Lame jokes, dull cast, stale plot. Ski Patrol, ski-daddle.

Cannonball Run II is a real lemon. [29 June 1984, p.19]

Nothing but Trouble, which distinguishes itself by being Dan Aykroyd's directorial debut and in no other way, certainly lives up to its name. But you could go far beyond that -- it's nothing but trouble and agony and pain and suffering and obnoxious, toxically unfunny bad taste. It's nothing but miserable.

In this movie, the sense of charm has been obliterated.

Cruise is walking in the footsteps of Troy Donahue and John Travolta here. He does what comes easy. He bumps and grinds and grins till his lips ache. It's a performance with all the integrity of wax fruit. And Cocktail is mud in your eye.

The film is amateurish on almost every level.

Stinks like a cat box that hasn't been changed in a hundred years.

Date Movie, alas, is here to remind us that slapstick can be just plain bad. These are sight gags best appreciated with a blindfold.

A workmanlike, if treacly and overblown, piece of propaganda. Its effectiveness depends entirely on the degree to which you already believe its talking points.

A rotten 89 minutes of night photography and close-ups of a man with the face of a dessicated bulldog. There's no kick, just sick: people who weren't being paid to watch walked out of the screening. [23 Apr 1982, p.13]

Lazy, boring, vile and tragically unfunny attempt at a horror-film spoof.

Zapped is a C-grade movie all the way. [28 Aug 1982, p.C5]

Death Ship unfortunately turned out to be about as frightening as "The Love Boat." No -- less. Except for one grisly, chilling scene too horrible to describe, this one was an unintentionally funny stroll. And pity the poor actors -- George Kennedy, Richard Crenna, Nick Mancuso, Sally Ann Howes; it's the TV-jeebies. Strictly second-string city. [9 June 1980, p.B1]

Puerile bluster.

And so begins the impale imitation of John Carpenter's once-scary bogyman tale, in which every shadow and reflection is premeditated and all the herrings are red.

Absent any self-awareness by its protagonists, the best thing about Sundown is that it’s too dumb to be offensive.

The movie was written by Rudy DeLuca, who also directs, and a camera in his hands is a dangerous thing. The only method to the framing is an unerring instinct for the inappropriate; "Transylvania 6-5000" appears to have been edited with a putty knife. And the look of the movie, which alternates between a moldy green and gobby white overexposure, leads you to ask not who was the cinematographer, but why. [8 Nov 1985, p.C4]

I doubt if I could stand to be in the same state as anyone who liked the new Anthony Michael Hall film "Johnny Be Good." If Chuck Berry were dead, he'd be spinning in his grave.

Car 54, Where Are You? is a stupid movie. Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid. If you pay money to see it, then you're stupid.

Stanley Donen's otherwise witty and diverting science-fiction thriller Saturn 3, a parable of jealousy set on a remote, futuristic Eden suddenly contaminated by insane lust, suffers desperately for the lack of an epilogue. As a result, an hour and a half of tense, funny sexual melodrama is squashed flat by a dud of a fadeout. [18 Feb 1980, p.B1]

A million monkeys with a million crayons would be hard-pressed in a million years to create anything as cretinous as Battlefield Earth.

So bad that I predict there will be drinking games set around viewing it someday.

Supremely idiotic.

Adapted by Hooper, Stephen Brooks and Peter Welbeck from a King short story, The Mangler is ludicrous from start to finish: Its plot lines dangle, its effects fail to dazzle and the acting and directing are uniformly bad. The movie looks as if it's gone through its namesake, the five-ton, 40-foot-long Hadley Watson Model-6 Steam Ironer & Folder. Even the least demanding of genre fans will be hard-pressed to tremble in its presence.

Teen Wolf Too is nothing a jar of Nair wouldn't cure.

The laughs are few, far between and pretty darn faint in this comedy.

Most of the time, though, the movie is too busy being saucy or sappy to even look at its target.

Like Nate, we are mere Notties. And we are supposed to feel oh-so privileged for getting to watch Paris through the glass.

Caddyshack II, a feeble follow-up to the 1980 laff riot, is lamer than a duck with bunions, and dumber than grubs. It's patronizing and clumsily manipulative, and top banana Jackie Mason is upstaged by the gopher puppet.

So stupefyingly hideous that after watching it, you'll need to bathe in 10 gallons of disinfectant, get a full-body scrub and shampoo with vinegar to remove the scummy residue that remains.

The daffy fires that often lit their four previous films are in danger of extinction. Or,to put it in terms they and their fans surely will understand, it's down to seeds and stems. [13 May 1983, p.B4]

D’Souza may wish to tilt the election, but he’ll be lucky if his fans can make it through his film without falling asleep.

A more accurate title would be “Inept, Inadequate and Insipid Comedy.”

A nonstop moronathon... Bio-Dome offers a pants-load of poop and masturbation jokes, deviant innuendo and simian sight gags destined to gross out and offend just about everyone.

