Though R-rated, its real target audience is under 18 -- either in years or IQ points.

A tired old quote about truth being the first casualty of war is a strange way to start 5 Days of War, an overwrought drama that, whatever its good intentions, could hardly be said to aim for objectivity in its account of the 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia.

Silent Night, Deadly Night takes off from the notion that Santa Claus is an ax murderer, but it never quite lives up to the delicious perversity of its premise. An idea this shocking has to be earned; instead, director Charles Sellier Jr. ("The Boogens") gives us another casually constructed splatter flick that has more to do with morbid arithmetic (the body count continues!) than movies.

Reinhold has a face that is halfway between leading-man handsome and Donald Duck, and a relaxed, drawling confidence with a line -- he seems to float not above the action but on it, like oil on water. And he seems to survive Head Office, a comedy so confused and cowardly it makes television look daring. [4 Jan 1986, p.D4]

Doubling duties as director and cinematographer, Peter Hyams seems to have tossed the former for the latter. The Presidio, purported cop thriller, looks great. It is, in fact, less filling. The maker of "Outland" and "2010" infuses a San Francisco setting with evocative misty grays, but screenwriter Larry Ferguson's dull doings hang thicker than smog.

New World Pictures has been promoting the film not so much as a fright show but more as a campy romp (the comic trailer was more entertaining than the picture); unfortunately, it doesn't work very well on either level. [01 Oct 1985, p.E1]

The fun never stops because it never starts.

Marshall and screenwriter Andrew Cosby went overboard with their R-rating, introducing so much gore and profanity that it, quite frankly, gets dull. The flat performances and incoherent story do not help matters.

The film rises above its conventions. Just when it seems to be a fable of sexual initiation, An American Affair pivots away from sex. Just when it seems to be a re-dredging of the Kennedy mystique, it pushes past history. Thoughtfully and imperfectly, it dramatizes the flight from childhood, the surrender to adulthood and the pieces of us that survive.

Unfortunately, even for devotees of the derivative, Legacy has all the scarifyin' power of National Geographic. It is a gross, hollow and hokey joke in which even the red herrings prove anemic. [05 Oct 1979, p.B1]

With all the dog dung in Envy, it's almost too easy to generalize that it stinks. But it does, unfortunately, despite the big-name actors in its cast.

Shakespeare this ain’t. In the long, long history of “Romeo and Juliet” movie adaptations, “Juliet & Romeo” lands well below the 1996 Baz Luhrmann version starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes and just above 2011’s “Gnomeo & Juliet,” in which the characters are portrayed as animated garden gnomes.

So tame and limp, it may actually give mothers-in-law a good name.

Reynolds never figures out whether he's making a thriller or a spoof, which for years has been the problem with his performances, too. His acting swivels from gravelly, glowering tough-guyness to nudge-and-wink appeals to the audience -- Mr. T and Johnny Carson in one. And he's way too polished for the character Leonard wrote; when he enters the slick world of Miami finance, he blends right in.

Only cognoscenti of things wet and wild could conceivably enjoy this B movie about an Arizona wave pool champion who comes of age by riding on water.

Oh, please. Stop and smell the manure.

Ultimately, the problem with this Red Dawn is the same problem with the first one. Despite the more realistic battle scenes, nothing in it feels more fateful than a football game.

One hackneyed, inauthentic, predictable scene after another.

Deception is another example of when genre-fication (the forcing of otherwise intriguing stories into the straitjackets of horror, thriller or other genres) reduces our entertainment to head-shaking banality.

It would be hard to reduce filmmaking to its basics more than Fire Birds does. It's more video game than motion picture -- the first coin-operated movie.

Each sweet moment is inevitably punctuated by some in-your-face joke that’s at least as stupid as the preceding moments were heartfelt. Blended has other problems, too, including some faulty editing and a typically predictable finale. But there are some genuinely sweet and funny moments, which are more than enough to exceed expectations.

Cutesy in the television sitcom sense.

To call Lawrence a poor man's Richard Pryor libels not just Pryor but also the 33 million Americans currently living under the poverty line.

Trapped in Paradise, a heist caper starring Nicolas Cage, Jon Lovitz and Dana Carvey, gets lost in a snow flurry of subplots and formulaic run-and-chase -- right around the time you've settled in for a good comedy.

Love the Coopers is one of the most jumbled, tonally misguided holiday movies in recent memory. It is an insult to tidings of comfort as well as joy, and a complete waste of the time and talents of its ensemble cast.

