The combination of tight close-ups and jarring camera work might require a dose of Dramamine. Better yet, give this movie a wide berth and check out a superb film set in a submarine, the 1981 classic "Das Boot."

Envy is in the unenviable position of saddling two of Hollywood's most talented comic actors with a script that doesn't do them justice.

You have to give director Jonathan Liebesman some points for sparing no shell casings or standing buildings to hustle us through the film's languorous two hours.

While the rapping stars of House Party I and II bring a few fresh (as in cool) ideas to the premise, little about this cartoony comedy seems all that fresh (as in not stale). [05 Jun 1992, p.4D]

Tries and winds up with a pleasant, if forgettable, romp of a film.

Parents may be pleased, children will cheer. But it's too bad the movie turtles have had to sacrifice their snap, victims of a box-office shell game. [22 Mar 1991, p.4D]

This boomer-coddling comic fantasy, in which a callous adult on the brink of 40 has a chance encounter with his pudgy, lisping 8-year-old self, is an iffier what-if.

As a raunchy romantic comedy or an homage to the 1980s, Take Me Home Tonight is hardly worth a one-night stand.

When so many PG-13 movies are encroaching on R-rated turf, it's heartening to see a film that responsibly approaches its audience.

Compelling almost in spite of itself, thanks to the impressionistic imagery of cinematographer Robert Richardson.

Though it has some mildly amusing moments (mostly in the visuals accompanying the novel's narration), Alex & Emma is disappointing, neither very romantic nor very comic.

It's asking a lot of audiences to spend nearly two hours with characters as screen-unfriendly as the ones played by Biggs and Ricci, though both actors (and especially Ricci) do what they're asked to do.

Eastwood, who spends much of Uprising squinting like his dad, Clint, plays buttoned-up straight man to Boyega, a dynamic that's initially grating yet finds its legs in the monster-punching stuff later.

A World War II thriller without enough thrills.

It may appeal to the most rabid fans of tearjerk romances like "The Notebook," but it's a hard-to-swallow, maudlin tale.

Too bad first-time director Christopher Erskin, who cut his teeth on music videos and commercials, took so many predictable turns on this Vacation.

The movie has more charm when it's earthbound. Cusack and Green's mother-son repartee has sharp comic timing. Once the story veers off to space, it goes downhill.

Yet because this adaptation of Franz Lidz's childhood memoir is odd enough and even stylish enough to attract a small following, you might want to weigh my ingrained dyspepsia before electing not to see it. [15 Sep 1995]

This cliche primer is a bit more than bearable - even when it's literally and figuratively off the track. It's no Cocktail, but it's no Dom Perignon, either. [27 Jun 1990, p.1D]

Though the movie is more mediocre than abysmal, Ryan's recently banged-up filmography (remember In the Cut) could use what every fighter needs at ringside: a good cut man to stop the bleeding.

A bland road-trip film that falls flat while heaping on the raunchiness.

You can feel the movie going wrong in the first scene.

Regard it also as a well-intentioned clunker. [10 July 1991, p.4D]

The film feels as if it's trying to force a sense of wonder and awe upon its youthful audience, rather than simply letting an intriguing story unfold naturally.

It's mostly smoke and mirrors. After Freeman's snooze became a YouTube fixture, the actor jokingly dismissed the nap, saying he was using "Google eyelids" to check his Facebook account. You may find yourself attempting the same feat, because Now has little up its sleeve.

The Change-Up should have fired on all cylinders. What went wrong here?

The Family is a fish-out-of-water/buddy comedy/Mob flick. But most of all, it's a missed opportunity.

Soon, the audience feels its own sense of despair -- for a movie that might have worked but didn't.

Eastwood gutsily stages the extended opening slowly and methodically... [But u]nintentional yuks litter an otherwise somber political thriller adapted from David Baldacci's novel.

Its message is unobjectionable, and there are a few laughs to be had, but too much of Elf is like Buddy's favorite meals: syrupy sweet.

The cycle thrills here are everything: flips, collisions, a chase across the top of a fast-moving train and even a zoom down the aisle of one of the train's cars as the passengers take it in stride.

With Bonham Carter's been-there, done-that performance and a plot that spins out of control, we end up with a movie that you can't quite sink your teeth into.

Much of the action in Ice Age: Continental Drift takes place on an iceberg fashioned into a seagoing vessel. No one seems to be piloting the boat, which is an apt metaphor for the film.