Even though these characters are hogtied by the story's unimaginative conventions, at least their lively interactions feel genuine.

The movie is about so much more than politics. Growing up, growing disillusioned, gaining wisdom — these are the themes of Levitt’s slight but eminently watchable film.

“War” reminds us that “economic” doesn’t have to mean “cheap.” “Indie” doesn’t have to mean “amateur” and “gangster” doesn’t have to rely on tired cliches.

At the end of the day, the movie’s limitations keep its aspirations in check. It’s safe for everyone, but inspirational for only a few.

The movie’s transition from surfer flick to a story about faith is swift and not particularly smooth.

Pay 2 Play makes no new revelations... The difference with this movie is that it actually means to inspire hope.

A lovingly laid-back documentary about the charms, liquid and otherwise, of the traditional Irish watering hole.

It’s just a question of what route Angie and Marco will take to happiness. Yet their unsurprising journey is lively and entertaining, thanks in equal measure to the movie’s star and its director.

Few war films are entertaining in a traditional sense. This one is so relentless that recoiling from it is nearly impossible.

The thing that really doesn’t translate is the movie’s melodramatic sensibility. What New York New York presents as profound tragedy may strike non-Chinese viewers as simple bad timing.

Mrazek, who certainly knows the workings of this city from his 10 years in office, has written a script that feels accurate in its depiction of the mudslinging, lobbying chicanery and constituent grumbling that come with the job of politician. It’s just that little of it is terribly fresh or funny, and it draws no blood.

Teetering precariously between satire and base humor, “Jimmy Vestvood” squanders opportunities for both.

Despite bloody mayhem, Sword Master is more swashbuckling ballet than epic battle.

This engagingly goofy romantic comedy speaks the international language of food.

Breakneck chases, high-altitude jeopardy and split-second rescues upstage everything save for a flowery moral: No technological breakthrough is more disruptive than a mother’s love.

This movie’s condensed telling is somewhat bewildering, although the essentials eventually become clear. But then they’re really just a pretext for such fairy-tale wonders as an underwater city, a living island and a hummingbird air force.

Perhaps more banter would have helped sustain interest. As the body count burgeons, the surprises become unsurprising, and the climax proves anticlimactic.

Thunderstruck is an after-school special that lucked into a couple of NBA all-stars for its ensemble. The language is a little coarse for a family film. And, yes, sometimes it feels like a Durant highlight reel - or an OKC Thunder infomercial - stretched to feature length, with the occasional life lesson tossed in to balance the film's obvious commercial angle. [24 Aug 2012, p.T34]

Chinese director Guo Ke takes a quiet, deliberate approach. That must be partly out of respect for the women and their suffering. It’s also because this meditative film functions as a memorial to the remaining survivors: 22 of them when filming began, and even fewer today.

As both a movie and a battle plan for ending the child-sex trade, “Stopping Traffic” is disorganized and incomplete.

With its jazz-funk score and trust-no-one scenario, The Swindlers is an entertaining if mostly routine con-game thriller.

Unlike the traditional issue-driven documentary, which typically unfolds like a newsreel, this one plays like a thrilling jungle adventure.

Gift doesn’t really get into such unpleasant details as financing, and that’s okay. The idea that culture has a value beyond cash — that both sides of the equation, both the getters and the givers, are enriched by something that doesn’t have a price tag, or at least not an obvious one — is a beautiful thought.

Scavenger Hunt, a solvenly farce about a frantic competition for a multi-million dollar legacy, is the studio's bottom-of-the barrel Christmas treat. [29 Dec 1979, p.C6]

As an exercise in sincerity, fellowship and earnest inquiry, it might be the most subversive movie in circulation right now.

Director Pedro Kos makes lively use of archival footage and animation in Rebel Hearts, but the stars are the women themselves.

The screenplay is thoughtful and nuanced, and Epps’s performance anchors the narrative with a solid, unfussy portrayal of ethical indecision, even if the third act detours into more melodramatic territory.

In The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, deeper meaning is left by the wayside, in a tale with way too much story and not nearly enough life.

The discussions that take place on camera, in tastefully appointed suites, are frank and often offer fascinating insights into these dilemmas. But it is the sharply jarring — and dismayingly repetitive — footage of carnage that will stay with you long after the echoes of the film’s subjects’ words have faded from your mind.

The result is competent and informative, but lacks swagger and elegance. Sweetwater is no three-pointer.

The documentary could have been shapelier and better focused, but it packs lots of information and even more emotion.

The Keeper will win no filmmaking prizes. But it doesn’t mean, or need, to. Like an infomercial, its aim is more simple, direct and unapologetic: to call attention to an epidemic hiding in plain sight. By that measure: mission accomplished.

Civics lessons rarely come this disturbing or this convincing.

Without demonizing either side, it shows how Israel’s pattern of mistakes, if not arrogance, may have helped set a pot on the stove that is now boiling over with venom.

In an era beset with dizzying setbacks in the ideals it celebrates, Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round feels particularly necessary right now.