There isn’t one joke, sight gag or piece of slapstick tomfoolery that lands with any success or originality in Hot Pursuit.

It's a performance in search of a movie.

Most of the comedy, however, is unintentional. House At The End of the Street may not draw much of an audience during its initial run, but the movie's preposterousness certifies it for future midnight screenings, where the story will get the jeering it deserves.

Charmless, stupid and badly made, No Holds Barred makes Rocky look like Citizen Pain.

It’s the filmmaking equivalent of a monkey with the head of a goat, the tail of a fish, wings and teeny-tiny rat claws.

The only thing that distinguishes this teen-magnet wannabe from its predecessors is how lazily it appears to have been slapped together.

It’s unfortunate that the tribute to veterans that is so much a part of the movie’s marketing turns out to be little more than a framing device that’s dispensed with for most of the plot.

With its fancifully moldering sets and technical effects, Highlander 2 is little more than a barbarous arena, a Conanistic return to paganism for those among us who still laugh at violence.

What could be more frightening than an indestructible murdering mutant? Consider the unbelievably horrifying performance of Stephen Furst as Charlie, the sheriff's deputy. Couple Furst's incompetence with a scene like this one and you know real fear: Charlie tells Sheriff Dan that he just isn't made for law-enforcement. Not because he's incredibly out of shape and dumb as a post, not because he can't drive a squad car. No, no, no. It's worse. The coquettish Charlie confesses to some pretty grim experimentation of his own. He tells of giving his first puppie a bath by swishing it around in the toilet. Then he put it in the freezer to dry. Voila! the first freeze-dried pupsicle. [2 Apr 1982, p.11]

Tiresome and messy.

Let's talk about it quickly, because the thumbs of both my hands have gone similarly crazy. They're pointing downward and refuse to budge until I finish this review.

Another tediously sanctimonious message movie from Alan Parker.

Winter’s Tale is ambitious with its otherworldly ingredients and temporal leaps. It’s not always a success, but the movie has one thing going for it: spot-on casting.

A genial and surprisingly self-contained performance by Adam Sandler.

Not quite documentary, yet by no means drama, Inside the Mind of Leonardo is what might be called poetic biography: maddeningly fragmentary and idiosyncratic, but 100 percent true.

When a master dedicates his genius to the production of schmaltz, it's not a pretty sight.

Despite a few well-timed jump scares, Friend Request never really builds much tension.

The Cave isn't just a bad movie, it's a very, very, very bad movie, so bad that it can't even redeem itself by turning into high camp.

Alex Cross isn't meant to be analyzed too deeply. The title character probably sums up the best strategy for appreciating the film's modest pleasures when he says, "Don't overthink it; I'm just looking for a bad guy."

Anyone with a modicum of good sense -- or a weak stomach -- will take it as a warning to stay the heck away from this literally and figuratively deadly "War Zone."

Stone-dead bad, incoherently bad... Cage acts as if he has been taking hits off of Dennis Hopper's gas mask. There's no way to overstate it: This is scorched-earth acting -- the most flagrant scenery chewing I've ever seen.

Doesn't just play like a cheap "Batman" knockoff, it plays like a cheap "Batman" knockoff that knows it's a cheap "Batman" knockoff -- and wants to be sure everybody knows it knows.

Annoying.

You judge a movie by its own standards, right? Bulletproof, starring Damon Wayans and Adam Sandler, is rambunctious, crude, ridiculous, violent and -- incidentally -- very funny.

In her imperfectly beautiful way, Bell suggests Carole Lombard. As a comedian, Bell is enough of a distraction that you can forgive all the inanities around her. And there are many.

To make matters worse, this third “Hangover” is dull.

With no real comedy to enjoy, it's torture to watch Diesel undergo a predictable change from emotionless soldier to loving family man. Makes you want to spit out your pacifier in disgust.

Manages to make sex look like no fun at all.

It's not brazenly bad or heroically bad or stridently bad. It's bad in all the old, dull ways of being bad: poor performances, absurd story, dreary special effects, witless dialogue and the excessive length of someone taking himself far too seriously.

Less a movie than a meticulously, tediously accurate Civil War reenactment committed to celluloid.

Although Kill Me Three Times includes a few murders, it does nothing to justify its title. Mostly, it just shoots itself in the foot, over and over.

In the world of Freedom, slaves and the people who help them are Christians, and the bad guys don’t believe in God.

