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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    • 24 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
    The earlier films in the series were far from perfect, but at their best they had some flair and agreeable humor, qualities this one sorely lacks. Hackman gets a few laughs, but has less to work with than before, and everyone else seems to be just going through the motions and having less fun doing so.
    • Variety
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    La Bamba
    La Bamba is engrossing throughout and boasts numerous fine performances.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    RoboCop
    Robocop is as tightly worked as a film can be, not a moment or line wasted.
    • 15 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Jaws: The Revenge
    Pacing leaves a lot to be desired and the moment-of-attack sequences, full of jagged cuts and a great deal of noise, more closely resemble the view from inside a washing machine.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Adventures in Babysitting
    Chris Columbus weighs in adequately in his directorial debut, thanks to a fresh, solid lead performance from Elisabeth Shue. Yet the film can never rise above the leaden script.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Surf Nazis Must Die
    A sort of Clockwork Orange meets Mad Max on the beach, pic hasn't one redeeming feature.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Innerspace
    Quaid is engagingly reckless and gung-ho as the pioneer into a new dimension, although he is physically constrained in his little capsule for most of the running time. Short has infinitely more possibilities and makes the most of them, coming into his own as a screen personality as a mild-mannered little guy who rises to an extraordinary situation.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Full Metal Jacket
    An intense, schematic, superbly made Vietnam War drama.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dragnet
    Dragnet tries very hard to parody its 1950s TV series progenitor but winds up more innocuous than inventive.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Spaceballs
    Mel Brooks will do anything for a laugh. Unfortunately, what he does in Spaceballs, a misguided parody of the Star Wars adventures, isn't very funny.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Withnail and I
    Withnail & I is about the end of an era. Set in 1969 England, it portrays the last throes of a friendship mirroring the seedy demise of the hippie period, delivering some comic gems along the way.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Roxanne
    Aussie director Fred Schepisi, who has elsewhere handled much rougher material, does a professional job of creating a breezy atmosphere, but in the end it’s hopelessly sappy stuff.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Predator
    A slightly above-average actioner that tries to compensate for tissue-thin-plot with ever-more-grisly death sequences and impressive special effects.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Witches of Eastwick
    With a no-holds-barred performance by Jack Nicholson as the horny Satan, it’s a very funny and irresistible set-up for anyone who has ever been baffled by the opposite sex.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Harry and the Hendersons
    Harry and the Hendersons is proof that the folks at Amblin Entertainment, a.k.a. Steven Spielberg’s production company, can’t keep using the same E.T. formula for every kiddie pic.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Stepfather
    The Stepfather is an engrossing suspense thriller that refreshingly doesn't cheat the audience in terms of valid clues and plot twists.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Untouchables
    The Untouchables is a beautifully crafted portrait of Prohibition-era Chicago.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tampopo
    A thoroughly offbeat but most enjoyable comedy on the subject of food.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Beverly Hills Cop II
    Beverly Hills Cop II is a noisy, numbing, unimaginative, heartless remake of the original film...Murphy keeps things entertainingly afloat with his sassiness, raunchy one-liners, take-charge brazenness and innate irreverence.
    • Variety
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ishtar
    Enter Charles Grodin, who upstages all involved via his savagely comical portrayal of a CIA agent.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    River's Edge
    Tim Hunter’s River’s Edge is an unusually downbeat and depressing youth pic. As group leader Layne, Crispin Glover could have used more restraint: he gives a busy, fussy performance. Others in the cast are more effective, with young Joshua Miller particularly Striking as the awful child, Tim.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Prick Up Your Ears
    The script is witty, the direction fluid, with one of the homosexual orgy scenes in a public toilet almost balletic, and the depiction of the lovers’ life in their flat suitably claustrophobic. Gary Oldman is excellent as Orton, right down to remarkable resemblance, while Alfred Molina creates both an amusing and tormented Halliwell. Vanessa Redgrave takes top honors, though, as a compassionate and benign agent.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Gardens of Stone
    Gardens of Stone, Francis Coppola's muddled meditation on the Vietnam War, seems to take its name not so much from the Arlington Memorial Cemetery, where much of the action takes place, but from the stiffness of the characters it portrays.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Creepshow 2
    Tied together with some humdrum animated sequences, three vignettes on offer obviously were produced on the absolute cheap, and are deficient in imagination and scare quotient.
    • Variety
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    American Ninja 2: The Confrontation
    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.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    My Life as a Dog
    An exquisite look at childhood, based loosely on Reidar Jonsson's 1983 novel about a rural-provincial 12-year-old equivalent of J.D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Extreme Prejudice
    Extreme Prejudice is an amusing concoction that is frequently offbeat and at times compelling. Taut direction and editing prevail despite overstaged hyper-violence that is so gratuitous to be farcical.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Project X
    If nothing else, Project X is the ultimate film for monkey lovers. Some quite endearing chimpanzees share center stage with Matthew Broderick for nearly two hours here, and while they, and he, are engaging enough to watch, picture lets its manipulative strings show too clearly.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Secret of My Succe$s
    A bedroom farce with a leaden touch, a corporate comedy without teeth. What it does have is Michael J. Fox in a winning performance as a likable hick out to hit the big time in New York.
    • Variety
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blind Date
    Theme of pure mayhem works well because of chemistry between the main trio of actors, Willis, Basinger and her spurned ex-beau (John Larroquette).
    • Variety
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