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.