Here are some of Summer School's favorite things: idiocy, illiteracy, irresponsibility, drunkenness, dumbness and debauchery. Piqued? [24 July 1987]

Little Boy is a as phony as a game of three-card monte.

The Boy Next Door plays best as unintentional comedy.

On the plus side, Allen's basic movie-making skills are sound. The $13-million film looks crisp and clean. An idiot could follow the story line and two hours could go by without many glimpses at the wristwatch. In short, the perfect made-for-TV movie. [15 Jul 1978, p.E1]

What saddened me, however, wasn't the silliness but recognizing the great Swedish actress Lena Olin under a lot of "Elvira, Mistress of the Dark" makeup. What a waste.

It's lewd, crude and socially irredeemable.

For those who saw the first two Massacres, this will seem pretty much deja-boo! All too much of III is rehashed horror. The first installment was genuinely shocking, unrelenting, visceral terror. II was camp terror, a gothic detour that cast Dennis Hopper as a good guy (albeit nuts). III envisions itself as a return to I, but director Jeff Burr is no Tobe Hopper (director of the first installment), and even the special effects seem bloodless imitations.

The movie is unsurprising and not especially ambitious, but it’s agile enough to vault over most of its flaws.

Hampered by Niall Johnson's script, which is often confusing, muddy and ultimately cliche-ridden.

Sadly, this movie is a far cry from the atmospheric, even thoughtfully crafted original, which made you truly scared for the unkempt, everyman victims. But this latest version, though just as grisly, is literally hackwork, and stars a forgettable, airbrushed cast of slaughterees.

The movie itself is already like one long commercial.

Is it mindless fun for the kids in an air-conditioned environment? I guess, sure, but it's maddening how many details in Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore are swiped wholesale from other stories.

Never Ending Story II is as flat as the pages of its script.

Legend may turn out to be legendary, but not in the way the filmmakers intended. As a flight of fancy, it has the balletic grace of the goony bird, crashing on takeoff and spending the next 90 minutes in a fluttering tizzy on the ground. [24 Apr 1986, p.D3]

This movie, written in crayon by James Kearns, is too dumb to come up with a way of defeating the system by using its own rules.

A knuckleheaded but amiable summer trifle, Stroker Ace is aimed straight at Burt Reynolds' vast heartland public.

Grown Ups finds Sandler reverting to lunkheaded, lazy-laff form.

It’s a shame that the beginning of a movement that has come so far, so fast has been reduced to a trite, calculatingly manipulative reenactment.

Tries to cram too many ingredients into one small pot.

A considerable cut above the crop of recent features by other 'SNL' alums.

A lightweight skating story/road-trip film, is apparently the best it can do, which is to say, not good at all.

With a surprisingly unhappy, anti-Hollywood ending that will appeal to those who like things dark.

Two if by Sea, directed by Australian Bill Bennett, suffers from a symptom common to romantic comedies that begin after the couple have visited the haystack: There's simply no more sexual tension. Without it, you'd better be as good as Tracy and Hepburn.

The Smurfs is exactly like Amy Adams's princess-in-Manhattan comedy "Enchanted," only far less clever, kindhearted, original, exciting or entertaining.

As directed by Steve Miner and shot by Gerald Feil, the film's use of 3-D is spectacularly and viciously effective. (Gray-lensed Polaroid glasses are handed out at the door; this 3-D process works much better than that used on recent 3-D TV broadcasts.) Not only sabers and butcher knives are tossed into the movie house, however; there are also such relatively benign protuberances as popping popcorn, a leaping snake and a blue yo-yo. From the back of a van, a hippie reaches out with a joint, and very early in the film the audience gets poked at with a pair of rabbit ears atop a television set. An opening scene of sheets flapping on a clothesline is attractively eerie, and a later shot of a victim sitting on a pier that juts into a pool of water is actually pretty. The playfulness is so engaging it's really too bad that the gore has to be so unrelenting, but the producers of these films are now trapped in their own excess [17 Aug 1982, p.B1]

If it touches on notions of scientific arrogance and the question of what makes us human, it ultimately does so lightly, and with a mix of eye-popping action and loopy good humor.

Will satisfy only those who can't tell the difference between the good, the bad and the ugly.

A meet-cute whimsy set among divorced fifty-somethings in New York, it blunders on toward oblivion, excruciatingly unfunny and pitifully unromantic.

The movie feels like Nicholas Sparks fan fiction.

