Director Roger Donaldson may have started out aiming for intentional thrills, but ends up with unintentional comedy as his characters do and say the darndest things.

As alternate history and a showcase for a fine Neeson characterization, “Mark Felt” offers an intriguing if incomplete view of a man who remains inscrutable, 40 years after the fact.

This unusual convergence of stars doesn't amount to much.

Imagine settles disappointingly for rom-com cliches. It doesn't even bother to explore its own premise.

Despite its earnestness and valuable lessons, however, "Blood" feels a little like preaching to the choir.

As quickly as the technical elements pull the audience in, the plot pushes us away.

Sold is maudlin in a way that makes its audience, paradoxically, feel good, albeit superficially. A story of human trafficking should move us on a deeper, more uncomfortable level.

The best thing about "Children" is the cinematography by Zhao Xiaoding ("Hero," "House of Flying Daggers"), which is so distracting because it so out-classes the rest of the movie.

With a slick visual style similar to "Monster House", Open Season trots out tropes that recent animated classics have done with more wit and smarts.

Gerwig remains one of the most captivating new stars to hit the big screen, but she's still looking for a movie that deserves her.

Attempting to make an atrocity palatable to a mainstream audience, The Promise delivers the history, but undercuts its impact.

Mary McDonnell, as Nat's patient wife, provides too-brief clarity as Nat goes off the rails, finally taking the movie with him.

A religious feel-good message, first and foremost. As for drama, well, it's a distant second. For the right audience, however, this reversal of priorities will work just fine.

If you choose to see this puerile tripe, check your dignity at the door.

Less a tale of mysterious, tragic love than a three-way Harlequin romance.

Director Gao Xiaosong doesn't do anything surprising with this melodramatic material, but the movie boasts sumptuous costumes and several nifty action sequences.

As with any band movie, this is a moral, rise-and-fall tale. Rock must learn he's a regular guy, not a nasty poseur. Like Spinal Tap, the movie basically peters out, tying up its narrative loose ends. But for the laughs you get, it's a small price to pay.

With the exception of one heartbreaking and well-acted scene towards the end of the movie, the atmosphere is oppressive and the characters act as if their personalities have been shot with novocaine.

Despicable Me 3 disappoints, if only mildly, not because it’s bad, but because it only aspires to be good enough.

Running Scared, ha. They ought to call this police story "Re-Running Scared." It's as cliche- riddled as Scarface's limo. [27 June 1986, p.29]

Yet despite the stirring performance at its heart, the movie is ultimately too restricted by its own dramatic conventions, and it only seldom comes to life.

It's a film within a film about a film within a film, and seems to lose layers of authenticity with each iteration, finally becoming a profoundly alienating experience.

The movie is full of half-witted Hollywood satire (the Devil's an agent -- get it?), lame wordplay, and easy moralism about family being more important than career blah blah blah. [09 Nov 1984, p.F8]

The Three Musketeers, a rusty trio of middle-aged retirees, have all but changed their motto from "All for one and one for all" to "I have fallen and I can't get up" in this less-than-rollicking adaptation.

Akin to watching a ring-tested champion punch far below his weight. What a comedown.

What it lacks in originality it makes up for with a streamlined story, a sharp pace — there isn’t a superfluous moment or a wasted scene — and quips galore.

Misbegotten buddy-bonding comedy of errors.

It will make you jump, to be sure, and your heart to beat a little bit faster. But what's truly scariest about it takes place not in the body, but in the mind.

The Quick and the Dead is made bearable by director Sam Raimi, who bombards us with frenetic editing, crazy-angle shots and enjoyably cartoonish cliches. But all the stylistic sleight of hand in the world can't hide the central problem: The star of the show is more Dead than Quick.

The Best of Enemies is perhaps the first account of the United States’s traumatic racial history that could be adapted into a sitcom.

Follows all these rules, which is why you'll get the enjoyable basic minimum. But not a whit more.

Best news: over in 87 minutes.

