Variety's Scores

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For 17,825 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 52% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 IMAX: Hubble 3D
Lowest review score: 0 Divorce: The Musical
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9,159 out of 17825
  2. Mixed: 7,029 out of 17825
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17825
17825 movie reviews
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  1. Random Hearts
    An ideal rainy day matinee attraction for well-to-do ladies of a certain age.
  2. Little Nicky
    Sandler turns the joke around on his detractors and manages to lead a devilishly energetic vehicle that contains about as many laughs as his previous features combined.
  3. Final Destination 2
    Suffers from the same rancid dialogue and acting problems as the original but with a much funnier pulse. The real progenitor here is less the previous pic than the sick-funny horror cinema of George Romero.
  4. Gothika
    Hampered by thinly developed characters and pedestrian plotting.
  5. The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D
    There's little chance of grabbing teens (or even many tweens) during summertime playdates. Still, small fry will be enchanted by this rambunctious action-adventure.
  6. Adore
    A ludicrous melodrama that begs to be handled as an over-the-top sex farce is instead treated with the solemnity of a wake, albeit one with a rather lenient dress code.
  7. Psychopaths
    Devoid of characters or a story about which one might care, Psychopaths proves to be a fright-free pastiche without purpose — save, that is, for unimaginatively paying homage to a string of superior genre predecessors.
  8. The Addams Family 2
    In the case of The Addams Family 2, Tiernan and Vernon have used the sequel as an opportunity for an upgrade. The script is by an entirely new team (Dan Hernandez, Benji Samit, Ben Queen, and Susanna Fogel), and in some ineffable bats-in-the-belfry way the jokes now land with a more inspired and spontaneous creepy kookiness.
  9. The Air I Breathe
    Stellar thesps gamely strive to elevate the one-note material, but gravity ultimately defeats them in this relentless downer.
  10. The Words
    A literary film that stands to work best for those who don't read, The Words is a slick, superficially clever compendium of stories about authors of uncertain talent and varying success.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Made of Honor
    Like a shopworn wedding gown disguised with a new sash, Made of Honor feels recycled from top to bottom. That's because it's essentially a gender-swapped version of "My Best Friend's Wedding."
  12. If I Didn't Care
    Featuring a strong central perf by Bill Sage, a raincoated detective turn by Roy Scheider and the upscale autumnal serenity of the Hamptons, If I Didn't Care remains a stylistic exercise in elegant gratuitousness.
  13. The Last Bus
    For a tender movie that follows an old man on a long and demanding multi-bus excursion to honor his late wife’s wishes, the placid affair has curiously little emotional range, and an even narrower sense of stakes
  14. Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin
    On some level, every “Paranormal Activity” film is about monsters caught on camera, but in this one the demons remain scariest when they’re sight unseen
  15. Reindeer Games
    With a far-fetched script that might barely have passed muster at the B units in the old studio days, this Dimension release will command a certain up-front attention due to cast topliners.
  16. Amelia
    What rankles most about Amelia is the timidity and lack of imagination with which Nair approaches one of America's most exceptional and intriguing celebrity life stories.
  17. Mr. Church
    A crude sugary-sweet fantasy.
  18. Sweet Talk
    Hopelessly stagebound, despite halfhearted efforts to open up what’s basically a talky two-hander, and risibly pretentious in the manner of soft-core porn that’s no sexier than glossy ads for expensive perfume.
  19. Kickboxer: Vengeance
    This revamp (which ignores several interim direct-to-video sequels Van Damme did not participate in) is a bit shorter, a tad more stylish, and utilizes the same clichés a little less ponderously.
  20. Jacqueline (Argentine)
    Gets points for originality but quickly succumbs to terminal self-amusement.
  21. Paper Man
    The picture's biggest stumbling block is its superhero hook.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
    Seemingly clueless as to how best to utilize Carrey, or make humorous hay out of its pet-loving shamus' central character, Ventura fails to place either Carrey or Ace in the winner's circle of memorable screen crazies.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Striptease
    Writer-director Andrew Bergman has good fun sending up the weak morals, outrageous hypocrisy and trashy lifestyles of many of his characters, but his satirical aim is wobbly, the jibes and potshots falling short of their mark more often than not.
