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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  1. Songs from the Second Floor
    One of the most highly crafted pics in recent memory, and certainly the most original in vision of the 23 features competing at Cannes this year, Songs From the Second Floor rapidly wears out its welcome after the first few reels to finish up as a perplexing objet d'art.
  2. The Powerpuff Girls
    Small children who will accept it as rock-'em, sock-'em excitement with a touch of gender-specific empowerment, and hipper teens and grown-ups who can appreciate the whole thing as a semisatirical hoot.
  3. Lovely & Amazing
    Engaging, intermittently insightful but too glib to wring full value out of its subject matter.
  4. The Cockettes
    Joyously re-creates the brief but resplendent reign of the legendary freakadelic drag troupe.
  5. The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest
    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.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    3 Women
    Absorbing moody and often compelling story.
  7. Hey Arnold! The Movie
    Has surprising hipness and good humor to spare, all put across with a funky, low-tech vibe.
  8. Harvard Man
    Wildly uneven yet perversely coherent ode to the lure of sexual and chemical experimentation, the precariousness of sanity and the sheer suggestible power of paranoia.
  9. Pumpkin
    Begins as though the filmmakers imagine that they're making a daringly anti-p.c. serio-comedy, but long before it's over, the picture is wearing its bleeding liberal heart all over its sleeve.
  10. Mr. Deeds
    A perfectly dreadful film.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Money Buys Happiness
    Camera compositions are curious, even poorly framed at times, but helmer's gift is in directing actors and building scenes around physical actions, much like silent filmmakers.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Kiss Me, Stupid (re-release)
    Wilder, usually a director of considerable flair and inventiveness (if not always impeccable taste), has not been able this time out to rise above a basically vulgar, as well as creatively delinquent, screenplay, and he has got at best only plodding help from two of his principals, Dean Martin and Kim Novak.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bobby G. Can't Swim
    Gutsy, unconventional, bursting with raw urban energy, this surprisingly suspenseful drama portrays New York Hell's Kitchen residents whose lives are governed by the immutable circumstances of their tawdry existence.
  14. Juwanna Mann
    Bringing absolutely no fresh angles to a time-tested formula that's seemed particularly overworked of late.
  15. Dahmer
    Jacobson produces a remarkably creepy piece of cinema that disturbs by suggestion, nuance and ambiguity.
  16. Sunshine State
    Falco, light years from "The Sopranos," is exquisitely vulnerable and her scenes play well with Hutton, in his finest role in years as a good man who knows he's sold out.
  17. Lilo & Stitch
    Has a casual, freewheeling nature in contrast to the creeping grandiosity of some of Disney's A-list animated titles.
  18. Minority Report
    May be a shade too serious and contemplative to completely enchant the thrill-seeking masses, while simultaneously seeming too mainstream-minded and genre-bound to be entirely embraced by highbrows.
  19. Peau d'homme coeur de bête
    Tough, cogent and resonantly chilling, this slow-burning drama continues the vein of harsh realism seen in recent Gallic cinema including "La Vie de Jesus" and "More Than Yesterday."
  20. The Emperor's New Clothes
    Pleasant rather than rollicking entertainment.
  21. ZigZag
    Evidencing savvy visual flair and compelling storytelling skill, Goyer infuses heart and vigor into material that could have come off as overly familiar at best, sappily improbable at worst.
  22. Windtalkers
    A powerful premise turned into a stubbornly flat, derivative war movie.
  23. Gangster No. 1
    Often nastily violent, and defiantly foul-mouthed in a realistic but dramatically unnecessary way, this portrait of a ruthless young hood in '60s London has several fine qualities but dilutes them with disorganized direction.
  24. Scooby-Doo
    Just fast, frenetic and funny enough to amuse both new fans and longtime devotees of the characters who have inspired more than 30 years worth of animated TV episodes and made-for-video features.
  25. The Bourne Identity
    A first-rate thriller with grit and intrigue to spare.
  26. The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys
    The film's chief shortcoming is perhaps its failure to convey a stronger, more atmospheric sense of the repressive 1970s Catholic school environment that breeds the titular boys' rebellion and wild flights of fancy.
  27. Cuba feliz
    Not quite a documentary, it's more like a musical travelogue that doesn't quite sustain feature length and seems ideally suited to a shorter TV version for music webs.
  28. Virgil Bliss
    Two superb, nervy and delicately nuanced performances by newcomers Clint Jordan and Kirsten Russell enliven and momentarily elevate writer-director Joe Maggio's Virgil Bliss above the familiar post-prison-drama cliches to which it so strenuously adheres.
  29. Secret Society
    Charmingly eccentric light comedy.
  30. Bad Company
    It's almost impossible to enjoy this uneven but mostly exciting popcorn pic without flinching at a few plot elements that feel a bit too real for comfort.
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