Gimme Shelter has a lighter touch than you might think. Yet there are times when its attempts at wringing drama out of real life are more strenuous than is strictly necessary.

With summer comes theaters filled with superheroes, sequels and forgettable family fare. In the last category, we find Judy Moody.

Don’t expect to see a great film, or even a very good one. Whether you discover a meaningful channel with which to continue your walk with the film’s protagonist, however, is strictly between you and your god.

The twist is, yes, audacious, even daring. It’s full of risk and defiance of expectation. So half a star for that. Steven Knight, you’ve got some nerve. But none of those things mean that the movie works.

Cinema-as-shoplifting is okay, as long as you still get the feeling it's for a greater good. But that's something The Tourist is sorely missing.

Too infuriatingly quirky and taken with its own style to get down to telling a story.

This latest, utterly gratuitous chapter in the saga of the wisecracking reptile hunter will add nothing to the ever-dimming reputation of the Subaru pitchman.

Now and then sputters to comic life but more usually wheezes along.

It's like a ferret on crystal meth that belatedly discovers ecstasy, and it's a tiresome trip either way.

So primitive, it must have been written in lizard blood on animal skin.

The only reason you'll feel any wrath is because you shelled out 12 bucks for this steaming bucket of half-baked plot, cliched dialogue and disappointing 3-D special effects.

This mishmash of styles, genres and tonal shifts makes for a dizzying pastiche best described in terms of the many movies it references throughout its nearly 2 1/2-hour running time, from “Little Big Man,” Buster Keaton’s “The General” and the Monument Valley-set canon of John Ford to “Dead Man,” “Rango” and “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

In Evan Almighty, Mr. God goes to Washington. Frank Capra, stop rolling in your grave. At least they cared enough to steal from the very best.

No, it's not a great movie. It is, however, an interesting one.

With all due respect to Cook's novel, another book - the Bible - teaches us that on the seventh day, God gave it a rest. Seven Days in Utopia should have followed His lead.

Charlie St. Cloud, like its star Zac Efron, is a gorgeous, unblemished thing. Both would be much improved with a tiny flaw or two.

Like an elaborately decorated wedding cake, the kid-friendly Walking With Dinosaurs 3D may leave you wondering how something so stunning could end up being so bland.

Despite its deficiencies, Annabelle is not without a modicum of verve. It has its unnerving moments, but they’re outweighed by the sheer stupidity and predictability of the story.

The movie winds up a casualty of schmaltzy, patronizing sentiment on the one hand and overweening ambition on the other.

A longwinded, predictable scenario.

When a burning rat is the funniest thing in your movie, I think you're in big trouble, even in Miami.

I can't recall the original, or even if I saw it or not. But this variation certainly makes its points effectively, in what must be a more superheated milieu.

Unfortunately for the makers of Tuff Turf, the plot's as hokey as they come; the dialogue is dreadful ("Life isn't a problem to be solved, it's a mystery to be lived!"); and kids in 1985 are just too sophisticated for such juvenile tripe. Right kids? Right? [1 Feb 1985, p.19]

Essentially, Chuck & Larry is an oafish chance for audiences to laugh at gay-bashing jokes and then feel morally redeemed for doing so -- courtesy of an obligatory wrap-up scene that reminds us that homosexuals are humans, too.

There's something secondhand about everything here. Hoge (this is his debut) seems to be mimicking the tone and fabric of other, better indie movies.

It's a like a film made by people who don't really care, for an audience of people who don't really care. It stars Tim Conway and Don Knotts, who are not exercising their legitimate comic talents beyond one expression each: Conway crosses his eyes, and Knotts makes his eyeballs disappear upwards. [13 July 1979, p.25]

All the King's Men hasn't been directed so much as over-directed, although the result, when you make an effort to filter out all the film school pyrotechnics, is an honorable run at Robert Penn Warren's classic novel.

[A] scatterbrained imitation. [15 Oct 1993, p.D7]

The slapsticky, sight-gag-heavy yukfest, which is filled with the kind of phallic humor you may have sniggered at when you were 16, floats like a dead butterfly and stings like a B-movie.

The movie is small but sensational. I don't know what writer-director Frank E. Flowers might lose by trying to take his career international, but he has real talent.

A film that, in attempting to ridicule the Bush administration, finally just settles for being ridiculous itself.

In Mercury Rising, the mercury may rise but pulses never do. A promising thriller with tough guy Bruce Willis wearing an ever-more radiant tapestry of bruises on his face, the film ultimately surrenders to the entropy of stale plotting and familiar formula.

