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. Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd
    Fitfully amusing prequel.
  2. Replicas
    How late can a thriller spring a plot twist that at least partially compensates for all the cavernous plot holes, risible dialogue, and ludicrously illogical behavior that precede it? Probably not nearly as late as the makers of Replicas wait before introducing a third-act reveal that brazenly acknowledges just how silly things have been up to that point.
  3. After Fall, Winter
    Uncomfortably confessional or wildly melodramatic plot twists work interestingly in the moment, but wobble in retrospect. Pic's overarching structure is further weakened by Schaeffer's half-hearted attempt to tie together loose ends.
  4. The Ultimate Life
    At least the narrative sloppiness and ineptly delivered themes in the script by Brian Bird and Lisa G. Shillingburg (freely adapted from the novel by Jim Stovall) feel of a piece with the entire production.
  5. The Strangers: Chapter 3
    This is an unconscionably lazy piece of work, the kind of movie that makes you marvel how people will put months of work into creating a feature film whose script seems to have been written in a few hours’ uninspired haste.
    • 19 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Wild Orchid
    What doesn’t work is the hold Rourke is supposed to have over Otis. Looking pudgy and puffy-faced, with a little gold earring, he is anything but an appetizing sex object...As Emily, Otis really is hypnotically attractive, but she plays the still-waters-run-deep country beauty with expressionless immobility. Bisset, always a class act, here bubbles over with caricatured joie de vivre.
  7. Outta Time
    So absurdly contrived that it begs to be taken as comedy.
  8. 36 Saints
    This confused and confusing pic delivers no thrills, chills or anything remotely surprising.
  9. Reasonable Doubt
    This utterly unmemorable, uninspired and unnecessary genre exercise should fade from view so fast they might just as soon have called it “Without a Trace.”
  10. The Prince
    The action sequences are competently directed, but exhibit virtually no flair or invention.
  11. Kite
    At the very least, Kite could have given Jackson some scenery to chew.
    • 19 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Sentinel
    The Sentinel is a grubby, grotesque excursion into religioso psychodrama, notable for uniformly poor performances by a large cast of familiar names and direction that is hysterical and heavy-handed.
  13. Downloading Nancy
    On a moment to moment basis, however, picture continuously skirts very close to the ludicrous in its advanced-stage grimness and outre forms of torture foreplay.
  14. Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever
    Remote, non-involving and finally incomprehensible.
  15. Halloween: Resurrection
    More uselessly redundant and shamelessly money-grubbing than most third-rate horror sequels.
  16. Species II
    An unsavory and unsatisfying blend of dumb plotting, leering lasciviousness and full-bore gore, pic should warp-speed to video shelves.
  17. Surviving Christmas
    An almost mirth-free, poorly conceived comedy destined to offer Ben Affleck bashers satchels full of new ammunition.
    • 19 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Supernova
    Appears headed for a deep-space rendezvous with audience indifference.
  19. Polar
    Gratuitous sex, gruesome torture, copious amounts of gore, and garish imagery populate the picture. Those qualities might be reason enough for some to watch, although a great many others would do well to scroll right past it on their Netflix feeds.
  20. Valentine
    Looking good but lacking much in the way of personality or gray matter -- rather like its characters -- Valentine is a straightforward slasher pic that's acceptably scary until a weak finale.
  21. BloodRayne
    Anemic action-fantasy.
  22. Stripped Down
    Lacks the delicate tonal control and subtle smarts required for such an intended half-surreal exercise.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Beastmaster
    When The Beastmaster begins, it is very hard to tell what it is all about. An hour later, it is very hard to care what it is all about. Another hour later, it is very hard to remember what it was all about.
  24. Ultraviolet
    Pic is hermetically sealed in a synthetic wrapping that's so total -- Sony's top-flight high-def cameras, visibly low-budget CG work, exceptionally hackneyed and imitative action and dialogue --that it arrives a nearly lifeless film.
  25. Company Man
    A consistently silly, occasionally funny but mostly forced account of how a mild-mannered teacher from Connecticut unwittingly triggered the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Gigli
    Arrives carrying more baggage than a Greyhound bus, which may distract moviegoers from what is a silly but still an enjoyably written and performed romantic comedy.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Police Academy 5: Assignment: Miami Beach
    Miami field trip only brings a pastel backdrop to the insipid infighting of the boobs in blue.
