Variety's Scores

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For 17,779 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: 9,134 out of 17779
  2. Mixed: 7,009 out of 17779
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17779
17779 movie reviews
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  1. Redemption Day
    If Redemption Day were any more generic, the first thing you’d see on screen would be a bar code in place of the opening credits.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Medicine Man
    An indelicate attempt to create some African Queen-style magic while curing cancer and saving the rainforests in the bargain, this jumbo-budget two-character piece suffers from a very weak script and a lethal job of miscasting.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Five Days One Summer
    An attempt at an intimate personal drama that just doesn't come off, Five Days One Summer is so slow that it seems more like Five Summers One Day.
  4. Sir Billi
    Sir Billi lacks the looks or charm of even the most rudimentary CG offerings being made today, as if not only the animation but also the plot and characters were spat out by off-the-shelf software.
  5. The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee
    “Mr. Dundee” is saved from total catastrophe by Hogan’s natural-born appeal.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man
    A dopey, almost poignantly bad actioner about two legends-in-their-own-minds, who bungle their way through a bank robbery on behalf of a friend, stands out only for big stars Mickey Rourke and Don Johnson.
  7. Bliss
    Cahill gets so bogged down in hair-splitting rules and exposition that he loses track of the bigger themes.
  8. Don't Look Up
    Don’t Look Up plays like the leftie answer to “Armageddon” — which is to say, it ditches the Bruckheimer approach of assembling a bunch of blue-collar heroes to rocket out to space and nuke the approaching comet, opting instead to spotlight the apathy, incompetence and financial self-interest of all involved.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Phase IV
    This one didn't get the bugs worked out before release. It's another in the Hollywood cycle of films based on every kind of creature enlarged by radiation.
  10. Savage State
    A gonzo mashup of gothic melodrama, Wild West survival story, and voodoo-flavored supernaturalism, with a side order of slasher-movie tropes and a sprinkling of kinky sex insinuations.
  11. First Date
    More concerned with paying homage to ’90s-era Quentin Tarantino than telling a contemporary coming-of-age tale with believable stakes, co-helmers Manuel Crosby and Darren Knapp’s debut feature First Date saddles a young couple not with a romantic night out, but with a haphazard all-nighter crime-comedy that’s mostly unfunny and free of convincing suspense.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Nowhere to Run
    Action hero Jean-Claude Van Damme takes a career step backward in Nowhere to Run, a relentlessly corny and shamelessly derivative vehicle.
  13. A Week Away
    If anything, the film’s cross-pollination with faith-based cinema is detrimental to its already minimal tension.
  14. Safer at Home
    Will Wernick’s film not only fails to use that format in clever or suspenseful ways, it blows the basics of maintaining plausibility and viewer interest.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Ladybugs
    A klutzy would-be comedy about a girls' soccer team, Ladybugs is sexist, homophobic and woefully unfunny to boot. Paramount apparently thought it was ordering up another Bad News Bears, but the garish Ladybugs has the look of a third-rate TV movie.
  16. Creation Stories
    As directed by Nick Moran in obvious imitation of executive producer Danny Boyle’s most hyperbolic style, scripted by Irvine Welsh and Dean Cavanagh, this apparently loose interpretation of the subject’s memoir becomes a hyperventilating “Behind the Music” caricature, all familiar flash and precious little substance.
  17. The Affair
    Despite a fine Continental cast and gleaming production values, Czech helmer Julius Ševčík has made a muddled, maudlin hash of what ought to have been a sure thing.
  18. Happily
    Aiming for a darkly humorous portrait of marital bliss — and the difficulties of maintaining it — the film comes off as a half-formed “Twilight Zone” joke minus the punchline.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Split Second
    Split Second is an extremely stupid monster film, boasting enough violence and special effects to satisfy less-discriminating vid fans.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Millennium
    Millennium tries hard to combine sci-fi special effects and a love story, but unfortunately neither are convincing and the pic ends up looking like a failed pilot for a TV series. Veteran science-fiction director Michael Anderson does the best he can with a mediocre script.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Lassiter
    Hutton is totally unbelievable with her Germanic accent and evil habits. As the girlfriend, Jane Seymour is wasted. Her role is basically to stand by as Selleck races about trying to grab the diamonds and run.
  22. Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City
    In any decade, the film’s bevy of unexplained details, dropped subplots, paper-thin characterizations and fright-free mayhem would disappoint.
  23. Demonic
    At one point, a character in a coma is referred to as having Locked-In Syndrome, which means that she’s still aware of her surroundings but is totally unable to move. By the end of Demonic, you’ll know just how she feels.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    HouseSitter
    Davis Steve Martin Universal's HouseSitter, a tediously unfunny screwball comedy, is a career misstep for both Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn. Hawn is grating as the kind of giggly flake she played two decades ago on "Laugh-In," and Martin is more obnoxious than endearing as the New England architect whose life she invades. This looks like a B.O. dud.
  25. Seance
    Seance proves a disappointingly boilerplate retro slasher that’s pedestrian on every level from concept to execution.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Mr. Destiny
    A heavy-handed, by-the-numbers fantasy about an ordinary Joe who thinks his life would have been different if he'd connected with that all-important pitch in a high school baseball game.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Harry & Son
    Fuzzily conceived and indecisively executed, Harry & Son represents a deeply disappointing return to the director's chair for Paul Newman. Cowritten and coproduced by the star as well, pic [suggested by the novel A Lost King by Raymond DeCapite] never makes up its mind who or what it wants to be about and, to compound the problem, never finds a proper style in which to convey the tragicomic events that transpire.
  28. Chasers
    This mangy, dimwitted gender switch on "The Last Detail" won't even have the benefit of trial before being sentenced to the video brig, since it's virtually there already.
  29. Twist
    Carol Reed’s “Oliver!,” now 53 years old, feels more authentically youthful and vibrant than this try-hard “how do you do, fellow kids” exercise.
  30. Casanova, Last Love
    Whatever the truth, there’s nothing in Jacquot’s vision of Charpillon to inspire devotion. There have been other unlikely Casanovas, yet the best of them conveyed not just the man’s charm but a depth of intelligence. Lindon’s downturned eyes have always exuded a world-weariness that fits with his characters, but there’s no spark here, no understanding of the man’s aura.
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