There's no sense of perspective here.

Segel and Diaz are gifted and game comedians, with a lot of audience appeal. But Lowe clearly upstages them, consummating their Sex Tape — and making you want to roll over and have a cigarette — while there’s still one reel to go.

Tries so hard to be cool that it forgets to be alive.

Maestro is for people already aware of this history. For everyone else, this is pretty much invitation-only.

The movie is pure hound, but you'll want to catch Short's every pixilated move. He almost made me wish that the picture would never end.

Even in this conglomerate era of marketed, predigested mediocrity, this Disney movie slips instantly into the humdrum.

The movie insists that the fate of the world hangs on the actions of these people. If you buy that, you'll buy anything. [11 Dec 1981, p.31]

Pan doesn’t deliver on its own promise. The movie doesn’t so much enhance our understanding of the flying boy as it demonstrates how little thought went into crafting his back story.

And you thought the Mapplethorpe show was shocking....But then incongruity is fundamental to comedy, and at least "Ladybugs" has that, if nothing else, going for it.

It's hard to know who exactly Parental Guidance was made for.

Even though it earns an R rating for profanity and some risque material, it’s too meek and mild-mannered to qualify as brave, or even slyly subversive.

This belabored charade of mistaken identities is guided by Herbert Ross, who has directed everything from The Sunshine Boys to Footloose. Apparently, he's decided to cater to younger moviegoers with this discordant mix of MTV imagery and classic farce.

It's astonishing how much intensity and focus these two have lost, but the picture itself is not all that bad -- if you can get the collapsing-career thing out of your head.

Despite some Cold War humor, the formulaic film is aimed squarely at the youngest of young children.

It's lame, corny, Ed Woodishly amateurish -- all of which is as lovable as the big lug himself.

It's saying something when Tom Arnold's performance is among the movie's highlights.

Intentionally defies categorization and explication.

It’s incrementally more fun than it is silly.

A few minutes of excitement can’t compensate for an hour and a half of unimaginative storytelling and dull characters.

The film's inconsistencies, inaccuracies and disjointed editing can be explained by Lee's untimely death; the producers had to piece the movie together from the available footage. But what's the excuse for the other wretched performances? [25 May 1979, p.39]

Those nostrils do a lot of Momoa's acting, to be honest. As right as he is looks-wise, Momoa falls short in attitude.

Although III claims seven times as much action as ever before, the movie is still so boring that even the love interest (Robyn Lively) leaves early. She's no Kung Fool.

If the ultimate goal is entertainment, then Lady in the Water enthusiastically rises to the task. In a movie laden with enough symbolism, shamanism and mythic lore to make Joseph Campbell dance a tribal jig, Shyamalan never forgets to have fun.

The best thing about awkward moments, after all, is that they usually pass quickly. And, blessedly, just as swiftly forgotten.

Death Sentence, directed by "Saw" co-creator James Wan, swings the pendulum too far. One day Nick is a mild-mannered nerd who spends his days making (and loving) risk assessments for his company; the next, he's Travis Bickle from 1976's "Taxi Driver."

Ninety minutes of Shock Treatment feels like a week in "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," a Quaalude interlude, a quart of Sanka laced with Valium. No jolt...Despite flashy lights, splashy sets and plump girls in tight white corsets, "S.T.'s" a bore -- a blatant try for teeny-punk bucks. It's a lesson for filmmakers: You can't force a cult film, they just happen. [28 May 1982, p.13]

Cooper and Lawrence do their best, but the material consistently works against them, from the overwrought dialogue to the never-ending plot twists in place of character development.

Cletis Tout is both in love with and able to laugh at the conventions it adopts, which is exactly where it goes wrong. It's just a little too self-satisfied.

A bungled screen version of Louis de Bernieres' cult novel, Captain Corelli's Mandolin was doomed from the moment Nicolas Cage was cast as the "life-devouring," Puccini-loving hero.

The wanton fabulistas of Party Monster are as boring and insignificant as the very "normals and drearies" they so contemptuously deride.

The film might take its name from poker subculture, but it lacks all the urgency, single-mindedness and swiftness that the title implies at its most literal. Runner Runner is a bummer. Bummer.

When they part ways at picture's end, Marlboro's parting words are "Vaya con Dios," which translates as "Go with God." I'd put it differently. Go, the both of you. With God or without, but by all means, go.

Unfortunately, despite its adorable heroes, you’d have to be nutty to sit through The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature, a largely unengaging modern-day animal fable.

Having ruled out humor, the movie emphasizes action and melodrama. Director Park Hong-soo, making his feature debut, handles the former with proficiency but little flair.

