Yogi Bear is a big boo-boo.

Waterlogged trip to nowhere. [13 February 1998, p. 3D]

If they were going to make a movie with Phillips about a dead guy who comes back to life, why didn't they just make La Bamba II? [05 Apr 1990, p.6D]

I cry for I Spy— or I would if this latest and laziest imaginable of all vintage-TV spinoffs were capable of engendering an emotional response of any kind. Comas are physical, not emotional.

Plays a little like a pacifistic variation on Bruce Lee's "Enter the Dragon."

This would-be tribute to youthful anarchy fails the junior-high acid test: Will my parents hate it? Dead is too dead on arrival to inspire much emotion either way. [07 June 1991, p.5D]

This wrongheaded biopic that bears her name does nothing to burnish her legacy. In fact, the tedious movie lacks any insight into the characters involved, and surely would have the late Princess of Wales rolling in her grave. And it can't be easy on her sons to see their mother depicted in such a one-dimensional fashion.

Although delayed several months for fine-tuning, Freejack hijacks any potential cult status with drab visuals and a lousy score. Even Jagger fans aren't going to get much satisfaction out of that. [20 Jan 1992, p.4D]

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

The standout performances by Sobieski and Skarsgaard, and the sense of foreboding aided by the deliberate pace of this suspenseful script, polish off the rough edges.

You can always judge a sci-fi thriller by its aliens. What does Planet offer -- Space roaches.

The biggest mystery in this wannabe thriller is why such topnotch actors would sign on for such a dreary movie that amounts to a mediocre soap opera.

Bewitched does have a few laughs, thanks to Ferrell's antics. And some of the wittiest contemporary comedians are on board, notably "The Office's" Steve Carell and "The Daily Show's" Stephen Colbert, but they are underused.

When it comes to comedies about pregnancy, "Knocked Up" and "Baby Mama" delivered more. This sitcom style exercise in planned parenthood is blandly predictable. If it were a cheese, it would be Velveeta.

Much more concerned with the emotional ties between twin sisters — both played by Game of Thrones’ Natalie Dormer — than scaring the pants off audiences.

Ghosts can't make up its mind whether it wants to be a racy raunchfest or a sentimental celebration of soul mates. So it ends up being a sappy, sleazy hybrid.

Sporadically amusing but sometimes slogging.

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

Cloying and dated movie.

Shyamalan isn't drawing the caliber of performances from his actors as he used to. Who can forget Haley Joel Osment's haunting portrayal in The Sixth Sense or that of Toni Collette, who played his mother, or Bruce Willis in arguably his best role?

This is a fantastical faceplant, and though Elba tries his hardest, what could have been the tale of an iconic gunslinger is a big miss.

DeepStar Six is a dead-in-the-water knockoff of Alien, an adventure that goes down and never comes up. You may need a breathing apparatus yourself to sit through it. [19 Jan 1989, p.4D]

Clumsy urban thriller.

A Disney Thanksgiving movie that plays like a Halloween holdover is odd enough. Even so, it wouldn't be that bad if you stuck your hand into the trick-or-treat bag and found a hefty, succulently dressed and edible turkey instead of the other kind.

Deeply crude as an overused latrine and defiantly non-P.C., the best you can say about the aptly titled Major Payne is that it's somewhat more tolerable than star Damon Wayans' last fumbled effort, the also well-named Blankman. [24 March 1995, p.8D]

Get Hard is hard to sit through and hardly funny. So unless you're really hard up for entertainment, stay away from this tone-deaf raunchfest.

Deep within Law Abiding Citizen lurks a thought-provoking movie. But most of what we see on the screen is implausible, superficial and only marginally involving.

While it's billed as a "re-imagining" of the horror franchise, this Friday is more like a rehash, delivering just what you expect and nothing more.

The film is funnier off court than sizzling on it, the preferred balance in a broad farce that's only in it for the laughs. Irrelevant to real life but performed with enough gusto to justify somebody's 91 minutes, it at least allows the actors to hold their heads up. Not with pride, but not with shame, either. [19 Apr 1996]

The humor, largely centered around bodily functions and bathroom habits, is almost exclusively sophomoric.

When it aims for humor, it feels overwrought and clichéd.

Earnest to the point of stultifying, “Red One” offers a busy landscape of plastic action figures come to life, visually appealing and plenty colorful, though as hard as it tries, the movie doesn’t deliver the joy and emotion you’d want in a seasonal treat.