So dull and awful, you actually wonder if this is some kind of Andy Kaufmanesque in-joke, a deliberate attempt to douse the spark that made the original film so enjoyable.

The new film by the phenomenally talented Scots-English trio of director Danny Boyle, producer Andrew MacDonald and screenwriter John Hodge -- they did both "Shallow Grave" and "Trainspotting" -- is a failure so absolute and witless it deserves some kind of mention in the Hall of Lame.

A 90-minute theatrical release from Nickelodeon Productions that, if anything, should have aired as a half-hour Nickelodeon special.

There's nothing terribly surprising about Special Forces, a moderately gripping action flick about a group of commandos on a mission to rescue a pretty blonde who has been abducted by the Taliban. Nothing, that is, except that it's French.

The most persistent question asked at When Do We Eat? will probably be "When do we leave?" This abrasive Passover comedy-drama is extremely difficult to sit through, and if its makers weren't all Jewish, it would be considered anti-Semitic.

The movie is intermittently amusing, particularly when the American human part of the cast (Breckin Meyer and Jennifer Love Hewitt) are off-screen, the longer and farther the better.

The action sequences are cloddishly orchestrated. And for the most part, the movie simply doesn't make sense.

It evokes a warmed-over Fox TV special.

Sometimes the punch lines land and sometimes they don’t, but overall the result is pleasantly nostalgic.

As a thriller, Wisdom is dull; as an examination of a terrorist's psychology, it is, paradoxically, both overly detailed and unilluminating; and as a meditation on the nature of fame in America today, it is portentous in the gloomy manner of what college catalogues call an "all-night bull session." On the other hand, Moore springs to life whenever she's given a good sarcastic line to deliver. And if you stick around till the end, because your date wants to get his money's worth or whatever, there's a doozy of a car chase.

Clearly targeted at Christians looking to reaffirm their faith. Its chances of crossover success with the secular crowd seem remote, given the dramatic shortcomings.

H.G. Wells did it better. This movie spends so much yawn-inducing time on variations of the same combat scenario that its final showdown feels rushed.

Child's Play 2 is an inevitable sequel that's not as good as its progenitor, but better than most movies with the numbers 2 through 8 in their titles. Thin plot-wise, it caters to an audience apparently amused on the first go-round by the antics of a foul-mouthed doll named Chucky.

This movie isn't a thriller, it's an insomnia killer.

A grisly, depraved and wholly uninvolving exercise in empty mannerism.

Even if you’ve never heard any of this back story — let alone anything about Mine That Bird — the outcome of the film is never seriously in doubt. That leaves filmmaker Jim Wilson in the predicament of having to entertain us by showing how the horse and his handlers get their act together. Unfortunately, 50 to 1 never really does that.

The Bye Bye Man had a relatively modest budget, and it shows in the special effects, which tend to be more funny than scary.

Despite the Sybil-like plot (and questionable Rambo mentality), there's something watchable about it all. Weird it is, flop it ain't.

Speaking of the script, questionable motives and unbelievable decisions are relatively small potatoes compared with the Sputnik-size plotholes.

The most objectionable thing about Only God Forgives isn’t that it’s shocking or immoral, but that it’s so finally, fatally dull.

If you're looking for some good family interspecies entertainment, take the little ones to see "Stuart Little 2" again; in the meantime, you might want to crawl into your cave and sleep through this one.

A piddling non-adventure with Louis Gossett Jr. as a namby-pamby sidekick. It's Gung-Ho and Gunga Din, in yet another variation on the "Raiders" theme.

The movie loses many opportunities for stronger emotional resonance — the Sonic the Hedgehog films succeed far better because of their strong focus on character relationships. Yet, while watching this movie, I was reminded of the beginning of cinema.

Folks, I really feel that seeing this one for you is the movie critic's equivalent of jumping on the grenade to save your lives. Send me medals.

It's about women, but as written and directed by a man, it appears to make no emotional sense at all. It treats women like idiots.

A thinly written, hoarily cliched story that serves mostly as connective tissue between the movie's chief draw, its dazzling dance sequences.

There's not much adventure on these high seas. This buccaneering boondoggle is more like a slow voyage aboard the PMS Pinafore. [22 Dec 1995, p.C06]

Chances are, after they've passed the two-hour mark, viewers will share the same collective, if unspoken, wish: Go, Speed Racer. Go.

Conceived and directed by Madonna, W.E. is a gorgeous mess.

