In all candor, and with all the amity I can muster, Divergent is as dauntingly dumb as it is dauntingly long.

I've enjoyed Ms. Leoni's comic gifts in the past, and I'll enjoy them again, but Spanglish asks her to play crazed, and she delivers with a performance of unremitting, crazymaking shrillness.

A minor comedy, though a major delight.

Relevance can't rescue this would-be epic from the swamps of inertia, absurdity and sentimentality.

What's missing is an emotional center. This Sinbad, with its flying ship and becalmed script, seems destined to be DreamWorks's version of Disney's "Treasure Planet."

Adam Sandler's 50 First Dates isn't just slovenly and smarmy but creepy.

What's missing is dramatic subtext and surprise, as well as any playfulness that might have kept us guessing about the plot.

It’s a finely wrought story of palace intrigue enriched by lush sets and decors, having been shot at Versailles.

The movie is counterfeit too, a coarse imitation of a stylish star vehicle for stars who deserve the real thing.

An undercooked serving of political skulduggery that nevertheless provides a showcase for the magnetic Jodie Turner-Smith. Like most of the cast, she’s better than the material.

Ms. Vikander has leapt into the void of a franchise reboot, based on a video-game reboot, that generates no joy, makes negligible sense, and seals its own tomb with a climax of perfect absurdity.

If I could find some facet to praise, I'd be glad to do so, but the production's mediocrity is all-pervasive -- story, character, graphic design, even music -- and it all points to a failure of corporate imagination, or maybe just nerve.

Very little adds up in 21.

Some of the comedy bits have a delightful freshness and edge while much of the glue (the romance, for example) holding the routines together remains a little sticky. [31 Jan 1989, p.1]

A general sense that things aren’t heading anywhere too exciting pervades this cinematic chunk of corporate synergy.

The only parts of the film that ring true -- and they sometimes ring touchingly true -- are the ones that give Mr. Allen simple human themes to work with.

Built from an alloy of absurdium and stupidium, with the latter, heavier element dominating the mix.

It's a movie at war with itself. The first half, more or less, is witty about California culture, or the lack of it, in a "Clueless" kind of way, which is a very good way.

Mr. Hallström, who has made some emotionally satisfying and even delicate movies (“What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” “My Life as a Dog,” “The Cider House Rules”), doesn’t really have the material here that he had in his other films. His cast is pretty; the Sagrada Familia is more eloquent.

By the end I could have used a Bulleit to the mouth.

The film never quite succeeds, simply because the book’s core virtues do not lend themselves to cinema.

Ms. Judd commands the screen with consistent authority, and Mr. Freeman brings expansive humor to the role of a self-styled wildcard who's still dangerous in court.

What they've done here goes beyond gross -- or clumsy, or dumb -- to genuine ugliness, both cutaneous and sub.

Angels & Demons is a serious slog. Still, it's an odd kind of a slog that manages to keep you partially engaged, even at its most esoteric or absurd.

That's what is missing from The Longest Yard most egregiously. Charm has been kept on the bench.

In this frustrating fizzle, the friendship does keep struggling to change into a love affair. But year after year, July 15 after July 15, it's the same old same old - two increasingly tedious people talking self-conscious talk.

Penelope was in a trough of trouble before the oink on the script was dry.

Nobody doesn't like Tina Fey, and anyone aware of her starring role in Admission will be wishing her well. But wishing won't make this dramedy any less dreary than it is.