What a bomb this highly touted union turns out to be...There is less drama than a Dr Pepper commercial, and its feeble attempt at camp makes "The Return of the Living Dead" look like a production of Stratford-on-Avon. [20 Aug 1985, p.C3]

When he crushes a patrolman's head between his hands, you think you're watching a happy campesino lusty for coconut milk; when he skewers a depraved camp counselor with a knife in the temple, he is the happy barbecuer on a sunny Sunday afternoon. "Soup's on!" he might have cried. Then he tears a girl's head clean off. Well, the head probably wasn't doing her much good anyway. [6 Aug 1986, p.D10]

Madhouse is excruciating fluff for moviegoing masochists. It's what bad cinephiles can expect in the cineplexes of hell. No, it's probably already on video there.

The result isn't merely ludicrous, it's something far worse. It's drab. It's uninteresting. It squanders Chan's uniqueness; it could even be said to squander Jennifer Love Hewitt!

Tries to put your tear ducts in a headlock with a litany of catastrophes.

A field goal, not a touchdown.

Pratfalls and agonizing tumbles appear to be James's business, and man, business is booming.

The most misguided, ill-conceived and lamentable film.

Johnson and Wayans are both gifted comic performers but are given way too little to do in a film that wends its way from set piece to set piece, not with antic glee but desultory and-then-this-happens randomness.

Just a few more tweaks and Crossover could have been something special -- a truly terrible movie to savor for the ages. But nooo, this street ball movie -- has to settle for middle-of-the-road badness.

A buddy cop parody of the lowest possible caliber, National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 empties its chamber but only nicks its enormously deserving target. It's a fusillade of tired jokes and cheap shots, primarily meant as a burlesque of "Lethal Weapon," but "Basic Instinct," "The Silence of the Lambs" and "48 Hrs." also come in for some lame bashing from director Gene Quintano.

Tries to combine humor with ghostly horror but excels at neither.

Isn't it past time to stop dangling Brooke Shields as erotic bait in movies where it's obvious that she doesn't comprehend sexality and everyone knows she's always doubled in sexually graphic interludes anyway? There's one weirdly funny take that seems to satirize this pretty string bean's excruciating lack of sexual consciousness. Tilting her head to one side and smiling like a simp, she looks amazingly like the friendliest extraterrestrial in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." [17 July 1981, p.B2]

Everything about The Heavenly Kid is ripped off, from a sprig of music that apes the Beverly Hills Cop theme to Gedrick, who was obviously cast because he looks like Tom Cruise, but cheaper. [26 July 1985, p.D2]

A bland, utterly silly, curiously provincial courtroom drama.

At least it cares enough to steal from the very best. Unfortunately, that's about all it cares about.

Sandra Bullock is a disheveled, grumpy, adorable mess in Premonition, a psychological thriller that was no doubt pitched as "Medium," only longer and brunette. Or maybe "The Eternal Sixth Sense of the Spotless Groundhog Day."

Maybe it's me, but I find it difficult to dislike any movie that has horses, guns and big hats in it.

The most surprising thing about the movie is that somebody bothered to make it in the first place.

Cedric the Entertainer is the best (and probably only) reason to take this "Vacation."

At every turn, the movie is less moving than the real-life events that inspired it.

Mostly, these guys carry on like spoiled children, complaining, roughhousing and badgering women to strip naked.

Somehow channeling the tone of both a Lifetime movie and an after-school special, Mothers and Daughters shambles into theaters oozing schlock and melodrama, just in time for Mother’s Day. This is no way to honor a beloved family member.

A lean, low-budget and claustrophobic mistaken-identity thriller that’s so stripped-down, it’s nearly nonexistent.

Seriously, though, watching New in Town left me feeling as pained as Zellweger, playing Lucy Hill, looks.

The movie is one of those can't-miss projects that, uh, misses...Altogether, this is about the most listlessly paced thriller you could imagine: Ashby's penchant for letting his actors improvise just results in endless dithering; and the image is weirdly flat -- the movie's shot almost entirely in profile. Actually, there aren't just 8 million ways to die -- now we know there are 8 million and 1. [25 Apr 1986, p.D2]

Time travels, but it sure doesn't fly by in this debacle.

The movie’s editing mishaps, unbelievable scenarios, overuse of music and computer-generated fakery distract from what should be a great ad­ven­ture.

Redundant, humorless and overlong screenplay.