All in all, the picture goes down fairly easily, and by any estimate it's an improvement over other Pryor nonconcert films such as The Toy or even Brewster's Millions.

The movie is pretty unabashed about the all-but-corny sentiment: Each of us has something to give.

Irving is a generalissimo of literary assault techniques, shameless about shifting his emphasis from, say, the lewd to the sanctimonious on a moment's notice if he perceives an emotional advantage, particularly one lending itself to convulsive moral indignation. [17 March 1984, p.C8]

The movie's half over before it really starts to whack at the funny bone.

Never asks its target audience of self-referential baby boomers and their littles bundles of joy to take it more seriously than it takes itself.

It couldn't be any less revolutionary in style. It is straighter than a guitar string.

If you think it's worth it to sit there for 97 minutes for three or possibly four laughs, then you are beyond help.

In the end, He’s All That is not all that — not even a little bit of that.

I would call the movie a trainwreck, except it’s really four or five separate trainwrecks.

Why -- when there are so many funnier, smarter, more gifted performers who can't get arrested in Hollywood -- why, for the love of all that's good and holy, does Martin Lawrence get to keep making movies?

Howl and damnation, if this isn't just one long, stomach-turning drool joke.

A convoluted psychosexual thriller that promises the moon and gives us Bruce's butt.

Tooth Fairy is cute. Which is to say that Dwayne Johnson is cute. How could anybody with the body of Arnold Schwarzenegger (circa 1984) and the smile of Cameron Diaz not be, especially when dressed -- albeit briefly -- in a pink tutu?

With the exception of a few enjoyable action scenes, such as when Aeon and fellow operative Sithandra (Sophie Okonedo) flip and backflip their way across a lethal garden of bullet-spewing trees and spikes disguised as blades of grass, Aeon Flux is surprisingly draggy.

This Arthur is an exercise in time-travel tedium, a trip to the Land That Funny Forgot.

The film's premise is hopelessly ludicrous. Plus, though Patrick Dempsey is an agile light comedian, he's hardly plausible as a lady-killer. Patrick Swayze he's not. Alfalfa, maybe.

A boilerplate melodrama whose good guys and bad guys are so baldly drawn they could have been conceived by Friz Freleng.

Screwball romance, action picture. Summer movie.

Has the stink of man-musk all over it.

Consider the title your best advice.

The movie, based on the TV cartoon series, is exceptionally pleasant, and there's just enough humor to make it enjoyable for adults.

Functional but tiresome.

It really should be arrested for impersonating an interesting movie.

Shanghai is an exercise in retro glamour, alluring decadence and tough-guy posing, all of which it delivers in sufficient quantities.

An unconscionable mess of unyielding crassness, from the overall tone, which celebrates gaucherie all the while it's saying that love is what really counts, to the sound mix, which makes most of the dialogue, which is larded with impenetrable slang, doubly impenetrable. [04 Jul 1986, p.C2]

Rarely has an actress exuded such blank nothingness as Simpson, a one-woman vapid delivery system who sucks the energy and joy out of every scene she's in, like some freakishly well-endowed black hole.

If this is corporate synergy fired up to a terrifying new level, there’s still enough heart at the movie’s center to keep it from becoming all business.

An innocent comedic revenge fantasy that somehow manages to be sweet and wickedly satisfying at the same time.

The movie's chief crime against the planet, other than the sheer wastage of time, is the trivializing of the great Freeman. This actor has such dignity and depth and humanity, he almost makes the film watchable.

Abomination of a movie.

Even McAvoy’s reincarnation-obsessed Frankenstein can’t breathe vitality into this shallow adaptation, which careens from moments of horror to serious drama to attempts at comedy that don’t quite land.

Plot and narrative? Minimal. Confrontations? Endless. Surprises? None.

Like its brain-damaged protagonist, Criminal just shouts and shoots its way into, not out of, an oblivion of illogic, plot holes and emotionally unengaging scenery-chewing.

In an era of careful cost accountancy and focus-group testing, it's remarkable that a movie as truly, deeply, madly foolish as The Wicker Man escaped the asylum. But we must be grateful for the endless guffaws and gasps and outright stunned silences it unleashes on lucky audiences.

The Jackal is based on a fabrication so absurd that it almost made me laugh out loud.

Sure, I laughed. Yes, I cried. But mostly I just wanted to throw up.

John C. McGinley from "Scrubs" gets to strut some of his comic stuff as the deranged builder, but he's the only passable feature in a property that should be condemned.