It's a simpering, ineffective ersatz-drama, so simple-minded and unrealistic and so full of fussy stupidity, it exiles you.

Entertaining for so long it's a downer to sit through the dumbed-down finale.

After introducing a provocative opening, the movie settles in for some pretty cheap scare effects, as well as by-the-numbers computer graphic imagery for the actual marauder.

Like nothing else that's played in months.

Despite a certain emotional chill, what holds this Mechanic together is - no surprise - the core Carlino story.

An opportunity for an unusual film about teen-agers was thrown away, in Taps, in favor of what its own screenplay characterizes as a cinematic stereotype. [18 Dec 1981, p.21]

The most ironic thing about Gold is this: For all its efforts, the movie seems to know it’s sitting on a gold mine of a backstory, but it just can’t figure out how to get the stuff out of the ground.

Here's a better title for Griff the Invisible, a well-meaning but unengaging love story about two 20-something misfits: "Griff the Implausible."

The dance itself makes a much more powerful, and ultimately poetic, point. On the most superficial level, it serves as a blunt metaphor for the elaborate choreography of the rescue operation, which entailed its own intense rehearsals, undertaken in a scale mock-up of the Entebbe airport that had been re-created back in Israel.

The movie’s ending could be called a twist. But it’s really more of a belly flop.

There are no sparks in Blind Date. And the script, written by Dale Launer (Ruthless People), is so devoid of laughs it's impossible to understand why Willis chose it for his first film outing. [02 Apr 1987, p.B11]

Despite what the singer/actress says, there’s not much to scream, let alone clap, about here.

Maybe there’s an epic novel in his head, but what [Costner's] given us with “Chapter 1” is a table of contents instead.

The movie feels at once too busy and too derivative. That’s no easy feat, but it’s also one sequel-makers probably shouldn’t aspire to.

There have to be better ways of wasting money and killing time than the fashionable nihilism of Killing Zoe.

The visual and performative elements are polished enough in Live by Night, but it lacks any sense of urgency.

The power of the story, such as it is, is not enhanced by the nonlinear narrative structure. In fact, it makes it needlessly confusing.

It's outrageous. It's obnoxious. It's offensive. And yes, it's also really, really, really funny. Or, at least, it is for the first 40 minutes or so.

In general, Lee directs with less visual verve than Park. Anchored by Brolin, who brings an almost simian physicality to his portrayal, this Oldboy feels simultaneously less showy, less nightmarish and less epic than the original.

Unfortunately, director Randall Miller can't put an original spin on the familiar material; he just doesn't have the offbeat comic gifts that the Hudlin brothers brought to the rap duo's first film outing in House Party.

Heartburn is a masterpiece, a collaboration of mature artists at the peak of their craft, and something of a summing up for Mike Nichols, who, more successfully than any other American director, has staked out the terrain where men and women meet as his own. Here it is -- a movie that is seriously funny.

Chase presides amiably over this uneven but affable slapstick comedy.

For the young people in its demographic wheelhouse, Inkheart packs a welcome amount of entertainment value, creating a genuinely original world of enchantment.

Even if you tap only a little of the magic of "Peter Pan," you'll come away with some pixie dust.

It's simple, sizzly and very funny.

An extraordinary collective act of moral and physical courage is relegated to a backdrop for a mushy, synthetic family melodrama.

You are allowed to come up with a monster we haven't seen before.

Less weird than "Spellbound" and less fun than your average episode of "America's Top Model," Ten9Eight shoots for the moon, but scans like the background noise at a philanthropic retreat.

There’s no doubt that Aniston deserves more roles like this one but, with luck, in less maudlin, more surprising movies.

If you’re already a subscriber to Apple TV Plus and have absolutely nothing else to do, “The Instigators” is worth a look.

Angel-A is counterfeit art-house chic writ large -- a French film that fails to produce the ineffable charms of the yesteryear movies it brazenly imitates.

