Despite an appealing, even ingenious premise, "Scorpion" is another quippy but uninspired comedy.

The actors make a good team in this film, and they're playing well-defined characters, but the script is so repetitive that we get mighty impatient for the mystery to be resolved.

A raunchy parody that's hip-deep in the mainstream it aims to rip, and sometimes does despite a glut of smug inside jokes.

What a bummer! Certainly the meanest-spirited film ever associated with the Disney hallmark.

A sweet but labored love story.

There's no escaping the hackneyed plot or Mayfield's conventional hand. So don't go.

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.

And even though the jokes keep on coming, not all are side-splitters. But before it's all over, they will have viewers howling at one or more pants-wettingly silly moments.

It's clean and transparent, with no movie director tricks. The characters, not the montages, speak the loudest.

The movie is a little crude for the subtlety of the emotions it plays with.

The movie's entertaining for some wickedly funny situations and witticisms.

This film isn't so much a sequel to the original "American Pie" as a reduction of it.

A tantalizing spine-tingler.

Should never have been released, not even on video. It should have been placed in a hazardous waste container, encased in concrete and dumped into the Farrelly brothers' septic tank.

The real story lies beneath the surface of this superbly acted, strangely moving film.

About half a notch above disaster.

Makes a virtue of its own simplicity. But don't be fooled. That simplicity is mere cover. You're kept wondering about the outcome until the very end.

The movie updates Disney's blueprint without altering it in any meaningful way.

It's about half as much fun as the original.

The movie offers one of the great lost pleasures, one we so seldom encounter at the bijou anymore. You watch this monster unreeling in its splendid vitality, its absurd ambition, its wobbly tone, its beauty, its stupidity, its immaturity, its tragedy, its grandeur, and before you know it, close to four hours has blasted by. And when you leave, you seize whoever is up close to you -- friend or foe, stranger or lover -- and begin to talk. You have opinions. You must express yourself. You must be heard. [5 Aug 2001, p.G1]

Ought to have been called "The Sap Also Rises."

Great picture? No. Cool picture? Oui. Not as good, I must say, as the sort of thing we moron yanks were doing on our own over here – "D.O.A." is much better.

The longer I take to review this movie, the more the absurdities loom. So let me finish before I think about the story's stupidly plotted structure or recall how tiring it was to watch apes perpetually pushing humans to the ground or sending them pirouetting into the air.

A little too shopworn and pokey to be more than a respectable European diversion.

This is supposed to be funny? It was so depressing I almost started to cry.

Nobody hits the jackpot here, certainly not filmmakers Michael and Mark Polish, whose audacious, empathic first film, "Twin Falls Idaho," showed such promise.

The sparks don't fly -- they fall down and they can't get up.

Bewildering, tediously violent.

The film's not only funny and weird, it's oddly poignant. I miss Hedwig already.

A character so real and poignant (yet hysterically funny), she'll linger for months or years.

A serious been-there-done-that number.

There are laughs -- lots of them, too -- but at some point the source of the laughs -- Vaughan's Ricky, a yammering loose cannon -- goes from entertaining to obnoxious.

Really nothing more than "Clueless" redux but without the edgy, knowing wit.

The best heist flick since "The Usual Suspects," a perfect 10 of a movie.

As monotonous as Muzak, and when it comes to the plot, both bewildering and trite.

The more you lower your expectations, the more you'll learn to laugh.

Too bad the filmmakers -- and here's where the American part comes in -- decided the movie had to have some heart, too.

There are scenes that simply ask the audience to drink in the details, to enjoy the repast, just as much as follow the plot.

Equally earnest and unconvincing.

The premise is tragically flawed and politically incorrect. In fact, it is blatantly cat-ist.

A pocket of infection on the skin of the American body cultural.

The French originals are always much breezier, the characters more genuine and the actors subtler even if the situations are just as silly.

The French now proudly prove they can make a big stupid violent cop movie, just like our gifted Hollywood professionals.

A wretch-a-sketch, a two-minute character-based skit (an occasional feature on HBO's "The Chris Rock Show") stretched to a mind-boggling 82 minutes.

Surprisingly mawkish teen film.

Intriguing, inspired, flawed, misbegotten and fascinating -- all of these qualities apply to the movie, at one point or another.

The movie is visually stirring. And the locations, in Zimbabwe and Mozambique, imbue the story with eerie authenticity.

The movie makes an over-long deal about Jody's immaturity and never seems to get beyond it.

You don't have any idea what's going to happen next. You're not caught in a movie, so much as a narrative stratagem.

Best news: over in 87 minutes.

The Fast and the Furious is "Rebel Without a Cause" without a cause. The young and the restless with gas fumes. The quick and the dead with skid marks.

After viewing documentarian Stephanie Black's dour exegesis of the wrecked Jamaican economy -- only the most insensitive vacationer will want to set foot anywhere near the resorts and beaches of Montego Bay.

This French film has a breezy, documentary air that belies the important issues is raises.

The haunting beauty of the music, and the people who produce it – that's the chapter and verse of this story.

It is the perfect modern product: loud, banal, empty, frenzied, plasticized, flavorless, drab, violent in a bloodless way and sexy in a sexless way.

In the end, I'm wondering what's so special about a film that has but one guilty pleasure and that's Ben Kingsley spraying saliva-lubricated variants of the F-word into the atmosphere like anti-aircraft fire for 10 solid minutes.

The result is cutesy but harsh, a hybrid of saucer-eyed anime and square-jawed angularity that brings to mind an edgier "Pokemon."

Evolution is bad. How bad? Who cares? Do you ask how hot the fire is before running out of a burning building? No, you just run for safety.

A fascinating premise. And yet, the movie, directed by Bruce Beresford, never quite blooms.

A celebration of the actor's art – but not the dramatist's.

Nobody really cares about the plot, least of all the filmmakers.

Based on a true story, the movie takes us through some harrowing times.

The film is nowhere near the level of Pontecorvo's masterpiece, or even his subsequent flawed allegory on Vietnam, "Burn!," but is clearly the work of a natural coming into the full range of his powers.

It's like a PBS version of a movie of the week about child abduction, complete with histrionic, spit-flecked speechifying in quaint Irish brogues.

The key to success: The audience must really like both characters and believe that they deserve a fairy-tale ending. That's definitely the case in this nicely acted love story.

Let's face it, some people find butt and bathroom comedy funny. And some don't.

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

The dance between authenticity and storymaking works beautifully.

The driving drama of such a desperate situation is lost in the movie's casting silliness.

A nostalgic paean to China's fading pastoral ways, might easily be taken for an audition tape for Zhang Ziyi.