The strong cast keeps the material from descending into sheer smutty tripe, but it's an uphill battle and in the end, not really worth their considerable efforts.

The script is often obvious and much of the acting is amateurish (Rakesh's comic sidekicks are just dismal), though Purva Bedi is a shining exception — she's got star quality to burn.

The bad news is that the racing scenes are repetitive and it takes some serious concentration to figure out which character belongs to what club.

Clumsy and amateurish. But it's also occasionally quite charming, and ultimately more commendable for what it ISN'T than worthy of censure for being nothing more than an inconsequential comedy.

Avildsen, however, is hardly a comedy director. Best known for his Oscar-winning ROCKY, he shows little sense of comic set-up and delivery. The result peters out about halfway through the film, with only touches of bizarre flavor in the rest. A ridiculous, cartoonlike score by Conti doesn't help much.

This moody film is ravishingly beautiful to look at -- but the story's fairy tale atmosphere doesn't entirely mesh with its psychological underpinnings.

This slow, derivative chiller (which lifts liberally from "Ghost Story," "Rear Window" and "A Stir of Echoes") wastes far too much time on red herrings and telegraphs its plot points with painfully obvious dialogue.

It's the movie equivalent of fast food -- nobody needs this to be good, just adequate. And Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is nothing if not thoroughly adequate.

1941 is loaded with slam-bang sight gags and action, but comedy isn't director Steven Spielberg's forte and the movie isn't nearly as funny as it might have been.

Huppert's performance leans a bit heavily on the moist-in-the-eyes motif, but it's terrific none-the-less.

Director Kevin Reynolds has no flair for action: the climactic battle is so ineptly shot and edited that it is difficult to tell who is smiting whom. While Costner is lifeless and speaks strangely (he was said to have attempted a British accent, then abandoned it during shooting), Mastrantonio is an acceptably vivacious Marian.

Though the story eventually runs out of steam and it's never clear why the night-crawlers torment certain children and then come back to get them, fledgling screenwriter Brendan William Hood and director Robert Harmon -- whip up some effective suspense sequences.

Israel Horowitz's script fails to develop sympathetic adult characters, leaving the children to give the film whatever charm it may have.

An old man's movie, filled with regret over things lost, corrupted and spoiled.

Ethan and Lenny's story is silly, good-natured and full of unlikely moves, just like the titular twister.

Even the excellent supporting cast could not help this exploitative picture, a lame attempt at replicating the classic film noir pieces of the 1930s and 1940s.

An occasionally brutal, but generally plodding western from Lancaster (his first as a director), who fails to pump much life into the anemic script, giving the cast little to do.

Filmed in Vancouver (which looks like nobody's idea of the Bronx), the film is a throwback to the hoary chop-socky conventions that gave Hong Kong cinema its shabby reputation.

Despite its failings, Wind Chill represents a road rarely taken by 21st-century American horror films: Original (in the non-remake sense of the term), subtle and restrained.

Director/writer Andrew Bergman has a proven flair for screwball humor, and you can still discern traces of the lighthanded romp Striptease might have been if Moore hadn't reshaped the project to accommodate the formidable dimensions of her ego.

Crams more subplots, minor characters and comic situations into 100 minutes than most sitcoms burn through in an entire season. And that's not necessarily a good thing.

Even Stevenson, a singularly accomplished and versatile actress, can't do much with Julia's early scenes, in which she's forced to dither around like a complete idiot.

LEAN ON ME's manipulations justify Clark's drastic methods only superficially, by trivializing legitimate questions regarding Clark's actions.

Viewers who remember Max Baer may, however, take issue with the way the film treats this charismatic fighter. In 1933, Baer became an important symbol of Jewish strength when he faced off against Hitler's favored fighter, Max Schmeling, and while reducing Baer to a bloodthirsty villain makes it easier to root for Braddock, it's an unfair bit of character assassination.

But one can only imagine how different the film might have been with, say, Parker Posey or Catherine Keener -- truly funky actresses with some real edge -- in the lead.

An enjoyable, ultimately inconsequential crowd-pleaser.

Richards and Eisenmann are a pair of orphaned children with psychic powers who suffer from amnesia and cannot remember where they came from.

Points for an interesting concept; demerits for the dull execution.