Variety's Scores

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For 17,828 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: 9,160 out of 17828
  2. Mixed: 7,031 out of 17828
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17828
17828 movie reviews
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  1. Exists
    Sanchez’s thoroughly conventional approach here does little to elevate a dismally generic script from frequent collaborator Jamie Nash.
  2. One for the Money
    Tedious and tonally inept.
  3. Left Behind
    Might be extremely effective while preaching to the converted, but it's no great shakes as secular entertainment.
  4. Tortilla Heaven
    As flat as a tortilla and considerably less nourishing.
  5. Locker 13
    Only those scared of being bored to death need fear Locker 13, an omnibus of horror stories that could hardly be more tame, talky and tepid, both individually and as a whole.
  6. Ironclad: Battle for Blood
    Writer-director Jonathan English’s dank-looking film delivers enough amputations, decapitations and other instances of rusty-bladed gore to distract undiscerning genre fans stuck between seasons of “Game of Thrones,” but serves no other obvious purpose.
  7. Reach Me
    A misbegotten venture that constantly ups its own ante on histrionic overacting, ludicrous plot twists and insipid empowerment mantras.
  8. Cabin Boy
    Obnoxious, snide and pointless , this ill-fated spoof carries the bonus of being as crude and gamy as the hold of an old fishing barge.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Molly
    A shamelessly sentimental story.
  10. Say It Isn't So
    Even dumb farce has to be built on logic, but that crumbles in the face of a set of tired routines playing off of stock types.
  11. Alien Girl
    Offering a smorgasbord of violence with liberal sprinklings of sex, Russian import Alien Girl delivers wearisome brutality but little finesse.
  12. Saving Lincoln
    The script, while largely historically accurate, is undermined by stilted dialogue, and the picture is laced with ill-fitting parts that wind up literally all over the matte. The result is a film better suited to classrooms than theaters.
  13. The Angriest Man in Brooklyn
    Though much of the script borders on unbearable, compounded by “Juno” composer Mateo Messina’s tell-you-how-to-feel score, writer Daniel Taplitz manages to sneak in some poignant self-help aphorisms here and there.
  14. Gun Shy
    Gun Shy is the sort of leaden misfire in which actors labor mightily to transform themselves into cartoon caricatures in a desperate (and largely unsuccessful) attempt to make viewers think, despite all evidence to the contrary, they are watching a comedy.
  15. Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector
    Entirely comfortable as the crude character he has honed in countless stand-up routines and TV appearances, Larry the Cable Guy sustains a level of likeability that enables him to get away with a lot more than he has any right to. But, he remains very much an acquired taste.
  16. The Body
    Has shown its true colors as less a serious religious-themed film than a moth-eaten tapestry of foreign intrigue and badly miscast international stars.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Mannequin
    Mannequin is as stiff and spiritless as its title suggests.
  18. Norm of the North
    With plot elements cobbled together from recent animated hits, the blandly executed pic might as well be titled “Happy Minions of Madagascar’s Ice Age.”
    • 21 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    9 Dead Gay Guys
    9 Dead Gay Guys, a dark comedy in the John Waters tradition, takes place in such a cartoonish, good-natured universe it's hard to imagine anyone taking offense.
  20. Sextuplets
    What was novel when Eddie Murphy did it for “The Nutty Professor,” however, feels lazy by comparison here, with hardly enough story to support them, and even though the transformations are impressive, there’s an alarming clumsiness when it comes to Wayans acting against himself.
  21. The Gracefield Incident
    There are some unintentional laughs to be had from this hectic, silly, defiantly un-scary mashup of stock “cabin in the woods” and alien-invasion formulae. But that dubious plus won’t be enough to soften the scorn of horror fans who plunk down hard cash for this feeble, somewhat amateurish if enthusiastic retread.
  22. I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
    Purists will find the pic's obviousness disappointing, but there's no question that the film delivers a sufficient shock quotient to satisfy its youthful target audience.
  23. Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj
    The four-years-in-the-making, badly recycled (not to mention awful) sequel might stain the honor of the Lampoon label if it hadn't already produced several even worse films.
