A magical child movie in which the child is magical, yes, but the movie is not.

Exorcist II seems to have evolved out of delusions of cinematic grandeur shared by Boorman and writer William Goodhart. It's obvious that they wanted to contrive a metaphysical thriller that would be astonishing and spiritually inspiring, but their thought processes are so muddled that the movie degenerates almost instantly into a confounded shambles. [18 June 1977, p.B1]

As it is, the audience must content itself with baby poop, naughty words and the female anatomy at its pneumatic extreme, while Bateman and Reynolds's search for transcendence continues.

Even likable actors can’t obscure the fact that, holy gods on Mount Olympus, this thing is a slog, a movie that dutifully hits its plot points involving prophecies and fleeces without evoking a whiff of spirit or imagination.

It's a moralistic muddle with only one message: If Disney wants to make movies about Germans, it should restrict its efforts to German shepherds.

A stupid and violent delicacy, congealed nachos and Mountain Dew for the Beavis-and-Butt-head set.

Paquet-Brenner has assembled a talented cast.... Yet he elicits mostly unmemorable performances from just about everyone involved.

Extremities pretends to be a serious movie, and in a film culture where women are routinely exploited and revenge is taken blithely, it is, at least, a departure. But we don't learn anything about men and women, or revenge, from "Extremities" -- we just watch people score debating points, to the tune of J.A.C. Redford's stale TV-movie score.

This new Fame, whitewashed for the kids, leaps into a catchy rhythm at the start.

An intriguing idea for about two seconds.

The movie is still a routine Hollywood high school morality play.

Its heart is vaguely in the right place.

Watching the Care Bears' Adventure in Wonderland, the latest of the teddy superstars' animated movie escapades, is like being pelted mercilessly for 75 minutes with Lucky Charms. It's nonfatal (unless you have a sugar problem, in which case you're likely to lapse into a coma), but it's not exactly my idea of fun either.

An Innocent Man isn't an inspired piece of filmmaking, but it is tightly focused and efficient, and on its own modest terms it is effective.

If we lived in a just universe, Captain Ron, a farce filmed in and around the Devil's Triangle, would simply have vanished into another dimension. But we don't and it didn't.

This a sweet, mostly cute story about the importance of the people we’re related to, peppered with some fairly broad and not especially hilarious yuks.

The second half of the film -- that is, everything after the dubious wife-swapping -- is as mindless and sloppy as the first half is sharp.

In striving for a combination of grit and grandeur, Leterrier misses a chance to make the kind of camp classic that could have endured for generations. Instead, it's a muddled disappointment.

Sloppy compendium of filthy jokes and lowbrow sight gags.

Despite flashes of brilliance, Why Him? is perfunctory and boorish, the sort of film that already has begun to fade from memory before you’re too annoyed by it.

Kato's often the best part of the movie. Britt calls him a "human Swiss army knife," and he's right; Kato is not a sidekick, but a fully formed hero who's full of surprises.

Clumsily written and numbly performed comedy of yammers.

The rare film that is capable of offending both Trent Lott and Al Sharpton.

Ought to be called "Hook, Line and Stinker."

In the Cannon Films esthetic, the only good Ninja is a dead Ninja, and the bodies certainly fly fast and furious here. Okay, it's silly, but maybe you were expecting Tess of the D'Ubervilles? And from a director named Sam Firstenberg?

Like the original "Care Bears Movie," Care Bears Movie II is nothing but an insidious feature-length toy commercial. But since Funshine Bear has taught me to look on the bright side, I will admit that the animation in the sequel is of a higher quality.

Need for Speed is a piece of auto-collision pornography that weighs down its car-flip-and-massive-fireball money shots with a preposterous plot involving vehicular manslaughter vengeance.

In the end, “Nutcracker” is a delightfully old-school diversion. The plot may not always hum with the clockwork precision of one of Drosselmeyer’s mechanical toys, but like a music box, it nevertheless plays a sweet tune.