The best way to appreciate this fitfully funny collection of japes and jests is to treat it like any teenage boy in your midst: Focus on the positives and know that even its worst is only a phase.

This is one movie that no one needs to relive.

It's wage earners versus employers, his same old pitch. No curveballs, no spitballs, no surprises.

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.

As with most sequels, Addams Family Values is a thinner, airier reunion. For those who enjoyed the original The Addams Family, the flavor is still there. But you feel a little undernourished.

Marie Noelle fills the story with passion, debate and human contradiction. If the material ultimately eludes the director’s grasp, wandering off on unfocused tangents, it’s because of its ambition.

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.

The story often feels like a collection of (so-so) jokes, forcibly strung together in a tenuous narrative.

The movie's nowhere near the inspired funniness of its predecessors. But it often displays the same spirit. It's strung end to end with sight gags. Some fall flat on their faces. But, by sheer weight of numbers, many of them work. It depends on your ability to lower yourself into -- or steer stoically clear of -- the idiocy pit.

It's a monumental biopic that cheapens the hero's successes by glossing over the failures that surely also shaped the man.

A double fish out of water structure -- first she's the fish, then he's the fish -- but the movie doesn't go anywhere with it, mostly because the characters are such nullities.

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

These unfortunate innovations aside, the film, directed by Ivan Reitman, has moments when the old army joke is done well. Reason against discipline is always funny -- hero to sergeant: "I know I'm speaking for the entire platoon when I say that the run should be postponed until the platoon is better rested" -- but the kicker, that there really is a reason for the discipline, is necessary to the premise. [26 June 1981, p.17]

For a terrible movie, Used Cars certainly has its moments. Anyone braving the sleezy ad campaign will be treated to some wonderfully funny gibes at a larger-than-life target: the used-car-industry. The question is, do a few moments of satire justify an hour and a half of naked ladies, car stunts and chase scenes? That's what most of this movie consists of. [11 July 1980, p.27]

Witty as they sometimes are, Romero's ironies aren't subtle or devastating enough to justify lengthy comtemplation. "Dawn" seems like a good 80-minute horror premise stretched out at least half an hour too long. Moreover, the excess running time appears to be filled by repeated shootings, clubbings, stabbings and munchings, always vividly depicted, rather than further character exploration or mordant strokes of humor.

Playing a mentally unhinged, almost wordless naif who finds true love with equally nutty Mary Stuart Masterson, he's supposed to invoke the silent comedian, with a little Chaplin thrown in. But he's just Edward Scissorhands without the scissors -- or the edge.

Romero has some fun with cackling frat-style boors in the background, all of whom get their comeuppance. But by and large, the acting is extremely flat and strident, and shot in a much more conventional style than Romero's other movies. Romero, in other words, seems bored by the whole enterprise, less interested in the story than in sausage-making. [23 July 1985, p.E2]

The rift that opens between Bea and the two combatants feels somehow terribly contrived. From there until the requisite happy ending, the story loses some of its emotional weight, if not its humor.

Interiors imposes a portentous formality that seems deliberately starved of sensuous appeal. It's obvious that Allen has serious intentions, but they're expressed in bloodless, superficial, derivative ways. [29 Sept 1978, p.D1]

While it’s gratifying — and occasionally gripping — to see that story told in 12 Strong, the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced film contains few genuine surprises, at least from a cinematic standpoint.

The Money Pit is Richard Benjamin's attempt to make a '30s comedy through the lens of Steven Spielberg -- there are contraptions and "smart" dialogue and, unfortunately, nothing to hold them together. [28 Mar 1986, p.D2]

A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy promises to take off every so often, but the material proves too slight for buoyant fancy. [16 July 1982, p.C1]

Despite flashes of brilliance, strong performances and innovative camera techniques, the film never rises above the schmaltz of an after-school special.

Sutherland's not particularly strong in his role of the man who knew too little -- he's handicapped by obvious dialogue like "I was so naive."

It’s only upon reflection that viewers may realize that, despite its nominal title character, the movie never delves that deeply into who Gloria Grahame was, aside from a femme fatale slinking across a black-and-white screen.

It's a little like watching Hsing-hsing and Ling-ling attempting to mate, to see John Travolta and Debra Winger, as the simple couple in Urban Cowboy, spend over two hours trying to find a modus vivendi in a mobile home. They're sweet and it's amusing that they have so much trouble doing the obvious, but after a while you get exasperated and wish they would just figure it out and do it.

Unfortunately, screenwriter David Shaber hasn't laid the sort of tracks that can support a clever or gripping vehicle. The rickety foundation might be finessed by swift, dynamic direction -- the sort of approach William Friedkin brought to The French Connection or Walter Hill to The Warriors, an urban thriller Shaber also helped fabricate -- but newcomer Bruce Malmuth isn't agile enough.

Filmmakers ought to be granted time off for good intentions. Then, perhaps, those responsible for the prison film Brubaker could have gotten their do-good impulses under reasonable control, and used them to make a good picture, instead of a goody-goody one.