Variety's Scores

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For 17,791 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 2.4 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: 9,139 out of 17791
  2. Mixed: 7,015 out of 17791
  3. Negative: 1,637 out of 17791
17791 movie reviews
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    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Overboard
    Overboard is an uninspiring, unsophisticated attempt at an updated screwball comedy that is brought down by plodding script and a handful of too broadly drawn characters. Only element that occasionally lifts pic is the work of the redoubtable Goldie Hawn, who gives a gem of a performance.
  2. The Leisure Seeker
    With a script that signals every progression as obviously as the large-lettered signs used in homes for people with dementia, viewers can guess after 10 minutes exactly how this predictable story is going to end.
  3. England Is Mine
    England Is Mine is fussy and prudish — about erotic longing, and about the rock ‘n’ roll that gives form to it.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Any Which Way You Can
    Any Which Way You Can is a benign continuation of Every Which Way But Loose. Original ape from Loose was not available to Eastwood here, but substitute performs heroically.
  5. What Happened to Monday
    Wirkola’s film is set apart by its almost heroic lack of self-awareness: Not only does it not realize how dumb it is, there’s a real sense that it thinks it’s smart. In fact it’s a whirlygig of inanely convoluted plotting, deeply dubious philosophy and shots of Noomi Rapace sliding glasses across tables to herself. You should probably watch it.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Golden Child
    A strange hybrid of Far Eastern mysticism, treacly sentimentality, diluted reworkings of Eddie Murphy’s patented confrontation scenes across racial and cultural boundaries, and dragged-in ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) special effects monsters, film makes no sense on any level.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Death Wish
    Poisonous incitement to do-it-yourself law enforcement is the vulgar exploitation hook on which Death Wish is awkwardly hung.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Brubaker
    Even with a sharp cast topped by the star power of Robert Redford, it’s hard to imagine a broad audience wanting to share the two hours of agony in this one, all the way to a downbeat ending with Redford the loser in his righteous battle.
  9. The Queen of Spain
    Sure it’s meant to be taken in good fun, but the energy keeps getting undercut by over-broad comedy and uninspired scenes, such as a limp musical number in the Isabella movie.
  10. The Ice Cream Truck
    If the horror aspects are underdeveloped, so are Johnston’s other major ideas.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
    Pic is mainly focused on the violent special effects outbursts of Freddy Krueger (ably limned under heavy makeup by Robert Englund), the child murderer’s demon spirit who seeks revenge on Langenkamp and the other Elm St kids for the sins of their parents. Debuting director Chuck Russell elicits poor performances from most of his thesps, making it difficult to differentiate between pic’s comic relief and unintended howlers.
  12. Holmes & Watson
    The trouble is, Sherlock Holmes exists so large in audiences’ minds already that the pair’s uninspired take feels neither definitive nor an especially fresh take, but just an off-brand, garden-variety parody.
  13. Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?
    Wilkerson doesn’t mean to suggest ambiguity with his title, since no one questions the identity of the culprit, but it is regrettably indicative of his naval-gazing focus on family skeletons, combined with a deeply annoying tendency to sensationalize the obvious.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Airplane II: The Sequel
    It can’t be said that Airplane II is no better or worse than its predecessor. It is far worse, but might seem funnier had there been no original.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Smokey and the Bandit II
    Sally Field tells Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit II that he is no longer having fun doing what used to come naturally. This stale sequel seems to be evidence of going through the motions for money instead of fun. Ironically, the best part of the film is the unusual end credit sequence, which shows the actors having fun when they blow lines in outtakes.
  16. Dalida
    As so often in biopics of famous, complex women, Dalida’s life is thus reduced to a parade of romantic intrigues and solipsistic heartbreak, with very little sense emerging of the real woman who lived it all, and less still of the talent that made her music and performances so meaningful to millions.
  17. A Family (Una Famiglia)
    With a surface dusting of realist grit hardly covering for the strained contrivances and one-note characterization propelling its lurid narrative, Riso’s sophomore feature never shakes the artificial, soapy aroma at its core.
  18. Loving Pablo
    Long, loud and lurid, with a distinct whiff of week-old quesito colombiano, Fernando Leon de Aranoa’s pulpy Pablo Escobar biopic promises an alternative spin on familiar material by taking the perspective of the drug kingpin’s glamorous journalist lover Virginia Vallejo. Yet she turns out to be as stock a presence as anyone else in this blood-spattered chunk of cartoon history.
  19. Acts Of Vengeance
    This slick-enough mediocrity will pass the time tolerably for less discriminating genre fans. But it’s a little sad to see Antonio Banderas reduced to a B movie with grade-C material.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Heroes
    A poorly-written melodrama.
    • Variety
  21. Princess Cyd
    Caring more about what its characters represent — and its empathetic representation of them — than about crafting a fully formed drama concerning flesh-and-blood people, Cone’s film has little more than its heart in the right place.
  22. Let There Be Light
    This drama about the spiritual awakening of “the world’s most famous atheist’” is predictably simplistic and maudlin in content. But it should satisfy the target demographic with an inspirational family-values message wrapped in a sudsy narrative.
  23. Permanent
    Apart from casting (which is just OK here, as Wilson resorts a bit too much to shtick, while Arquette reaches for sincerity), regionally- and period-specific details are the ingredient that make otherwise-interchangeable stories like this appealing.
  24. Cutthroat Island
    What seemed like a dubious proposition on paper plays even more dubiously onscreen, as Cutthroat Island strenuously but vainly attempts to revive the thrills of old-fashioned pirate pictures. Giving most of the swashbuckling opportunities to star Geena Davis, pic does little with its reversal of gender expectations and features a seriously mismatched romantic duo in Davis and Matthew Modine.
  25. Gangster Land
    What ultimately keeps “Land” from rising above mediocrity — even to the level of guilty pleasure — is that Ian Patrick Williams’ screenplay is such a stock compilation of gangster tropes, the film has little chance of developing a personality all its own.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Wind
    The elements prove far more stimulating than the people in Wind, a sail-racing saga that could have used a great deal more dramatic rigging.
    • Variety
  27. Freak Show
    Freak Show...doesn’t exhibit an understanding of queer identity that goes much deeper than the sheer sequined fabulosity of Billy’s image.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Crocodile Dundee II
    Crocodile Dundee II is a disappointing follow-up to the disarmingly charming first feature with Aussie star Paul Hogan. Sequel is too slow to constitute an adventure and has too few laughs to be a comedy.
  29. The Dancer
    More problematic, even if we accept the film as pure fiction, is its pedestrian construction and ill-conceived script, unlikely to spark interest in one of the most innovative and influential performers of the last century and a quarter.
  30. Hellboy
    It’s lunging to be a badass hard-R epic, but it’s basically a pile of origin-story gobbledygook, frenetic and undercooked, full of limb-hacking, eye-gouging monster battles as well as an atmosphere of apocalyptic grunge that signifies next to nothing.
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