  28. Swept Away
    A simple misfire rather than a world-class fiasco. This misguided attempt to remake Lina Wertmuller's corrosive 1974 satire as a wistful romance is only unintentionally funny in the last reel.
  29. The Vanishing Of Sidney Hall
    Sidney Hall strings its audience along on a tedious journey that runs out of steam long before reaching an embarrassingly overwrought finale.
  30. It's Pat: The Movie
    Sweeney, who first invented the character while a member of the L.A.-based Groundlings comedy troupe, has almost perversely turned the relatively harmless TV character into a boorish, egotistical creep for the bigscreen. Fans of the “SNL” sketches will be disappointed. Non-fans won’t bother.
  31. Who's Your Caddy?
    An instantly forgettable trifle.
  32. Hush
    Unfortunately, almost everything about the film is so unbelievable and misjudged that only the most gullible audiences will feel any transporting thrill at the end other than from the movie finally being over.
  33. Behaving Badly
    [A] ruthlessly unfunny misfire.
  34. The Wash
    A sloppy and shoddy piece of work, filled with just about every cliche and caricature common to low-budget, low-brow comedies with predominantly African-American casts.
  35. Zero Contact
    Just when you think this nothing-burger can’t get any more exasperating, it spends a full 10 post-fadeout minutes on final credits.
  36. McHale's Navy
    Time and adapters have not been kind to the fun-loving series.
  37. Serving Sara
    Little more than a mall movie designed to kill time.
  38. The Fanatic
    Bad in ways that sometimes provoke a disbelieving guffaw, but more often stir pained embarrassment.
  39. The Darkest Hour
    The Darkest Hour turns out to be a modestly inventive and involving variation on a standard-issue sci-fi doomsday scenario.
  40. Mr. Nanny
    Cross Uncle Buck with Home Alone, stir in the Hulkster, and you've got Mr. Nanny, a gonzo comedy-actioner that should entertain the under-12 and couch-potato sets.
  41. Kickin It Old Skool
    An inauspicious feature debut for director Harv Glazer and all three scenarists, the "Big"-meets-breakdancing comedy will be kickin' it to ancillary by swimsuit season.
  42. The Devil Inside
    Despite the palpable air of deja vu that hangs over it like a light fog, The Devil Inside generates a fair amount of suspense during sizable swaths of its familiar but serviceable exorcism-centric scenario.
  43. 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag
    Spade is tiresome in yet another smart-ass part.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Death Wish 3
    Death Wish 3 adds significantly to the body count scored to date in this street-rampant series. Thrills, however, are way down due to script’s failure to build motivation for Paul Kersey’s latest killing spree.
  45. Movie 43
    An appalling misfire that tries and fails to evoke the anything-goes spirit of such '70s sketch-comedy concoctions as "The Groove Tube" and "Kentucky Fried Movie."
  46. Boat Trip
    Washout. Lacking the mojo even to be offensive in its stereotypical view of gays and women, this excruciating cocktail of sitcom plotting and gross-out humor makes a clunky cheesefest like "The Love Boat" look like breezy, sophisticated fun.
  47. Mr. Magoo
    By turns frenetic and flat-footed, Mr. Magoo is an uninspired live-action comedy.
  48. Lucky Day
    The trouble is, apart from Glover’s unforgettably weird contribution, Lucky Day isn’t a particularly memorable offering. It’s enough to get Avary back in the game, one hopes, but considering his talent, this is hardly the film his fans have been waiting for.
  49. The Ridiculous 6
    The scenery ain’t bad but the laughs are tumbleweed-sparse in The Ridiculous 6, a Western sendup so lazy and aimless, it barely qualifies as parody.
  50. The Nutcracker
    The familiarity of the music may actually be a disadvantage; the ear wants the melodies to conform to one's memory of them, but instead they've been tortured into compliance with the needs of a standard movie musical.
  51. Vampires Suck
    The lame mediocrity of Vampires Suck undeniably reps an advance for writer-directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. By just about any other standard, however, this instantly forgettable trifle is fairly close to worthless.
  52. The Apparition
    This enervating muddle of paranormal nonsense manages the difficult feat of seeming frenzied and lethargic all at once, while building toward the sort of ludicrous cop-out climax that often incites die-hard genre fans to shout rude things at the screen.