  24. Dirty
    The cop genre receives a shot of adrenaline in helmer Chris Fisher's Dirty, a no-nonsense dramatic response to the LAPD Rampart scandals of the '90s.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    My Chauffeur
    David Beaird avowedly set out to imitate the screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s and has succeeded admirably, thanks to adorably spunky Deborah Foreman and her stuffy foil, Sam J. Jones. They make quite a pair.
  26. Trespass
    Helmer Joel Schumacher and a game cast headed by Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman do their damnedest to build and sustain suspense while trying, with some degree of success, to breathe fresh life into a formulaic, even generic scenario.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Jazz Singer
    No one’s going to get sweaty palms waiting for the answer, as Samson Raphaelson’s venerable chestnut lacks urgency and plausible incidental detail.
  28. Papa: Hemingway in Cuba
    Disappointingly plodding and ham-fistedly obvious in its attempts to offer an up-close and personal portrait of a mood-swinging, self-loathing 59-year-old Ernest Hemingway.
  29. The Culture High
    The film’s haphazard structure and freewheeling arguments only serve to reinforce tired pothead cliches — it’s paranoid, prone to starry-eyed dorm-room philosophizing, and it doesn’t know when to quit.
  30. Traffik
    Noble intentions are derailed by deeply confused execution in writer-director Deon Taylor’s Traffik, which attempts to marry cheap genre thrills with an unflinching depiction of the horrors of international sex trafficking, only to cheapen the latter and cast a grimy pall over the former.
  31. The Black Tulip
    Tulip has the conviction as well as the artlessness of a saber-rattling speech at a political fundraising dinner, one that preaches fire and brimstone to inflame the already converted. Those seeking a more nuanced portrayal of the challenges facing the country will be less satisfied.
  32. Forever Strong
    The performances are credible across the board, excessive sentimentality is largely avoided, and the sequences devoted to rough-and-tumble rugby match-ups are expertly shot and edited.
  33. Underdog
    Falls somewhere between stale retread and half-hearted parody of superhero-movie formulas.
  34. A Hole in One
    This oddball tale of a small-town gangster's troubled girlfriend hovers uncertainly on the edge of an absurdist universe.
  35. The Last Legion
    Seriously hampered by glaring inconsistencies of tone and intent, and often feels like a series of highlights carved out of a much longer epic.
  36. The Blackout
    Ferrara has made a film that's always visually arresting, but one that lacks emotional and dramatic sense -- a recurrent weakness in his work.
  37. Knock Off
    Working from a formulaic script by Steven E. De Souza, Hark employs a variety of visual stratagems to keep the action fast and flashy.
  38. My Wife's Name Is Maurice
    Gamely thesped, lowbrow farce.
  39. Winnie Mandela
    Decently acted despite screenplay shortcomings.
  40. Annapolis
    James Franco and Tyrese Gibson scowl and strut and should make the hearts of teenage girls all atwitter, and that's about the only audience that won't see most of the punches telegraphed well in advance.
  41. 24 Hours to Live
    Smrz brings considerable gusto if not much conceptual originality to the pileup of dire crises, keeping the pace brisk and seriocomic tone variable.
  42. P2
    What "Psycho" did for the shower, P2 tries very hard to do for the parking garage, spending most of its time below ground, and below an adequate level of convincing dread.
  43. Autómata
    Even for sci-fi, some logic has to enter the plot, which also needs to be devoid of major holes if it’s not to fall into ridiculousness, and that, unfortunately, is where Automata lies.
  44. Lazy Susan
    Lazy Susan aims hazily between the sad-sack valentine likes of “Muriel’s Wedding” and something more satirically misanthropic, missing a target it never quite commits to in the first place.
  45. Baywatch
    The trouble is that the movie plays it boringly straight.
  46. Middle Man
    Crowley’s thinly conceived debut feature only has one big joke, and everything around it is either long-winded setup or deflating letdown.
  47. Another Gay Movie
    This is son-of-John-Waters with most of the grossness but none of the essential anarchism -- silly pop trash set for vid-classic status in gay households.
  48. The Secret Scripture
    A classic case of a literary adaptation capturing the high-gloss trappings of its source without getting a handle on its story or themes, The Secret Scripture is like a nicely decorated Craftsman home built on a foundation of Jell-O, with a toilet where the kitchen sink should be. It looks nice on first glance, but spend any time there, and things start to get messy.
  49. Girl Play
    The live event was hopefully more engaging than this dull adaptation.
