitutes cheap exploitation of the memory of a man who convulsed audiences for years.
    • 1 Metascore
    • 20 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    The cast isn't bad but the movie is, and Amir's use of Holocaust imagery is cheap and unnecessary; Jo and Alexander could just as easily have died on the Titanic. At one point the dialogue is completely drowned out by the roar of the surf, and that is no doubt a blessing.
  22. The story's broad strokes are painfully clichéd and its details make no sense at all.
  23. Cynical and contemptuous of its audience, this lazy sequel oozes an insufferable air of self-satisfaction.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Up The Academy is another in the seemingly endless parade of inane teenage comedies.
  24. In search of inspiration and the human spirit triumphant, they managed to cook up a pot of sanctimonious, reductive claptrap (which the credits confess was only "inspired" by Quinn's book) that's not in the least instructive or entertaining.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Uniformly dull and predictable, save for the sight of Borgnine turning into a goat-headed demon--not much of a stretch, perhaps--and Travolta (in a small role) melting along with the rest of the cast.
  25. An arty fright flick that's neither artistic nor the least bit scary.
  26. This big budget mish-mash is almost unbelievably derivative and shockingly cheap looking.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The humor here is forced, incoherent, and sophomoric, made worse by Thomas Chong's amateurish direction.
  27. The less said about the story's twists and turns the better, except to warn that they become increasing preposterous with each passing minute.
  28. A lovely soundtrack by Irish balladeers the Saw Doctors can't make up for the rest of this belabored labor of love.
  29. The pacing is slack, the comedy has an oddly sour tone and frankly, no matter how hard the script tries to paint Sean as a petty martinet with a stick up his butt, it's hard not to sympathize with him.
  30. This totally sucks.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    HER ALIBI veers with little purpose from bland drama to heavy-handed slapstick, with rhythm, characterization, and plotting better suited to television than the movies.
  31. The gags are familiar collegiate stuff, involving horny young men, horny old whores -- horny young tramps -- silly foreigners, uptight authority figures, homosexuals and sassy fat women.
  32. The air of low-budget Eurotrash is unmistakable. Almost everybody has an unidentifiable accent.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Candy manages to squeeze a few laughs from the crude and cliche-ridden script, but Paul Flaherty directs broadly and obviously, with little feeling for comic pacing.
  33. Not funny at all.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    This unnecessary sequel to the 1977 cult item Attack of the Killer Tomatoes picks up where the latter left off, as, over footage from the first film, we are told that the human race has survived the onslaught of the giant killer fruit, yet some are still traumatized even at the sight of a normal-sized tomato.
  34. Continuity errors are as numerous as product placements and though shot on location, the movie captures none of London's local color.
  35. Only die-hard and undemanding Chan fans need apply.
  36. Director Jesse Peretz, onetime bassist for The Lemonheads, cut his teeth on music videos and appears to have embraced the austere aesthetics of Dogme 95 filmmakers without comprehending that an interesting story and well-developed characters are supposed to be part of the package.
    • 10 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Surprisingly, the special effects aren't bad but they're wasted in a film that features a vomiting contest as a highlight. Skip this one.
  37. This bare-bones plot is merely an excuse to string together a series of gross-out jokes involving bodily fluids, private parts, food and genetic deformities.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    A worthless attempt to cash in on a lot of sniggering innuendo and crude slapstick.
  38. Muddled tale of demonic hijinks and devil worship. It's terrible.
    • 12 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Apart from Bronson, this is a complete waste.
  39. The parade of eccentrics never ends, and Stone's near-miraculous achievement is to drain the life right out of material so sordid you'd think it couldn't help but be interesting. A must to avoid.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    This vulgar, supposedly comic horror tale about vampire hookers and religious morons is just plain gross.
  40. A creepily unpleasant study of race and class.
    • 1 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Dumb sex comedy...Not much here except loads of beautiful women in swimsuits.
    • 7 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    A disaster. Mason founders in his poorly written role, and none of the film's endless series of gags is the least bit funny.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    THE HUNTER is more dead than alive. Supposedly based on a real bounty hunter's life, this episodic film never focuses on anything long enough for the audience to care about it, and characters race in and out of the story without introduction or development.
    • 1 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    A potentially amusing comic premise -- dropping a pair of anarchic stoners into the spaced-out, sanctimonious world of New Age bio-dome enthusiasts -- gets submerged in a shower of witless gags and the feeble one-joke persona of MTV celebrity Pauly Shore.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    It's not all that scary, either, making this psuedo-horror film largely a waste of time for even hard-core fans of the genre.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    A lumbering journey that conveys none of the joy or mystery of exploration. Star Gerard Depardieu's unintelligible line readings and director Ridley Scott's murky mise-en-scene make it a hard film to hear and see, let alone like.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    This poorly plotted film concerns three middle-class suburbanites who turn to crime when faced with poverty.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The strange thing about this film is that there are some interesting--albeit half-baked--ideas floating around in the script, and the direction shows some skill and style. However, the plot is ludicrous from start to finish, the characters one-dimensional, and the world-view simplistic.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Vadim's direction is pretty tedious, and his main aim seems to be titillation.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Laughable exploitation film results in a complete waste of time and talent.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Airheads commits the cardinal sin of satire: it's not sure what it's making fun of.
  41. Has a sour undertone that strangles its cheap laughs.
    • 8 Metascore
    • 20 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Filled with long, obviously improvised pseudo-philosophical ramblings about nothing -- and that's before the drugs kick in.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The film attempts to mock both slasher movies and the mentality that produces them, but its humor is so sophomoric that it's a little like the pot calling the kettle stupid
  42. S-s-s-smokin'? Hardly, this sequel to the 1994 Jim Carrey flick "The Mask" should have been snuffed out in the drawing room.
    • 13 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Ski Patrol is lame-brained entertainment stuffed with tired gags and stale slapstick.
  43. Repetitive, predictable comedy.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    THE FISH THAT SAVED PITTSBURGH is about as entertaining and memorable as a sports celebrity Miller Lite commercial.
  44. The annoying Reg Rogers, on the other hand, who plays Little Caesar creator Raoul Berman, delivers his lines like a stoned Pee-wee Herman, and the scene in which Billy Crystal mutters and drools in a restaurant is just disturbing for anyone who admired his work in the past.

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