Rather like the faltering way Dennis runs the race, Pegg the performer insists that we keep watching, ever hopeful for a decent gag. And we spend most of our time thinking back to movies that better showcased his talents, such as "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz."

This gives nobody, least of all me, any pleasure, but a truth must be faced: Scoop is the worst movie Woody Allen has ever made.

It is unsparing when it comes to gruesome descriptions and ominous characters, but it's got more giggles than goose bumps. The Exorcist III isn't about to scare anybody.

As an action film, it is intense and gripping. As a drama, it is bombastic and unsubtle.

Howard entices us into overlooking the film's faults with some genuinely amusing scenes, particularly those featuring Japanese-American Gedde Watanabe as a beleaguered Assan executive who doesn't fit the corporate mold. [14 Mar 1986, p.27]

Less Than Zero, an aptly titled tale of snooty California drug snorters, is dumber and duller than primordial ooze. It's one of those silly speed-bumps-in-the-fast-lane laments, though it does have a significant message: Get off the freeway or take the last exit ramp to the Betty Ford Clinic in the sky.

British writer-director Bruce Robinson, who won kudos for his screenplay "The Killing Fields" and his novel adaptation "Withnail & I" doesn't have a clue when it comes to this populist genre. What he has are cliches.

It starts with a bang and ends with a whimper.

The picture is not a social satire. It’s a mess.

The film does have its moments, mostly involving the relationship between Meir and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, nicely played by Liev Schreiber, whose character engages in delicate negotiations with her over a bowl of borscht, speaking in a seductive, diplomatic rumble.

It continually crashes and burns on its own banality.

From opening to closing credits, there isn't a single genuine moment -- as phony as a dime bag of oregano.

Those who do go with the fantasy are probably hopeless romantics.

You're hard-pressed to dislike the film.

Will this film do Kerry any good, or the Swifties any harm? My bet is: Not a bit, one way or the other.

Two-hour exercise in chaotic action and coarse, annoyingly coy sexuality.

So smug and so proud of itself, and you can tell that everybody involved conceives of it as a civics lesson instead of a story, that they squeeze all the life out of it.

In his effort to inject fresh blood into this gory franchise, which has already seen four sequels (including two “Alien” crossovers), the filmmaker can’t seem to summon up that old Black magic.

This We're No Angels isn't funny and it isn't smart -- it's a dumb show, almost literally, in fact. So few lines have been written for these actors that you almost believe that the script intentionally parodies their renowned inarticulateness.

The conventions that worked for High Noon break down in the high-tech atmosphere of Outland and the story seems trite and dinky. [23 May 1981, p.C6]

With the raunch of "American Pie" and the heart of an after-school special, the comedy turns out to be a lot less than the sum of its parts.

Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II may be derivative, but for the most part it's clever enough to trade on its sources with humor and class. It's "Peggy Sue Lives on Elm Street," with dollops of "Carrie," "The Exorcist" and a half dozen other genre stalwarts.

This sequel is just as profligate as its 2009 predecessor with explosions, anachronisms and quick cuts. But the dialogue is a little sharper, and Holmes gets a worthy opponent in Professor Moriarty.

If it's subtle, insightful satire you're after, don't look to this coarse farce. It's simply more vulgar, insidiously homophobic Victor/Victoriana from the sexually confused writer-director.

The Protege may not rise to the level of art, but like Anna herself, it does demonstrate a mastery of a certain set of skills, however limited.

Timecop is good dumb fun, but it's likely to receive the same sentence most Van Damme projects do: a few weeks in movie theaters and eternity on video store shelves and cable television.

The movie's ending is overly sentimental -- something I never thought I'd see in a Toback movie. What it delivers is a message about commitment -- and it's pretty much of a crock. You don't feel that Toback's heart is in it either, especially as an explanation for Jack's behavior. It's too pat a resolution.

Never manages to make its characters anything other than cartoons.

