Let's give this ghastly studio comedy a Truthiness in Advertising award, if nothing else.

Mr. Carter's intelligent, straight-forward style and the good performances of the young actors prohibit hooting at the story's completely American approach to a German story. [11 Mar 1993]

The entire film feels like an exceedingly stale stand-up comedy routine, which is to say it’s exactly like one of Mr. Maniscalco’s stand-up comedy routines.

What's wrong with this sad fiasco goes far beyond its visual deficits.

The film's only unqualified success is the end title sequence-because it's genuinely stylish, because it looks like it was shot in genuine 3-D and, most of all, because it's the end.

If you go to see this sloppy sitcom, in which Mr. Martin plays a divorced, repressed lawyer named Peter Sanderson, do expect to be surprised, seduced and entertained by Queen Latifah.

Do not attempt to see this film, derived loosely from the videogame of the same name, unless you're prepared for wobbly writing, lead-footed direction and acting that must have been boosted by nitrous-oxide injectors, plus a starring performance that could have used a boost and didn't get one.

The good news is twofold. Ms. Foy, an accomplished performer, is appealing throughout. And Keira Knightley, as the Sugar Plum Fairy, gives the film several desperately needed jolts of edgy energy.

Less than the sum of its parts, which were problematic to begin with.

The movie will surely find an audience, since it speaks to young people's anxieties about marriage and parenting. But what are two particularly engaging performers doing in a dump of a comedy like this?

Mr. LaBute is not a moralizer as much as a lamenter — his people usually bring unhappiness upon themselves. In the gently joyous Dirty Weekend, though, they are capable of finding a flight path to contentment.

The Greatest Beer Run Ever is far too interested in having a good time to get too heavy about a bygone American argument, but there are truths to be found in the film, by peering through its various fogs of war.

The result is a mess -- sometimes an entertaining mess, but mostly a movie that makes a perfunctory mockery of the mockery currently passing for political discourse.

The inch-deep approach to history and social issues, the high-concept device, and the trite characters all seem better suited to a different type of movie—such as one of those gee-whiz featurettes shown at the EPCOT theme park.

The film almost suffocates on overripe dialogue (“We are messing with the primal forces of nature here”) and finally loses its way in the logical contradictions — or the nonlogical implications — of time travel.

Successfully stringing together shocking, disgusting and terrifying moments counts as a solid day’s work for most horror directors, and since The Exorcist: Believer achieves all that it’s competent enough. But I expected better from Mr. Green.

His (Eddie Murphy's) performance in Daddy Day Care isn't bad. He's restrained, and even tender in some of the scenes he plays with the kids. But restraint is the last thing we want from a comic of his caliber. It's no fun at all.

The devil had taken Reagan to the mountaintop and offered a world of spoils, from peace prizes to popular acclaim and a glamorous place in history. To reject it took more than guts. It took a man who put freedom ahead of his own glory. This is not a biography but the story of a man who faced off against the 20th century's "heart of darkness" and won.

A small story, a monodrama with a hero but no antagonists.

Ella McCay is not quotable. It is not believable. It is not likable. It’s not even digestible. For an ordinary filmmaker, it would be merely a disaster. For James L. Brooks, it’s more like a tragedy.

This movie is truly unhinged — not crazed, which might be interesting, but devoid of the usual hinges that connect one sequence with another.

The film suffers from a different condition, an emotional elephantiasis that is inexorable and ultimately terminal. What was by all accounts a modestly scaled production in all of its live-theater iterations has become a ponderous movie that turns earnest into maudlin, lyrical into lugubrious.

Those too young to remember Jackson will get what they want, which is a fantastically effective introduction to the talent.

Ms. Carson is a photogenic commodity to have in your film; so is Oxford, and director Iain Morris (the rebooted “Time Bandits”) balances the visual dimension of his film upon these twin resources.

Depending on how you feel about Zac Efron, he is either a sensitive hunk or an inexpressive hunk, but definitely a hunk. Unable as I am to locate any feelings about him, I see Mr. Efron as a hunk with a problem delivering sustained dialogue in units of more than one or two sentences.

The Blue Fairy may have brought life to Pinocchio, but no one here is delivering anything particularly fresh. Or alarming. For that, we wait till Christmas.

Mr. Tipping ditches reasonable motivation to deliver a satirical haymaker aimed at those whose religion is football. Like many failed satires, the conclusion is more vehement than amusing.

Charm has curdled into smarm in the big-screen version of Entourage. The jaunty style of a hit TV series has been replaced by huge spasms of false energy and a sense of barely concealed flop sweat.