  50. Ass Backwards
    Ass Backwards proves that no amount of comic talent can shine — or raise a chuckle — in the absence of even halfway decent material.
  51. Flypaper
    Strenuous and just fitfully amusing.
  52. Anaconda
    A silly and plodding "Jaws" rip-off about a 40-foot man-eating snake on the prowl in the Brazilian rain forest.
  53. 1911
    Resulting mish-mash of exposition and speechifying opts to summarize rather than dramatize; one spends nearly as much time reading indigestible lumps of onscreen text as one does listening to the often distractingly post-dubbed dialogue.
  54. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2
    Every bit as sitcom-ish and saccharine as its predecessor, but considerably less distinctive.
  55. Aardvark
    The film can never quite decide what it wants to be — wounded-inner-child drama, quirky comedy, quasi-thriller, all the above — and its good ideas never quite gel, or lead toward sufficient narrative revelation.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Freddy vs. Jason
    The basic formula of iconic supernatural beings slaughtering plucky teenagers continues with even more graphic violence.
  57. Be Cool
    A staggeringly flat sequel that trades filmdom for the music bizbiz and could hardly be less cool.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Brewster's Millions
    It’s hard to believe a comedy starring Richard Pryor and John Candy is no funnier than this one is, but director Walter Hill has overwhelmed the intricate genius of each with constant background action, crowd confusions and other endless distractions.
  59. Resident Evil: Afterlife
    Director Paul W.S. Anderson (who also directed the original) can hardly manage a hint of suspense or excitement. And excitement is exactly what the film ought to have in excess.
  60. Gimme Shelter
    The film is hamstrung by its fidelity to real-life inspirational models.
  61. Burying the Ex
    Strained, sexist schlock, which raises zero jolts and only fitful chuckles with its gamely performed tale.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer
    Picture comes off as an exaggerated slapstick romp rather than the breezy, affecting tale of an 8-year-old tomboy it might have been.
  63. Son of God
    A clumsily edited feature-length version of five episodes from History’s hugely popular 10-hour miniseries “The Bible,” this stiff, earnest production plays like a half-hearted throwback to the British-accented biblical dramas of yesteryear, its smallscreen genesis all too apparent in its Swiss-cheese construction and subpar production values.
  64. Serenity
    Serenity sees a usually reliable screenwriter-turned-director take a bold swing and miss the mark completely, so intent on pulling the rug out from under you that he never notices you weren’t even standing on it.
  65. The Tourist
    Like a beautifully tailored suit that starts to smell funny after a few minutes, this sumptuous but stultifying lark sets up a quasi-Hitchcockian intrigue between two strangers abroad, but smothers any thrills or sparks in a haze of self-regard.
  66. Dieu est grand, je suis toute petite
    Choppy and fragmented to the point of irritation, pic overuses blackouts between scenes, self-conscious camera movements, narrative ellipses and other jangly techniques.
  67. Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles
    Amiable rather than genuinely funny.
  68. Riding the Bullet
    A ponderous, incoherent horror mishmash that turns King's short story into utter nonsense.
  69. What's the Worst That Could Happen?
    The star in this case is Martin Lawrence, who is not only thoroughly upstaged by nemesis Danny DeVito but is completely boxed out of his comfort zone for broad physical comedy.
  70. Confessions of a Burning Man
    This not particularly well shot/organized feature isn't very engaging on the human level, either.
  71. The Pact 2
    The Pact 2 simply stretches out rather than elaborating on its predecessor’s already thin premise, creating holes that are poorly patched over with false scares and unconvincing character behavior.
  72. The Professor
    From its rigid, symmetry-inclined compositions to its heavily worked one-liners, this is cautious, stifling filmmaking in thrall to a reckless, retrograde man, who does little in the course of 90 minutes to merit great fascination or pathos.
  73. Atlas
    Atlas is predictable, overlong and bland, the kind of experience it’s hard to get excited about when the star player seems to be perfunctorily running the bases.
  74. Domino
    Satisfying neither as character study nor as straight-ahead actioner.
  75. xXx: State of the Union
    You'd half expect the Xbox logo to pop up on the credit roll for XXX: State of the Union, since what's on view is closer to a videogame than a movie. While that will be music to the ears of young gamers, it's noise to anyone hoping for a coherent action movie.
  76. Wrath of the Titans
    It's a mess too, but it's far more defensible as a lazy Sunday lark for those who have just recently outgrown action figures.