Harry Hamlin remains in a depressing, narcissistic low gear in King of the Mountain. Part of the problem is a blah role: Steve is not a protagonist of many words, or even many revealing looks. [06 May 1981, p.E7]

The movie is fussy and organized rather than moving. It follows a pattern so precisely, it's as if Lahti thought points would be taken off if she colored outside the lines.

They succeed in presenting a compelling series of dots, to use the current parlance, but they don't succeed in connecting them.

At its best, it's joyful, uplifting and even, occasionally, moving. And at its worst, it's a propaganda piece designed to win our undying loyalty to a TV show/cash cow that advocates for the little guy even though it's clearly turned into a diva.

As he proved with his misbegotten A Million Ways to Die in the West, MacFarlane is essentially a guy who’s gotten appallingly lucky on television. He exhibits zero proficiency in cinematic staging and no sense of pace.

A character study with underdeveloped characters.

The Theory of Flight, an unlikely marriage of malady movie and romantic comedy, never quite soars, but beats its wings with the desperate tenacity of a wounded butterfly. Alas, the proportion of lift to drag isn't quite enough to defy the gravity of its subject.

Director Neil Burger (“Limitless”) has crafted a popcorn flick that’s leaner, more propulsive and more satisfying than the bestseller that inspired it.

Don’t overthink it, in other words. All “Showman” asks of you is that you give yourself over to the holiday-cheer machine, if you can. Like the circus, it’s an experience that’s been engineered for this precise moment in time, and not one minute longer.

It’s a critic’s failure to gauge the movie he wishes had been against the movie that is, but in this case the movie that is is disappointingly bloodless, cold rather than chilling, with a payoff that isn’t shocking so much as an admission that we’ve spent 90 minutes we’ll never get back.

It’s the actors, plus an exuberant Mary Steenburgen as quick-witted lounge singer Diana, who make the movie more than a middling copycat.

Luck takes things that are intangible — in this case, random felicity and affliction — and imagines them as palpable. It doesn’t quite work.

So rancid is Brooks's fury that it's clouded his judgment, so that each of his main characters is a stereotype of the most broad-brush, malodorous nature.

It's what the Brits themselves might call fair to middling.

A respectable effort that doesn't care to do more than course smoothly and effortlessly through familiar waters.

Possesses an undeniable heart. The bad news is that it will still be buried underneath layers of stale Sandlerisms tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.

This is an odd amalgam of bleeding-heart sentimentality and over-the-top guts-and-glory action. You're not sure how to feel. But you're certainly not as moved and stunned as you were in "Black Hawk Down."

Its important if inflammatory message will bore all but Chomsky's fellow travelers to death.

It's creepy, all right. It's just that HOW it goes about creeping you out is sometimes just plain cheesy.

A manifest abomination on every measurable level, So Fine, the painfully threadbare comedy opening today at area theaters, is easily as transparent as the peekaboo jeans that give the film its nominal but squandered topicality. The film's only conceivable distinction is that it could be the worst that Ryan O'Neal has ever made, and that's saying something. [25 Sept 1981, p.C6]

A movie that, despite its strenuous efforts to appear hardened and sexy and sleek, is unforgivably phony, talky and dull.

The movie, which marks the feature debut of writer-director Kate Barker-Froyland, has the low-key appeal of “Once,” with its extended scenes of music and drama-free romantic subplot. But the characters in Song One are stubbornly bland, despite their quirks.

One of the peculiar attractions of Easy Money is that it's suggestive enough to keep you amused even as it takes goofy, capricious detours. It's not what you'd call a classic or a class comedy act, but it has the kick of an embryonic pop phenomenon.

No one could accuse Dan Aykroyd of waiting around for the perfect script to come along. Doctor Detroit, now at area theaters, is as feeble a vehicle as any but the meanest mean spirit would ever wish on him. [9 May 1983, p.B12]

The level of humor, of course, is familiarly low -- with nothing more deadly than the Crypt Keeper's puns ("Frights! Camera! Hack-tion!"). As for the gore, let's just say the demons are slimy, heads do roll and bodies are ripped asunder

Paris Can Wait is a modest, genteel piece of cinematic escapism, a silky testament to sensuality as impeccably tasteful as it is utterly undemanding.