A little soon for any movie this millennium to reunite overacting Matthew Lillard, underacting Freddie Prinze Jr., feigning mousy Linda Cardellini and the more obviously lip-glossy Sarah Michelle Gellar.

For a big-screen disposable, Doom has a few jolts, a few good laughs and an attractive female lead to whom you want to say, "What's a nice girl like you doing on a Mars like this?"

This insipid, and sometimes awkward, blend of animation, computer generation and live action wastes a ton of talent and lacks a true sense of whimsy.

Looking Glass is instead a competition to see how goofy Johnny Depp can be as the Mad Hatter and how many scenes (and hearts) Helena Bonham Carter can steal as the ragingly high-maintenance Red Queen.

While it doesn't exactly reek like week-old refuse, there's a certain stale odor about Men at Work - like a Saturday Night Live skit that goes on too long. And any film whose soundtrack is divided between reggae and classical definitely has identity problems. [27 Aug 1990]

You don't have to believe in far-fetched tales of mysterious beams of light and alien abductions to get caught up in The Fourth Kind.

It would have worked better if the silly premise had been played for farcical satire, rather than following the cookie-cutter rules of the romantic comedy playbook.

The actors take a back seat to computer-generated demonic images and apocalyptic special effects.

Give Dozen a slight edge to the mournful "Yours, Mine & Ours" as a holiday season bottom-feeder, because Martin and Levy are better at slapstick than Dennis Quaid.

Amusingly macabre. [16 July 1999]

The best thing about the nod-inducing Death Warrant is a muscleheaded psycho called the Sandman. That figures, since you're likely to take a nap or two waiting for hero Jean-Claude Van Damme to stop taking his lumps and start busting heads. [17 Sep 1990, p.2D]

The tepid result is like "Courage Under Fire" without the compelling Meg Ryan angle, or Travolta's 1999 "The General's Daughter" without the sexual squalor. It all feels a little moldy.

A bottom-rung Bette Midler vehicle disguised as a biopic of novelist Jacqueline Susann, the movie is a wannabe satire shackled by misplaced reverence.

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

Shot by a special-effects superstar making his first stab at directing, Mark Dippe, the result is dizzying in its unreality, and the visual tricks are impressive. [01Aug1997 Pg.02.D]

Within a few minutes into the ponderous prehistoric pseudo-epic that is 10,000 B.C., you find yourself longing for George of the Jungle to crash into a tree or the Geico cavemen to amble up and put an end to the droning seriousness of this tedious tale.

Moviegoers may wish that Will Ferrell's megalomaniacal supervillain Mugatu had won in the first Zoolander and saved us from another film with these boneheads.

The film feels as calculatedly sentimental as one of those bland pink candy hearts.

Unless you have a craving to watch a sluggish Ski-Doo race or want to admire Chase dressed as a hula dancer, consider this the cinematic equivalent of yellow snow.

Such overkill might seem like an asset to teenage boys (and those who think like them). The rest of us are better off not wasting our Washingtons.

Despite its collegiate setting, 21 and Over is pretty much for people with an IQ of 21 and under.

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

Those who sit through this mindlessness get the booby prize.

Her (Garner) grace and mystical abilities make for a lonely burden, and we are supposed to feel her pain. Instead, we feel our own for having to sit through this silly movie.

It's no "Taxi Driver" or even "Open Water," but Route has enough attractions to warrant the trip.

The Mummy is a tomb full of action-packed guilty pleasure that owns its horror, humor and rampant silliness equally.

The movie is raunchier than expected, and above all clichéd, formulaic and thoroughly sexist. Worst, it's just not very funny.

The opening frame of Jonah Hex should say: "Caution: Made expressly for the male teen demographic. Not suitable for anyone of any age who prefers movies with coherence, an original plot or characters they give a hoot about."

What we get is simply another opportunity for Schwarzenegger -- who seems to be in perpetual Terminator mode -- to flex his muscles.

This road-trip piffle is basically a male version of a chick-bonding flick.

If only the story that surrounds this watchable heroine were as well-stacked.

Actor John Corbett, so clean-cut in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" and "Raising Helen," goes surprisingly scruffy here as someone who apparently studied music under Grizzly Adams.

The martial-arts sequences take this prosaic thriller to a higher level.

