Against all odds and prejudices, Cheech and Chong seem to get better and better. Their new film is a vulgar, zany kick. Cheech and Chong's Next Movie decisively confirms the flair for movie comedy that the pair demonstrated so disarmingly in "Up in Smoke." Objectionable as their raunchy sense of humor and simple-minded, potheaded characters may be from a socially responsible standpoint, Cheech and Chong transcend the objections. [19 July 1980, p.B1]

Friday the Thirteenth meets Saturday Night Fever. Good and promising actors -- people who deserve a better film the next time -- are too numerous to name. [16 Aug 1980, p.D2]

Used Cars, a mean, spirited farce about cutthroat rivalry between ruthless used-car salesmen somewhere in the Southwest, recalls the worst tendencies of "Ace in the Hole" crossed with the worst tendencies of "One, Two, Three." It's assiduously nasty and hard-driving too, a double-duty excess. Director/co-writer Robert Zemeckis has undeniable energy and flair, but it's being misspent on pretexts and situations that seem inexcusably gratuitous and snide.

A scruffy but appealing light entertainment, the movie owes its unexpected charm to the fact that comedian and dog seem to complement and humanize each other. [09 Sep 1980, p.C3]

The movie isn't skillful enough to back up its satiric presumptions. Though it obviously aims to be sassy and uninhibited, Airplane! never approaches the comic heights achieved unwittingly by "Airport '75" and the peerless "Concorde -- Airport 1979." [3 July 1980, p.C11]

The Blue Lagoon is a plump sitting duck, waiting to be roasted by sarcastic spectators. But director Randal Kleiser and his associates may enjoy the last laugh at the box office if this oblivious romantic idyll connects with susceptibilities as naive and dumb-founding as their own.

Flawed and uneven, but vigorous and imaginative, The Stunt Man is a brash, whirlwind action comedy about the paranoid uncertainties of a fugitive who takes refuge with a movie company on location. [24 Oct 1980, p.B1]

In one scene -- a costume ball on his ship -- Korman wears an archaic naval uniform and explains that is is an exact copy of "the uniform worn by Lord Nelson when he defeated the Spanish Armada." That's very funny, but one wonders whether anyone who understands why it is funny could enjoy the rest of the picture. [11 Aug 1980, P.B3]

Ironically, the stars didn't get it together either. The Blues Brothers offers the melancholy spectacle of them sinking deeper and deeper into a comic grave.

Filmmakers ought to be granted time off for good intentions. Then, perhaps, those responsible for the prison film Brubaker could have gotten their do-good impulses under reasonable control, and used them to make a good picture, instead of a goody-goody one.

Rough Cut isn't the finest vintage of its light, dry style, but it is easy to take and when it ends you may be sorry there isn't more. [20 June 1980, p.17]

The movie is so shabbily written (by Dennis Hackin) and unevenly directed (by Eastwood himself) that the traditional obstacles to romantic comedy consummation are overwhelmed by superfluous complications and imprecise calculations.

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]

An absurdly upbeat romantic vehicle for John Travolta. The film-makers appear to believe that the moviegoing public craves a reassuring love story, at any cost. This film ends up as s counterfeit endorsement of the so-called simpler so-called values.

In spite of cliches as thick as stars in the sky, the price of admission to "The Mountain Men" may be worth almost as much as one 1830 beaver pelt.

With The Hollywood Knights, Floyd Mutrux, the director of "American Hot Wax," seems determined to wear out the welcome of a once-amusing nostalgic device once and for all.

Stanley Kubrick's production of The Shining, a ponderous, lackluster distillation of Stephen King's best-selling novel, looms as the Big Letdown of the new film season. I can't recall a more elaborately ineffective scare movie. You might say that The Shining, opening today at area theaters, has no peers: Few directors achieve the treacherous luxury of spending five years (and $12 million-$15 million) on such a peerlessly wrongheaded finished product.

The total effect is fast and attractive and occasionally amusing. Like a good hot dog, that's something of an achievement in a field where unpalatable junk is the rule.

Like Parker's earlier features, Fame is a stylistic self-advertisement. The locale has shifted, but one recognizes the identical false urgency and coy tumult. Parker seems destined to spend his career whipping up ephemeral picturesque frenzies. [20 June 1980, p.C2]

Humanoids is a clever combination of Jaws and Alien. [09 Jun 1980, p.B1]

When the names of the players flash on the screen in Friday the 13th, it is not so much a list of the cast as a body count. Practically everyone who spends more than five minutes on camera dies horribly -- in close-up. Considering the quality of the acting, most of them deserve no better. [13 May 1980, p.B3]

An admirably crisp, incisive counter-terrorist thriller, the most proficient and entertaining movie of its kind since Richard Lester's Juggernaut.

The Tin Drum is likely to be remembered as another conspicuous example of why the urge to film certain books ought to be resisted. [25 Apr 1980, p.C1]

Happily, director Peter Medak is aware of the fundamental absurdity of his ghost story. In fact, he's taken considerable care to compensate with virtuoso displays of scenic and atmospheric suggestiveness. The Changeling has a stylistic gusto and polish that were conspicuously missing from The Fog and The Amityville Horror. [28 Mar 1980, p.F1]

There's an adult mentality throughout the film, and not a nice one. It gets all the smirking fun it can, then tacks on some quick sermonizing at the end. One minute sex is like a camp food-fight -- against the rules but everybody has a good time-- and the next it's the grown-up activity that leads directly to that other favorite grown-up activity -- depression. The accompanying adult had better be prepared to explain not sex, but "Do as we say, don't do as we show."

Death Ship unfortunately turned out to be about as frightening as "The Love Boat." No -- less. Except for one grisly, chilling scene too horrible to describe, this one was an unintentionally funny stroll. And pity the poor actors -- George Kennedy, Richard Crenna, Nick Mancuso, Sally Ann Howes; it's the TV-jeebies. Strictly second-string city. [9 June 1980, p.B1]

Although their film resolves itself into a lurid shambles, screenwriter Gerald Ayres and director Adrian Lyne demonstrate a certain flair for foxy exploitation. [19 Apr 1980, p.C3]

Huston's straightforward, sardonic direction reinforces a compact, unusually literate screenplay. [07 May 1980, p.C1]