Heckerling directs this mess with no sense of pace and less sense of where to put the camera. There are pixilated, MTV-style sequences that simply slow up the story, car chases and car crashes, and, of course, aerobicizers boinging out of their leotards. The best thing in the movie is the catchy theme from the last Vacation, which, unfortunately, hasn't the slightest thing to do with Europe.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods dutifully doubles down on everything that made the first film both charming and instantly disposable. But the heart and meta-humor that were so refreshing the first time feel static and stale in returning director David F. Sandberg’s more-of-the-same sequel.

In nearly all the important categories -- story, direction, pacing, acting -- the picture is pretty much negligible. Still, almost by force of sheer winning dopiness, the movie seduces you into dropping your defenses. It's weightlessly, irredeemably enjoyable.

The best thing about this psychological exploration is its star, Courteney Cox.

The best reason to see 44 Inch Chest is simply to behold some of the finest actors working today, especially Winstone -- who can embody winsomeness and menace in one sweaty, unkempt glance -- and the woefully underemployed Dillane.

Typically hollow and patchy, the script is low par for the course, the acting close behind. Where it's a cut above the rest is in the work of Yugoslavian cinematographer Bojan Bazelli: His outdoor shots, both day and night, are superbly lit and cleanly shot, as if this were an A film. And with Marcus Manton's crisp editing, Pumpkinhead looks three times as good as it is.

Outlandish, uneven, preposterous and often maddeningly morbid.

Atrocious. It's also pretentious, superfluous, superficial, shallow, dated and bilious. I'd pay money not to have seen this jumble of gooey special effects, sappy symbolism and out-of-it animation. [17 Sept 1982, p.13]

"Mr. Jones" does have some things to savor. Director Mike Figgis, who made "Stormy Monday" and "Internal Affairs," has a distinctive, atmospheric touch. There's something memorably restless about Gere's performance. He never stops. Olin gives her white-uniformed, statistics-spouting, let's-work-together role an off-center appeal. And there are likable supporting performances from Delroy Lindo, as a construction worker who befriends Gere; Lauren Tom, a hauntingly beautiful but distraught mental patient; and Lisa Malkiewicz, as a bank teller who giddily falls for Gere when he effortlessly calculates accrued interest on his account. But these worthy elements can't completely disguise the conventional medicine we're ultimately being asked to swallow.

A thoroughly unnecessary but nonetheless satisfying adaptation of the cheeseball 1980s TV series.

Controversial, yet undeniably powerful.

In all, it's not too bad and it's not too long.

While it's fitfully, harmlessly diverting, Breaking Training never overcomes the handicaps that derive from its fundamentally derivative character. [04 Aug 1977, p.B11]

An entertaining mishmash of skits which finds Mel Brooks back in lively form, both for better and for worse. The only consistent thing about this burlesque miscellany, which incorporates skits about the Dawn of Man, Moses, the Roman Empire, the Spanish Inquisition and the French Revolution, is its inconsistency.

An uncoordinated tear jerker certain to double up cynics and touch only those fans who prefer their favorites lost in a narcissistic fog. [26 Oct 1977, p.B1]

Neither funny nor suspenseful nor particularly well drawn.

It winds up being tuneless, unfunny and, despite its strenuous efforts, not terribly sexy.

A slow, talky and only faintly moving meditation on mortality and memory.

If you go in with the right attitude, there’s a fair amount of fun to be had from In Secret, considering it’s a musty French costume drama done in plummy English accents.

To Greenwalt's credit as cowriter, there are funny lines and some situations that held promise. But his direction is early "Brady Bunch," with a daub of Ridley Scott's Chanel commercials for further inspiration...Despite the director, the cast is decent, with Fred Ward of the "Right Stuff" in rare comic form as Lt. Lou Fimple, a vice cop who finds both his wife and his daughter undone on lover's lane.

Beautifully outfitted and moodily photographed, the movie is directed by Stephen Hopkins, the Jamaican-born Australian responsible for Nightmare on Elm Street V. He keeps the pedal to the metal but never allows the explosive action to minimize his actors.

Director James Bridges and journalist Aaron Latham wrote the shoddy screenplay from Latham's cover story "Looking for Mr. Goodbody" and two other articles, none of which come together sufficiently to comprise a plot. You've got to wonder what they really had in mind with this marriage of ink and sweat. What next -- the "The 60-Minute Workout" with Morley Safer, or Arnold Schwarzenegger and "Meet the Bench Press"? [7 June 1985, p.29]

Filmmakers John Hughes and Chris Columbus go for repetition over comedy.

A Benji movie can't be the most boring thing under the sun, but while struggling to stay awake during something as tedious as "For the Love of Benji," now at area theaters, you begin to imagine that the minutes might pass more quickly and vividly if you were watching the grass grow or contemplating the horizons in Barstow or Wendover. [24 June 1977, p.B9]

Unhappily, the attractive twosome never give into the pull, just as this coquettish variant of "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" never arrives at its promised destination.

