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. Blackwoods
    Tries to salvage its dopey premise with frantic final-reel plot contortions.
  2. Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo
    A sign that the Sandler comedy empire is expanding and reaching new depths of pure gross-out stupidity.
  3. Grind
    A textbook example of the charm-free ephemera dumped by studios during the waning days of summer.
  4. The Butterfly Effect
    This overwrought and egregiously self-serious thriller about the poisonous fruit borne of child abuse grows more ridiculous by the quarter-hour and is poised for a theatrical life span scarcely longer than that of its eponymous insect.
  5. Two If by Sea
    The dialogue has the crispness of aging lettuce, and the situations rely on coincidence, disbelief and a singular disregard for character.
  6. The Smurfs
    Adorable and annoying, patently unnecessary yet kinda sweet, it's a calculated commercial enterprise with little soul but an appreciable amount of heart.
  7. Finding Bliss
    This mildly amusing, resolutely inoffensive outing lacks serious sexual tension -- which might just make it a viable compromise date pick in limited release.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Friday the 13th Part III
    Friday the 13th Part III is terrible, too...There are some dandy 3-D sequences, however, of a yo-yo going up and down and popcorn popping.
  9. Daltry Calhoun
    A string of scenes in search of a movie.
  10. I, Frankenstein
    Utterly witless, listless, sparkless and senseless, this supernatural actioner makes one long for the comparative sophistication of the conceptually identical “Underworld” franchise (with which it shares producers and a writer).
  11. The School for Good and Evil
    Sure, it’s a “Harry Potter” rip-off, but had Feig taken the time to let the film breathe, it might have stood on its own. Unlike Hogwarts, where fresh surprises lay waiting around every corner, this school seems to exist in concept only — and not a particularly good one at that.
  12. Slender Man
    Slender Man is the kind of movie in which images come before logic, because there really isn’t much logic. There’s just a movie out to goose you.
  13. Big Gold Brick
    Everything and everyone lurches about in a desperate bid to be hilariously weird, and the effect is to make the proceedings feel hopelessly strained, as if they know that there’s nothing funny going on and thus must compensate via out-there quirkiness and constant mugging.
  14. Knockaround Guys
    Young male auds should warm to its cool criminal ethos, sharp dialogue, charismatic cast and wry humor.
  15. Never Again
    A hugely enjoyable romantic comedy that dares to suggest that love can bloom -- and, more important, hormones can rage -- after 50. Smart, sassy and slickly packaged.
  16. Incarnate
    Offers a relatively fresh take on standard-issue exorcism-melodrama tropes, along with a performance by Aaron Eckhart that is more than persuasive enough to encourage the investment of a rooting interest.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Harry & Son
    Fuzzily conceived and indecisively executed, Harry & Son represents a deeply disappointing return to the director's chair for Paul Newman. Cowritten and coproduced by the star as well, pic [suggested by the novel A Lost King by Raymond DeCapite] never makes up its mind who or what it wants to be about and, to compound the problem, never finds a proper style in which to convey the tragicomic events that transpire.
  18. Endless Love
    In “The Greatest” (2009) and “Country Strong” (2010), Feste proved herself quite skilled, if not especially innovative, at limning her characters’ emotional travails. But subtlety, complexity and even the slightest modicum of realism elude her here.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Bride
    While there is deliberate humor at times, most of it successfully produced by a lilting dwarf character who steals the movie (David Rappaport), the intention of the filmmakers is not camp. That’s both the pic’s virtue and, at the conclusion, its downfall.
  20. After
    An innocuous teen pulp soap opera that flirts with “danger” but, in fact, keeps surprising you with how mild and safe and predictable it turns out to be.
  21. Cabin Fever: Patient Zero
    Fittingly, though, given the uniformly regurgitated feel, the projectile-vomit effects are superb.
  22. Vacationland
    Marred by sluggish script and Verow's inability to either direct actors or cast ones whose thesping ability matches their good looks.
  23. Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour
    There's something clumsily charming about Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
    Writer-director Tom McLoughlin, who made the scare entry One Dark Night, puts comic spin on some of the predictable material and turns in a reasonably slick performance under the circumstances.
  25. Purple Hearts
    This glossy but gloopy Netflix original is primarily out to serve its leading lady’s legions of fans, some of them perhaps young enough not to have seen it all before.
  26. The Tuxedo
    This bad idea is then underlined by pallid direction from tyro helmer and TV ad vet Kevin Donovan, a virtually incomprehensible plot line and a less-than-satisfying co-starring turn from Jennifer Love Hewitt.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Whispers: An Elephant's Tale
    The unsophisticated, even crude result is not likely to win over too many tots.
