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. Tyler Perry's Temptation
    Significantly lacking in star wattage (including Perry’s own), this sluggish, relentlessly downbeat portrait of a young couple in crisis should play well to Perry’s fanbase.
  2. Dolittle
    What should have been an awe-filled adventure quickly curdles into an awful one, thanks to a pedestrian formula and the filmmakers’ fixation on fart jokes.
  3. Babylon A.D.
    A noisier, costlier version of "Children of Men," yet lacking that film's social-political significance and jaw-dropping direction.
  4. Safelight
    A handful of solid performances and some subtle ’70s period detailing are hardly enough to recommend this flat, predictable drama.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Look Who's Talking Now
    One nagging point: Pic seems aimed at kidvid market, but it revels in its ongoing references to open sexuality, including a reprise of opening credits that run over a microscopic view of squirming sperm. Very tasteful.
  6. The Poison Rose
    It’s just a sad, unimaginative affair in which an impressive lineup of talented names goes to waste before our eyes.
  7. The Choice
    Director Ross Katz’s The Choice, which mimics “The Notebook” in everything but meaningful conflict, believable characters, style and emotional honesty, is a very unsuccessful story.
  8. The Ottoman Lieutenant
    Though the film ultimately hinges on a “forbidden” Muslim-Christian romance, almost nothing is made of the enormous hurdles that would be present in this time and place.
  9. Borderlands
    Marketed to look like a cross between “Suicide Squad” and a Zack Snyder movie, director Eli Roth’s tamer-than-expected take on “Borderlands” doesn’t have half the attitude or style its cyberpunk ad campaign might suggest.
  10. Time Changer
    There is something sweetly naive about pic's astonished contention that this is because morals were taught in a nonreligious context. But it's not a compelling argument for the Apocalypse.
  11. The Reunion
    A flabby, unfunny action-comedy produced, directed and written by former WWE exec VP Mike Pavone, The Reunion boasts one of the most poorly assembled scripts to emerge from the wrestling franchise.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Millennium
    Millennium tries hard to combine sci-fi special effects and a love story, but unfortunately neither are convincing and the pic ends up looking like a failed pilot for a TV series. Veteran science-fiction director Michael Anderson does the best he can with a mediocre script.
  13. Madame Web
    Madame Web feels like a cross between an extended soda commercial and a teaser trailer for still more spinoffs.
  14. Hell Fest
    Eye candy without much to offer the brain or emotions, Hell Fest is a competently crafted slasher film rendered instantly forgettable by its disinterest in character, plot, and motivation, let alone original ideas.
  15. Dracula 2000
    Overall, though, the slapdash pic appears to be the work of folks who made things up as they went along; you might say they were, well, vamping.
  16. Van Wilder
    There's nary a comic idea in Van Wilder that isn't ripped off from a recent Farrelly brothers movie. But that doesn't stop Van Wilder from being very funny, provided you're not easily offended.
  17. No Good Deed
    Ensuing action is tamely PG-13 in terms of graphic violence. Despite competent performances and packaging, dialogue and situations in Aimee Lagos’ script are too routine to create much excitement.
  18. Isabelle
    Isabelle is curiously old-fashioned and not at all original enough to distinguish itself in American release.
  19. Basic Instinct 2
    Those hoping for either a sizzling -- or an unintentionally hilarious -- good time will be disappointed by this inexplicably dull sequel.
  20. Patch Adams
    Shamelessly sappy and emotionally manipulative, Patch Adams is an aggressively heartwarming comedy-drama that may be roasted by critics but embraced by ticketbuyers.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Friday the 13th Part 2
    Horror fans will probably delight in seeing yet another group of sexy, teen camp counselors gruesomely executed by yet another unknown assailant, but the enthusiasm will dampen once they recognize too many of the same twists and turns used in the original.
  22. The Squeeze
    Jastrow is a longtime helmer of PGA events, and as expert at choosing just the right camera angle for his shots on the course as he is apparently confounded over fashioning believable dialogue or characters.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Split Second
    Split Second is an extremely stupid monster film, boasting enough violence and special effects to satisfy less-discriminating vid fans.
  24. Tideland
    Dragged down by a sputtering script and torpid pacing. Way too disturbing for kids and too weird for most grown-ups.
  25. Memory
    It's actually considerably better -- and far more intriguing -- than most entry-level horror pics, marrying a retro B-movie setup with the ghostly obsessions of recent Asian extreme cinema.
  26. Zoom
    This tepid comic-bookish comedy should zip through its theatrical run faster than a speeding bullet. It likely won't perform much more superheroically in ancillary venues.
