There's nothing wrong in the setup: It worked fine in films like "Adventures in Babysitting" and "Uncle Buck." But director David Gordon Green populates the movie with so many soap opera asides it's hard to keep count.

There's no substitute for bad taste. And this one has it double-barreled, both in the timing of its release and as a movie, one said to be loosely based on fact.

The movie runs just 80 minutes, but it's enough time for doldrums to set in when nifty special effects and funny verbal exchanges are out grabbing a smoke. [19 Feb 1993, Life, p.5D]

With its excessive sleaze and gross-out gags, Soul Plane overshoots effective spoofery. Mostly it's a foul, eye-rolling experience.

Besides the inevitable devious government types, there are anemic subplots about a fanatical priest and an abused mother and child. Let's see. This is your brain: MMMMMMMMM. This is your brain watching The Lawnmower Man: ZZZZZZZZZ. [6 Mar 1992, p.4D]

Kris Kristofferson, as a scaled-down old gray mentor to Blade, still looks like the visual equivalent of your five worst college hangovers.

Filmmakers must have been tripping pretty badly when they made High School, a flub that's about as lucid as a stoner at a spelling bee.

There's so little action or suspense that this Cell isn't too likely to multiply itself into a sequel.

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.

Making matters worse is the number of clips from old scary movies that pop up, including quintessential Dracula turns by Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee. They only serve to mock Landis' pale efforts. One thing's for sure - Innocent Blood won't become immortal. [25 Sept 1992, p.5D]

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.

This warm-weather variation on the original, once again set in a small Minnesota town, is in dire need of Geritol. Or a dose of ginseng. Or Ex-Lax. Anything to get things moving faster than this turgid replay. [22 Dec 1995, p.3D]

Director George Cosmatos brings nothing new to this Wyatt Earp saga except leftover bullets from previous films Cobra and Rambo: First Blood Part II. [23 Dec 1993, p.5D]

With its Rocky Horror meets Camelot aura, this little black movie reeks of self-satisfied smugness and pretentious perversity as only a Sundance Festival favorite can -- especially one that squanders the considerable quirky charms of indie-film darling Parker Posey. [10Oct1997 pg 04.D]

Sometimes laughably incoherent.

Mortal Thoughts is a mystery that any halfway-OK hack might turn into a halfway-OK movie by bagging all pretense to art and simply telling a story. But that isn't the style of Alan Rudolph, whose last space shot was Love at Large; the result is a quirky boo-boo I suspect is already halfway out of theaters. [19 Apr 1991, p.2D]

A substandard ebony-and-ivory buddy pic.

An American Affair is sordid business blandly portrayed and not worth meddling with.

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."

Instead of Hitchcockian flair, there's Silver-ian excess: Women treated like meat, maimings in close-up, plot craters. [07 Oct 1991, p.4D]

Couldn't be murkier or less emotionally involving if it were "The Matrix 8," a natural observation because Keanu Reeves stars in both.

Mother Nature has always gotten the Cindy Crawford treatment from director Carroll Ballard (The Black Stallion, Never Cry Wolf). And he does right by Wind's splashy backdrop of America's Cup boat racing, as the camera bobs and weaves about like a wave-whipped buoy. Too bad there has to be a story, for Wind becomes so much hot air whenever it stays on land. [11 Sep 1992, p.8D]

It's a mess with sporadic flashes of creativity. Someone should have gone back to the drawing board. [19 July 1996, p.13D]

Tooth Fairy will make your teeth ache and your skin crawl.

Like fellow SCTV alumnus John Candy, Short has been shortchanged by the big screen. If anyone deserves a change of Luck, he does. [09 Aug 1991, p.5D]

Though it has flashes of promise, Bones traces the footsteps of its fantasy film predecessors too closely to blaze anything close to an original narrative.

Cradle settles for saying ''boo'' when it could have said a lot more about parental fears. [10 Jan 1992, p.4D]

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]