  28. Where the Heart Is
    Banal and trite where it could have been insightful and emotionally truthful, this Fox release is also notable for featuring the first disappointing performance by teen star Natalie Portman.
  29. The Replacements
    A frankly formulaic but agreeably funny comedy about has-beens, wannabes and never-weres.
  30. Dude, Where's My Car?
    Aimed squarely at adolescents who might find "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" too intellectually taxing.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Damnation Alley
    Damnation Alley is dull, stirred only occasionally by prods of special effects that only seem exciting compared to the dreariness that proceeded it. What's worse, it's dumb, depending on its stereotyped characters to do the most stupid things under the circumstances in order to keep the story moving.
  32. The Gallows
    The Gallows isn’t without a certain amount of atmosphere, it simply feels borrowed wholesale. That would matter less with a better script, but the four main characters are paper-thin even by genre norms.
  33. Zookeeper
    Ultimately, it's a marketing pitch in search of a movie that proves punishingly flat.
  34. Meet Bill
    A labored screwball comedy about disenchanted people of privilege yearning for fulfillment, pic is full of leaden hijinx directed and played with all the subtlety of a myocardial infarction.
  35. She Hate Me
    A scabrous, provocative and often funny social satire about the American dream, Spike Lee's flawed but fascinating She Hate Me addresses everything from corporate malfeasance to the African AIDS epidemic, barely catching its breath in-between.
  36. Let's Be Cops
    The mix of raucous buffoonery and violent mayhem isn’t exactly seamless, and the laugh-out-loud moments come with conspicuously less frequency during a third act that suggests a rough draft for “Bad Boys 3.”
  37. Crossover
    Overshadowed by vastly superior sports movies like Invincible and hardly disguising its low-budget sources, pic isn't in any kind of shape for the theatrical leagues.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Loaded Weapon 1
    More an imitation than a parody, this would-be comedy is very short on laughs.
  39. Surviving Eden
    A flighty and unnecessary send-up of reality television.
  40. Eban and Charley
    Sometimes spare to a fault (especially scriptwise), low-key effort nonetheless holds attention with its naturalistic, nonsensationalized approach.
  41. Thirteen Ghosts
    The actors manage to keep from being upstaged by the sets, though just barely. Abraham goes over the top, then further still.
  42. Paa
    Though unrecognizable, Amitabh Bachchan is the star of -- and the only reason to go see -- Paa.
  43. Speed-Dating
    Though it follows the reductive paradigms of men-on-the-make laffers, the low-budget, flatly shot picture rarely turns nastily shrill or swaggeringly stupid in tone; redemption and/or sanity is usually waiting in the wings.
  44. Cost of a Soul
    As is, the emotional elements explored by Cost of a Soul, and the devices it employs, seem trite and occasionally shoplifted from better-told tales.
  45. Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension
    There may well be new and novel ways to spark audience shivers from not-so-bright homeowners inexplicably using their cameraphones to check out bumps in the night, but this series clearly has neither the patience nor the inclination to look for them anymore.
  46. The Odd Way Home
    Its essential contrivance works against the earnest emotions it’s aiming for.
  47. Molly Moon and the Incredible Book of Hypnotism
    A chintzy children’s fantasy that summons the powers of suggestion, but falls well short of mesmeric.
  48. Daddy's Home 2
    It arrives at a moment when the crackling voltage of the culture wars — blue state vs. red state, Trump haters vs. Trump lovers — is coursing through every fiber of the nation. This means that a film like Daddy’s Home 2, in its stupido-on-purpose way, can seem almost relevant in its trivial hit-or-miss yocks.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Endless Love
    A Cotton-candy rendition of Scott Spencer's powerful novel, Endless Love is a manipulative tale of a doomed romance which careens repeatedly between the credible and the ridiculous.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Chained Heat
    A silly, almost campy follow-up to producer Billy Fine's women's prison hit, The Concrete Jungle, that manages to pack in enough sex tease and violent action to satisfy undiscriminating action fans.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Body of Evidence
    A courtroom drama built around the charge that Madonna's body is a deadly weapon with which she 'fornicated' a man to death, this showcase for the singer-thesp as femme fatale is more silly than erotic.
  52. The Price of Desire
    It’s filled with risible dialogue, a visual style more suited to a Côte d’Azur fashion video (the slow motion, the tasteful, slightly obscured sex scenes), and plastered with an undistinguished score by Brian Byrne (“Albert Nobbs”).
