Variety's Scores

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For 17,760 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: 9,121 out of 17760
  2. Mixed: 7,003 out of 17760
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17760
17760 movie reviews
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    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Lock Up
    Lock Up is made in the same, simplistic vein as most other Sylvester Stallone pics - putting him, the blue-collar protagonist, against the odds over which he ultimately prevails.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Parenthood
    An ambitious, keenly observed, and often very funny look at one of life's most daunting passages, Parenthood's masterstroke is that it covers the range of the family experience, offering the points of view of everyone in an extended and wildly diverse middle-class family.
  3. Kiki's Delivery Service
    Overall, thoroughly delightful tale is stronger on character and texture than on plot, with Miyazaki’s masterful use of quiet spaces and expansive moods (especially in flying segs) offering a fresh contrast to hyped-up Yank toons.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Turner & Hooch
    Until its grossly miscalculated bummer of an ending, Turner & Hooch is a routine but amiable cop-and-dog comedy enlivened by the charm of Tom Hanks and his homely-as-sin canine partner.
    • 14 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan
    Jensen Daggett is a standout as the troubled young girl on whom Jason is fixated. V.C. Dupree has vibrant energy in his boxing scenes, Sharlene Martin has a fine time with the bitch role, and Martin Cummins is funny as a video freak who compulsively films the proceedings.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shag
    As a dance flick, Shag suffers from an unexciting dance-style and so-so choreography but compensates with a fine young cast and likable story.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Licence to Kill
    The James Bond production team has found its second wind with Licence to Kill, a cocktail of high-octane action, spectacle and drama...The thrills-and-spills chases are superbly orchestrated as pic spins at breakneck speed through its South Florida and Central American locations.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    When Harry Met Sally...
    Rob Reiner directs with deftness and sincerity, making the material seem more engaging than it is, at least until the plot machanics begin to unwind and the film starts to seem shapeless.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lethal Weapon 2
    Loaded with the usual elements, Lethal Weapon 2 benefits from a consistency of tone that was lacking in the first film. This time, screenwriter Jeffrey Boam and director Richard Donner have wisely trained their sights on humor and the considerable charm of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover's onscreen rapport.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Do the Right Thing
    Combines a forceful statement on race relations with solid entertainment values.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Twister
    Appealing for its ambition to achieve a unique tone and for its wildly disparate cast, pic never entirely comes together.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Karate Kid Part III
    The makers of The Karate Kid Part III - also responsible for its successful predecessors - have either delivered or taken a few too many kicks to the head along the way, resulting in a particularly dimwitted film that will likely spell the death of the series.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Great Balls of Fire!
    It's a thin, cartoonish treatment of the hellbent, musically energetic young Jerry Lee Lewis.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Batman
    Nicholson embellishes fascinatingly baroque designs with his twisted features, lavish verbal pirouettes and inspired excursions into the outer limits of psychosis. It's a masterpiece of sinister comic acting.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
    Pic [story by Stuart Gordon, Brian Yuzna and Ed Naha] is in the best tradition of Disney and even better than that because it is not so juvenile that adults won’t be thoroughly entertained.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Dead Poets Society
    Sings whenever Williams is onscreen.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ghostbusters II
    Ghostbusters II is babyboomer silliness. Kids will find the oozing slime and ghastly, ghostly apparitions to their liking and adults will enjoy the preposterously clever dialog.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
    Even die-hard Trekkies may be disappointed by Star Trek V. Coming after Leonard Nimoy's delightful directorial outing on Star Trek IV, William Shatner's inauspicious feature directing debut is a double letdown.
    • Variety
    • 30 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Vampire's Kiss
    Cage's over-the-top performance generates little sympathy for the character, so it's tough to be interested in him as his personality disorder worsens.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Renegades
    Renegades offers some rollercoaster thrills thanks to Jack Sholder's full-throttle direction but ultimately exhausts itself with unrelenting bedlam.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
    The Harrison Ford-Sean Connery father-and-son team gives Last Crusade unexpected emotional depth, reminding us that real film magic is not in special effects.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Road House
    With Road House, United Artists hotwires Patrick Swayze a star vehicle shackled by a couple of flat tires in the script department. Ill-conceived and unevenly executed, pic essentially is a Western - a loner comes in to clean up a bar, of all things, and ends up washing and drying the whole town - but its vigilante justice, lawlessness and wanton violence feel ludicrous in a modern setting.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    See No Evil, Hear No Evil
    With Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder in the lead roles, See No Evil, Hear No Evil could only be a broadly played, occasionally crass, funny physical comedy .
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Rachel Papers
    The basic material is as old as the hills, but Martin Amis, who wrote the original novel some 15 years earlier, explored it in fresh directions.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Earth Girls Are Easy
    Earth Girls Are Easy is a dizzy, glitzy fish-out-of-water farce about three horny aliens on the make in LA. The two val-gals and their alien ‘dates’ take off for a weekend of LA nightlife, where the visitors’ smooth adaptation to Coast culture is intended by director Julian Temple and his screenwriters to affectionately skewer Tinseltown lifestyles.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Return of Swamp Thing
    The Return of Swamp Thing is scientific hokum without the fun. Second attempt to film the DC Comics character will disappoint all but the youngest critters.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    How to Get Ahead in Advertising
    The picture would be genuinely hilarious were the subject matter not so overworked.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    K-9
    There are a few amazing moments (the dog’s rescue of Belushi in a bar). In between lingers lots of standard action-pic fare, plenty of toothless jokes and some down-right mangy dialog.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Miss Firecracker
    Putting the show over with a bang is Hunter, the epitome of energy in a tailormade feisty role. She very accurately judges the line between high and low camp in her climactic tapdance for the talent contest, entertaining but just klutzy enough to be authentic.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Field of Dreams
    In spite of a script hobbled with cloying aphorisms and shameless sentimentality, Field of Dreams sustains a dreamy mood in which the idea of baseball is distilled to its purest essence.
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