Variety's Scores

For 17,849 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:
17849 movie reviews
  1. In style and content, Sarah Jessica Parker starrer is the kind of earnest, talky, modestly scaled social-issue pic that seems predestined for the smallscreen.
  2. Less a movie than a ill-advised lab experiment in which classic children's stories are injected with Bond-movie stylings, inane wisecracks and martial-arts mayhem, this manic misfire takes storybook revisionism to ever more irritating ends.
  3. This messy amalgam of mysticism, romance, satire, social criticism and cartoonish f/x seems destined for discount DVD bins.
  4. At half the length or twice the budget, this CG-animated musical mash-up of fairy tales would still be a pretty pathetic excuse for children’s entertainment, short on charm and utterly devoid of magic.
  5. Feels entirely a part of an already faded go-go era. Pic is too late by a mile and rightly dumped in a few theaters by Fox, which will doubtless send it to video bins faster than you can say gigabyte.
  6. The film is banal by obvious intent. The only question, as with other Ellis adaptations including "American Psycho," is whether auds will appreciate the aggressively shallow depiction of an aggressively shallow milieu, or mistake the pic's implicit critique for the crime itself.
  7. A clumsily told story of friendship and wartime remembrance that has a tough time serving up a halfway believable moment, let alone a moving and powerful testimony about the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
  8. The hit-to-miss ratio is less than impressive throughout A Haunted House, a frenetic and freewheeling satirical comedy that only sporadically scores a bull's-eye while aiming at easy targets.
  9. The jazz-scored picture relies heavily on quirkiness to round out shaky characterizations and inject interest into otherwise forgettable pairings.
  10. In execution (and there are precious few of those), Asking for It is too much like its cardboard heroines: edgy on the outside, empty within. It’s the “Charlie’s Angels” freeze-pose of rape-revenge movies.
  11. Results are simple-minded at best, contemptible at worst; most audiences would rather watch anything else.
  12. While roving interviewer Ben Stein extracts some choice soundbites from scientists on both sides of the creation-vs.-evolution debate, the film's flippant approach undermines the seriousness of its discourse, trading less in facts than in emotional appeals.
  13. The net result is a truly numbing experience.
  14. This is all enormously disappointing, of course, since the best we could hope for from a live-action "Avatar" adaptation is the mind-blowing equivalent of our first encounters with wire-fu, rather than this cartoony nonsense.
  15. Makes little impression and is sure to leave few memories for a teen.
  16. Takes a prominent place along with "Tomcats," "Say It Isn't So," "Saving Silverman" and "Get Over It" on the list of reasons why raucous teen farce is headed six feet under.
    • 20 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Somewhere lurking behind the scenes of She's Out of Control is the germ of a good idea. Despite some funny scenes, the sitcomish treatment of a father's anxiety over his teenage daughter's budding sexuality is mostly shallow and uneven.
    • 20 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Writer-director Michael Crichton has used interesting material, public manipulation by computer-generated TV commercials, to create Looker, a silly and unconvincing contempo sci-fi thriller.
  17. A horror movie without horror, a spook pic without spookiness and a metaphysical drama without the slightest spiritual tug, Soul Survivors virtually dwindles away on the screen.
  18. Plays like an overextended variety-show sketch.
  19. Ranks as the most slapdash comedic star vehicle to hit screens since Harland Williams misfired with the career-stalling "RocketMan."
  20. Voice work is weirdly awful and funny at the same time.
  21. Director Baget clearly strives to replicate the ersatz Dixie flavors of "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" right down to the vintage '30s music in a film set in the 1970s, but nailing the Coen brothers' precisely calibrated style is far harder than it looks.
  22. Much of this makes little sense, but it's hard to care.
    • 20 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Director Sam Firstenberg stages the numerous action scenes well, but engenders little interest in the non-story.
  23. Series regulars Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo and Randy Quaid (who joined for "Christmas Vacation") are all back for more, and thank God for Quaid, who injects a few bracing shots of mangy humor into what is otherwise a lukewarm brew.
  24. What surprises Mortal holds largely relate to the oddity of its construction and its tonal whiplash, as a thin, repetitive narrative skips from emo “Twilight” moping to dour Scandi-noir procedural to dollar-store Marvel ripoff.
  25. Overblown and underwhelming, Bitch Slap is a desperately unfunny attempt to satirically recycle cliches and archetypes from sexploitation actioners of the 1960s and '70s within the time-trippy, multiple-flashback framework of a Quentin Tarantino. extravaganza.
  26. The script is so thinly written that the main characters are defined almost entirely by the actors playing them. Fortunately, seasoned pros Slater, Rhames and Cromwell are able to flesh out their boilerplate parts.
  27. A dismally stupid and sexist romantic comedy.

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