USA Today's Scores

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For 4,677 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 61% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 36% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1 point lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 64
Highest review score: 100 Fruitvale Station
Lowest review score: 0 Amos & Andrew
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,969 out of 4677
  2. Mixed: 1,022 out of 4677
  3. Negative: 686 out of 4677
4677 movie reviews
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  1. Lethal Weapon 2
    Lethal Weapon 2 is bang-bang and brain-dead in roughly equal measure. If there's an advantage this time out, it's that the film seems to play the action (and its lead character's psychoses) more for laughs. [7 Jul 1989, p.1D]
    • USA Today
  2. Do the Right Thing
    This is a fascinating movie experience. [30 June 1989, Life, p.1D]
    • USA Today
  3. Great Balls of Fire!
    Great Balls of Fire! doesn't shake your nerves or rattle your brain; at times, though, it gets on your nerves. Even so, it's a just-tolerable junk-food chronicle of the brief era when Jerry Lee Lewis threatened to heist Elvis' ''King'' crown. [30 June 1989, p.5D]
    • USA Today
  4. Batman
    There's a cold intelligence at work here. Though its pleasures are plentiful enough to reward a second viewing, only Nicholson has saved Warners from a wing-clip. [23 June 1989, Life, p.1D]
    • USA Today
  5. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
    The special effects are pretty special for the most part, and the movie seems only about 10 minutes too long. [23 June 1989, p.1D]
    • USA Today
  6. Dead Poets Society
    Williams is impressively restrained as well as funny, so fans need not fret. It only means that instead of Good Morning, Preppies, we're given a bittersweet, even eerie Goodbye, Mr. Hip. [2 June 1989, Life, p.1D]
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  7. Ghostbusters II
    Jumbo budget and the same talent notwithstanding, the element of surprise is missing. And ghostbusters, it seems, need that every bit as much as their targets. [16 Jun 1989, p.1D]
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  8. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
    The starship Enterprise is back, piloted for the first time (from behind the camera, that is) by William Shatner. Though he doesn't exactly parallel-park Star Trek V: The Final Frontier into a meteor, the journey is (at best) an amiably lazy Sunday drive. [9 June 1989, p.4D]
    • USA Today
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Renegades
    Renegades is a dumb idea - undercover Philadelphia cop teams up with Lakota Indian named Hank - but it's smartly executed, and this gives it some interest. The movie evolves from urban thriller to ersatz-suburban Western, climaxing with a big shootout at a punk's deluxe ranch. [02 Jun 1989, p.6D]
    • USA Today
  10. Pink Cadillac
    The sad truth is that Cadillac is still another of the amiably lazy efforts that Eastwood and his band of production regulars have been mass-producing for too many years. (And by now, it's decades.) [26 May 1989, p.4D]
    • USA Today
  11. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
    The relaxed and confident Crusade is the first Jones outing to benefit from actual characterizations. [24 May 1989, Life, p.1D]
    • USA Today
  12. Road House
    Ultimately, it's just too long and redundant, too violent and unpleasant, too stupid and full of itself. But otherwise, lordy. [19 May 1989, p.4D]
    • USA Today
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    See No Evil, Hear No Evil
    Arthur Hiller's direction is competent bordering on crisp. The language, as you would expect in a Richard Pryor movie, is pretty strong. [12 May 1989, p.6D]
    • USA Today
  14. Earth Girls Are Easy
    With cartoon colors, loony tunes and a kitschy-coo sensibility, Earth Girls Are Easy finally lands in theaters after having distributor trouble. This close encounter under the California sun is fun, fun, fun - until its Beach Party-meets-Splash plot unravels. [12 May 1989, p.6D]
    • USA Today
  15. K-9
    Is this a comedy, action pic or sensitive Belushi-Harris romance? Director Rod Daniel never establishes a definitive tone, though he comes close in the scene where James Brown's I Feel Good hits the sound track after some canine fornication. You don't need a dog to smell this. [28 Apr 1989, p.4D]
