Posse is a great idea for a movie, but rarely has such a solid idea been exploited with greater indifference or lack of imagination.

It's an updated Capra fantasy that goes for the sweet rather than the tart.

It's tremendous fun. The movie -- directed by Rob Cohen -- switches pleasingly from exciting fights to moments of magic playfulness. It's doubly touching to experience Bruce Lee's fleeting life and, in the brief depictions of little son Brandon, to fatefully anticipate the tragedy to come.

Romero's film starts out well and clearly benefits from some higher-on-the-line elements, ranging from the cast to the cinematography of Tony Pierce-Roberts (A Room With a View, Mr. & Mrs. Bridge). But like too many King transfers to the screen, it falls apart in the last reel.

Playing a mentally unhinged, almost wordless naif who finds true love with equally nutty Mary Stuart Masterson, he's supposed to invoke the silent comedian, with a little Chaplin thrown in. But he's just Edward Scissorhands without the scissors -- or the edge.

Indian Summer would like to be to the '90s what "The Big Chill" was to the '80s. But something is missing, namely a superior cast, a more engaging group of characters, a far smarter, more focused script, and Lawrence Kasdan's expertly timed direction. This is a wan knockoff.

Boiling Point is a bad cable movie -- USA as opposed to HBO -- temporarily masquerading as a theatrical release; even the presence of one hot actor, Wesley Snipes, can't elevate it past lukewarm status. Dennis Hopper, here reduced to an unamusing caricature of himself, further cools things down. The end result, if truth-in-titling were in effect: "Tepid Point."

It never attains full dimension. It pursues the De Niro-DiCaprio war so singlemindedly, everything else is left high and dry.

In Adrian Lyne's latest monstrosity, love takes on money -- and loses. Not necessarily in the story, of course. This is a Hollywood movie. I'm talking between the lines.

Has enough dog slobber, curdled hurl and toe-jam jokes to keep its target audience amused. Older kids and overgrown ones too probably will notice that nothing much ever happens in this belabored suburban variation on "The Little Rascals."

There's something scuzzy about the whole exercise.

If the first sequel was a photocopy of the original, this second sequel is a tracing of a photocopy. It's the same business twice removed, and twice diminished.

Screenwriter Robert Getchell and director John Badham (whose resume includes the fallen "Bird on a Wire") wouldn't know a believable moment if it hit them. Fonda's transformation to lethal weapon, her affair with Mulroney and the implied romance with Byrne are all lukewarm, lazily outlined conceits. There have been deeper human relationships in TV commercials.

In Just Another Girl on the I.R.T., Ariyan Johnson seizes the camera's attention like no other performer since John Travolta strutted into "Saturday Night Fever."

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.

Essentially, this is a film about humans as victims of alien abuse, a mediocre look at helplessness.

It's the rapport between the two actors, De Niro and Murray, that saves Mad Dog and Glory from being something less than just another buddy movie. Their real-life friendship spills over into this jittery, very funny look at the male bonding experience.

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.

One thing's for sure about Amos & Andrew: It ain't no "Thelma & Louise."

This brilliantly naive, low-budget shoot-'em-up presents every action as if it were brand spanking new.

Douglas again takes on the symbolic mantle of the Zeitgeist. But in Falling Down, he and Schumacher want to have their cake and eat it too; they want him to be a hero and a villain, and it just won't work.

Few American directors would dare to show as much over-the-top glee in their chosen craft as Sam Raimi does in Army of Darkness. [19 Feb 1993, Style, p.c7]

With its zany daily episodes, "Groundhog" gets stuck in a non-progressive repetition.

It practically celebrates convenience of plot, over-the-top acting and follow-the-footprints dialogue, but mostly it is a salute to sequins and sashay. With just a hint of sarcasm.

The romantic fable Untamed Heart is hopelessly syrupy, preposterous and more than a little bit lame, but, still, somehow it got to me.

A case study in how Hollywood can make a complete mess out of what was previously a marvelous film.

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.

If you're looking for a picturesque romance -- with a little intrigue on the side -- you could do worse than "Sommersby."