  53. Turn It Up
    Patently absurd in both the details and larger aspects, the ultraserious pic is undermined by poor casting.
  54. Mother's Day
    Atrociously written, begrudgingly acted, haphazardly assembled and never more backward than when it thinks it’s being progressive.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice
    Coming nine years after the original, this supernatural horror sequel is a competently made but uninspired effort. Gore fans should dig it.
    • Variety
  56. Miriam
    Despite troubling sexual themes (while in hiding, Miriam is raped by her protector), this remarkable, albeit unpolished, personal history may prove appropriate for religious or teaching purposes.
  57. I Hate Valentine's Day
    A plodding mediocrity with an almost mercenary adherence to formula.
  58. Vice
    Conveying zero grit, atmosphere or texture (exterior shots are repetitively bathed in cobalt blue), and gathering little in the way of force or dramatic momentum, “Vice” barely engages with its potential ideas beyond the most blandly expository, bullet-ridden level.
  59. Samson
    Even if you’re willing to forgive the laughably fake beards, the unconvincing computer-generated imagery, and a man-versus-lion skirmish that might have embarrassed Ed Wood, the overall clunkiness of this enterprise may tempt you to shout rude things at the screen.
    • 17 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Reform School Girls
    Every character is a caricature, from the rifle-toting, Bible-quoting warden (Sybil Danning) to the lineup of lovelies who parade as reform school girls. Pat Ast, as the cantankerous and corpulent head matron, and Williams play their rotten roles to the hilt and get most of the juicy lines.
  61. 88 Minutes
    Ludicrous in the extreme, the picture easily snatches from "Revolution" the prize as Al Pacino's career worst.
  62. See No Evil
    Throats are ripped, heads are crushed and limbs are severed with brutal efficiency throughout See No Evil, but that's not nearly enough to dispel the sense of deja vu that pervades this generic slasher thriller.
  63. Best Night Ever
    The four leads are nothing if not game, and actually earn respect, along with a fair amount of sympathy, for their uninhibited willingness to go to extremes. But there are limits to what they can do to dispel the overall sense of mounting desperation as the gross-out tomfoolery grows ever more tedious.
  64. Material Girls
    It's less substantial than cotton candy, but Material Girls is as slickly produced as one of the Marchetta TV spots.
    • 17 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Hudson Hawk
    A relentlessly annoying clay duck that crash-lands in a sea of wretched excess and silliness.
  66. Extreme Ops
    Action pics rarely come much more blandly generic than Extreme Ops, an instantly forgettable snow-and-stuntwork extravaganza.
  67. I Will Follow You Into the Dark
    For a supernatural thriller that spends so much time on material that is neither supernatural nor thrilling, there’s not nearly enough effort put into credible, complex character writing, leaving the cast only so much ability to fill in the gaps.
  68. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
    Neither the best nor the worst of movies derived from videogames, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li at least gives action fans plenty to ogle besides the titular heroine (Kristin Kreuk), whose original incarnation, legend has it, was among the first distaff figures controllable by joystick.
  69. Prom Night
    A surprisingly effective teen-skewing thriller that soft-pedals graphic violence (in marked contrast to the R-rated 1980 original) while generating a fair degree of suspense.
  70. The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence)
    More boring than stomach-churning, the film nevertheless contains scattered scenes and sequences so far beyond the tolerance of the squeamish that it can't be overstated.
  71. Bless the Child
    Combines the most rudimentary of Catholic-inspired good vs. evil plots with visual effects that would barely pass muster in episodic TV.
  72. Overcomer
    Laced with white-savior undertones this vaguely “The Blind Side”-esque sports drama doesn’t bother investigating (if it recognizes them at all), Overcomer offers nothing in the way of nuance — even its title is awkward — and, also, no respite from its religious propagandizing.
    • 17 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
    Jason goes to hell, and not a moment too soon. His descent has been far too long in coming, as the exhausted, witless Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday demonstrates.
  74. All About Steve
    Sitting through the picture is an endurance test.
  75. The Lodger
    What needed to be a taut, structurally sound psychothriller instead malfunctions from the start.
  76. A Haunted House 2
    It’s certainly likely to be among the worst movies in wide release this year, but it’s far from the most hateable, and that should count for something.