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  16. Miss Firecracker
    At its weakest, Miss Firecracker seems as calculated as Henley's co-scripted True Stories; laughs, though, are a great equalizer. Director Thomas Schlamme's outdoor location work gives an extra boost in the final (and superior) third - enough to give this oddity snap, crackle and pop, if not quite the ultimate ka-bam. [28 Apr 1989, p.4D]
    • USA Today
  17. Field of Dreams
    Imagine: a pseudo-intellectual baseball fantasy loaded up, like a spitter, with seductive sentiment. You can distrust the mix, but still like the movie - and I do. [21 Apr 1989, Life, p.D1]
    • USA Today
  18. Pet Sematary
    The film's only bright notes are Fred Gwynne's flavorful performance as a bucolic neighbor, his Herman Munster basso in full throttle, and the lovely Maine settings. If Pet Sematary could have boasted more authentic details in telling its devastating story, it might have been a classic instead of just another pet peeve. [25 Apr 1989, p.9D]
    • USA Today
  19. Major League
    Not only is this comedy no Bull Durham, it's just plain bull. [7 Apr 1989, p.6D]
    • USA Today
  20. Dead Calm
    Thanks to fuzzy motivation, snicker-bait melodramatics and craters in logic, Calm quickly disintegrates into a might-have-been. [07 Apr 1989, p.6D]
    • USA Today
  21. The Dream Team
    Contrived or not, this suspect premise is made acceptable by four perfect leads, as well as by other nicely modulated performances further down the cast. Boyle is as good as he's ever been, Lloyd perhaps the best he's been, and if Keaton is the star, he wisely blends in, as Jack Nicholson has always been willing to do. Which may be why, like Nicholson, Keaton just keeps getting better. [07 Apr 1989, p.1D]
    • USA Today
    • 86 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Say Anything...
    Crowe has invented a fresh character in Lloyd Dobler, and Cusack has invested him with an ingratiating persona that helps avert disaster when things become a bit melodramatic in the final resolution. [14 April 1989]
    • USA Today
  23. Heathers
    It's a tough entry into the tough black-comic genre; don't be surprised if it becomes a classic. [31 March 1989]
    • USA Today
    • 32 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Troop Beverly Hills
    Nothing happens that is not thoroughly predictable under Jeff (Revenge of the Nerds) Kanew's direction. Maybe kids, even though they won't have a clue about all those references to chichi Beverly Hills hairstylists, may find these shenanigans more fun than anybody. Maybe we could find a badge for them: the endurance badge. [22 March 1989, p.4D]
    • USA Today
  25. Fletch Lives
    Except for one good recurring gag with a brakeless Cadillac, Fletch Lives is best when it's most offensive. What an unprecedented thing to say about a Chevy Chase movie - but it's true. Compared to much of the rest here, Chase's airplane nose-picking is pretty funny. [17 March 1989, p.4D]
    • USA Today
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Leviathan
    As underwater adventure, Leviathan is so much like already forgotten DeepStar Six that they are crusted with the same brine. By the time they come to almost identical conclusions, you'll wish both were swimming with the fishies. [17 Mar 1989, p.4D]
    • USA Today
  27. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
    Excesses or not, I'm rabid to see this again. [10 Mar 1989, p.1D]
    • USA Today
  28. Police Academy 6: City Under Siege
    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]
    • USA Today
  29. Chances Are
    Shepherd and O'Neal have six Peter Bogdanovich films between them- but criss-cross for the first time here under Emile Ardolino's (Dirty Dancing) comatose direction. They're pleasing (as are their co-leads) but don't quite deliver the salvage job a good cast performed on Mystic Pizza. [10 March 1989, p.5D]
    • USA Today
  30. Dream a Little Dream
    This unbearable cross-generational fantasy, with Coreys Haim and Feldman, has one bit that sums up its overall ineptitude. It's a romantic interlude featuring the great Sinatra standard Young at Heart; instead of the 1954 hit version on Capitol, the filmmakers use the 1962 Reprise remake - photographed on a revolving turntable (and with the wrong label) as a 78! A 78 in the era of Gene Pitney? - what preschool did the filmmakers graduate from, anyway? [8 Sept 1989, p.3D]
    • USA Today
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