Zealots flip over Endgame.

Even if this movie wasn't based on a computer game, Starship Troopers' reputation would still have just shot up another 50 notches. [19 March 1999, Life, p.11E]

Though the movie trails off unsatisfyingly, it raises intriguing and candid, if unanswerable, questions about race relations and political correctness.

Memorable for being one of the most obnoxious animated movies of recent years.

Shocking is the fact that three highly regarded actors -- Kim Basinger, Mickey Rourke and Billy Bob Thornton -- chose to star in this dreadful film.

Saw V is a terrible combination: grisly and tedious. Let's just call it bloody dull.

While he gets points for addressing the debate, the way in which Stein goes about it undermines his efforts to be even-handed and intellectually rigorous.

Icky and incompetent (special effects aside) in equal parts, this groaner makes 1994's "The Mask" look like something you'd study in a film graduate course at NYU.

He hasn't mastered the craft yet, but M. Night Shyamalan may be on to something with this action-movie thing.

Structured loosely enough to work in all the excrement and incest jokes necessary to seem hip these days.

Didn't work this time, David. Maybe next season.

The movie is so silly I found myself snickering a couple of times, just before slumping down in my seat in mortified embarrassment.

What snookered Slater (not to mention Donald Sutherland) into this film is a wonder, because there's not a genuine bone in it. Think the Bourne franchise meets the Bond franchise, without the wit or action.

Long on visual dazzle but short on warmth, and the humor is excessively raunchy for a family film.

The movie was postponed from 1998 and shielded from critics. (They were ot allowed to see the movie before the opening, usually a bid sign.) [15 January 1999, Life, p.8E]

That sound you hear is from jet engines gassing up, about to zoom Underclassman to DVD-ville.

This is not the Travolta of "Pulp Fiction," nor is it the Williams of "One Hour Photo." Though no animals were harmed in the making of Old Dogs, the lead actors were defanged. But like a pair of Labradors, they have a playful rapport.

The distractions are more satisfying than the romantic main course. [23 April 1999, Life, p.8E]

Even as temporary visitors, the audience can feel IQ points slipping away.

In "There's Something About Mary," the gross gags were hilarious. Here, they're just vile.

None of this is erotic, but it is pretty silly. Silly enough to make this the low point of the movie year so far. [30 Apr 1990, p.1D]

This is a movie in which you rarely know where you are or who's doing what to the next person.

Some screwball moments elicit a chuckle or two, but the script is weak and the characterizations clichéd.

Good actors seem plastic and plastic actors seem worse in a knockoff of every rocket-ship movie you've ever seen.

A nose-bleeding mass murderer wears a mask that suggests Roger Ebert is knocking off a group of lifelong female friends.

A few chuckles will be had by both the rabble and more learned brains.

An embarrassing debacle...the rare movie that never seems to take off, but also never seems to end. It tries hard to titillate, but ends up making audiences want to avert their eyes.

t's far too soon for an actress as vital as Jessica Lange to stoop to Bette Davis-Joan Crawford horror-hag histrionics. [6 Mar 1998, pg.04D]

Good spirits are worth something, and the movie has them, as well as scattershot chuckles.

Romantic screwball comedies are supposed to be at least a little romantic, but there's no chemistry between Perry and Hurley.

The only thing a movie this unrefined needs is a vaudevillian in baggy pants and someone hawking peanuts in the aisle.

The best acting in Mr. Magoo actually comes courtesy of his resourceful bulldog, Angus. As pooches go, he has a better pedigree than this dog of a flick. [23 Dec 1997, p.3D]

Who had the lamebrained idea for a post-apocalyptic 3-D Nutcracker that is lacking any trace of ballet?

May boast a star-studded cast but it’s a spectacular dud on every other level with tonal whiplash, a little casual racism played for jokes and a script seemingly pulled from Hallmark cards rejected for being too hokey.

This is probably the year's worst romantic comedy -- and that's saying something in a year that includes "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" and "Whatever Works."

This may be the most preposterous movie of the year. It is certainly the most ridiculous movie starring an Oscar-winning actor.

It ends up choking on a never-ending stream of inept gags... A worst-case scenario of wackiness gone out of whack. [24 May 1991]

A cheesy crock of religious mumbo jumbo.

Manages to be both toothless and tasteless in its satire of TV news sensationalism.

Clean up the language, and this little roach of a movie could play the bottom half of a double bill with Rowan and Martin's “The Maltese Bippy.” [26 March 1999, Life, p.9E]

It's a dated effort.

Except there are all these dumb pranks even a third-grade schoolboy would be too embarrassed to commit - putting glue on chairs, making silly faces and stupid noises, setting off fireworks at the precinct house. [13 March 1989, p.5D]

Sandler mugs through a back-to-school daze. [13 February 1995, p.D1]

After gagging on this second helping, all we can say is, Bernie, rest in peace already. [12 July 1993, p.4D]

It would appear that director Scott Kalvert never met a cliché he didn't like. No telegraphing is too obvious or simplistic for this movie.

I don't mind that Nights is a potty-mouth benchmark; crude verbiage is appropriate to the leads, as well as the film's subject matter. This is, however, an amazingly mean two hours. Even the funniest gag involves Murphy's fatal shooting of three men. [17 Nov 1989, p.6D]

Jumps at chance to be silly.

This is 90 minutes of gags of the lowest order, yet Poirier occasionally injects them with more energy than anything in "Heartbreakers."

Can't scare up a decent plot.

With its long takes and a talky script involving an influx of revolving-door eccentrics, Nuts has the feel of a badly filmed play - akin to, say, any 12 of the worst Neil Simon screen adaptations. [21 Dec 1994, p.6D]

The word on Rollerball is "troubled," though troubled is what you call a high school junior with 50 snakes under his bed. Catastrophe is more like it.

To crystallize its fundamental flaw, here's a movie about Manhattan that takes 75 minutes just to get to Manhattan - followed by another 15 that could just as easily have been shot (and possibly were) in some East Topeka alley. [31 July 1989, p.4D]

Even the soundtrack doesn't rescue the movie from its tedious banality.

Worst of all, Marlon Wayans' performance as a cowardly thief would have seemed in bad taste a half-century ago.

The unfunny jokes center on outhouses, vomit and flatulence. Gooding mugs, screeches, even hops up and down to no avail. Nothing can wring an ounce of comedy out of this sorry spectacle.

Not since Andy Kaufman's reign of terror has a supposed funnyman been so self-indulgently persistent in testing a fan's patience.

What Aykroyd concocts here is about as appetizing as that fish shake he made on Saturday Night Live. Meet Hollywood's first Bass-o-matic filmmaker. [18 Feb 1991, p.2D]

Near Cocktail's numbing end, viewers who are still awake will hear love interest Elisabeth Shue warn Cruise: "Your sexy little smile isn't going to work this time.'' Drink to that - a Bloody Mary to a bloody shame. [29 Jul 1988, p.4D]

The performances don't help matters any, with acting ranging from tolerably earnest to laughable. Cage keeps Left Behind from being a completely unholy mess.

There are laughs here, but easily as many groans.

Lacking even a hint of humor or a watchable story, Disguise has distinguished itself as the summer's worst movie.

Interspersed between the misogyny and flatulence jokes apparently left over from Pooh's co-written script for "Friday," there's a story about an ex-con.

A cynical sex comedy that manages to be infantile and jaded at the same time.

The script, based on a novel by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, is deeply dumb, depressingly derivative (ripping off "Planet of the Apes" the most) and just plain nonsense.

Here's a late-August dog-days atrocity from the "aren't farts funny?" school of filmmaking.

Clumsy on every level.