  27. A Night at the Roxbury
    The track record of SNL-drawn movies is dire ("It's Pat," "Stuart Saves His Family," "Blues Brothers 2000"), and this one stands just a peg higher, as an amiable, if flyweight, di-version.
  28. Blithe Spirit
    A tin-eared, lumpen-footed, almost perversely unfunny new spin on Noël Coward’s breezy 1940s farce.
  29. Waiting for Forever
    All the improbable, oddball and endless love in the world can't rescue Waiting for Forever from a premise that's irresponsible at worst and an example of profoundly bad timing at best.
  30. The Black Prince
    Clunkily scripted and generically pretty in a Stately Home porn kind of way, the film is vaguely accurate in its sequence of events but falls completely flat on personal relationships, psychology and political undercurrents — in other words, the stuff that makes history come alive.
  31. The Best and the Brightest
    Offering a fitfully funny sitcom plot clumsily stretched to 90 minutes, then goosed with increasingly tiresome doses of smuttiness and political incorrectness, The Best and the Brightest is neither.
  32. Supercross
    Completely disposable yet rousing on its own crude, testosterone-saturated terms.
  33. Reclaim
    Alan White’s polished but pedestrian pic mines little real suspense and few surprises from a formulaic script.
  34. I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
    Distinguishes itself from such last-fling-before-the-wedding comedies as "The Hangover" with the grittiness of its Texas locales and the smug intelligence of its unapologetically narcissistic protagonist.
  35. The Objective
    With a low-budget look, cliched dialogue, a stale plot and so-so acting, this supernatural thriller is unlikely to achieve the phenomenal success of its fabled predecessor.
  36. Angels with Angles
    Shrouded by memories of better times and better movies, Frank Gorshin and Rodney Dangerfield's final screen appearances are unfortunately in the thoroughly hapless and embarrassing comedy, Angels With Angles.
  37. Against the Night
    Against the Night isn’t a terribly good movie — it’s mostly a patchwork of clichés, stock characters and low-voltage shocks culled from dozens of similar small-budget thrillers — but it isn’t an entirely useless one, either
  38. I Melt with You
    A weekend romp for four middle-aged buddies devolves into a drug-fueled, suicidal hell in Mark Pellington's ill-conceived and executed I Melt With You, a work of extreme self-indulgence.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Phantoms
    Pic's virtues all stem from taking its genre imperatives absolutely seriously rather than condescending to them or playing cute. Even venerable O'Toole resists what must have been an obvious temptation to wink at his role, and delivers a solid, enjoyable turn.
  40. Atlas Shrugged II: The Strike
    Has a whole new director, cast and crew, with slightly higher production polish and more familiar faces onscreen. Nonetheless, it's consistent with its predecessor as a somewhat awkward translation of Ayn Rand's 1957 novel to our current era, handled with bland telepic-style competency.
  41. Stratton
    Solidly pro in overall packaging yet cliched, pedestrian and indistinct in specific contributions, this thriller never finds (let alone raises) its own pulse.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Gloria
    A travesty trying to be a Sharon Stone vehicle, this wooden crime yarn easily qualifies as the most tired, unexciting mob movie in recent memory.
  43. Shortcut
    With lackluster character development, a few ill-conceived situations in the second half and dialogue that sounds like it’s been run through Google Translate, there’s only a modest amount of entertainment value found therein.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Empire of the Ants
    Periodic moments of good special effects are separated by reels of dramatic banality as players flounder in flimsy dialog and under sluggish direction.
  45. Five Nights at Freddy's 2
    Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is a supernatural video-game slasher movie of astonishing clunky crudeness. No, the movie isn’t dumb fun. It’s flat-out bad, maybe even worse than the first film.
  46. Filth and Wisdom
    Ineptly written and helmed story of three Londoners, although quite bad, does have a few redeeming features.
  47. The Other Side of the Ice
    With its striking Arctic scenery, “Ice” is a gorgeous if overexplained armchair adventure.
  48. Nola
    Screwball elements feel overly theatrical -- one can almost see the actors waiting calmly in the wings for their breathless entrances.
  49. Taken 3
    A mind-numbing, crash-bang misfire that abandons chic European capitals for the character’s own backyard.
  50. 2016: Obama's America
    While it's highly unlikely that anyone predisposed to championing Obama would be won over by the sound and fury here, there's no gainsaying the value of "2016" as a sort of Cliffs Notes precis of the conservative case against the re-election of our current U.S. president.