Even Posey -- who brightens most movies she's in -- fails to stir the movie's unresponsive tectonic plates.

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

The only thing that's truly scary about the movie is the escalating vulgarity of the latest in a string of skanky comedies by filmmakers determined to out-gross the other.

Shabbily photographed and raggedly assembled. Caddyshack is hanging evidence that Ramis wasn't prepared for the assignment or clever enough to fake it...Ramis proves unable to sustain a single frayed thread of plot continuity, and none of the prominent cast members -- Chevy Chase, Murray, Rodney Dangerfield and Ted Knight -- enjoys opportunities decisive enough or direction competent enough to generate a little comic momentum and help prevent the gratuitous material from falling in a stinky, dismembered heap.

Clearly, The Octagon is no real threat to War and Peace or even Beau Geste, but it will appeal to those who are still in mourning for Bruce Lee, who like carefully choreographed fight scenes and who enjoy standing in front of a mirror looking at their muscles. [25 Aug 1980, p.B1]

Thanks to the taste and shrewd judgment of director Julio Quintana, this funny, heartwarming movie provides just the right combination of adventure, character-driven humor, spiritual depth and inspirational uplift.

Though the script is predictable, it's not too clumsy.

The Disney animators still take great care to capture the majestic beauty in the jagged landscapes and towering conifers of the Yellowstone-esque Piston Peak Park. Unfortunately, the same contours and shading don’t apply to the characters.

This drama is serious and well made but will appeal primarily to those with an interest in the devastated setting (1945 Tokyo) and the enigmatic title character (Emperor Hirohito).

Norwegian director Roar Uthaug has had past success with nail-biting suspense, as in his well-received 2015 disaster movie “The Wave.” He can’t quite replicate that same tension here, however. Watching a tiny-but-tough woman survive one danger after another tests not only our credulity, but our patience.

Add Big Town's collection of spotty characters (with motives murkier than the cinematography), cliche'-laden dialogue (from We gotta get out of here to I can change, I can change), abruptly ended scenes, no exposition when you need it, poor sense of drama (a deep breath), and you have something that should be pitched out into the alley behind the dingiest bar in town.

Takes the story one more crank toward the literal. When the thing hits the bird, it turns out, guess what, it is a piece of the sky, the sky is falling. It's like saying: McCarthy was right! Sheesh, revisionist history: It's everywhere!

The story may be based on real events, but most of it feels patently false.

Wayans' choosing to play romantic lead seems more narcissistic than smartly comic (watch him unleash those built biceps once too often); he lacks an unidentifiable shtick. And he seems too easily satisfied with predictable and sophomoric punchlines. Lapses like that give Sucka the Shaft.

Where Gran Turismo works best is on the track. Director Neill Blomkamp adds some formalist flourishes to the driving sequences, turning what could have been a monotonous series of races into entertaining and engaging fun.

The film is all cliched atmospherics and no real insight.

The characters are as thin as the air at 26,000 feet, and the story as silly as anyone willing to assault K2 in a punishing blizzard.

This sloppily made, poky, extra cheesy adventure is virtually a remake of "Armageddon."

Allen, who's a natural charmer, seems to be at half-strength here.

The movie is less than nothing special. The movie veers between pretentiousness (oh, the plight of the instant, start-up Artist) and vacuousness.

The best thing about the movie is its personable, amusing cast, all members of the five-man comedy troupe Broken Lizard. There's a chemistry among them, which obviously comes from having been together as comedians at Colgate University.

A plodding, aggressive film that is neither engaging, disturbing nor funny.

When the film isn’t sloppily directed, it’s a series of lazy filmmaking tics, including fetishistic slow-motion shots of blood, water and sweat, as well as sundry dismemberments, impalings and decapitations.

