Variety's Scores

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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:
  1. Positive: 9,174 out of 17849
  2. Mixed: 7,036 out of 17849
  3. Negative: 1,639 out of 17849
17849 movie reviews
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  1. The Cat in the Hat
    Attractively designed, energetically performed and, above all, blessedly concise, this adaptation of one of the most popular American kids' books of all time walks the safe side of surrealism with its fur-flying shenanigans. The younger the viewers, the better reactions are bound to be.
  2. Virus
    Curtis and Pacula are thoroughly convincing in thinly written roles.
  3. All the Queen's Men
    Not bad enough to qualify as a memorable dud, multinational production nonetheless misses mark on every level.
  4. Thomas and the Magic Railroad
    All mish-mash.
  5. Reprisal
    Reprisal is not a very good movie, but it leaves you with tantalizing hints that some people involved with it are capable of doing something much better.
  6. Underclassman
    So far-fetched as to make "Kindergarten Cop" look comparatively austere.
  7. Labor Day
    For every engrossing rank-and-file story, there are endless self-congratulatory explanations and podium highlights.
  8. Old Dogs
    Too bad this shrilly tuned comedy doesn't demand more than clock-punching effort from everyone involved.
  9. Good Luck Chuck
    Dane Cook sells out arenas with his stand-up act, and Jessica Alba is, well, Jessica Alba, but once "Chuck" exhausts their devoted bases, this doesn't promise to bring much good luck to Lionsgate.
  10. On a Wing and a Prayer
    Like “Soul Surfer” before it, On a Wing and a Prayer clearly aims to appeal to audiences seeking faith-based entertainment; but just because its story is based on events that are technically true, that doesn’t mean that ticket buyers should be subjected to a version of them that’s executed too predictably to believe.
    • 19 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Oxford Blues
    Director-writer Robert Boris fails to establish a consistent tone to make his fairytale story believable.
  12. To Save a Life
    Just as representations of human sexuality on film are often unpleasantly twisted by the grotesqueries of the porn industry, so, too, are filmic representations of religious conversion homogenized by the faith-based entertainment industry. Case in point: Debutante director Brian Baugh's To Save a Life.
    • 19 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Lost & Found
    Tumbles off the sick-but-sweet balance beam.
  14. The Hillside Strangler
    Plays as a blackly comic slice of mock '70s-style exploitation that flirts with the viewer before applying its chokehold.
  15. Grown Ups 2
    Among the slackest, laziest, least movie-like movies released by a major studio in the last decade, Grown Ups 2 is perhaps the closest Hollywood has yet come to making “Ow! My Balls!” seem like a plausible future project.
  16. Cavemen
    An utterly unevolved romantic comedy, “Cavemen” tries to split the difference between raunchy and sweet and fails miserably on all counts.
  17. The Covenant
    Muddled and most unmagical offering.
  18. Gummo
    Gummo is personal, honest and raw, but it's also erratic, self-indulgent and full of ideas that are not fully explored. [8 Sept. 1997, p.80]
    • Variety
  19. Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd
    Fitfully amusing prequel.
  20. Replicas
    How late can a thriller spring a plot twist that at least partially compensates for all the cavernous plot holes, risible dialogue, and ludicrously illogical behavior that precede it? Probably not nearly as late as the makers of Replicas wait before introducing a third-act reveal that brazenly acknowledges just how silly things have been up to that point.
  21. After Fall, Winter
    Uncomfortably confessional or wildly melodramatic plot twists work interestingly in the moment, but wobble in retrospect. Pic's overarching structure is further weakened by Schaeffer's half-hearted attempt to tie together loose ends.
  22. The Ultimate Life
    At least the narrative sloppiness and ineptly delivered themes in the script by Brian Bird and Lisa G. Shillingburg (freely adapted from the novel by Jim Stovall) feel of a piece with the entire production.
  23. The Strangers: Chapter 3
    This is an unconscionably lazy piece of work, the kind of movie that makes you marvel how people will put months of work into creating a feature film whose script seems to have been written in a few hours’ uninspired haste.
    • 19 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Wild Orchid
    What doesn’t work is the hold Rourke is supposed to have over Otis. Looking pudgy and puffy-faced, with a little gold earring, he is anything but an appetizing sex object...As Emily, Otis really is hypnotically attractive, but she plays the still-waters-run-deep country beauty with expressionless immobility. Bisset, always a class act, here bubbles over with caricatured joie de vivre.
  25. Outta Time
    So absurdly contrived that it begs to be taken as comedy.
  26. 36 Saints
    This confused and confusing pic delivers no thrills, chills or anything remotely surprising.
  27. Reasonable Doubt
    This utterly unmemorable, uninspired and unnecessary genre exercise should fade from view so fast they might just as soon have called it “Without a Trace.”
  28. The Prince
    The action sequences are competently directed, but exhibit virtually no flair or invention.
  29. Kite
    At the very least, Kite could have given Jackson some scenery to chew.
    • 19 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Sentinel
    The Sentinel is a grubby, grotesque excursion into religioso psychodrama, notable for uniformly poor performances by a large cast of familiar names and direction that is hysterical and heavy-handed.
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