  77. Delta Farce
    If three of "The Magnificent Seven" had been Gomer Pyle, the result might have looked like Delta Farce, a movie rife with fat, fart and Fallujah jokes, but with a subcutaneous wit that has a lot to do with Iraq war fatigue.
  78. Excuse Me for Living
    A catchy but irrelevant title is the first of many problems with Excuse Me for Living, which throws together a lot of superficially flashy elements that never gel in any organic way.
  79. Sir Billi
    Sir Billi lacks the looks or charm of even the most rudimentary CG offerings being made today, as if not only the animation but also the plot and characters were spat out by off-the-shelf software.
  80. Epic Movie
    If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, big studio Hollywood hitmakers should consider themselves lauded to the max in Jason Friedberg and Aaron Selzer's Epic Movie, the latest (and epically unfunny) entry in the movie parody franchise.
  81. All's Faire in Love
    Verily, this Scott Marshall-helmed production has several nutjob supporting performances that almost rescue its hackneyed plot, but there's not enough consistent madness to keep the film from what will be a fleeting theatrical career, followed by entombment on homevid.
  82. Tyler Perry's Boo 2! A Madea Halloween
    Tyler Perry hasn’t generally been in the business of sequels, but apart from Joe’s overly salty soul-food patter, this one has a joyless, obligatory, cardboard feeling that marks it as one of Perry’s least satisfying films.
  83. Witless Protection
    If you need a GPS unit to find your own backside, you'll be laughing uproariously at Witless Protection, a movie that's far more interesting politically than dramatically -- or, God knows, comically.
  84. The Mod Squad
    Feels like the most shameless effort yet in the renewed exploitation of the youth market.
  85. I Know Who Killed Me
    Much like the ongoing real-world meltdown of its troubled star, Lindsay Lohan, I Know Who Killed Me is a disaster that exerts a perverse fascination.
    • 16 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Lost Souls
    The hallucination sequences are among the pic's creepiest.
  87. If One Thing Matters: A Film About Wolfgang Tillmans
    Kalmbach’s laid-back approach proves more likable than revelatory.
    • 16 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Police Academy 6: City Under Siege
    Director Peter Bonerz and writer Stephen J. Curwick (the latter taking his second Academy shift) both cut their teeth on TV sitcoms, and it shows. Rarely has a film cried out so desperately for a laughtrack.
  89. The Last Face
    The Last Face would have been a better movie if it had an actual screenplay, rather than the bare-bones one credited to Erin Dignam.
  90. Billy Madison
    There are a few bursts of sheer, irresistible idiocy -- along the lines of "Wayne's World" or even "Pee-wee's Big Adventure"-- but not enough to sustain the more arid stretches.
  91. Weekend at Bernie's II
    A mildly diverting farcical caper... stretches a thin idea even thinner, but it offers enough puerile fun and well-executed gags to lure fans of the 1989 predecessor back to theaters before a more robust future on homevideo.
  92. Simon Sez
    A frenetically junky action adventure that will quickly dribble off to vid stores after a token fast break in theatrical release.
  93. Urban Legends: Final Cut
    A poorer film than the paltry original even as it strikes a self-consciously clever pose.
    • 16 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Half Baked
    A couple of hash brownies short of a satisfying cinematic picnic, with far too few comic highs during the bigscreen reefer party.
  95. Silent Hill: Revelation 3D
    A cheaper, cheesier sequel that's worse than its predecessor on every level (save being a half-hour shorter) and takes no special advantage of the stereoscopic process.
  96. Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey
    It’s bad enough that the film doesn’t have the smarts to actually satirize its inspirational source. But bizarrely, it doesn’t really send up slasher tropes, either, while lacking the skillset to take play them seriously.
  97. FeardotCom
    Never quite realizes its potential to evoke the real horror of the Internet -- Yet, Malone has given the film a distinctive atmosphere and occasional flashes of his perverse sense of humor.
  98. London Fields
    [A] misbegotten mess.
  99. God's Not Dead
    Even grading on a generous curve, this strident melodrama about the insidious efforts of America’s university system to silence true believers on campus is about as subtle as a stack of Bibles falling on your head.
  100. Deuces Wild
    In its overwhelmingly artificial depiction of the street gangs that ruled Brooklyn's mean streets in the 1950s, Deuces Wild draws from a phony deck.
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