The Glimmer Man is strictly a bummer, man. [07 Oct 1996, p.3D]

Imagine a movie so broadly conceived that it was written, directed and all parts were played by Charo — billed in her '70s heyday of Love Boat gigs as the "Cuchi-Cuchi Girl." That's what you get here.

Unlike glossier renderings of twentysomething love, Eric Schaeffer's If Lucy Fell at least elicits the heartfelt goodwill of a messy homemade valentine. [8 March 1996]

The fantasy segments, played up in trailers, get bogged down amid the ho-hum tale of a loser making good.

The movie tries to be both comical and touching, as befitting the coming-of-age genre. But it feels forced, derivative and sometimes sappily sentimental.

David Mamet handled such small-town whimsy better in 2000's "State and Main." Hackman could play his role in his sleep, but Romano IS asleep. Result: Welcome to Mildport, and that's being kind.

Imagine viewing Men in Black through the fog of a brain-embalming hangover and you won't have to buy a ticket to this piece of space junk. [12 Feb 1999, p.8E]

This is an amusing vehicle for Gibson. At least this time, the bird doesn't fall off the wire. [10 Aug 1990]

What Edwards doesn't bring to the party is an entertaining story. Something about a princess abducted by evil Robert Davi, who has done some great movie bad guys, but seems uninterested here. Benigni deserves another chance to strut the stuff that has made him a box-office phenom in Italy. [31 Aug 1993, p.5D]

A substandard ebony-and-ivory buddy pic.

Yet another foray into unnecessary 3-D, is a rehashed mishmash of Jonathan Swift's 18th-century classic. Mostly, it's a vehicle for Jack Black's zany humor.

As a director, Seagal isn't much on transition scenes. That would cut into the time devoted to knives slicing through heads. [21 Feb 1994, p.4D]

You've never seen a movie like Sucker Punch. And depending on your entertainment preferences, you may not want to.

Love Happens is an oddly upbeat title for a movie that is surprisingly sad.

Kid's tone is off 100% of the time. The young actors are irredeemably bland, and two of the adults (Michael Des Barres' bank president, James LeGros' Storm Trooper-like security guard) are hammy enough to make James Brown seem controlled.

There’s fish-out-of-water hijinks as the Martian boy looks for the dad he never knew, but the whole sci-fi narrative collapses into a mess of illogical story beats and groan-inducing quasi-tragic bits right out of "Love Story."

Pytka may know how to push fizzy water, but he certainly can't make a punch line sparkle. [21 Aug 1989]

Under the guise of delivering one of the most overworked of messages - adults are dolts, kids rule - North fails such basics as a compelling story, fleshed-out characters and a brisk, bright pace. [22 Jul 1994, p.5D]

Unfunny, sappy and massively predictable.

All the obvious elements combine to manipulate the audience into a weepy time at the movies -- again.

Quvenzhané Wallis is adorably plucky as the lead in Annie. She and Jamie Foxx as the newfangled Daddy Warbucks character have an appealing chemistry and their songs together are the best moments in the movie. But the rest of Annie is banal, shallow and markedly cynical.

In this Amityville, the performances are bad, the special effects ho-hum, and it's not even particularly scary.

The only good thing about Impostor is the appropriateness of its title for a film posing as the first 2002 release.

It's one bad apple.

This is not only unsuitable for children, it's a colossal waste of time at any age.

A contrived, unpleasant and very drawn-out affair.

There are a lot of negative things to be said about Fifty Shades Darker. But it does impress in one sense: The erotica lite sequel somehow manages to be worse than the stupefyingly bad "Fifty Shades of Grey."

For added heehaws, the normally dependable Nick Swardson comes along to act the ass and delve into some of Sandler's more nuanced scatological humor.

This is about Meg. Only about Meg. Meg in the Middle.

The flick, based on Hoover’s best-selling novel, lays it on thick alongside a lacking narrative and cringey dialogue. On the plus side, the young acting talent and a welcome lightheartedness will keep the eye-rolling to a minimum.

It may sound like a Peter Pan spinoff, and Dear Wendy does involve lost boys in a stagey setting, but the film is closer to "A Clockwork Orange" than a tale of lasting youth.

Though it's meant to be pulse-pounding, After Earth is a lethargic slog.

The only possible reasons to do this concept again is sheer laziness (it's easier to borrow an idea) and pure greed (it's cheaper to borrow an idea). [2 April 1999, Life, p.6E]