Enjoy it, in moderation. It's your recommended weekly allowance of schlock.

Memoirs of an Invisible Man isn't a movie. It's an identity crisis. The previews would have you believe it's a zany comedy. But the jokes are too far and few between. And if it's a comedy, why is John Carpenter directing it?

Ultimately Sleeping With the Enemy wants to be about one woman's rebirth, but Roberts neither grows nor glows in this empty movie.

Hill and Stallone seem determined simply to prove that, even in their golden years, they're still tough enough to rumble with all comers. Bullet to the Head exposes that bravado for the pose that it is, and it's not a good look.

The Unholy Trinity is a reminder that they don’t make ’em like they used to — and maybe that’s a good thing. A pokey, low-budget Western enlivened by a couple of aging stars happily hamming it up, it’s the kind of B movie they used to program before the feature and after the cartoon in the old days.

It's brutal, horribly manipulative, and we've seen this stuff before in better pictures.

On the one hand, it's a diverting entertainment for children and young adults; on the other, it's a ludicrous fantasy about a war whose complexities cannot be contained by facile metaphors.

The movie is as damnably perplexing as the subject himself.

Even viewers who are mildly diverted by the whodunit angle are unlikely to find themselves emotionally engaged in the outcome.

What the movie is supposed to accomplish -- laying out a fairly complex mystery in a way that creates suspense -- is precisely what it doesn't do.

All in all, High Crimes isn't worth the crayons it took to write the script.

Nothing could save this movie. These guys make a fortune off the comedy of cruelty. How dare they climb on a soapbox?

It's a warm bath experience, soap-sudsed with sentimentality, improbability and other storytelling misdemeanors.

A moment past its concept, Fortress settles into a mix of sci-fi and prison cliches that result in predictable and often silly confrontations, including a not-so-great escape. Much of the blame lies with Lambert, as vapid here as he has been in the "Highlander" fiascoes.

Whether it's the sight of Reynolds squeezed painfully into a football uniform or the endless footballs-to-the-crotch and tired gay jokes, The Longest Yard has the feeling of mutton dressed as lamb.

Those who fondly recall "The Blob" would seem to be the target crowd for a fastidious pastiche that attempts to coax laughs by maintaining a poker face.

One Day often seems too tame for its own good, as if its spirited protagonists were censoring themselves in deference to a PG-13 rating.

The movie is a capable and attractive enough biopic, if also less than riveting cinema.

Broderick, for his part, is playing a role solidly in his late-career wheelhouse: a middle-age disappointment, Ferris Bueller gone to seed. So affecting is Broderick in these parts -- at this point, only Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a better schlub.

The movie, directed (and written) by Zach Helm in grotesquely bright colors, means to approach the creepy wonder of Roald Dahl but gets only the creepy part right.

Tatum, the hunky object of Amanda Bynes's fancy in "She's the Man," and an engaging basketballer in "Coach Carter," is the best thing about this uninspired formula-thon.

Anyone willing to tolerate the tortured premise of the story will be paid off handsomely by several winning performances and a moral that makes most of the absurdity worthwhile.

Admission is not especially funny. The trailer can’t seem to make up its mind. On the one hand, it looks like a satire of academia. On the other hand, it could be a gentle rom-com. In truth, it’s neither.

Viewers of “Session” may find it harder to take solace from (or to find entertainment in) this stagy jar of slightly pickled discord, directed by Matt Brown, based on the 2011 play by Mark St. Germain (itself inspired by Armand Nicholi’s 2002 book “The Question of God”).

A queasy union of savagery and uplift, the film ought to be unnerving. Instead, it finally becomes routine. [18Apr1997 Pg. C.07]

What is perhaps most disappointing about this ham-handed film, though, particularly since it was directed by the screenwriter of the righteously raging "Thelma and Louise," is its crypto-misogyny.

In “Quantumania,” sprightly pacing and lighthearted humor have succumbed to the turgid seriousness that plagues so much of the comic book canon.

