Variety's Scores

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For 17,847 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: 9,172 out of 17847
  2. Mixed: 7,036 out of 17847
  3. Negative: 1,639 out of 17847
17847 movie reviews
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  1. Fun Mom Dinner
    A film that, for all its tinniness of craft and carelessness of storytelling, gets by on sheer force of personality.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Tora! Tora! Tora!
    Both overall director Richard Fleischer and his Japanese counterparts do a dull job, and the monotonously low-key tone of scene after scene almost suggests that each was filmed without a sense of ultimate slotting in the finished form.
  3. A Previous Engagement
    Stevenson casts her usual magic in this frankly adult, determinedly lighthearted comedy of romantic errors.
  4. El cantante
    A virtual template of every imaginable cliche of the musical biopic, picture suffers from a lack of narrative and character focus
  5. They/Them
    It’s so committed to affirmational messages about queer identity not being a choice, a condition or a legitimate motive to get axed by a deranged serial killer that the movie all but forgets to be scary — although enlisting Kevin Bacon as too-genial-to-be-trusted camp overseer Owen Whistler nearly makes it work.
  6. Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer
    Indie effort evidences more energy than wit, and spends too much time on set-up before a slam-bang pay-off.
  7. Yes Man
    Genial but slim, picture is certainly a light-hearted alternative to weighty year-end awards bait, but the conceit isn't realized fully enough.
  8. U.N. Me
    Covering a lot of ground in colorful, pacey fashion, the documentary is nonetheless somewhat compromised itself by co-director Ami Horowitz's insistence on playing the Michael Moore/Morgan Spurlock role of onscreen provocateur.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Weird Science
    Hughes’ true gift is at capturing the naturalistic rhythms and interaction between the boys with a great ear for dialog. Le Brock is just right as the film’s calm but commanding center.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Beneath the Planet of the Apes
    This sequel to the 1968 smash, Planet of the Apes, is hokey and slapdash. The story [by Paul Dehn and Mort Abrahams] and Ted Post’s direction fall far short of the original.
  11. The Burning Sea
    The movie has every right to be fiction, but the heart of its drama lies in its patina of plausibility.
  12. Smilla's Sense of Snow
    An exceedingly sleek and handsome thriller, this ambitious European co-production, like the novel on which it's quite faithfully based, starts intriguingly but fails to stay the distance.
  13. Killing Bono
    Taking liberties with journalist Neil McCormick's memoir to create narrative tension, screenwriters Simon Maxwell and prolific scribe team Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais ("The Commitments") overstuff the story with subplots and trite character arcs.
  14. Rust
    It’s a handsome and watchable indie art Western, set in 1882, that turns into a sentimental cross-generational buddy film. Yet I can’t say that the movie, in the end, is especially good. It’s got a bare-bones plot, it lopes along more than it takes wing, and for no good reason it’s two hours and 19 minutes long.
  15. Judgment Night
    This is an exceedingly well directed, cleverly filmed and edited, tension-filled affair. It is also a wholly preposterous, muddled, paranoid's view of the inner-city nightmare where the slightest misstep is sure to have a fateful result.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Chorus Line
    Chorus often seems static and confined, rarely venturing beyond the immediate. Attenborough merely films the stage show as best he could.
  17. Destination Wedding
    Destination Wedding barely holds together as a coherent film. It’s too callous for coos, too chipper to examine the dark corners of the soul. Yet it works as a valentine to old-fashioned star power — two modern legends, older if no wiser, daring the audience to somehow love them for all their faults, and on that level, somehow succeeding.
  18. The Dukes
    With Davi and Chazz Palminteri fronting a first-rate ensemble cast, and a tasty soundtrack of golden oldies, this unpretentious indie dramedy has much to recommend.
  19. Black Water: Abyss
    Given its tight dark spaces, opaque water and lunging menace, this movie has plenty of natural nightmare material that it deftly turns toward more atmospheric than rote jump-scare uses.
  20. The Heartbreak Kid
    Uproarious romp, grounded in believable if gleefully implausible human behavior, is a model of comic timing.
  21. Cheaper by the Dozen
    Unfortunately knows no tone between schmaltzy/gooey and slapstick/gross-out. Pic is as far from the original pic and its autobiographical memoir source as it can be while retaining the same title.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bobby G. Can't Swim
    Gutsy, unconventional, bursting with raw urban energy, this surprisingly suspenseful drama portrays New York Hell's Kitchen residents whose lives are governed by the immutable circumstances of their tawdry existence.
  23. Greenfingers
    This shameless knockoff marches lock-stepped through moves that were already looking as tired as the Macarena.
  24. Blue Streak
    A dull afterthought and a sorry vehicle for the comic expression of Martin Lawrence.
  25. Chasing Liberty
    Inoffensive adolescent escapism laced with surprising amounts of genuine charm.
  26. Pumpkin
    Begins as though the filmmakers imagine that they're making a daringly anti-p.c. serio-comedy, but long before it's over, the picture is wearing its bleeding liberal heart all over its sleeve.
  27. Firedancer
    Film struggles to balance its past-present memory drama and a rather standard take on an American immigrant family. Although accented by fine cinematic flourishes, pic is harmed by an abrupt conclusion and technical glitches.
  28. Ghostlight
    Neither fish nor fowl, slick yet strangely rudderless Ghostlight sounds interesting in description but lacks fascination in actual viewing.
  29. Flavors
    Likeable, credible actors, snappy dialogue and a determinedly upbeat tone should work well on cable and score with Indian diaspora auds. But pic lacks density and spontaneity necessary to lift it out of its carefully posed and plotted set-ups and onto a bigscreen.
  30. Life of the Party
    This is a heartier celebration of McCarthy’s talents, a mash note to a comic who can also play flirtatious, empathetic, and human. She’s believable, even if the scenes setting-off her performance aren’t.
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