  51. Officer Downe
    Imagine Paul Verhoeven’s “RoboCop” stripped of its politics, its wit, its humanity, and its craft, and that only gets halfway down the bottom of the barrel scraped by Officer Downe, a hyper-aggressive and thoroughly repugnant piece of comic-book juvenalia.
  52. Survive the Night
    Arguably, the most exciting turn goes to a foxy, blue vintage Dodge Challenger. A small knot of cattle comes in a close second, scampering away from roar of the car chase. Because, yes, there’s got to be one of those, too.
  53. Skyline
    An underwhelming and derivative sci-fi thriller that's only marginally more impressive than a run-of-the-mill SyFy Channel telepic.
  54. Rambo: Last Blood
    Here, it’s the screenwriters, not the cartel, who should be held accountable for conjuring a virginal relative only to violate and degrade her.
  55. Pavilion of Women
    Fails to stir the emotions despite its heavily melodramatic drive.
  56. Hatchet III
    There’s something curiously underwhelming about the blood-soaked mayhem on display in Hatchet III.
  57. September Dawn
    The didactic presentation, grim speechifying and tacked-on love story all signify a less-than-healthy regard for the audience's intelligence.
  58. Case 39
    This ludicrous outing from helmer Christian Alvart ("Pandorum") and scribe Ray Wright ("The Crazies") takes its psycho-satanic babble much too seriously, and should elicit more laughs than frights.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Teen Wolf
    Lightweight item is innocuous and well-intentioned but terribly feeble, another example of a decent idea yielding the least imaginative results conceivable.
  60. The Misfits
    The movie feels like both an advertisement for this posh, ultra-modern oasis and a late-20th-century smear of the people and culture one might expect to find there.
  61. Here on Earth
    Young teen girls will flock to pic in droves, dragging their boyfriends or other girlfriends.
  62. The One
    The combo of cheesy effects and martial arts choreographer Cory Yuen's unimaginative staging results in something that's martial artless.
  63. American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally
    Clumsy, campy and kitsch, but also deadeningly dull for long stretches.
  64. Playmobil: The Movie
    An attempt to do for the smiling, claw-handed Playmobil collective what “The Lego Movie” did for the humble plastic brick — but without that blockbuster’s dizzy, self-aware wit and visual invention — Lino DiSalvo’s hyperactive film never transcends its blatant product-flogging purpose.
  65. Bad Johnson
    The film manages to be an often uncomfortable experience without fully embracing its own bad taste, starting with an inherently insane premise and somehow steering it through the most basic of romantic comedy paces.
  66. The Benchwarmers
    Under Dennis Dugan's rote direction, Schneider winds up playing straight man to Spade, who once again relies on his snarky coward shtick, and Heder, who comes across like someone doing a bad imitation of ... well, Heder himself in "Napoleon Dynamite."
  67. Georgia Rule
    No offense to either of them, but Georgia Rule suggests an Ingmar Bergman script as directed by Jerry Lewis. The subject matter is grim, the relationships are gnarled, the worldview is bleak, and, at any given moment, you suspect someone's going to be hit with a pie.
  68. Hell Ride
    All this sounds like a surefire recipe for knowing, trashy fun, but something got burnt in the oven.
  69. License to Wed
    Pic is at best a relatively harmless way to enjoy air conditioning for those who admire Williams' ability to riff, even at his most irritating.
  70. American Outlaws
    Sadly symbolizes the decline of the Western. The 36th bigscreen version of the exploits of the James-Younger Gang is one of the least convincing.
  71. Drowning Mona
    A white-trash black comedy, a caustic working-class whodunit in which the solution to the murder mystery takes a distant back seat to countless barbs and jibes tossed in the direction of the mostly imbecilic cast of characters.
  72. The Big Bang
    A borderline unintelligible, scattershot attempt at Lynchian neo-noir that takes intellectual and aesthetic risks it has no reasonable hope of pulling off. And yet train wreck that it may be, it's completely watchable, at times garishly eye-catching, and certainly the only film in theaters that features Snoop Dogg comparing himself to Alfred Hitchcock.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cobra
    Cobra is a sleek, extremely violent and exciting police thriller.
  74. The Identical
    All things considered, The Identical might have worked better as a TV miniseries, a format that would allowed the filmmakers to give equal time to Hemsley’s story.
  75. The Comebacks
    An exceptionally lame genre parody that plumbs depths of ineptitude heretofore charted only by the marginally less abysmal "Date Movie."
    • Variety
  76. Sorority Boys
    A cut above most youth-skewed sex comedies of late, with bouncy execution and an unsophisticated but positive gender-sensitivity message elevating a so-so script.