The best thing about Murder at 1600? Speed of exposition. Directed by Dwight Little, who made Steven Seagalís "Marked for Death," this thing whizzes from one unbelievable story point to the next. Your suspension of disbelief appreciates the momentum, if nothing else.

While Airplane II, proves to be a breezy and tolerably consistent follow-up to its successful prototype, a parodistic copy that relied less on jokes from the original might have seemed a shade fresher. [11 Dec 1982, p.C1]

In short, it's about as charming as a gob of spit.

Stands out for its earnest effort to entertain without commenting on itself or the modern world.

A movie that’s not a disaster, but not particularly distinguished; a movie that, in the end, will wind up being as forgettable as its own bizarre publicity.

In drama, and just about everything else, almost is never enough. Which is why Martian Child, about the growing bond between an adult and child, never reaches us.

Anyone who’s ever dreamed of tutus, tights and toe shoes will likely get a kick out of Leap!

I Feel Pretty suffers from a fatal flaw: its premise.

Helped by director Hany Abu-Assad and spectacular cinematography by Mandy Walker, who makes the most of the film’s British Columbia locations, Elba and Winslet generate chemistry that is convincing in direct proportion to the story’s outlandishness.

This is a movie for people more interested in the subject matter than its dramatic presentation.

Sensory pleasures abound in Black Nativity, which is grounded by Forest Whitaker and Angela Bassett’s performances as Langston’s strict, God-fearing grandparents.

It's a fun ride, and the big payoff -- that history turns out to be way cooler than its reputation suggests -- is even more gratifying. Bully!

Indeed, you come out of Back Roads feeling more familiar with the configuration of Sally Field's spinal column and chestbone than the character she's struggling to embody.

Engaging but pedestrian comedy.

Strikes an unsatisfying balance between serious romantic texture and outright farce.

The story line is little more than a shiny hat for holding the high-tech rabbits. Still, it's an enjoyable bit of smoke and mirrors, thanks to the decency and resourcefulness of its hero.

Critters 2 is flat, lacking the kinetic energy, tight pacing and generally better acting of its predecessor.

Intermittently diverting as it may be, the movie bears all the earmarks of a cobbled-together, made-by-committee product, poorly aimed at its tween-and-younger target audience in look, tone, music and story.

Sinbad, one of show business's sunniest souls, brings much-needed buoyancy to this somewhat soggy tale of kindred spirits. [30 Aug 1996, p.F06]

Biographical stinker that insists on remaining unreasonably disjointed for 2 1/2 hours. [28 Jan 1983, p.D1]

The movie is a mess from start to finish. But then again, this jerky, haphazard approach is part of the movie's goofy charm.

It's as predictable and comforting as a Happy Meal, but it must be said that The Proposal manages to elicit some genuinely amusing moments.

Despite such flashes of originality, the whole thing has the air of a cynical, low-quality knockoff of something that wasn’t very good to begin with.

Cage is back in crackling good form in National Treasure: Book of Secrets.

Without being parodistic, it manages to poke fun at the air of privilege and strenuous political correctness common to lefty, liberal arts schools, while retaining a certain affection for their heartfelt quirks.

The movie does not roar, but rather emits only a serviceable yelp.

It is only when Reeves meets up with his incredibly cute baseball team that this movie comes to life.

Many of the visual effects are stunning, but others are downright cheesy -- especially an attempt to fuse the Rock's head onto a scorpion's body.

Essentially a dumb guy's day in Heaven. The movie's retrofitted with stunts, fights, explosions, drugs, babes and cars -- not necessarily in that order.

An unfunny comedy by Tony Vitale that is enacted not by fleshed-out characters but by hackneyed, two-dimensional stereotypes. There’re so many sexual and ethnic caricatures, it’s hard to know which is most offensive.

This movie just doesn't match its predecessors.

Traffics in nearly every trite cliche of the "colorful" South one can think of, from its pseudo-Gothic aesthetic to its overripe dialogue.