So programmatic, so dogged in hitting the right steps at the right time that it completely lacks spontaneity.

The film is visually mannered and full of posing and longueurs. But it is stylish, very French (despite its American origins) and diverting if well short of brilliant.

Newsies is all left feet, noise and clutter.

Vaughn is the film equivalent of a well-known novelist that no longer gets a good edit. He has the charismatic salesguy shtick down, but he needs a director who can rein him in.

Wonder Wheel may be scenic, but it goes nowhere — and slowly.

A few others have compared this to a James Bond movie, but it's more of a piece with a Tom Clancy movie; it never leaves the real world that far behind, it has a fair sense of documentary reality, and the action sequences -- from shootout to car chase to a commando takedown of a tanker on the high seas to a final knife fight -- are extremely well managed.

The film is, at times, almost sinfully fun, assuming you have a taste for self-indulgently logic-free hedonism.

Overwritten, overextended and clunkily symbolic

We're supposed to adore Gibson's sang-froid and his toughness, but everything, a few good lines aside, is so witless and monotonous it becomes numbing.

Unless you're a Clint fan there's little other reason to sit through this one.

"Dragon" was apparently meant to be a big, rousing musical comedy-fantasy, but it's staged and photographed without musical-comedy energy, flair or coordination. [17 Dec 1977, p.D7]

The war-movie cliches are as abundant as the antiaircraft fire, and the dialogue as wooden as a balsa glider. The leading characters are issued one personality trait apiece, and some don't even get that. Cuba Gooding Jr., for example, plays Maj. Emanuelle Stance as a man who smokes a pipe.

The stories are markedly different, but the acting seems remote and hollow, as if no one believes in what they're doing. [18 Oct 1996]

The result won’t sway nonbelievers, but is mostly watchable and occasionally even moving.

Upon this fine mess shines Janeane Garofalo like a ray of sarcastic sunlight as FBI agent Shelby...With her gift for sweet bile, the sardonic Garofalo makes every second on screen a treasure to be cherished.

One-dimensional archetypes, too much predictability and not enough comedy.

Linney -- this has happened too much to her -- is once again the best thing in a movie that at most achieves a certain mediocrity.

Ruffalo is so squirrelly in the role that he seems like a dead giveaway from the start. You know exactly where the story is going, and, dang, that's exactly where it goes.

A cautionary environmental tale with a thin veneer of entertainment on top. With its cotton-candy-colored palette of orange, pink and purple truffula trees, it looks like a bowl of fuzzy Froot Loops. But it goes down like an order of oatmeal. Sure, it's good for you. It's just not terribly good.

The artistry is enough to keep children and adults watching. It may help that Mario gains power by eating mushrooms — a good message about healthy eating, on the one hand, yet one with an obvious psychedelic resonance at the same time.

When the jokes work, it's for a simple reason: The four actors playing the couples are seasoned veterans of film comedy (although each is more than capable of handling dramatic roles, as well).

If your teenage sons are looking for heroes, send them to Toy Soldiers. Even if they're not, send them anyway. They'll probably enjoy watching a judge being thrown out of a helicopter. Too bad the judge didn't take the script with him. Most reasoning adults will probably reject this far-fetched clash between American preppies and Colombian terrorists.

By the end, though, the original bits fade as easily as one song bleeds into another.

There's a fine line between precocious and insufferable, and it's a line continually crossed by Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

The movie's self-importance is further inflated by the usual pseudo-Wagnerian score and occasional narration by John Hurt.

A lifeless pop vision of the future that tries too self-consciously to be irreverent, hip and cutting edge.

As Snow White, actress Lily Collins is a washout.

The only reason to watch this movie is for stargazing, nice shots of the sea and to revel in a world where false promises, lies and empty posturing are actively encouraged.

A movie that sags and drags under the weight of poor pacing, execrable writing and largely unlikable characters.

This vainglorious biopic about Bobby Darin is really about what the '60s pop singer and actor means to Kevin Spacey.

More than predictable. It plods along with the inevitability of a doomed soldier going off to war.

As Balthazar, Cage doesn't disappoint. He's just manic enough to keep the character from becoming too predictable.

Whatever its failings, Beaches speaks to women. It makes girlfriends think of calling girlfriends they haven't seen in 10, 20, 30 years. You can live without love, but "you've got to have friends," as Midler sings.

The film is one of those accursed self-styled "outrageous" comedies that play the horrific for broad laughs, with a comically inflated style of dialogue that's so hip one doubts it could have been conceived before 1997, much less 1847.

I spent most of Johnny English wondering whom the filmmakers were targeting. While childish and silly, it's far too violent for young kids.

Perhaps Steven Soderbergh's metamorphosis from clever Cajun auteur ("sex, lies, and videotape") to heavy-duty Eastern European angst-master has been altogether too successful. Like authentic Soviet Bloc cinema, Kafka makes its audience suffer along with its heroes.

I wished Next Day Air were funnier. In the end, it's a fitfully amusing, sloppy comedy that doesn't work very hard for your 10 bucks.