Indeed, I'd say Undiscovered belongs on the WB, but that would be gravely unfair to the channel, which looks like the BBC in comparison.

Downey's direction is so flat that about 20 rock songs have been inserted to cover the dithering continuity with a semblance of rhythm. Like the flatulent and shattering noises, the score functions a distracting sound effect, camouflaging tattered swatches of "comedy." [10 June 1980, p.B2]

It's difficult to predict if audiences will be patient enough with Best Defense to allow it the shakedown time necessary to hit a funny stride. But the movie confirms a flair for comedy that may pay dividends when the filmmakers' rapport with the actors is strong enough to discipline and perhaps improve dodgy material. [25 Jul 1984, p.D3]

It’s wholesome but starchy fare: a story of sacrifice and good fortune that feels less like a movie than a marketing vehicle for the power of divine providence.

All in all, this is not a Jobe well done.

What saves “Battle” from complete irrelevancy is the undisputable fact that a scrappy underdog formula tends to work no matter what time period or sport.

The film has the whiff of easy paycheck. It looks glossy but is empty. It sheds light without gaining insight.

The film isn’t bad, although it is somewhat repetitive. If it has plot holes, conceptual laziness and an overreliance on dumb-insult humor, the film at least seems to know it. There are lots of self-referential jokes that acknowledge its own stupidity.

An adolescent romance that isn't smart enough to mirror "When Harry Met Sally" or crudely amusing enough to get close to "American Pie."

The drug-fueled romp turns ugly, sexist and misogynistic, as so many rap-star vehicles do.

Makes "Conan the Barbarian" seem like Dostoyevsky in its complexity.

Creepy, creepy, creepy -- and not in a good way.

Invasion USA might actually be fun in a campy way if it weren't so dourly exploitative.

Even by the forgiving standard of stuff-we-sit-through-for-our-kids, Ratchet & Clank falls short.

A pocket of infection on the skin of the American body cultural.

Any more than two writers on a movie usually spells trouble. On the other hand, that two of the three scribes responsible for Fool's Gold have previously specialized in horror makes perfect sense.

A lurid, loopy, utterly ludicrous enterprise.

Sexist, racist, overlong, dull, visually ugly and, worst of all, unfunny, “Kasbah” squanders its cast.

There are no surprises here, only blandly reassuring homilies.

In the end, I can't think of a movie that matters less than Just My Luck. It's just negligible.

The movie's gentle and friendly, but nowhere close to exciting. It would be hard to believe that anyone involved with this production --considers Snow Dogs anything more than phoned-in business as usual.

Director-star Kevin Costner falls head over heels in love with himself in this nihilistic, post-apocalyptic clunker about a loner who becomes a reluctant sperm donor, role model and inevitably a godsend to what's left of America.

An animated King and I? Now there's torture, especially in this wretched, lurid, absurd concoction which seems to have been conceived to annoy adults and bore children.

Although Boniadi makes Shirin nearly as likable as she’s supposed to be, writer-director Ramin Niami’s movie is crudely contrived and sloppily edited.

American director Jim Sonzero has taken the same campus setting and plot and added some rationale by "science-fictioning" it.

Even as characters are tweaked and actors bring a slightly different energy than his other movies, The Best of Me is still the same mushy Nicholas Sparks adaptation with drama so overwrought audience members can’t help but laugh — at least until they’re sniffling during the closing credits.

The depiction of an always energetic and often furious Breitbart may please the man’s followers. But Marcus makes little effort to illuminate Breitbart’s character or motivation, so this high-pitched portrait ends up a little flat.

Like a wounded yeti, Batman & Robin drags itself through icicle-heavy sets, dry-ice fog and choking jungle vines, before dying in a frozen heap. Unfortunately, that demise occurs about 20 minutes into the movie, which leaves you in the cold for approximately 106 minutes.

Here is a Neil Simon movie with all of his banality, but none of his humor -- a sort of "The Nod Couple." [30 March 1985, p.G3]

The whole thing is coarse and vulgar, as it hides its low fascinations behind a scrim of Holocaust piety until it becomes pure kitsch.

Suffers from an increasingly common movie defect: appealing, sharply drawn supporting characters, and a cast of main characters that is as unlikely as it is unlikable.

The movie that Disney uses to explore this premise drips with so much corporate good-neighbor syrup, you might want to wear something waterproof. And Penn's performance is, at best, ripe for discussion.

A vicious anti-Catholic diatribe disguised as an audition tape for MTV.