Flexploitation pure and simple -- nothing but savagery, sex and sinew.

An ugly commingling of old Westerns, Zen chic and kung fu movies...Full of gratuitous mayhem, head-bashing, gay-bashing and woman-bashing, Road House has a malicious, almost putrid tone.

The romantic drama is painfully contrived and insistently predictable.

Fast Food Fast Women is "Sex and the City" in Payless shoes. An incoherent jumble of characters and situations.

This David Spade comedy breaks an ankle, ruptures several knee ligaments and hits the dirt harder than a felled linebacker. Best thing you can do for this movie? Leave it writhing in the throes of forced humor.

It is the story itself that never achieves liftoff.

The Watch takes the same ethos of male bonding, obsession with sex and sardonic violence that has proved so profitable in recent years on yet another summer spin. The tires may be in need of changing pretty soon, but for now the jalopy still runs.

Although audiences will admire the film's do-it-yourself energy and commitment, Poster Boy finally collapses of its own contrived weight, deflating just when it should soar into madcap -- or at least thoughtful -- satire.

It's a shame Allen fired her from that play. After all, then she might not have had the time to make this documentary.

Horror fans will twitch impatiently at those long stretches between killings. And audiences anticipating a feature-length "Girls Gone Wild" video will suffer withdrawal from the lack of loosened bra straps.

The littlest children in your house may find something to titter at from time to time, but based on the reaction of a young screening audience, it won't be often.

Perhaps there will be people who do laugh at Lawrence and Raven-Symon screaming in tandem, or mugging their way along every tortured mile of their road trip, or unwittingly joining a sky-diving club and having to parachute into Washington so Melanie can make her interview. Heck, it was all really funny when they did it on "I Love Lucy."

Unfortunately, Rhinestone is content to cackle and scratch around at such a dumb cluck level of facetiousness that what began as a "cute" idea degenerates into a moronic one. [22 Jun 1984, p.B8]

Tells us nothing we didn't already know, and it tells it over and over and over.

Rusnak, who was the second-unit director of "Godzilla," brings plenty of style to this ambitious yet utterly anticlimactic thumb-sucker.

If only The Reaping had the decency to be coherent.

So maybe some of this is hilarious. Heck, maybe all of it is. It will not be everyone’s cup of tea, and it was not mine.

Unoriginal and woefully half-baked, Number Four plays out as such.

An exceedingly bright comedy that never makes you feel stupid for enjoying its brisk pacing, smart lines, sound construction and superb comic acting, not only from Ashton Kutcher but from Cameron Diaz and well-chosen No. 2 bananas Rob Corddry and Lake Bell.

My only question is this: In the context of these by-the-book pratfalls, is it funny enough?

An ugly, unbelievable thriller, Striking Distance is a lame excuse for a few loosely connected chase scenes, full of macho piggishness, glaring inconsistencies and yawning plot-holes.

Something Borrowed clinches it: It is not okay to sleep with the fiance of one's best friend. What's odd, and ultimately icky, is how enthusiastically the film attempts to justify doing so.

As you might expect, the calculations here are on a much less sophisticated level. And by less sophisticated, I mean like counting on fingers.

The new Darn Cat moves faster, has a few more laughs, nonviolent villains who are barely seen, a never-ending car chase climax, and gives more than a passing nod to such phenomena as teenage discontent.

The performances take the movie to a higher level.

There's something so familiar and commonplace about this story and its characters...it's hard to get particularly thrilled.

Burke's face is impressively scaly, his head is adorned with shorn horns. He makes a great monster. If only he had a better movie to growl in!

The fourth film in the series, the newest installment has a new director, Chris Cain, and a female Kid, Hilary Swank, but otherwise it reprises the formula established by John G. Avildsen in 1984: A troubled teen conquers self-doubt and the local bullies with the help of an enigmatic karate teacher.

Triple the length of its cable television inspiration, Tales From the Crypt Presents Bordello of Blood is triple the gore, triple the naked women, but not, alas, triple the fun. Comic takes on vampires have been done better, less bloodily and with more clothing, but always without the benefit of a wildly popular franchise like this HBO series.

With pulpy material to begin with, the film's ham-fisted, novice director Robert Longo seems to be the major incompetent. [25 May 1995, p.M24]

I spent a lot of time during the new Corey Haim-Corey Feldman movie, License to Drive, trying to figure out where it is set. Then it hit me. IT IS SET IN HELL! Hell, in this case, is a place where all the actors are named Corey. Where everyone is under the legal drinking age. Where everybody still breathes through his mouth and Oxy-5 flows like champagne.

