Jaws 3-D, in which the Amity horror swims south to Florida, looks a lot like a Poligrip commercial, what with its extreme close-ups of the Great White's artificial chompers. [29 July 1983, p.17]

The biggest sin of Sex and the City 2 is its lack of beauty. It's garish when it should be sumptuous, tacky when it should be luxe, wafer-thin when it should be whip-smart and sophisticated.

Did you hear about the Morgans? Trust me, you don't want to.

It does wonders to a critic to know that [Britney] could be a continuing font of teen and post-teen kitsch for years to come.

It can't fake sincerity. It tries ever so hard, but it doesn't have a single believable second. Every word in it is a lie.

Tries desperately to lower the bar for scatological gags, rank sexual humor and cheap physical shots.

Dragged down by a paper-thin story, the predictable number of fight scenes executed at equally predictable intervals and stock, unmemorable characters.

For fans of Neeson as action hero, “Blacklight” may be something of a disappointment, at least measuring it against the yardstick of previous thrillers in this particular branch of the actor’s body of work.

The movie never rises to the level of the professional, much less the comic. The gags are witless and surprisingly gross. The four actors, each accustomed to being at the center, never develop any rhythm, any chemistry, any anything.

Watching “Transfomers” is like sitting in a car that’s revving its engine while stuck in the mud. It sounds like it’s getting somewhere, even though all it ever does is spin its wheels.

The tale grows only more toxic with time.

I liked Coyote Ugly better when it was called "Flashdance," although I didn't like it very much then.

Falls flat at every turn.

When a Stranger Calls never manages to convey the primal, almost atavistic terror that has earned John Carpenter's movies and the "Scream" franchise their places in the teen horror canon. The most lasting psychological effect of this pulp non-classic will most likely be limited to a deep pathological fear of Architectural Digest.

A dreary, dismally unfunny excuse for a romantic comedy.

A round of misfires from title to denouement, the new comedy "Modern Problems" is a modern problem for moviegoers: the latest rummy example of that strange abomination, the unfunny "fun" movie, victimized by utter confusion about its genre, tone and audience. [30 Dec 1981, p.B6]

Technically, Bakshi's work is uneven; some of the characters in his Cool universe are hilarious, while others are flat.

Goes nowhere fast.

Rollicks and rolls, thanks mainly to Roth's over-the-top depravity and Xiong's swingin', "Crouching Tiger"-style choreography.

The bad news is that the opening credits, which make sick and darkly comic allusions to suicide, are the best thing about the film.

The story of an insurgent Indian woman certainly seems timely in 2019. Too bad the new account of her uprising, The Warrior Queen of Jhansi, is as stodgy as a movie from 1958, if not earlier.

Much of the movie -- which Murphy wrote with a small posse of collaborators -- is taken up with the torturously dull, not to mention unbelievable, romance between Norbit and Kate (a disappointingly lackluster Newton) and the tedious agenda of Cuba Gooding Jr. as a schemer-manipulator.

Child's Play 3 is further proof of the principle of diminishing sequels: The original was actually quite good, the follow-up was lame and now what is hopefully the capper is DOA.

The dialogue is fast but bad, the acting is loud but awful and the morality is chaste but unromantic. As for the food, it looks vulgar.

There's not much zest here, even with Mike Myers's energetic attempts to steal the movie as a cross-eyed flight instructor.

I’ll say one other nice thing: The film isn’t terribly long. You’ll keep waiting for the suspense to kick in. Spoiler alert: It never really does, except feebly, after about an hour and 15 minutes. And then, unceremoniously, it’s over.

How bad is the third installment... So bad that this bland, pointless sequel features a gratuitous scene where the stunning Jessica Alba - one of many new faces added to an already overstuffed ensemble - strips down to her lacy undergarments, belly-flops into a backyard pit, rolls around in the mud, and I still can't recommend you pay to see it.

Dugan has a brisk, imaginative comic style; he sets up his gags well, so that there's still some surprise in the punch lines when they come.

Technique counts for a lot in directing a picture like this -- more perhaps than in any other genre -- and Foley doesn't have any. His approach here is to toss things up into the air without caring much where they land. And as a result, the noise they make when they land is not a pretty one.

The special effects look cheap, the acting is wooden, and the shouted dialogue consists largely of throwaway action-movie cliches (“Let’s do this”) and B-movie sci-fi jargon (“His bioenergy is off the charts!”).

The music isn't bad, but there's something more than a little blasphemous about hearing She's Leaving Home or A Day in the Life sung by the likes of the Bee Gees.

A nasty, formulaic and unforgivably obvious procedural.

What the filmmakers try to play for laughs -- a mom and her daughters chatting about orgasms while shoe shopping -- isn't funny, it's creepy.

Ultimately Dolittle is not just a weak story, badly told, but a puzzling waste of talent.

Although the hallmarks of Rudolph movies can be found everywhere -- they don't add up to the usual magic this time.

Take the "dle" out of "poodle" and you've pretty much got the leitmotif of Look Who's Talking Now, a crude and mawkish film in which dogs attempt to communicate with Kirstie Alley and John Travolta.

Morality is hardly the main concern of The Ottoman Lieutenant. Instead, it’s content with hackneyed romance and soaring strings.

There are more than 6 million potential love stories in Rio de Janeiro. Unfortunately, none of the 10 that have been assembled in the anthology film Rio, I Love You is any good.

Mainly for those who are already infatuated with Cena's stoic, Mount Rushmore-esque countenance and who do not find the idea of the big lug leaping off the edge of a cliff onto an airborne helicopter's landing gear remotely absurd.

Madame Web is no blockbuster, but in its own quiet way, it manages to break down a few barriers.

The movie is really just an elaborate excuse to show repeated close-ups of an elephantine dog scrotum.

"4" isn't even a film; it's more like a long trailer, a collection of scenes without sense. It has everything you expect and nothing more: flat and uninspired aural and visual jokes about bodily functions (people's and pigeons'), leather bars, porta-johns, superglue, fat and/or stupid people -- all interspersed with "training," jailbreaks and an airborne chase finale.

Alan Silvestri's score is the worst mix of ersatz Jerry Goldsmith and schlock pop tunes, and the acting is pretty weak, though the filmmakers get good marks for using Calegory, a real-life disabled 11-year-old who brings a healthy authenticity to his role.

Where is the suspense part? There is no suspense part. Suspense demands clarity of motive and action, and this screenplay never provides it.