Variety's Scores

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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:
  1. Positive: 9,121 out of 17760
  2. Mixed: 7,003 out of 17760
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17760
17760 movie reviews
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    • 38 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Pet Sematary
    Pet Sematary marks the first time Stephen King has adapted his own book for the screen, and the result is undead schlock dulled by a slasher-film mentality – squandering its chilling and fertile source material.
    • 20 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    She's Out of Control
    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.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Major League
    Major League lacks the subtlety of Bull Durham or the drama of Eight Men Out, but for sheer crowd-pleasing fun it belts one high into the left-field bleachers...Though the plot turns are mostly predictable, they are executed with wit and style.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dead Calm
    Though not always entirely credible, Dead Calm is a nail-biting suspense pic handsomely produced and inventively directed.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Dream Team
    The Dream Team is a hokey comedy that basically reduces mental illness to a grab bag of quirky schtick. Yet with a quartet of gifted comic actors having a field day playing loonies on the loose in Manhattan, much of that schtick is awfully funny.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Say Anything...
    A half-baked love story, full of good intentions but uneven in the telling.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Heathers
    Daniel Waters' enormously clever screenplay blazes a trail of originality through the dead wood of the teen-comedy genre.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Fletch Lives
    Film’s saving grace is its scathing satirical sketches of fictional televangelist preacher Jimmy Lee Farnsworth.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Leviathan
    It's a soggy recycling of gruesome monster attacks unleashed upon a crew of macho men and women confined within a far-flung scientific outpost.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
    A fitting final installment in Terry Gilliam's trilogy begun with Time Bandits and continued with Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen shares many of those films strengths and weaknesses, but doesn't possess the visionary qualities of the latter.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Chances Are
    A potentially charming premise yields only a handful of chuckles.
    • 16 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Police Academy 6: City Under Siege
    Director Peter Bonerz and writer Stephen J. Curwick (the latter taking his second Academy shift) both cut their teeth on TV sitcoms, and it shows. Rarely has a film cried out so desperately for a laughtrack.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lean on Me
    Morgan Freeman's inspired performance as Joe Clark, the New Jersey principal who uses controversial methods to clean up a drug- and crime-ridden high school, makes it easier to forgive John Avildsen's rather glossy and simplistic treatment of a serious dilemma in the public school system.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Skin Deep
    Revenge is sweet and Ritter gets his due in any number of silly and embarrassing situations which he handles with nearly perfect comic timing.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    High Hopes
    Leigh builds a slight story intended to be a microcosm of today’s London.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    American Ninja 3: Blood Hunt
    Even for this level of by-the-numbers action filmmaking, Cedric Sundstrom’s script is incredibly lame, and his staging of chopsocky violence is little better. Cheap-looking pic was produced in South Africa.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
    Reeves, with his beguilingly blank face and loose-limbed, happy-go-lucky physical vocabulary, and Winter, with his golden curls, gleefully good vibes and 'bodacious' vocabulary, propel this adventure as long as they can.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Fly II
    The Fly II is an expectedly gory and gooey but mostly plodding sequel to the 1986 hit that was a remake of the 1958 sci-fier that itself spawned two sequels.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Her Alibi
    He’s a mystery writer, she’s a mystery; and it’s also a mystery how TV fodder like this manages to get the high-gloss, top-talent treatment at studios.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Who's Harry Crumb?
    Foolishness in the right hands can be sublimely funny, and combo of star John Candy and director Paul Flaherty (former SCTV cohorts) puts the perfect spin on Who’s Harry Crumb?, a Naked Gun-style farce about a bumbling private eye who succeeds in spite of himself.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mississippi Burning
    Though its credibility is undermined by a fanciful ending, Mississippi Burning captures much of the truth in its telling of the impact of a 1964 FBI probe into the murders of three civil rights workers.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Three Fugitives
    As for the Nolte-Short pairing, it’ll do, but it’s no chemical marvel. Nolte, not really a comic natural, gruffs and grumbles his way through as hunky straight man to Short’s calamitous comedian.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Parents
    There is not enough weight or complexity to the material to justify the serious approach, and while the potential for considerable black comedy exists, Balaban only scratches the surface. The laughs never come.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Gleaming the Cube
    Slater, who sounds as if he is trying to imitate Jack Nicholson, is the only character who has a shading of personality. His skateboarding buddies are funny, considering one needs a glossary to translate their dialog, while the Vietnamese are mostly sleazy cardboard figures.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    DeepStar Six
    Pic’s cast is a grab-bag ensemble with no real center. It eventually finds its emotional core in an affair between crewmen Greg Evigan and Nancy Everhard. A sharp performance by Miguel Ferrer as a punchy, smartmouthed crewmen is diluted when character goes campily berserk.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The January Man
    Kevin Kline as an unorthodox but indispensable detective tracking a serial strangler infuses this improbable Gotham-set romantic policier with personality.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Accidental Tourist
    Slow, sonorous and largely satisfying.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Working Girl
    This is not a laugh-out-loud film, though there is a lighthearted tone that runs consistently throughout, Griffith's innocent, breathy voice being a major factor.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hellbound: Hellraiser II
    Hellraiser II is a maggotty carnival of mayhem, mutation and dismemberment, awash in blood and recommended only for those who thrive on such junk.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Talk Radio
    Bogosian commands attention in a patented tour-de-force. Supporting performances are all vividly realized, notably Michael Wincott’s drug-crazed Champlain fan invited to the studio for a tete-a-tete with the host.
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