Mermaids will satisfy those who like sentiment served on a plastic platter. Others should treat it like 3-day-old fish. [14 Dec 1990, p.5D]

The harder this film tries to be quirky and edgy, the more it feels like a run-of-the mill TV movie.

What starts as a bright and bouncy time-waster that at least borrows from the best of its genre-defining ilk -- "Fast Times at Ridgemont High", "Clueless", "Carrie", "The Breakfast Club" -- eventually stumbles into sappy message-movie territory. [29 Jan 1999, p. 09E]

Misguided raunchfest.

It’s a lot of soapy melodrama and underdeveloped characters that never really go anywhere.

It's mystifying how such a muddled and silly movie drew the talented cast it did.

Lively pulls off one of her best movie roles so far – ranking up there with her surprisingly delicious shark flick “The Shallows” – and is surrounded by plenty of visual spectacle, yet is waylaid by a narrative that lacks excitement. Even the twists seem painfully ordinary.

Sinbad steers First Kid past mediocrity. [30 Aug 1996]

You'll figure out just about everything that's going to happen in Cool Runnings, a congenial Disney comedy, quicker than an icicle melts in Kingston. [4 Oct 1993, p.4D]

An immature obsession with sex at 17 seems understandable. But at 30 it's getting cringe-inducing.

So the cliches are as thick as a vat of honey. And the love story proves just as syrupy. But for those who lap up this sappy vision of romance, it contains all the key ingredients.

Despite Mel Gibson wearing dude duds, Jodie Foster picking their inside pockets, and even James Garner for incalculable good will, the poker hand in the all-new Maverick is almost an empty house. [20 May 1994, p.1D]

By trying to combine fantasy and romance with goofy humor, globe-trotting adventure and feel-good inspiration, Stiller has made Mitty a mixed bag of clashing tones and facile redemption.

Woody, please: Go back to the European locales that so energized you of late.

The perfect vehicle for Johnson's charm and talents is still out there. It's certainly not in the muscle car he pilots in Faster.

Hurried, harried. [14 February 1997, pg.D4]

It's instantly devoured and quickly forgotten.

By the time you've given up guessing whether S.W.A.T. wants to be a half-serious action pic or just affably jokey, its storytelling has turned so ludicrously melodramatic that it doesn't matter.

How to lose an audience in 10 minutes: Cobble together a predictable and forced romantic comedy that should have been funnier.

The movie keeps switching focus without ever getting its bearings, and when Brando exits earlier than expected, there's little but mayhem to fall back on. Moreau and mayhem are synonymous, to be sure, but we already know this going in. [23 Aug 1996]

Low on Diesel fuel, though probably amusing enough if you're part of the intended demographic, which appears to be the age group that likes to stick fingers up noses.

Lean on Me is surprisingly subdued (and very coolly photographed, too, by Victor Hammer). It may be that Avildsen was feeling disciplined - Clark's influence, perhaps. And, then, school board politics and students' testing skills aren't exactly juicy dramatic themes. [3 March 1989, p.4D]

Director Hugh Wilson and co-writer Peter Torokvei allow this Driving Miss Daisy with attitude to fully steep, like a cup of fine tea spiked with lemon. [11Mar1994 Pg. 01.D]

Yet another ho-hum family comedy hits screens this weekend -- this one in peppermint holiday flavor.

Disappoints with its lack of character development and convoluted storytelling.

The picture-postcard location of Southport, N.C., is the film's strong suit.

Has a three-way split personality, which happily includes an action-packed middle to ease the pain of its early protracted exposition and later action so slow that you'll be asking "Gotta match?" to the person next to you.

Though the film offers a meticulously rendered Depression-era L.A., it's not in the same league as "Chinatown," for which Towne wrote an Oscar-winning script. Here, the characters seem shallow, their motivations murky.

Despite his cockney-accented verbosity, Brand does not convey the effortless conviviality that Dudley Moore did in the part.

This could be the start of an awful new genre: Nannies Gone Wild.

The film's mythology is a bit dodgy, and the dialogue is standard issue, but the over-the-top action sequences are occasionally fun, if gory. Ultimately, it's a formulaic, predictable take on a Hollywood staple: the vampire horror film.

The inspiring story of surfer and shark attack victim Bethany Hamilton deserves a better dramatization.

These are hardly damsels, but the distress will be felt by audiences watching the collection of non sequiturs, twee remarks and tangential vignettes that is Damsels in Distress.