A John Hughes movie without Pretty in Pink director John Hughes, sure makes you appreciate the teens' auteur. Frankly, Steve Rash, who directs this copycat comedy, another nerd-gets-the-cheerleader romance, isn't fit to wear Hughes' hightops. Rash only tinkers with adolescent angst, without the progenitor's empathy for his audience.

Walas' animatronic Robo-Fly is as clumsy as both Stoltz's Martin and the film's script, which resorts all too often to clever computer graphics and video-flashbacks.

As fantastical as all that sounds, the pleasure of Push comes from its glamorized grit, its no-nonsense pacing and the committed performances of the actors roughhousing in the gray area between heroism and villainy. It's pure popcorn, popped fresh, doused in butter and sprinkled with soy sauce.

Cinematographer Larkin Seiple’s fine camera work and Eli’s mystery weapon just don’t keep the thunking, derivative script afloat.

This is a surprisingly inept tale about an evil nanny and a killer tree that's right out of Jason's woods. Despite a prologue that aims to excuse subsequent plot deficiencies and a finale that's as absurd as you're likely to find in a modern horror film, The Guardian is simply ludicrous.

The privileged protagonists of Truth or Dare are neither interesting nor likable. They don’t even seem worthy of the academic degrees they’re getting.

KEN, KEN, KEN, not another Shakespeare, pleeeeeeez.

By its own deliriously rock-bottom standards, "Universal" ain't half bad. Of course, you have to be big on bloody slaughter, kickboxing, infrared gunning and impaired acting. But "Universal" executes its subtle-free mission with surprisingly watchable efficiency.

The Entity may be the least catchy title in movie history, and for the first tedious hour or so this curiously indecisive account of supernatural sexual intimidation remains in an expedient and exasperating rut: writer Frank DeFelitta and director Sidney Furie seem fixated on the rape scene from Rosemary's Baby. [09 Feb 1983, p.F11]

Oh, God! Book II revives that excruciating game of false piety in which Hollywood humorists grovel for brownie points in eternity by presuming to be God's chummiest press agents. [03 Oct 1980, p.C1]

Full of incident, heartbreak, secrets and betrayal, The Affair and its choppy formal structure don’t do justice to an enormously appealing cast.

While the funny, action-packed sequences are the best parts, they are indicative of the film’s main problems: an inability to focus and an overly complicated plot.

Luckily, a strong supporting cast makes up for the protagonists’ tepid interactions. The brilliant duo of Kevin Hart and Alan Arkin steal the show.

The movie based on Young's 2002 memoir is a good bit blunter. One early laugh comes at the expense of a pig urinating on a woman's feet at the BAFTA awards, the British equivalent of the Oscars. And it doesn't get much better, or much smarter, than that.

For all its faults, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 manages to just get by on pretty scenery and a meticulous inoffensiveness. What else is there to say but, “Opa!”

In the end, it all looks and plays like a $40 million version of a game you're more likely to enjoy on a computer.

Little kids at play have come up with craftier plots, better characterization and conceivably more spectacular effects -- provided their mothers let them play with matches.

It is a beautiful, moving tale, a love story even, sad without being schmaltzy, full of funny, knee-slapping moments and sufficiently thrill-packed without the usual padding of cheap thrills. Despite the dramatic imbalance, and the need for some fine-tuning in an otherwise sensitive script, Heroes, directed by Jeremy Paul Kagan, remains a stunning film. [04 Nov 1977, p.11]

Lazily written and hopelessly miscast.

My Blue Heaven puts you in a stupor comparable to the one that comes on after Thanksgiving turkey. Written by Nora Ephron, it makes you long for the awful "Heartburn."

It's not new. It's not interesting. I wish it would go away.

Unfolds with all the entertainment value of watching somebody else play a video game.

It's as pretentious and wispy as its title.

It's difficult to know whom to root for.

A jarring amalgam of sitcom goofiness and uncomfortable ooginess.

When Vaughn is cooking, his films can be stylish, self-satisfied junk food. “Argylle” leaves the style out of the equation — it’s filmmaking as processed interstate fare, high in calories, low in fiber, tasty until you’ve had enough of it and then you feel sick.

It's got a little kick to it.

Much of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is simply despicable.

Doesn't anyone get sick of this same old routine?

Surprisingly amateurish attempt at cross-cultural comedy.

The gratuitous vulgarity is just one more reason that Scooby-Doo should never have left the pound.

PSTwo feels like an elongated Tales From the Crypt, though the annoying heavy-metal soundtrack sounds like seepage from Headbanger's Ball. The first time around, Lambert went for terror; this time, it's mostly hardy-har-horror.

Jigh class briefly gives way to high camp, which then itself dissipates to an anticlimactic thud.