  24. Grace of Monaco
    Amel’s script is agonizingly airless and contrived
  25. 8MM
    A movie that keeps jumping the gate and finally unravels all over the floor.
  26. Held Up
    A shoddy vehicle for Jamie Foxx to ride into the summer season on.
  27. Let's Kill Ward's Wife
    [A] torturously unfunny exercise, which doesn’t even rise to the level of competent misogyny.
  28. A Family Man
    Sparing no maudlin contrivance in a quest to jerk tears that remain stubbornly dry, this hokum is slickly executed by producer Mark Williams in his feature directorial debut. But the result never rises above polished plastic, formulaic, and pedestrian.
  29. Geostorm
    The only thing more reliable than bad weather is bad movies, and in that respect, Geostorm is right on forecast.
  30. Dirty Grandpa
    This contemptible fiasco is not only comfortable courting laughs through ugly mockery of minorities, but also doesn’t even have the courage of its own crass-as-I-wannabe convictions.
  31. 211
    A rote, overstuffed compilation of genre cliches with pedestrian handling of action elements and frequent notes of maudlin contrivance.
  32. Killers
    Bullets fly and jokes land with a thud in Killers, a deadly dull hubby's-a-hit man farce that alternately resembles a knockoff of 2005's "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" and a rehash of "Knight & Day" avant la lettre .
    • 21 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Better Living
    Vibrant, snappy and surprisingly fresh.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Order
    Commits the first cardinal sin of cinematic horror -- it's boring and doesn't have a single scary moment.
  35. The Clapper
    The movie is not entirely without charm — although it’s safe to say, it’s mostly without charm. In fact, the movie has so little charm to offer that it borders on insipid.
  36. Just Getting Started
    Some bad movies trigger swells of anger and outrage, while others prompt industrial-grade snark and scorn. And then there are leaden clunkers like Just Getting Started that provoke an ineffable sense of sadness as one considers how much time, money and talent has been squandered on something so thoroughly useless.
  37. Summer Catch
    Haphazard mix of boisterously crude comedy, romantic entanglements, class-conscious clashes and intensely competitive hardball.
  38. Life Itself
    It is sentimental and sprawling, which are not necessarily bad things, but also manipulative and contrived, which very much are.
  39. Ghost Team One
    An aggressively obnoxious tone undermines a decent concept and appealing cast.
  40. Bratz
    Bratz’s references and parodies are consistently on-target, if always way too over-the-top. Every line of dialogue could plausibly take an exclamation point.
  41. Homecoming
    Competent but unimaginative horror entry.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Hellraiser: Bloodline
    Fourth installment of Hellraiser series proves to be so bad that the director of record is Alan Smithee, the name used under Directors Guild rules when the real helmer refuses credit. The director billed in early announcements was special effects whiz Kevin Yeager -- who retains credit in that category -- but who wisely realized the released film would not enhance his resume. Except for the most undiscriminating gorehound, pic is a pointless mess.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Choirboys
    When Robert Aldrich's filmmaking is good, it's very, very good; and when it's bad it's awful. This cheap-looking ultra-raunchy alleged comedy about policemen leaves no stone unturned in its exploitation of vulgarity.
  44. Highlander: Endgame
    The sheer raggedness of the plotting -- and the pic's cynical disdain toward audiences -- is staggering.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Wing Commander: Space Will Never Be the Same
    Formulaic, humdrum and sometimes unintentionally laughable.
  46. 3000 Miles to Graceland
    If drive-ins still existed, this film would rule there for weeks.
  47. Boricua's Bond
    At the most basic level, Boricua's Bond is at war with itself.
  48. Bigger Than the Sky
    Unconvincing poser.
  49. Crazy on the Outside
    Looking and sounding like a second-tier '80s made-for-cabler, Crazy on the Outside is the sort of bland trifle one might watch to kill time during an extended flight.
  50. An American Carol
    Conservatives score a few political points but aren't very funny in An American Carol, a cheesy spitball directed at the very large target of a Michael Moore-like filmmaker.
  51. Accidental Love
    The disparate tones never gel, and the movie has an airless, stop-and-go feel, as if a studio-audience laugh track were intended but never inserted.