The movie — which looks and sounds like a more brutal Bond knockoff — is at least consistently stylish, though its tone is less assured.

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers is a prime example of the principle of diminishing reruns.

The Other Sister is sanctimonious, sanitized fare primarily preoccupied with patting its own back and plucking our heartstrings.

Return to the Blue Lagoon, which doesn't star Brooke Shields or that blond guy, makes the original Blue Lagoon look like Citizen Kane.

Both assaultive and tiresome, A Good Day to Die Hard barely registers on the action movie Richter scale. It goes bang, it goes boom, and then it blessedly goes away.

Doesn't orchestrate the scares with much finesse.

Saddled with leaden lead performances, hobbled by an arch, incoherent script and pokey pacing, the new, improved Cowgirls is a miscarriage - misconceived, miscast, miserably boring.

It's all wildly implausible and occasionally fun, but it could be so much better if director Randall Miller (who co-wrote the screenplay) had thrown in a little more character development and excised a half-dozen crazy plot twists.

As you watch Howard the Duck, you get the vivid sensation that you're watching not a movie, but a pile of money being poured down the drain. [02 Aug 1986, p.G10]

Ultimately, the movie just doesn’t justify its outrageous bid to turn a solemn tale of self-sacrifice into swaggering global-marketplace entertainment.

London Has Fallen is remarkable only because of how much worse it is than its inane predecessor.

This is a movie that doesn't just make you feel dumb, it makes you feel as if your head has been hollowed out and pumped full of Cheez Whiz.

Graveyard Shift is the latest failed attempt to visualize what King imagines so well. The acting and directing are substandard. Even the hackneyed plot is barely turned over.

You won't feel enlightened, just let down

You know a movie is in trouble when its biggest laughs come not from its lead players but from a dog and a car

The Amityville Horror is a feeble excuse for a haunted-house thriller, but given the source, who could ask for more?

Those immortals keep noting that there can be only one. Perhaps they mean there should have been only one.

A sweet and funny take on the crossed-wire romantic couplings of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.'

An amiably dopey teen movie.

Content to pick up where the skid marks from "Smokey and the Bandit II" left off, The Cannonball Run quickly establishes itself as an aggressive shambles, the latest exercise in amateurism from facetious professionals. [20 June 1981, p.B1]

The film is smart, literary, nuanced, slightly stagy — and pedigreed to within an inch of its life. It practically reeks of dusty, yellowed pages and engraved-leather bookbinding.

Imagine National Lampoon's Animal House without the raunch, originality or wit and you have Midnight Madness. [08 Feb 1980, p.16]

As it is, The Divide is simply noxious for noxiousness's sake. French director Xavier Gens and writers Karl Mueller and Eron Sheean almost seem to take a kind of perverse pride in seeing how far they can go.

Even the susceptible softies, who always cry at weddings, will probably leave the theater dry-eyed, not to mention feeling a little empty inside.

Screenwriter Lona Williams and director Michael Patrick Jann spare no attempt to show characters at their zaniest, wackiest or most grotesque. The effect is disconcerting. Is this light comedy or dark satire? It ends up being neither.

Avoid this movie unless a) your child has refused to eat until you take him or her, or b) your house is being fumigated to kill an infestation of mosquitoes with the West Nile virus.

See You in Valhalla, which is being released simultaneously in select theaters and on demand, is as deadly as its funereal subject matter.

Winds up answering the question of what "Shrek" hath wrought, and between its plastic-looking visuals and cynical attitude, the news isn't good. Lacking the genuine wit and humanism of that film and any number of forebears, this one deserves its dumpin'.

Ernest keeps up his filibuster of inane chatter, shifting from one comic voice, one accent, to another with impressive dexterity. That voice of his is a real gift. Too bad we have to look at him too. [12 Nov 1993, p.C6]

The self-conscious affectation of the film would be funny, were it not so smug.

Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 is nearly as stilted, didactic and simplistic as Rand's free-market fable.

The movie proceeds in near darkness, perhaps to obscure its shoddy special effects, but the pervasive gloom is less discouraging than star Nicolas Cage's indifferent performance.

Pleasingly glossy, refreshingly snarky and startlingly sexy.

I literally did not count a single laugh in the whole aimless schlep, except for the hucksters who made it, on their way to the bank.

What Michael Bay did for the Hollywood blockbuster with his second "Transformers" movie, Jared Hess has now done for the low-budget indie with Gentlemen Broncos -- namely, stain an entire genre with a sense of soulless calculation.

