There just aren't many laughs in this slack dramedy, and what yuks there are are fairly low-wattage.

It’s not pretty, but it captures something that few cooking movies do: reality.

A numbingly unfunny romantic comedy. I hated every minute of it

A serious been-there-done-that number.

Too lightweight and streamlined to be memorable.

By the end, the film’s early promise has pretty much degenerated into routine pyrotechnics.

As Eleanor, Bonham Carter delivers a sweetly oddball performance playing a high-maintenance but fiercely determined grouch who is mostly impossible to like. Swank, for her part, is no picnic either: A former psychiatric nurse who discovered law later in life, her Colette is a largely charmless workaholic.

Parker the movie, like the man, delivers exactly as promised.

Wedding Palace boasts some neat moments.

It is this sense of real life blurring with make-believe that Allen's film is really playing with, like a kitten toying with a scared mouse. Back and forth he bats the subject, moving between reality, illusion and the imitation of reality with a deft touch that may bruise but never kills.

Unexpectedly likeable, thanks to the high-spirited performances of stars James Belushi and Charles Grodin, under the relaxed direction by Arthur Hiller.

There are a few laughs here and there. Most come at the expense of Ferrell, who plays the kind of hapless (and occasionally shirtless) straight arrow that the actor could turn out in his sleep.

A cold, protracted and unemotional affair.

Despite its impeccable acting and subtle backdrop of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, The Event lets its message overwhelm its emotion.

Only reason to watch this: the grisly reward Irving receives for being in this picture.

None of it appears to be well thought out, or thought through, and it's consequently never remotely believable.

The movie has an Austen-like plot about an Austen obsessive. And while Hess laboriously checks off so many familiar scenarios...the film doesn’t have so much of what makes Austen transcendent.

It's about learning to be human and, on that level, it's utter schlock -- cloying, manipulative and overcute. You could see it on another level, though -- as a comedy about an obnoxious houseguest -- and feel a little kinder toward it.

So predictable it could have been written by a chimp who's watched too much TV, the huge movie is as dumb as it is loud, and it's way too loud.

This sharp left turn takes the films’ mythology in strange and not entirely satisfying new directions, including a crazy time-travel element.

The major problem with "For Love or Money" is its leads, since Fox is no Cary Grant and Anwar no Audrey Hepburn. Fox is sweetly engaging at times but he still seems too boyish to be convincing. And though he wheels and deals with flair, no romantic sparks fly between him and Anwar. Of course, as she proved with Al Pacino in "Scent of a Woman," it takes two to tango -- and Anwar simply is too vapid an actress, a poor woman's Adrienne Shelly with a flat voice, wan looks and all too little presence.

Like "What the Bleep," this movie is a bit of a hodgepodge, blending an interview-driven documentary with a less remarkable story-based drama.

Despite a story line that covers such fraught historical events as 9/11 and the Iraq War, the movie is too tidy to ever really feel like a living, breathing thing.

Until betrayed by its essential docility, The Promise promises a fairly stimulating wallow in the tear-jerking depths. [10 Apr 1979, p.B3]

The overall sense, however, is of a movie coasting on an obvious and somewhat flimsy premise, to which no one thought to bring much else besides Nicholson and Freeman.

After the movie limps along for an hour and a half, Besson suddenly switches gears and does what he does best.

The high-school sports drama Crooked Arrows has two -- but only two -- original selling points: Its protagonists are Native Americans and the sport in question is lacrosse. That's something you don't see every day. Other than that, however, the film's moves are taken straight out of "The Bad News Bears" playbook.

Vaughn's con-man jive doesn't get much play in this one; he spends most of his time as a bitter creep, and the writing (by Dan Fogelman) isn't sharp enough to make the hipster-at-the-North-Pole theme pay off in any meaningful way.