Variety's Scores

For 17,760 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:
17760 movie reviews
  1. Never quite catches fire in its too-deliberate attempt to appeal to all ages and all tastes.
  2. Girls -- a big part of the Pokemon crowd and what makes it such a humongous commercial success -- will feel left out in the cold.
  3. A remarkably mirthless and inept romantic comedy.
  4. Entertaining but never fully engrossing.
  5. A borderline pretentious, overly inflated picture.
  6. A mediocre ensemble comedy-drama that's not particularly funny, involving or even nostalgic.
  7. As a mix of nonfiction and wafer-thin drama, however, it's a genial mess in which both elements emerge undercooked
  8. A gloriously sentimental true-life drama
  9. The material is at heart an intimate allegorical fairy tale about rarefied philosophical concerns.
  10. Exceedingly imaginative, beautifully realized animated epic adventure.
  11. Devilishly inventive and so far out there it's almost off the scale.
  12. Still nothing but a gussied-up B movie.
  13. Overall, this smooth, glossy, enjoyable film showcases an impressive new authorial voice.
  14. A smart and sassy comedy with a playful sensibility and subtle sensitivity.
  15. Smoothly maneuvering within the limitations of genre conventions, Bats emerges as a vigorously paced and surprisingly satisfying piece of work.
  16. Fires nothing but blanks.
  17. The opposition of the two dramas winds up in gratifyingly moral and philosophical territory.
  18. Achieves a poetic, quasi-religious tone.
  19. The stylistic devices used, which recall early Woody Allen and Paul Mazursky, get increasingly tedious, disrupting not only the sequence of events but also squelching audience sympathy for the protagonists.
  20. By turns laughably simplistic and confoundingly muddled as it charts the "final battle" between good and evil.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lynch has directed his most satisfyingly disciplined movie.
  21. Bold, inventive, sustained adrenaline rush of a movie.
  22. Newcomer Luca Guadagnino deserves credit for his choice of an unconventional model, by Italian standards, for his English-language debut feature, but it's a model in which approach and material are at odds. [22 Nov 1999, p.87]
    • Variety
  23. Too many scenes play like actors acting rather than life being lived as pic lurches around with ragged variations in tone.
  24. An ideal rainy day matinee attraction for well-to-do ladies of a certain age.
  25. One has no problem praising the bravura acting of the entire ensemble.
  26. A pleasant surprise...more directorial personality here than most "SNL"-derived features get...the cheerily absurd, color-saturated atmosphere recalls John Waters' "Hairspray."
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The poignant and candid Boys Don't Cry can be seen as a "Rebel Without a Cause" for these culturally diverse and complex times, with the two misfit girls enacting a version of the James Dean/Natalie Wood romance with utmost conviction.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    A shamelessly sentimental story.
  27. Relies on ensemble allure, with mixed results.

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