"Working Girl," is also heard in Little Black Book; it serves only to remind audiences of that far more winning story of triumph in the office. But there are many reminders of what a tiresome effort this is.

The dialogue is clumsy, the tone swings between somber and silly and the whole bizarre venture eventually succumbs to rigor mortis.

A shopworn studio contraption, slapped together from second-hand parts.

Despite all the nervous tension, the central drama is flawed - Jonathan isn't trying to find a killer. He is the killer. Something is lacking in the dramatic equation.

Instead of soft core, Sex Tape offers no core. No narrative core, just a not-bad notion executed execrably; no core of conviction, just two stars trudging joylessly through swamps of mediocrity.

This cloying piece of claptrap sets a high-water mark for pomposity, condescension, false profundity and true turgidity -- no small accomplishment for the man whose last two features were the deadly duo "Signs" and "The Village."

Any kind of acting requires courage. Great acting requires formidable courage. Then there’s the dogged courage, spawned by devotion to duty, of wonderful actors like these, doing what they’re asked to do even though they must know that it’s no damned good.

The distance between tawdry and tedious can be amazingly short. It is traveled with Concorde speed in the arch Party Monster.

I wish I'd brought a pair of peas to the screening. Then I could have taken in the glorious scenery without the dumb dialogue, which is delivered in a jangle of accents that makes a mockery of ethnicity.

Squanders endless opportunities for sharp satire, keeping to a steady course of tame, toothless comedy, and wrapping things up with the kind of vapid ending "The Brady Bunch" would be proud to call its own.

What Happens in Vegas... should have stayed in development -- forever. This ramshackle -- and occasionally repulsive -- farce doesn't even deliver on the minimal promise of its title; most of it takes place in Manhattan.

This time he (Martin) goes through the motions.

This time Rambo pulls off his superhuman Soviet-blasting stunts in Afghanistan, not quite as late on the scene as he was in Vietnam. Not very exciting; very noisy. [2 Jun 1988, p.1]

My Blue Heaven is interesting as an example of how talented or at least experienced people can spend a great deal of time, money and effort on a movie that fails consistently, in almost every single scene. [30 Aug 1990]

Brought down by repeated bursts of high absurdity.

Clone Wars will appeal only to the most tolerant, galactically minded children and their parents.

Jumper, based on the novel by Steven Gould, re-defines -- downward -- the notion of dreadful. It does so by dispensing with everything a movie needs for a shot at being merely awful. Dramatic development? None. Entertaining dialogue? Ditto. Internal logic? Puhleez. Intriguing characters? No characters, thus no intrigue. Interesting performances? Essentially none, though with an asterisk.

The screenwriter starts to seem like a sweaty basement-of-the-coffee-house magician who keeps sawing ladies in half long past the point of diminishing returns.

The movie transforms a dim idea - "Elmer Gantry" lite - into comedy that's dead in the water and as dull as it is broad.

This Transformers is a pile of glittering junk.

Robert De Niro collects another stupendous paycheck for starring in another piece of exploitable junk.

But clever casting, and inspirational dieting, can't make up for this poor little rich girl's shortcomings as a comedienne. Under Mr. Benjamin's vulgar tutelage, she portrays Connie's coarseness coarsely, with an accent that seems to have come from Ida Lupino by way of Madonna. [19 Apr 1996, p.A11]

Ms. Wynter's performance is only one of many failings in a heavily accented costume drama that Bruce Beresford has directed turgidly from Marilyn Levy's amateurish script.

We are meant to think they are all delightfully and amusingly eccentric (characters). Actually, they're just creepy

Nothing's alive in this trash-heap travesty of warm-weather entertainment, despite the frenetic pace.

I've been a Vanessa Redgrave fan for such a long time that I would have been happy to watch her beautifully weathered face without much happening around her.

A turgid recycling of Mr. Carpenter's remake of "The Thing."

Watch the trailer, if you must, but spare yourself the full experience: Identity Thief steals time.