Director James McTeigue frequently collaborates with the visionary Wachowski siblings, and he directed V for Vendetta. How the man who blew up Parliament in such memorably spectacular fashion can’t add some originality to Philip Shelby’s script is the movie’s only real mystery.

The interludes of terror are strictly functional and literal-minded: If it's not a murder spectacle, it's a tease that anticipates a subsequent atrocity. [25 Nov 1983, p.C2]

An insensitive, unfunny cringer from the entrepreneurial writer-director that should have come with a gift receipt.

Lazy humor and familiar plotting aside, Pixels at least gets a little mileage out of its affection for the 1980s.

Here's my favorite part: It's only 87 minutes long. But for the most part, this movie is just another bland, fair-to-middling vehicle for two emerging, fledgling stars.

Kids who love Pokemon movies are no doubt going to see this movie, and they'll have a blast watching it. Very soon they will become older and more sensible and understand how terrible these movies are.

Baby, when you walk out of a movie thinking, "Say, that Heather Locklear was pretty darn good," the movie's got some problems!

Shamelessly manipulative in a crude, bullying way.

The battles are boring and the jokes as flat as old 7-Up, but the film's color palette and creatures -- from teeny buzzing critters to a monster that looks like a giant dust mite -- offer a lot to see. It's just not enough to save the convoluted story.

It's zany. Actually, it's so zany it's almost creepy.

Chris Farley walks into walls, trips over invisible banana peels and otherwise makes a fat ass of himself in this imbecilic, slapstick adventure from the producers of "Dumb and Dumber."

Bland, workmanlike and instantly forgettable.

Mortdecai succeeds more as a talky farce than an action-packed adventure. But it would be even better if Mortdecai weren’t about Mortdecai at all.

Nina filters the singer’s voice — and her life — through tinny-sounding speakers and an out-of-focus lens.

Fans of the book will despise it, others will just find it tries too hard. If you want to see the masters of the universe chastened, see "Wall Street." This is a story of redeemed white guys.

Murphy has said that he wanted the picture to work both as a comedy and a horror movie, but he has succeeded at neither. Director Craven manages to wedge in some of his signature bits, but can't keep the comic elements in balance with the horror, and as a result there's no tension or dramatic pull.

The humor's a tad too raunchy for the kids, and the predictable plot won't win over any of the parents.

Jaws 3-D, in which the Amity horror swims south to Florida, looks a lot like a Poligrip commercial, what with its extreme close-ups of the Great White's artificial chompers. [29 July 1983, p.17]

The biggest sin of Sex and the City 2 is its lack of beauty. It's garish when it should be sumptuous, tacky when it should be luxe, wafer-thin when it should be whip-smart and sophisticated.

Did you hear about the Morgans? Trust me, you don't want to.

It does wonders to a critic to know that [Britney] could be a continuing font of teen and post-teen kitsch for years to come.

It can't fake sincerity. It tries ever so hard, but it doesn't have a single believable second. Every word in it is a lie.

Tries desperately to lower the bar for scatological gags, rank sexual humor and cheap physical shots.

Dragged down by a paper-thin story, the predictable number of fight scenes executed at equally predictable intervals and stock, unmemorable characters.

For fans of Neeson as action hero, “Blacklight” may be something of a disappointment, at least measuring it against the yardstick of previous thrillers in this particular branch of the actor’s body of work.

The movie never rises to the level of the professional, much less the comic. The gags are witless and surprisingly gross. The four actors, each accustomed to being at the center, never develop any rhythm, any chemistry, any anything.

Watching “Transfomers” is like sitting in a car that’s revving its engine while stuck in the mud. It sounds like it’s getting somewhere, even though all it ever does is spin its wheels.

The tale grows only more toxic with time.

I liked Coyote Ugly better when it was called "Flashdance," although I didn't like it very much then.

Falls flat at every turn.

When a Stranger Calls never manages to convey the primal, almost atavistic terror that has earned John Carpenter's movies and the "Scream" franchise their places in the teen horror canon. The most lasting psychological effect of this pulp non-classic will most likely be limited to a deep pathological fear of Architectural Digest.

A dreary, dismally unfunny excuse for a romantic comedy.

A round of misfires from title to denouement, the new comedy "Modern Problems" is a modern problem for moviegoers: the latest rummy example of that strange abomination, the unfunny "fun" movie, victimized by utter confusion about its genre, tone and audience. [30 Dec 1981, p.B6]

Technically, Bakshi's work is uneven; some of the characters in his Cool universe are hilarious, while others are flat.

