Unlike his action-movie rival Johnson, Statham does not have the charisma to carry this film. He gets the job done all right, but makes it feel more like work than play.

To the detriment of their story, the filmmakers seem to have forgotten that even the most serious of kid-friendly films can benefit from an injection of fun while attempting to jerk tears.

This time around, there's barely any plot, just excuses for Bronson to blow people away.

The End never really lives up to its beginning. It's much too long and, after a while, the one-track theme - how a man reacts when he's suddenly told he has less than three months to live - begins to get old. [26 May 1978, p.20]

Condorman is ingenious enough when it comes to mechanical resources. Its undoing is personality resources.

With more daring than success, Joker: Folie à Deux says that anyone who takes the Joker for a hero to be emulated is as delusional as Arthur Fleck, and it serves up its comic-book cake at the same time it stuffs it with rat poison.

Gibson, the thinking man's Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Spacek, a rawboned Raggedy Ann, are nearly silent partners in this largely visual parable. Despite their good looks and best efforts, the film falters. [11 Jan 1985, p.19]

This muttering boatman seems to have lost his old-time heroism. No longer is Rambo killing for a cause, but for kicks. And his portentous blather, even by Rambo standards, becomes unintentionally hilarious.

What's funny to Broken Lizard? Let's try: What's not funny? The answers are, everything and nothing. They'll do anything for a laugh, no matter how puerile, silly or offensive.

Nobody likes a fixed fight, except the backroom boys making the deal. Which is why The Break-Up may have its share of laughs, but isn't much fun.

It goes so far -- way too far -- as having a known actor play Grant.

All of The Last Days on Mars feels like it’s been done before.

It's both straight-faced spy film and sly spy spoof. That's a difficult balancing act, but director James Mangold gets it exactly right.

The shocks are strictly mechanical and redundant, the script uncomplicated by incidental humor or character byplay. It comes as no great surprise when the killer is revealed to a be a Halloween clone and then allowed to vanish, aggravating the pathetic resemblance. The reviewers who made a fuss over Halloween have a lot to answer for. [25 Feb 1981, p.B12]

With a cast like this, The Exorcism of Emily Rose is a superior performance vehicle and on that count alone is never less than riveting.

This is nothing but a dare-to-be-terrible movie.

This is a small film with some big-ish names in it: Jeffrey Wright plays Stuart’s boss; Taylor Schilling is his love interest; and Gabrielle Union is a TV reporter. But it topples under the weight of its unwieldy themes.

There’s just enough bite there to give the stars something to work with, and Diaz especially responds with the joy of the well-rested.

Because there’s little internal logic in IF, you may find yourself constantly asking why the characters are doing what they do, or how the whole imaginary-friend thing works within the context of the movie.

Penn, who also wrote the script, burdens the story with so many self-indulgent side developments that he loses emotional drive and Freddy's desperate obsession gets lost in the shuffle.

A little bit itchy, maybe, and smelling of mothballs, but deeply, inexplicably comforting, in these uncertain times.

With its widely acclaimed source material and a cast of distinguished actors, A Good Man in Africa held the possibility of being a welcome departure from the ordinary. Instead, ordinary is what it rises to at its best.

Spaceballs is actually a kind of comic black hole. All in all, the movie is about as funny as having coffee spilled in your lap. Except that there's no burn -- just that slightly embarrassing, uncomfortable, all-wet feeling.

This is a movie that starts silly and just gets sillier -- at one point Candice Bergen shows up with a Buddhist monk -- but its laughs are sweet-natured, and Heaven knows the lead players earn every one.

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

The movie -- adapted from James Patterson's novel by David Klass -- operates on the crime-movie equivalent of automatic pilot. It takes off, flies and lands without much creative intervention.

A feature-length version of the popular Hanna-Barbera cartoon series, it's an elaborate social critique done in cartoon terms -- a combination of Care Bears and "Das Kapital." And for what it's worth, it comes closer to having an actual cultural vision than any other movie of the summer. That doesn't mean it's good, mind you, but for kiddies it's colorful and bouncy at least, and for adults it's weird enough to keep you open-mouthed with disbelief.

The most elementary requirement of an action movie is that the hero know the score, be in command -- it lends tension to the moments when he's not in command -- a requirement that screen writer Christopher Wood blithely neglects. Aw, forget it -- just tell me when it ends.

Shyamalan the elder makes suspense-horror dramas that either give a half-baked idea a fully baked cinematic treatment or vice versa; Shyamalan the daughter’s first feature-length film is just half-baked all around.

Steven Brill, who has a small role in the film, constructed the screenplay much as one would put together some of those particleboard bookcases from Ikea.

A star isn't born in El Cantante as much as it's reconfirmed. She's still here, and she's still got it.

Even though Carrey is a bit mellower these days, the schtick feels dated. He's doing material from the '90s.

If it weren't so shocking, it would be a lot funnier.