  53. The Amati Girls
    Most discomforting of all is the sight of world-class actors stuck in such threadbare material.
  54. Noel
    Goes down like sour eggnog on Christmas Eve.
  55. Without a Paddle
    An unstable -- if mostly painless -- mix of low comedy, stabs at higher silliness, and schmaltz.
  56. Premonition
    This slick exercise about a housewife whose spouse might or might not be dead is effective until a downright maudlin close.
  57. Texas Rangers
    Has the frustrating feel of a rousing, epic oater sadly compromised.
  58. Domestic Disturbance
    Although decked out with a legitimate star and handsome production carpentry, pic takes no greater interest in creating three-dimensional characters or fleshing out a credible storyline than does the run-of-the-mill straight-to-video thriller.
  59. Johnson Family Vacation
    Mostly squanders some very gifted performers. Guided by a slapdash script, this vehicle for Cedric the Entertainer is tantamount to embarking on a cross-country journey without a map, making the ride predictably uneven.
  60. The Hot Chick
    At best routinely assembled -- at worst barely competent. The slapstick is labored, and the bigger setpieces flat.
  61. The Collector
    With both feet planted firmly on the sticky accelerator of the torture-porn vehicle, The Collector is a surprisingly stylish and confident high-concept thriller.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Haunted Honeymoon
    Pic provokes a few chuckles along the way, but no guffaws.
  63. 13
    A starry cast and glossier production values simply work against the black-and-white original's strengths in this stillborn thriller about a deadly game of chance.
  64. Paradox
    Paradox, a waste of time made bearable only by its brevity, plays like a bad acid flashback from the 1970s, a time when similarly self-conscious trippy pastiches of rock music and genre conventions proliferated on the midnight-movie circuit.
  65. Backstage
    Lacks sufficient appeal beyond niche aficionados of its featured performers.
  66. Astoria
    A muted coming-of-age piece that more often reflects rusty movie conventions than it freshly observes real-life struggles.
  67. Lake City
    Moore and Hill's script plunges Spacek in a mawkish stew of banality and improbability composed of bits and pieces of earlier roles.
  68. Peppermint
    As a onetime Girl Scout den mother turned brass-knuckled avenging angel, Garner gives everything that is asked of her, from brute physicality to dewy-eyed tenderness, but this half-witted calamity botches just about everything else. Drably by-the-numbers except for the moments where it goes gobsmackingly off-the-rails, Peppermint misfires from start to finish.
  69. Vehicle 19
    Neither particularly fast nor furious.
  70. New in Town
    It doesn't help that Zellweger, in an unfortunate attempt to make the aud appreciate her character's uptightness, spends many of the early scenes moving about as stiff as a flagpole in January.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    8 Million Ways to Die
    What could have been a better film delving into complexities of one tough-but-vulnerable alcoholic sheriff out to bust a cocaine ring, instead ends up an oddly-paced work that is sometimes a thriller and sometimes a love story, succeeding at neither.
  72. Timeline
    Lacks the consistent tone, pace and point of view for either a science fiction thriller or medieval war adventure.
  73. Trade of Innocents
    Unfortunately, with its unconvincing action, preachy script and flat performances, the picture winds up less moving than most typical journeyman documentaries on the subject.
  74. Chander Pahar (Mountains Of The Moon)
    It’s a tale that was once thrilling, but the thrills seem to have evaporated.
  75. The Postcard Killings
    This uninspired detour into impersonally commercial English-language terrain for Bosnian director Danis Tanovic (an Oscar winner for 2001’s “No Man’s Land”) should provide Patterson’s fans and undemanding miscellaneous viewers with an acceptably slick if not-particularly-suspenseful crime potboiler for home viewing.
  76. Eye of the Beholder
    A mixed-genre detective pic, thriller and love story that shifts gears too often and doesn't know when to end.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Civil Brand
    Film explores the abuses rampant in woman's prisons and the powerlessness of the inmates, while telling the uplifting story of one inmate, Frances (LisaRae).
  78. Driven
    Director Renny Harlin has unfortunately adopted a let's-try-anything attitude that translates into a chaotic and unattractive visual style.
  79. Undiscovered
    As a cautionary drama on the price of fame, Undiscovered could not tread on more exhaustively discovered territory, and the result is a reel-by-reel trail of cliches.