  77. Honeyglue
    Throughout, Bird’s visuals are consistently flat, and his habit of cinematographically spinning around his characters (at a dinner table, on a dance floor, in a field) is dizzying in an unpleasant, nausea-inducing way — thus creating a fitting marriage of form and content.
  78. Death Wish V: The Face of Death
    Slackly paced and unexciting, Death Wish V comes off as a flat-footed, by-the-numbers programmer that, judging from what’s onscreen, failed to spark much enthusiasm among the people who made it.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Hills Have Eyes Part II
    It’s dull, formula terror pic cliches, with one attractive teenager after another picked off by the surviving cannibals.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Flowers in the Attic
    V. C. Andrews novel of incestuous relationships and confined childhood always has been a superb candidate for a film treatment, but director Jeffrey Bloom has taken this narrative and squeezed the life from it. Performances are as stiff and dreary as the attic these children are imprisoned in.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The White Buffalo
    Production features arch scripting by Richard Sale (from his novel), stilted acting by the cast and forced direction by J. Lee Thompson.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ninja III: The Domination
    The new outing into the never-never land of the world's trickiest controlled violence is done with quite a twist.
  83. Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return
    “Oh, Toto, this doesn’t look like the Oz I remember,” Dorothy murmurs at one point. Truer words were never spoken.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Spy Hard
    The picture that will test the durability of Leslie Nielsen's lowbrow franchise -- and proves the talent of the regrettably absent Zucker brothers-Jim Abrahams team --Spy Hard sticks so closely to the "Naked Gun" formula that one half-expects an O.J. Simpson cameo.
  85. Moms' Night Out
    There’s nothing wrong with Moms’ Night Out that couldn’t be fixed by a massive rewrite, preferably one that involves a lobotomy for the main character.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Drop Dead Fred
    Oscillating between long arid stretches, inspired explosions of slapstick and disarming warmth, Drop Dead Fred [suggested by a story by Elizabeth Livingston] has an almost irresistible premise - kid's imaginary friend comes back to help the grown woman work out her problems - but it's probably too slow and mushy for kids and too sporadic in its rewards for adults.
  87. The Next Best Thing
    Likely lack of much critical enthusiasm or positive word-of-mouth will induce quick theatrical falloff, with better news likely down the line for rental merchants.
  88. A Cinderella Story
    Lusterless trifle.
  89. Arsenal
    Arsenal, a pulpy crime drama about desperate characters and excessive carnage in Biloxi, Miss., is memorable primarily for some random scraps of loopy dialogue, the credible evocation of a sleazy demimonde rife with white-trash lawbreakers, and yet another Nicolas Cage performance that could be labeled Swift’s Premium and sold by the pound.
  90. Love Is Blind
    Perhaps the biggest problem with this story is that the filmmakers work from the assumption that the audience instantly cares about these characters. We don’t, especially when we’ve been given no good reason to. As the film’s tagline prophetically declares, “We all have blind spots.” It’s okay to keep this one in yours.
  91. When in Rome
    Predictable but pleasant comedic fantasy.
  92. Laila in Haifa
    Gitai’s latest is a murky, largely po-faced affair, in which no character’s story urgently distinguishes itself from, or even within, a general morass of discontent.
  93. The Letters
    Opting for dutiful, reverent beatification over flesh-and-blood characterizations (or insights), the film is merely a clunky primer on how poor storytelling can make even the grandest of figures seem small.
  94. Pokémon 4: The Movie
    Supposedly, Pokemon can't be killed, but Pokemon 4Ever practically assures that the pocket monster movie franchise is nearly ready to keel over.
  95. Stealing Harvard
    Depressingly thin and exhaustingly contrived. Only masochistic moviegoers need apply.
  96. The Music of Silence
    A toothless ode to a still-living celebrity, it’s a film that may appeal to very young children and very old ladies, but seems sure to bore everyone in between.
  97. R.I.P.D.
    Thank heavens — or at least the “Department of Eternal Affairs” — for Jeff Bridges, whose hilariously free-associative performance as a 19th-century frontier marshal-turned-21st-century undead lawman is like an adrenaline shot to the heart of R.I.P.D.
  98. Argento's Dracula 3D
    Director Argento half-heartedly mixes schlocky 3D f/x with one-dimensional characters for a near-two-hour joke that ought to have been funnier.
  99. Obsessed
    Don't expect a pot full of boiling bunnies, because nothing so creatively crazy ever happens in Obsessed, a "Fatal Attraction"-inspired predatory-female domestic thriller that spends much time spinning its wheels and making auds practically beg for an explanation to all the madness and obsession.
  100. Modigliani
    Can't overcome a didactic script.
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