Goes nowhere fast.

Rollicks and rolls, thanks mainly to Roth's over-the-top depravity and Xiong's swingin', "Crouching Tiger"-style choreography.

The bad news is that the opening credits, which make sick and darkly comic allusions to suicide, are the best thing about the film.

The story of an insurgent Indian woman certainly seems timely in 2019. Too bad the new account of her uprising, The Warrior Queen of Jhansi, is as stodgy as a movie from 1958, if not earlier.

Much of the movie -- which Murphy wrote with a small posse of collaborators -- is taken up with the torturously dull, not to mention unbelievable, romance between Norbit and Kate (a disappointingly lackluster Newton) and the tedious agenda of Cuba Gooding Jr. as a schemer-manipulator.

Child's Play 3 is further proof of the principle of diminishing sequels: The original was actually quite good, the follow-up was lame and now what is hopefully the capper is DOA.

The dialogue is fast but bad, the acting is loud but awful and the morality is chaste but unromantic. As for the food, it looks vulgar.

There's not much zest here, even with Mike Myers's energetic attempts to steal the movie as a cross-eyed flight instructor.

I’ll say one other nice thing: The film isn’t terribly long. You’ll keep waiting for the suspense to kick in. Spoiler alert: It never really does, except feebly, after about an hour and 15 minutes. And then, unceremoniously, it’s over.

How bad is the third installment... So bad that this bland, pointless sequel features a gratuitous scene where the stunning Jessica Alba - one of many new faces added to an already overstuffed ensemble - strips down to her lacy undergarments, belly-flops into a backyard pit, rolls around in the mud, and I still can't recommend you pay to see it.

Dugan has a brisk, imaginative comic style; he sets up his gags well, so that there's still some surprise in the punch lines when they come.

Technique counts for a lot in directing a picture like this -- more perhaps than in any other genre -- and Foley doesn't have any. His approach here is to toss things up into the air without caring much where they land. And as a result, the noise they make when they land is not a pretty one.

The special effects look cheap, the acting is wooden, and the shouted dialogue consists largely of throwaway action-movie cliches (“Let’s do this”) and B-movie sci-fi jargon (“His bioenergy is off the charts!”).

The music isn't bad, but there's something more than a little blasphemous about hearing She's Leaving Home or A Day in the Life sung by the likes of the Bee Gees.

A nasty, formulaic and unforgivably obvious procedural.

What the filmmakers try to play for laughs -- a mom and her daughters chatting about orgasms while shoe shopping -- isn't funny, it's creepy.

Ultimately Dolittle is not just a weak story, badly told, but a puzzling waste of talent.

Although the hallmarks of Rudolph movies can be found everywhere -- they don't add up to the usual magic this time.

Take the "dle" out of "poodle" and you've pretty much got the leitmotif of Look Who's Talking Now, a crude and mawkish film in which dogs attempt to communicate with Kirstie Alley and John Travolta.

Morality is hardly the main concern of The Ottoman Lieutenant. Instead, it’s content with hackneyed romance and soaring strings.

There are more than 6 million potential love stories in Rio de Janeiro. Unfortunately, none of the 10 that have been assembled in the anthology film Rio, I Love You is any good.

Mainly for those who are already infatuated with Cena's stoic, Mount Rushmore-esque countenance and who do not find the idea of the big lug leaping off the edge of a cliff onto an airborne helicopter's landing gear remotely absurd.

Madame Web is no blockbuster, but in its own quiet way, it manages to break down a few barriers.

The movie is really just an elaborate excuse to show repeated close-ups of an elephantine dog scrotum.

"4" isn't even a film; it's more like a long trailer, a collection of scenes without sense. It has everything you expect and nothing more: flat and uninspired aural and visual jokes about bodily functions (people's and pigeons'), leather bars, porta-johns, superglue, fat and/or stupid people -- all interspersed with "training," jailbreaks and an airborne chase finale.

Alan Silvestri's score is the worst mix of ersatz Jerry Goldsmith and schlock pop tunes, and the acting is pretty weak, though the filmmakers get good marks for using Calegory, a real-life disabled 11-year-old who brings a healthy authenticity to his role.

Where is the suspense part? There is no suspense part. Suspense demands clarity of motive and action, and this screenplay never provides it.