Artistically, You, Me and Dupree is a mess. Technically, it's an abomination. Spiritually, it's a void. Commercially, it'll probably be a big hit.

Rebecca is nice to look at, inoffensive, competently executed and utterly unnecessary when once, it was so much more.

Some of it is funny -- particularly the physical comedy. Most of it is not.

Even the basic look of the film -- it was filmed on a stage with every shot set against a bleak, dark backdrop -- underscores the filmmaker's position as master manipulator, in a laboratory, looking down at his mice running through his maze.

This film manages to have the feel of an original -- and very effective -- piece of comedy. In part this is due to the delicate touch of director Michael Lehmann ("Heathers"), who never allows the film to slip into a silly mode.

Even amid the corny jokes, awkward segues, forced conflicts and predictable resolutions, Bergen and Giannini manage to develop a low-simmer chemistry between the insults.

Separates the tech-savvy boys from the lost-in-cyberspace men. Really--the movie may be too fast and confusingly jargon-choked for everyone but Netsurfers and Webheads.

The film is spiked with moments of gleeful violence, but Coen and Cooke understand that the primal reason we go to the movies is to look at beautiful people in nice clothes, and on that score ‘Honey Don’t!” is a rousing success. On every other score, it’s a short, shambling, surprisingly horny mess — amusing if you’re in an indulgent mood, obnoxious if you’re not.

Aside from the plot -- and if you can figure out the plot, the CIA's special projects unit wants to talk to you -- Cop II is a rarity: a sequel that's as good as the original, if not better.

The new film is professionally made, well-acted, entertaining enough, and possessed of no earthly reason to exist aside from the care and feeding of intellectual property.

“Reminiscence” has all the ingredients for electrifying summer entertainment. But despite its considerable star power and impressive set pieces, the sprawling meditation on memory is simply an attractive mess.

If Slater were a bigger star, this self-serving vehicle would have been a hoot, a surefire DVD attraction for any Camp Night in the living room, not to mention a shoo-in for one of the 10 worst movies of 2005.

There are only two really good jokes -- or two really gross ones, depending on your sensibility -- in She's Out of My League. Both of them are stolen.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is as visually imaginative as its predecessor.

It's the kind of movie that succeeds as a culmination of moments that ring true and sweet.

By going back to its origins and dusting itself off, the King Arthur story has proved itself to have a very contemporary resonance.

Despite his occasional witticisms, the old grump is no great catch, and neither is this movie.

The best cartoons recognize the dark side of kids, their penchant for violence, their fearful fantasies. The Care Bears Movie just patronizes them.

Even at its most wrenchingly painful, the film readily delivers generous dollops of pleasure.

First-time feature director Harald Zwart has a real flair for farce, and he keeps the outrageous high jinks of the script lively yet grounded in reality.

You can boost mediocrity a little, but you cannot raise it from the dead.

The movie loses all authority, despite wonderful work from cinematographer Peter Menzies and composer Patrick O'Hearn. In screenwriter Daniel Pyne's hands, every character becomes a disappointment. Even Dafoe loses his zest as the movie progresses.

The reunion is fun and frantic, like the original on double nitro.

The film fleetingly touches on the underfunding of schools and other administrative problems as well as the more compelling personal issues of teen pregnancy and violence. But the characters are so poorly drawn and underdeveloped that they seem to be little more than personifications of these societal ills.

Hoot may be warm and fuzzy with its adorable owls, triumphant kids and inviting Florida groves. But its forced, innocuous humor is unlikely to amuse anyone but the very young -- and the extremely forgiving.

In the end, there’s nothing here we haven’t seen before. But there’s also nothing as agonizingly awkward as James’s prose.

Writer-director Danny Strong’s feature debut embodies the very phoniness that the author — and his signature character, Holden Caulfield — railed against.

Undercover Blues offers a perfectly enjoyable, completely forgettable hour and a half. After all, how hard is it to watch pros like Quaid and Turner have a good time knocking around with a lovable baby? As Quaid coos to the toddler, "It's a bad world, isn't it, sweetheart? You 'n me 'n Mom are gonna make it better, right?" Quaid, Turner and the kid do make this movie better, but it isn't good enough.

The most controversial thriller of the year turns out to be about as exciting as watching your parents play Sudoku.

There's little momentum, no real story line, just Carroll's tediously inevitable descent from low to lowest.

A talented comedian, Lawrence has leaned all too easily on formula for his successful films. Imagine if he would test his flair against original and fresh premises, instead of the tried and trite. Why, he'd discover what it's like to take pride, not just profit.

This ethnic family sitcom thing is rapidly turning into wearisome cliche, and American Chai doesn't hold a candle to either "Beckham" or "Greek Wedding."

It feels old, tired and given-up-on, maybe three drafts shy of minimal production level.

Something between an indiscretion and an atrocity.

But humans who live above ground, including horror fans, will find themselves only fitfully entertained and more consistently appalled.

It's not Christmas that's being stolen here. It's the spirit of Dr. Seuss.