  52. Gunslingers
    Goosed by a couple gratuitous interludes of gory amateur surgery, the movie is eventful, with a high body count. But there’s never the baseline authenticity of atmosphere or character depth that might make so much action meaningful, or even particularly exciting.
  53. Spinning Into Butter
    In style and content, Sarah Jessica Parker starrer is the kind of earnest, talky, modestly scaled social-issue pic that seems predestined for the smallscreen.
  54. Hoodwinked Too! Hood VS. Evil
    Less a movie than a ill-advised lab experiment in which classic children's stories are injected with Bond-movie stylings, inane wisecracks and martial-arts mayhem, this manic misfire takes storybook revisionism to ever more irritating ends.
  55. Branded
    This messy amalgam of mysticism, romance, satire, social criticism and cartoonish f/x seems destined for discount DVD bins.
  56. The Seventh Dwarf
    At half the length or twice the budget, this CG-animated musical mash-up of fairy tales would still be a pretty pathetic excuse for children’s entertainment, short on charm and utterly devoid of magic.
  57. The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest
    Feels entirely a part of an already faded go-go era. Pic is too late by a mile and rightly dumped in a few theaters by Fox, which will doubtless send it to video bins faster than you can say gigabyte.
  58. The Informers
    The film is banal by obvious intent. The only question, as with other Ellis adaptations including "American Psycho," is whether auds will appreciate the aggressively shallow depiction of an aggressively shallow milieu, or mistake the pic's implicit critique for the crime itself.
  59. Faith of Our Fathers
    A clumsily told story of friendship and wartime remembrance that has a tough time serving up a halfway believable moment, let alone a moving and powerful testimony about the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
  60. A Haunted House
    The hit-to-miss ratio is less than impressive throughout A Haunted House, a frenetic and freewheeling satirical comedy that only sporadically scores a bull's-eye while aiming at easy targets.
  61. 30 Beats
    The jazz-scored picture relies heavily on quirkiness to round out shaky characterizations and inject interest into otherwise forgettable pairings.
  62. Asking for It
    In execution (and there are precious few of those), Asking for It is too much like its cardboard heroines: edgy on the outside, empty within. It’s the “Charlie’s Angels” freeze-pose of rape-revenge movies.
  63. Would You Rather
    Results are simple-minded at best, contemptible at worst; most audiences would rather watch anything else.
  64. Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
    While roving interviewer Ben Stein extracts some choice soundbites from scientists on both sides of the creation-vs.-evolution debate, the film's flippant approach undermines the seriousness of its discourse, trading less in facts than in emotional appeals.
  65. Son of the Mask
    The net result is a truly numbing experience.
  66. The Last Airbender
    This is all enormously disappointing, of course, since the best we could hope for from a live-action "Avatar" adaptation is the mind-blowing equivalent of our first encounters with wire-fu, rather than this cartoony nonsense.
  67. Whatever It Takes
    Makes little impression and is sure to leave few memories for a teen.
  68. Joe Dirt
    Takes a prominent place along with "Tomcats," "Say It Isn't So," "Saving Silverman" and "Get Over It" on the list of reasons why raucous teen farce is headed six feet under.
    • 20 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    She's Out of Control
    Somewhere lurking behind the scenes of She's Out of Control is the germ of a good idea. Despite some funny scenes, the sitcomish treatment of a father's anxiety over his teenage daughter's budding sexuality is mostly shallow and uneven.
    • 20 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Looker
    Writer-director Michael Crichton has used interesting material, public manipulation by computer-generated TV commercials, to create Looker, a silly and unconvincing contempo sci-fi thriller.
  71. Soul Survivors
    A horror movie without horror, a spook pic without spookiness and a metaphysical drama without the slightest spiritual tug, Soul Survivors virtually dwindles away on the screen.
  72. Marci X
    Plays like an overextended variety-show sketch.
  73. Corky Romano
    Ranks as the most slapdash comedic star vehicle to hit screens since Harland Williams misfired with the career-stalling "RocketMan."
  74. Digimon: Digital Monsters
    Voice work is weirdly awful and funny at the same time.
  75. Cellmates
    Director Baget clearly strives to replicate the ersatz Dixie flavors of "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" right down to the vintage '30s music in a film set in the 1970s, but nailing the Coen brothers' precisely calibrated style is far harder than it looks.
