Think Like a Man Too, the derivative, intermittently amusing follow-up to the surprise hit rom-com from 2012, is so frenetically paced and hysterically pitched that it makes almost no room for simple enjoyment.

Intended as a fuzzy family fable, "August" plays more to the gag reflex than to the heart, especially when our little orphan starts playing the guitar like a virtuoso after what seems like a three-minute tutorial.

Free Birds has the colorful palette, zippy action and silly story to keep kids giggling, but it also delivers a few worthwhile winks to parents.

A picaresque romance of self-discovery that delivers a near-constant flow of small delights until veering too far into screwball preposterousness.

It's a kind of "Miami Vice" with many more carz and numberz where all the adjectives used 2 go.

Insipid, unfunny and cliche-ridden.

Let's blame it on poor Robin Williams, who tries so desperately to be likable, whimsical, lovable, smart and funny all at once that he just wears you out. Blame it also on the behind-the-scenes engineers at Disney who think that effects are more important than story and character.

Max Rose seems to come from someplace personal, but its pain feels dialed down a notch to make it easier to digest. Still, the movie gains resonance from its look at what may be the final years of a movie legend.

Reiner assembles a square meal of rom-com pleasure points, but it’s bland, by-the-numbers and not particularly memorable.

A heady blend of beefcake, derring-do and jingoism, their adventure is not merely action-packed, but well-built to boot.

This isn't real life. It isn't even a movie. It's an extended sitcom. And for the first time in your life, you'll actually beg for commercials.

Irony is the movie's escape hatch. It allows the filmmakers to stage maudlin bits and, at the same time, signal the audience that they're too cool to actually believe in them. Their cool is all-purpose, and it carries with it a note of genuine nastiness. They manipulate us into a sentimental response, then kick us in the teeth for buying it.

So cheesy and cheap that it almost attains high camp.

The exuberance of the Rugrats seems nullified by the effete quirkiness of the Thornberrys.

A beautiful, sad, spiritual story with joy and delicacy, visual chops and emotional depth.

It's so over the top, the top isn't even visible in the rear-view mirror.

The movie isn't exactly providing entertaining escape. In fact, the only escape on your mind is going to be the exit door.

Most of the humor in The Pink Panther derives from Martin's silly French accent, especially when he tries to pronounce the word "hamburger." But zat joke, she ees not funny. And The Pink Panther ees, how you say, ze real dog.

The storyline is so familiar ("Cheaper by the Dozen," et al), the audience can practically call out scenes ahead of time.

As is true with so much of Haggis’s work, Third Person suffers from an airless, too-neat lack of connection with organic life.

To its credit, Men, Women & Children seems to allow for a rational middle ground between technophobic Luddites and the lamentably over-wired. It never turns down the moral panic entirely, but neither does it let it completely boil over.

The finished film obliterates whatever promise of novelty and human interested existed in the basic idea of Belinski's culture shock. If the rabbi's odyssey was embryonically appealing, the filmmakers have nurtured it along pact from an elephant trying to hatch a robbin's egg. [27 July 1979, p.B1]

Spaced Invaders is a slight, obvious sci-fi parody that would like to be in the same league as Spaceballs, but doesn't even deserve the comparison.

As Crossing Over makes its patronizing points, by way of two-dimensional characters and billboarded plot points, it recalls other, better movies that dealt with the same subjects far more deftly.

Bekmambetov and Co. have created a redesigned product that is at once inferior to the original and a slavish imitation.

When “Dominion’s” final 20 minutes play as a beat-for-beat re-creation of previous films’ set pieces, it becomes clear that Trevorrow and Co. have nothing new to say.

Oink. Oink. Porky's II: The Next Day is just swill. But the millions who pigged out on "Porky's" will go hog-wild for No. 2: It's packed with the same old sub-teen smut and subliterate sanctimony. Sex is all talk and dropped britches and one so-so hootchy-kootchy queen's flabby fling. At the same time, it's sexist and sexless, acted by hams and written by bores. [1 July 1983, p.21]

The movie leaves us, like J.D.’s family, with only a mounting pile of baloney excuses for bad behavior.