Variety's Scores

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:
17828 movie reviews
  1. Summer of ’84 is only cute and competent enough to be diverting; it’s neither funny nor scary enough to leave a lasting impression.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Neither the beguiling romance of Venice nor the undraped bodies of Natasha Richardson and Rupert Everett can disguise the hollowness of The Comfort of Strangers.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The horror is expressed through sudden murderous impulses felt by Black and Reed, a premise which might have been interesting if director Dan Curtis hadn't relied strictly on formula treatment.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The spitball script [from a story by Gail Morgan Hickman and S.W. Schurr] lurches along, stopping periodically for the blood-lettings and assorted running and jumping and chasing stuff.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Best that can be said for this quickie is its unpretentiousness in not seeking any pseudo-sociological meaning or theme, or assuming any airs that one is supposed to be enriched or provoked by it all. It's strictly action-adventure, alternating, like clockwork, drugs-sex-violence for its duration with hardly a plot line to hold it together.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sam Peckinpah’s Convoy starts out as Smokey and the Bandit, segues into either Moby Dick or Les Miserables, and ends in the usual script confusion and disarray, the whole stew peppered with the vulgar excess of random truck crashes and miscellaneous destruction.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Paul Schrader's first feature since Light Sleeper five years ago boasts a colorful cast and some vivid individual scenes, but unsuccessfully mixes tones while strenuously reaching for offbeat humor.
  2. The movie, while giddily entertaining and exciting in fits and starts, fails to coalesce into a satisfying whole.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Producer Michael Ritchie (who directed the first installment) and writer-creator Bill Lancaster encore with Japan resulting in a more vigorous film than the sodden Bad News Bears in Breaking Training.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Script by actors Gary Conway (who plays the narcotics overlord) and James Booth trades heavily upon the notion of Americans inherent mental and physical superiority to native warriors, who are a dime a dozen, but in such a comic way that the viewer can laugh with it rather than at it.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Script delivers any number of wise old Eastern homilies. Anyone over the age of 18 is liable to start fidgeting when Macchio dominates the action, but then viewers beyond that advanced age are irrelevant with this film.
  3. Leisurely and overly familiar pic should appeal to young teen girls, but won't be breaking any B.O. bricks with its bare hands.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The fifth in the series of slapstick comedies about Ernest P. Worrell will please his fans but is unlikely to convince anyone else as to it merits.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Though Turtles II suffers from a lack of novelty and an aimless screenplay, the bottom line is that the pic won't disappoint its core subteen audience.
  4. Economically deployed effects lend the gathering storm a genuine sense of anxious bluster, but tension and terror are harder to conjure in a narrative this sparse and emotionally one-note.
  5. Constructing Albert remains an oddly unsatisfying movie about food that’s so tasteful you can barely imagine what it tastes like.
  6. It’s like watching a romantic comedy while strapped to a roller-coaster with a VR headset on. Jungle Cruise is at once a love story, a made-for-4DX action movie, a “Pirates of the Caribbean”-style fairy tale featuring a ghostly conquistador (Edgar Ramirez) and his pewter-armored henchman with digital snakes slithering through them, and God knows what else.
  7. An extremely handsome physical production, with breathtaking Venezuelan vistas by Tony Pierce-Roberts, Jungle 2 Jungle is an otherwise modest effort. Simple truths are often the most effective, but in this instance they are only banal and mildly amusing.
  8. An exceedingly safe and conventional Chris Columbus comedy.
  9. Arguably the most critic-proof picture of the decade, Barney's Great Adventure will delight everyone who can't wait to see it and be a grin-and-bear-it experience for those who must accompany members of the former group.
  10. Decently crafted but oddly charmless.
  11. The effectively offbeat casting of Paul Hogan and some impressive underwater cinematography do much to enliven Flipper, an otherwise unremarkable attempt to revive the franchise that spawned two features and a popular TV series in the mid-1960s.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Some last-reel thrills and cathartic violence provide commercial oomph to the otherwise tedious thriller The Vanishing. This is one remake that sacrifices much of what made the original work so well.
  12. Those who grew up watching The Little Rascals may well be intrigued by the idea of introducing their kids to this full-color, bigscreen version. Still, the challenge of stretching those mildly diverting shorts to feature length remains formidable, and one has to wonder whether an audience exists beyond nostalgic parents and their young children.
  13. Snapshots wallows a little too readily in cliché to be quite as stirring as its story — one drawn from Corran’s own family history — sounds on paper.
  14. Time and adapters have not been kind to the fun-loving series.
  15. The term “crowd-pleasing” is frequently overused, but it applies to this — the latest in a line of so-so baseball movies, which serves up its corn so unabashedly it’s hard to take offense at its sappiness.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Even Steve Martin back in his wild-and-crazy mode can't breathe much life into Sgt. Bilko - a somewhat unlikely candidate for translation from the TV sitcom vaults to the bigscreen. Bilko can't really be much more than the series - the exploits of an unscrupulous army scam artist constantly looking for new ways to make a buck.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Aa glossy, fairy-tale romance that's longer on wishfulness than believability.
  16. Indian in the Cupboard is yet another example that Hollywood can make movies in which critics of sex and violence can find nothing to complain about. It’s also a reminder that family values can be, well, kind of boring.

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