The borderline Parenthood is either an iffy comedy with lots of compensations, or a good comedy with more irritating flaws than most movies manage to survive. Whichever, the "feel good'' infantry of summer-film escapists will probably love it. [2 Aug 1989, p.5D]

Maybe it's too much to ask that rationality and surprise accompany Heat's blood, bullets and busted-up cars. Red Heat is just lukewarm. [17 Jun 1988, p.1D]

This is impressive on costuming and hunk fronts (with Billy Dee Williams the key factor in both), while Diana Ross is better than OK in a performance whose Oscar nomination was probably a fait accompli. Otherwise, this lumpy 2 1/2-hour biopic of Billie Holiday hasn't improved since it was critically drubbed -- four other nominations or not -- as one of the most ponderous of all showbiz chronicles. [11 Nov 2005]

The material has enough meat to enable charitable viewers to drift in and out, but the result is too arch to conjure up much affection.

Freddy's Dead is fan fare, with little to offer those who aren't already Freddy freaks. [16 Sept 1991, p.5D]

Even with nifty giant bird Nimbly, flying dog-dragon Falkor and Tonto-like sidekick Atreyu along for the ride, Bastian seems to meander more than tumble into fun- filled adventures. For all its echoes of Oz, Fantasia is not much of a merry old land. [11 Feb 1991, p.4D]

As the girl fights and rivalry play out, flashes of wit are obscured by the plot's contrivances.

Abigail Breslin and Sofia Vassilieva are terrific. But the performances by the older actors are largely forgettable.

You're more likely to roll your eyes than swoon over this slow-moving and far-fetched love story.

Drab as it is, the movie is not impossible to endure -- in part because the concept has a timeless appeal.

The latest picture to give you the sense that Hollywood filmmakers simply plucked another old pop-tune title ripe for ripping off, then were shaken by the rude reality of coming up with a script to jerry-build around it.

If one of its points is to show that underused thirtyish actresses still are attractive, it succeeds with Leigh and Cates -- and Jennifer Beals, who also provides a flashback feeling playing Cummings' ex-squeeze.

While it's intriguing to learn about all the players involved in creating a fashion line, there's too much minutiae to keep the attention of those who are not obsessed with design trends.

Pretty hard to buy into at all.

A few bits are filler, albeit funny filler. But those who would rather laugh than cry at weddings ( will say "I do'' to Bride. [20 Dec 1991, p.1D]

Despite Murphy's campaigning, Gentleman deserves a veto. [04 Dec 1992]

Sex Drive does not fully satisfy our comic desires.

An hour into Earth and we're waiting for the film to end, not just the planet.

This follow-up seems so similar to the 1953 Disney classic that it makes one long for a geriatric Peter.

Monte Carlo is a wish-fulfillment fantasy. (What luck! The heiress' clothes fit all three girls like a glove!)

Movie stardom is seductive, but 50 Cent and his fans will be best served if he sticks to to his day job.

Somewhere within all of this there really is a homicide -- a hip-hop industry rub-out that may someday make this movie half of a passable DVD double feature with Nick Broomfield's documentary Biggie and Tupac.

Annette attempts to be an avant-garde rock opera, a farce about modern star culture and a tragic family drama all in one bizarre, head-scratching concoction, and not even a revved-up Driver or songs by the cult art-pop group Sparks can lift the film to its lofty aims.

It says something that during a scene in which nude chorines are turned into a fleshy backdrop, you spend as much time looking at your watch as what's on screen.

The cartoonish mayhem in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For aims for a film noir sensibility, but too frequently the script simply resorts to anachronistic scenes of Jessica Alba twerking.

De Niro's widely praised performance is like the rest of the film: competent, a product of hard work and borderline mechanical. I like much of Awakenings, including several supporting performances - but like Big, it left me just a little cold. [20 Dec 1990, p.5D]

The whole journey feels like a rich girl gone slumming. And for those of us along for the ride, it's a bit of a slog.

An ambitious hodgepodge that is all bang and bluster.

Shepherd and O'Neal have six Peter Bogdanovich films between them- but criss-cross for the first time here under Emile Ardolino's (Dirty Dancing) comatose direction. They're pleasing (as are their co-leads) but don't quite deliver the salvage job a good cast performed on Mystic Pizza. [10 March 1989, p.5D]

Portentous and dull, the film features one of the worst over-the-top performances by Dennis Hopper, who plays an abusive father.

What was blandly charming on stage — characters addressing the audience, ultra-broad jokes and showbiz patter — feels contrived, cheesy and cliched onscreen.

The story is corny and predictable, but Carlyle's subtle, nuanced performance saves the movie from drowning in sentimentality.