  80. The Red Sea Diving Resort
    American audiences typically adore “white savior movies,” but this one pushes the stereotype to such an extreme ... it’s impossible to ignore how badly the film marginalizes the courageous Ethiopian refugees about whom it purports to care so deeply.
  81. Answers to Nothing
    Stitching together a quilt of stories involving disparate Angelenos in the mode of "Magnolia" and "Short Cuts" and myriad other crisscrossers, this somber drama is well crafted and watchable but lacks the distinctive story content, style and standout performances to become more than a serviceable reboot of familiar ideas.
  82. Ethan Mao
    Messy admixtures of drama and mockery crucially undermine pic's serious message.
  83. Grand Isle
    A sub-Tennessee Williams potboiler triangle between restless sexpot, impotent husband, and hunky handyman ever-so-slowly congeals into a lumpy gumbo of thriller elements in Grand Isle.
  84. 2 Hearts
    It’s a softheaded piece of morbid romantic treacle — two parallel cloying love stories for the price of one.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace
    Managing to transcend the formulaic plot are Frewer and Bergin, whose performances make the film work. Frewer, reunited with his “Max Headroom” director, Farhad Mann, veers from the real — and still somewhat dull-witted — Jobe to the megalomaniacal virtual Jobe without missing a beat.
  86. The Great Alaskan Race
    With its general tone of inspirational uplift that’s too often spelled out in dialogue rather than felt, The Great Alaskan Race bears the same relation to “faith-based entertainment” that it does to action-adventure cinema: It gestures in that direction, yet doesn’t actually make the commitment.
  87. Battle of the Year
    So fatally frontloaded with endless training montages, awfully written, indifferently acted drama, sports-film platitudes and jaw-dropping product placements that only the hardiest of viewers will make it through to the payoff.
  88. Hurry Up Tomorrow
    Hurry Up Tomorrow bears all the signs of pop star hubris masquerading as artistic candor, despite game performances by Jenna Ortega and Barry Keogan to prop up the budding thespian.
  89. Patch Town
    Generally speaking, Goodwill doesn’t seem to know how to direct his cast, focusing more on big-picture details like the look and feel of the film. That makes for a frightfully uneven mix of acting styles, many of which are all too obviously from first-timers.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    King Solomon's Mines
    Cannon’s remake of King Solomon’s Mines treads heavily in the footsteps of that other great modern hero, Indiana Jones – too heavily. Where Jones was deft and graceful in moving from crisis to crisis, King Solomon’s Mines is often clumsy with logic, making the action hopelessly cartoonish. Once painted into the corner, scenes don’t resolve so much as end before they spill into the next cliff-hanger.
  91. Hot Tub Time Machine 2
    Boorish and crass, homophobic and misogynistic, the very definition of sloppy seconds — par for the course where the present generation of male-driven, R-rated, “Hangover”-aping franchise comedies are concerned. That it somehow manages to send you out of the theater feeling tickled rather than sullied may be a mystery as impenetrable as the cosmos.
  92. AVPR: Aliens vs Predator - Requiem
    Provides enough cheap thrills and modest suspense to shake a few shekels from genre fans before really blasting off as homevid product.
  93. AVP: Alien vs. Predator
    The thing-a-ma-jigs have it out with the whatch-a-ma-call-its -- as several humans scurry and scream between -- in Alien Vs. Predator, the kind of two-for-one dogfight (last repped by "Freddy Vs. Jason") that usually does more to bury a franchise than revive it.
  94. Swimfan
    A chiller resolutely without chills, in which even the pool water always seems heated. And inasmuch as the pic never owns up to its own trashiness, it's not even enjoyable camp.
  95. Boys and Girls
    As generic as its title.
  96. How High
    A genially haphazard but frequently amusing neo-stoner comedy that plays like "Cheech and Chong Go to Animal House."
    • Variety
    • 29 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Somewhere in Time
    A charming, witty, passionate romantic drama about a love transcending space and time, Somewhere In Time is an old-fashioned film in the best sense of that term. Which means it's carefully crafted, civilized in its sensibilities, and interested more in characterization than in shock effects.
  98. See You Soon
    Steamier and sleeker than a Hallmark Channel movie, but with just as many idealized scenarios, it’s “so bad, it’s good” escapism at its finest.
  99. Pathfinder
    Like "300" and "Apocalypto," this latest bit of historical balder-dash stands in direct defiance of proven action-movie formulas, trusting its brutal concept and striking visuals to overcome a lack of star power.
  100. Drive Hard
    The fact that the film isn’t quite boring is about the most one can say for it.
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