A notably undynamic treatment of Protestant Elizabeth I's ascension to the British throne.

So much luck is pressed with an absurdly overblown finale that 60 seconds will likely be Swordfish's shelf life after a couple of noisy opening weekends.

It's not dumb-good. It's dumb-stupid.

A rote variation on Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper that is marginally salvaged by those spunky Olsen twins from ABC's Full House. [17 Nov 1995]

Newsies' drag is its predictable script.... It's not a bad hook, but the treatment is uninspired, despite a fairly engaging turn by Bale. [08 Apr 1992]

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

An ambitious but mind-numbingly tedious and often incomprehensible film.

From the moment he trudges through the woods in his scratched and smudged birthday suit, Paul Bettany as a saucy Geoffrey Chaucer takes command.

What it isn't ... is a particularly compelling contribution to the impressive and by now enormous collection of Holocaust movies.

If nothing else, though, the stylish and slick thriller brings sass to the secret-agent genre, and there are worse things than watching an evil Chris Evans try to murder Ryan Gosling for two hours.

Drollness on screen can sometimes be had cheaply, but a perfect cast is tougher to bankroll. Hal Hartley's new comedy has both - enough to defuse the smugness that seems to linger in its soul. [15 Aug 1991]

We had hoped for just a funny movie, but instead we get some laughs and plenty of yawns.

Jennifer's Body is not as hot as you hope it would be.

The problem here isn't grimness but a failure to make grimness wrench the heart. [18 Oct 1996]

Anything goes, though director Ronny Yu keeps the idiocy on a fast pace.

Graphically gruesome when it means to be a provocative look at vengeance.

There's a fine line between darkness and glumness, one that "Spider-Man" bounced off buildings to avoid. The Hulk lumbers across it.

Director Stephen Norrington is more keen on finding new ways to explode the fiends... than developing a credible story. So the movie flits from one gore-laden assault to another with little suspense.

Goldberg has her best role in a while, especially when she twitches and grunts her way into phony trances. Poor Demi, though, cries enough tears to drench a small drought-stricken state. [13 July 1990, Life, p.4D]

While there is a pleasantness about this faithful Shakespearean reboot, there also is some woeful miscasting and a lukewarm feeling about the straightforward production.

It's no crime the movie has one or two endings too many, given that many thrillers of the past quarter-century have had the same. But Judd's latest is too harmless to be anything but a misdemeanor.

But for an epic set up to trace two life stories, there's a lack of dramatic focus, and the leads fail to evince any particular chemistry as friends who come to have a deeper emotional connection. [31Dec1997 Pg.02.D]

Nathan Fillion is the movie's brightest spot as Hermes, re-envisioned as a UPS manager. He makes a quip about how the best TV series always get canceled, in a nod to Firefly, the iconic sci-fi show in which he starred.

There is no tension here. Actually, The Minus Man is minus a lot - intensity, a point of view, maybe even a point - and that equals an unsatisfying film.

Not since Demi Moore lived happily ever after in "The Scarlet Letter" has a filmmaker felt so free to fudge a famous plot.

Moviegoers of rarefied sensibilities will easily identify this anti-captain-of-industry as a "typical Eric Stoltz role," just as moviegoers of extremely rarefied sensibilities will pick up on Kicking's "typical Chris Eigeman role." [23 Oct 1995, Pg.06.D]

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 result is passably speedy on the level of other TV retreads that seem miscast on the big screen.