  77. The Lone Ranger
    Extravagant but exhausting...this over-the-top oater delivers all the energy and spectacle audiences have come to expect from a Jerry Bruckheimer production, but sucks out the fun in the process,
  78. Evan Almighty
    It's mildly diverting for kids and families in a way that would be perfectly fine as an ABC Family cable project.
  79. Waist Deep
    Waist Deep packs considerable energy and style into its tale of an ex-con forced back into a life of crime to rescue his kidnapped son. Yet the kinetic direction and occasional sly humor can't disguise the tale's banal brutality or pump much excitement into its routinized pileup of shoot-outs and car chases.
  80. Seven Days in Utopia
    Provides little more than a pleasantly passable Christian sports parable delivered as a sort of Texan golfer's version of "The Karate Kid."
  81. Charlie St. Cloud
    Religious overtones, however, could make this the rare mainstream feature that connects with the faith-based entertainment market.
  82. After the Dark
    Credit for being offbeat can only do so much to redeem a neither-fish-nor-fowl bore like After the Dark, whose exploitable elements go tastefully unexploited while its gestures toward profundity turn out to be playing air guitar.
  83. All Nighter
    The part may be tailor-made for Simmons’ no-nonsense persona, and his performance reliably rock solid, but the bland execution of director Gavin Wiesen and the uninspired scripting of Seth Owen have no comic zing.
  84. Walking with Dinosaurs
    Visually, “Walking With Dinosaurs” dazzles with its combination of Animal Logic-animated CG creatures...and beautiful practical backgrounds... Less dazzling is the constant stream of jokey banter, which thwarts the pic’s educational potential and caps its target age awfully low.
  85. Annabelle
    When it comes to Annabelle’s five or six big stinger moments, Leonetti manages to deliver the jolts, and if audiences are sure to head home complaining about how dumb and predictable it all was, many may also find themselves nursing their significant others’ lightly bruised forearms.
  86. Cold Comes the Night
    A capably assembled if ultimately unremarkable thriller.
  87. Miracle at St. Anna
    This is a sloppy stew in which the ingredients of battle action, murder mystery, little-kid sentiment and history lesson don't mix well.
  88. Bad Company
    It's almost impossible to enjoy this uneven but mostly exciting popcorn pic without flinching at a few plot elements that feel a bit too real for comfort.
  89. The Crew
    The sentimentality is gently but firmly restrained in a potentially treacly subplot.
  90. Showboy
    It's a rich idea for a comedy, even if the filmmakers seem timid about making the pic the full-on satire it might have been.
  91. Love Don't Cost a Thing
    Stuffed with attitude but just as hackneyed as the original, Love Don't Cost a Thing brings a year of exceptionally lame youth comedies to a fitting conclusion.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tuff Turf
    This modestly budgeted youth pic is a poor man's and partially musicalized Rebel without a Cause with a touch of The Warriors thrown in.
  93. I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry
    The kind of buddy comedy Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau might have starred in 40 years ago, when the material would have felt less dated, if no less silly.
  94. The United States of Leland
    Hoge shows no particular directorial style, bringing a bland, anonymous look to the generic Southern California suburban locations.
  95. Spy Kids: All the Time in the World
    A cheap-looking, vaguely depressing echo of Robert Rodriguez's well-loved kidpic trilogy, assembled with minimal imagination or effort.
  96. The Search
    Intermittently stirring and undeniably well made as it slowly unspools a multi-pronged drama set during the 1999 outbreak of the Second Chechen War, the picture has run-of-the-mill pacing and storytelling lapses that are compounded by its ultimately hectoring, didactic approach.
  97. Are You Here
    One dead giveaway that the comedy isn’t working is the film’s score, which overcompensates throughout by attempting to bolster every second with bouncy energy.
  98. All the King's Men
    Overstuffed and fatally miscast, All the King's Men never comes to life.
  99. The Beverly Hillbillies
    It’s thin stuff, but the ingratiating naivete of the characters and the aw-shucks friendliness of the cast are disarming, and it becomes easy to just let this go down as a country tune with some moonshine on the side.
  100. Ex-Girlfriends
    In the central role, first-time feature helmer Alexander Poe may trigger sheepish identification among the neurotic with the protag's vaguely ridiculous reactions. While his character registers as white-bread bland, strong performances from the two "exes" save this indie from a surfeit of self-deprecating charm.
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