  76. Assassin's Bullet
    Much of this makes little sense, but it's hard to care.
    • 20 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    American Ninja
    Director Sam Firstenberg stages the numerous action scenes well, but engenders little interest in the non-story.
  78. Vegas Vacation
    Series regulars Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo and Randy Quaid (who joined for "Christmas Vacation") are all back for more, and thank God for Quaid, who injects a few bracing shots of mangy humor into what is otherwise a lukewarm brew.
  79. Mortal
    What surprises Mortal holds largely relate to the oddity of its construction and its tonal whiplash, as a thin, repetitive narrative skips from emo “Twilight” moping to dour Scandi-noir procedural to dollar-store Marvel ripoff.
  80. Bitch Slap
    Overblown and underwhelming, Bitch Slap is a desperately unfunny attempt to satirically recycle cliches and archetypes from sexploitation actioners of the 1960s and '70s within the time-trippy, multiple-flashback framework of a Quentin Tarantino. extravaganza.
  81. Soldiers of Fortune
    The script is so thinly written that the main characters are defined almost entirely by the actors playing them. Fortunately, seasoned pros Slater, Rhames and Cromwell are able to flesh out their boilerplate parts.
  82. My Man Is a Loser
    A dismally stupid and sexist romantic comedy.
  83. The Cat in the Hat
    Attractively designed, energetically performed and, above all, blessedly concise, this adaptation of one of the most popular American kids' books of all time walks the safe side of surrealism with its fur-flying shenanigans. The younger the viewers, the better reactions are bound to be.
  84. Virus
    Curtis and Pacula are thoroughly convincing in thinly written roles.
  85. All the Queen's Men
    Not bad enough to qualify as a memorable dud, multinational production nonetheless misses mark on every level.
  86. Thomas and the Magic Railroad
    All mish-mash.
  87. Reprisal
    Reprisal is not a very good movie, but it leaves you with tantalizing hints that some people involved with it are capable of doing something much better.
  88. Underclassman
    So far-fetched as to make "Kindergarten Cop" look comparatively austere.
  89. Labor Day
    For every engrossing rank-and-file story, there are endless self-congratulatory explanations and podium highlights.
  90. Old Dogs
    Too bad this shrilly tuned comedy doesn't demand more than clock-punching effort from everyone involved.
  91. Good Luck Chuck
    Dane Cook sells out arenas with his stand-up act, and Jessica Alba is, well, Jessica Alba, but once "Chuck" exhausts their devoted bases, this doesn't promise to bring much good luck to Lionsgate.
  92. On a Wing and a Prayer
    Like “Soul Surfer” before it, On a Wing and a Prayer clearly aims to appeal to audiences seeking faith-based entertainment; but just because its story is based on events that are technically true, that doesn’t mean that ticket buyers should be subjected to a version of them that’s executed too predictably to believe.
    • 19 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Oxford Blues
    Director-writer Robert Boris fails to establish a consistent tone to make his fairytale story believable.
  94. To Save a Life
    Just as representations of human sexuality on film are often unpleasantly twisted by the grotesqueries of the porn industry, so, too, are filmic representations of religious conversion homogenized by the faith-based entertainment industry. Case in point: Debutante director Brian Baugh's To Save a Life.
    • 19 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Lost & Found
    Tumbles off the sick-but-sweet balance beam.
  96. The Hillside Strangler
    Plays as a blackly comic slice of mock '70s-style exploitation that flirts with the viewer before applying its chokehold.
  97. Grown Ups 2
    Among the slackest, laziest, least movie-like movies released by a major studio in the last decade, Grown Ups 2 is perhaps the closest Hollywood has yet come to making “Ow! My Balls!” seem like a plausible future project.
  98. Cavemen
    An utterly unevolved romantic comedy, “Cavemen” tries to split the difference between raunchy and sweet and fails miserably on all counts.
  99. The Covenant
    Muddled and most unmagical offering.
  100. Gummo
    Gummo is personal, honest and raw, but it's also erratic, self-indulgent and full of ideas that are not fully explored. [8 Sept. 1997, p.80]
    • Variety
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