In order for the trick of the film to work, however, one must hold Morgan to a standard that the movie is unlikely to live up to.

The singer-actress has screen presence to spare and a nice, rich voice. By the time her young fans outgrow her -- or she them -- she should have an excellent chance at a second career. Making, you know, real movies and real music.

I like watching snakes eat mice just as much as the next fella, maybe even more, but The Strangers turns the gobble-'em-up into an ordeal. It's a fraud from start to finish.

The movie suffers by taking itself a little too seriously. It's not just that it's a lot less funny than the book. It's also a lot less fun.

What should have been a light summer romp is rarely funny, never scary and a boring mess.

Producer-for-Life George Lucas puts his awesome creative machinery to work in Willow, a would-be adventure of little people, big people, good guys and bad. But the fantasy wheels grind to a halt, bogged down in Lucas' flat, derivative story, and not helped in the least by director Ron Howard's clumsy steering.

There’s something admirable about the fact that Being Charlie exists at all. It’s a testament to Nick Reiner’s survival. That doesn’t mean it’s a great movie.

What madcaps! [12 Aug 1986, p.C8]

Fun With Dick and Jane has lived up to its title: It's fun, and that's fine.

A Mexican movie in which the outcome is never in doubt, the scenes are endless -- sorry, we meant poetic-- and the false beard on the central character's face looks as though it could use a little extra gum.

A definite improvement. However, whatever gains this adaptation makes are due entirely to the inspired goofiness of its star, Steve Martin, and not to anything that director Jonathan Lynn or screenwriter Andy Breckman may have contributed.

A romper that doesn't shy away from sexual frankness or Mediterranean laissez faire.

Take the cast of 1978's "Animal House" and 1984's "Revenge of the Nerds," toss them on a desert island, watch them breed and enroll their raucous, kvetching offspring at a college for rejects. A fluffy teen comedy, Accepted gets annoying fast.

The cumulative effect is closer to a didactic after-school special for troubled parents.

A hodgepodge in the raj -- a predictable patchwork of forbidden romance, English arrogance, a gun given as a gift, suicide, corruption, deception, rising Indian nationalism and a short-lived chase through the jungle.

The fat cats of Hollywood have coughed up a hairball.

Gibson and the overexposed Hunt don't exactly burn up the screen, not that it much matters. The charm isn't in the relationship, it's in Gibson's puckish appeal.

A spirited rally in the final reel can't quite overcome the damage.

Bewildering, tediously violent.

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

Although Ryan is cannily cast against type, she doesn't bring much more than muttery incoherence and nudity to the role.

The film’s execution isn’t entirely convincing. It’s not the actors’ fault.

In the end, “Sonic” is quippy without being mean, and sweet without being sappy, making this a trip that’s well worth taking.

This is billed as a romantic comedy, but it's much more boring than funny.

It may not be the most spellbinding of the prequels so far, but it does advance this saga in an entertaining, if less than fantastic way.

It would be cornier if it weren't so well acted by Nunn, Bening and 12-year-old Allen.

Falls as flat as a bottle of corked Bordeaux.

The bigger surprise is just how clunky and unsatisfying this follow-up feels.

This Matt Perry vehicle is funnier than anyone could hope to expect.

The movie is one of the best American films in months and months and the best comedy since I don't know when. It even makes you sorta kinda like Matthew McConaughey.

An ambitious, experimental mess of a movie in search of something more profound.

Nothing in this film makes any sense, and Stuart Blumberg, David T. Wagner and Brent Goldberg's script merely gets more preposterous as it elaborates on its implausible premise.

The aptly subtitled Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb is a blast of dead air and mummified humor.

After more than two hours, what we're left with feels like a Robert Altman movie on Botox. It has some real substance and heft, but it also might be a bit too glossy.

The Wachowski brothers have rendered their chronicles into banality, as if trying to imitate the qualitative tailspin of the "Star Wars" series.