Crammed with show-biz jokes that younger kids won't fathom, but the action is so quick and colorful that they probably won't mind.

This superficial treatment makes so many dubious decisions - oversimplifying issues, for instance, so there'll be more time for high-flying emotion - that 1960s veterans may be moved to protest rather than praise.

A spicy critique of tabloid TV is buried in romantic-comedy material that strains too hard for cuteness. Ditto for Murphy's acting.

Like the recent "Mona Lisa Smile," this tale could have been an effective feminist fable if it weren't so calculated.

Hovering between "Last Action Hero" and "E.T.," this sci-fi extravaganza is bookended with violence but has some gentle moments in between.

It will be interesting to see whether audiences embrace Mr. Diesel's barely controlled vigilante as warmly as they embraced Clint Eastwood's swaggering "Dirty Harry" and Charles Bronson's nasty "Death Wish" characters a few decades ago.

Denis's pungent images create a nightmarish mood but don't bring full artistic coherence to her odd mix of gothic horror and postmodern reverie.

Salomon directed the silly but diverting action yarn, which benefits from the talents of Freeman, Quaid, Driver, and White.

The drama makes up in intellectual weight what it sometimes lacks in psychological interest and cinematic realism.

The action is snappy and quick, but why does this youth-targeted adventure pit white male heroes against a trio of villains comprising a black man, an Asian man, and an ugly woman?

Plenty of mad moviegoers will put this in their diaries as one of the worst pictures in ages.

Arnold Schwarzenegger fights an outer-space monster in a third-world jungle. The monster never has a chance. Neither does the jungle. Neither does the audience. [19 June 1987, Arts & Leisure, p.23]

This visually intricate fantasia combines his (Greenaway's) extraordinary cinematic imagination with a story and characters less compelling than those in his best works.

It seems to have had the opposite effect on the director's taste, as she strives for new levels of raunchiness.

The only aspect that emerges a winner is the gorgeous Mediterranean scenery.

The plot is sordid and predictable -- indiscriminate nightclubbing leads to escalating drugs, promiscuity, and violence. Things perk up cinematically in the last few scenes, but by then it's almost too late.

Four chuckles and a lively final-credits sequence are a mighty poor score for 99 minutes of alleged comedy, and the sentimental stuff is even worse.

The satire is intermittently amusing, but Arcand adds little to the arsenal of standard mockumentary tricks, and the interesting cast doesn't get many interesting things to do.

Darkly elegant cinematography helps compensate for awful dialogue and lackluster acting.

It's a pity that such vital, thought-provoking material has been rendered so lifeless and inauthentic on the screen.

Less an American product than an international escapade, it's the kind of pigeonhole-resisting romp that Hollywood too rarely provides.

It's all very colorful, but the movie's diverse elements clash as often as they cooperate.

The result is a run-of-the-mill fantasy, competently produced but disappointingly familiar, from its "Forbidden Planet" premise to the digital-clock countdown near the end.

Danny Boyle's dark comedy has stylishly filmed moments, but overall it's a queasy blend of amusing, pointless, and sometimes quite nasty material.

The comedy is appealing as Hollywood's umpteenth variation on the Cinderella story, but think about its patrician views of upper-class privilege and you might find it too simplistic for comfort.

How did a dignified pro like Duvall get stuck in this fender-bender?

Based on a novel by French provocateur Georges Bataille, an important thinker whose fiction rarely translates into good cinema.

The settings and visual effects are imaginatively done, but the dialogue is silly and the plot is a mishmash, with echoes of everything from the "Aliens" movies to Michael Crichton's novel "Sphere," which pushes similar buttons a little more intelligently.

In sum, Van Helsing is yet another video game disguised as a wide-screen epic. Here's hoping the box office drives a firm wooden stake through its hokey Hollywood heart.

Carpenter pulls out all the action-adventure stops, but he and coscripter Larry Sulkis forgot to write dialogue the audience could listen to without howling in disbelief.

This low-budget drama tries very hard to convey messages of tolerance and compassion, but it's too weakly acted and directed to have much impact.

Mildly entertaining for a while; think "Stand by Me" meets "Alien," with a soupçon of "Starship Troopers" tossed in.

So sloppily made that it's barely coherent.

It's rare for an Egyptian movie to look so closely and unflinchingly at class conflict and other forms of social disarray, but lively acting keeps the story engaging even when it wanders and meanders.

Crash-lands as disastrously as the heroes and never quite recovers its wits.

The picture is equally long on eye-dazzling camera work and New Age sentimentality.

A romantic comedy that's pleasant, if not exactly spellbinding.

While the story and acting are the opposite of subtle, young moviegoers may enjoy the action and suspense.

Very broad, very brash ''film noir'' satire...The action is fast, flashy, sometimes funny, always loud. [13 June 1986, p.25]

The premise is promising, but Herzfeld cares more about sensationalism than substance, and portions of the picture are far nastier than they had to be.

While it may supply giggles and shivers to preteens, grownups should think twice before entering this all-too-haunted house.

Wants to appear bold and liberated, but it seems awfully solemn about the subculture it explores.

Starts quirky, grows steadily darker, doesn't build much excitement.

Dull despite its suspense-driven story.

It's picaresque, all right, but full of ethnic stereotypes, and filmed much too blandly to compete with the superb ''Black Stallion'' of a few years ago.

Unexpectedly entertaining, if you're willing to put up with the picture's stagy look, over-the-top moods, and heavy doses of vulgarity.

Travolta and Jackson have some effective scenes, but Nielsen is lacking in charisma, and James Vanderbilt's screenplay ought to be court-martialed.

The adventure is vulgar and violent, although the special effects are impressive.

The comedy isn't quite as crude as it sounds, but there's not much of value here beyond a little lively acting.

The plot isn't very original, but the acting and dialogue have a low-key realism that packs more emotional punch than a dozen of the standard-issue romantic dramas crowding the independent-film scene.

Verhoeven's lurid thriller has moments of welcome self-parody, but most of the action manages to be sensationalistic, homophobic, and tedious at the same time. [20 Mar 1992, Arts, p.12]

There's nothing special about this movie -- it's just business as usual for today's debased action-movie genre.

Too bad (Arnold) can't save the movie from it's superstitious clap-trap, sadistic violence, and sheer silliness.

House of D, arrives in theaters this week, after debuting at the Tribeca Film Festival last year. I'm sorry to report it's the opposite of impressive.

Romano tries hard, but it takes real big-screen talent to draw laughs and emotions from material as flimsy and formulaic as the script.

The results are unbelievably tedious, but Mansfield buffs may find it intermittently worthwhile.

There's a little humor, a little suspense, and not a hint of reality. You'll tune out quickly, unless you're 11.

This remake stays close to the eponymous 1979 horror movie it's based on, except for being precisely 10,000 times scarier.

Add marvelously imaginative directing -- finally Yakin fulfills the promise he showed in "Fresh" almost a decade ago -- and you have a colorful, creative, deliciously frolicsome romp.

Keaton doesn't have quite enough filmmaking savvy to balance the story's heart-wrenching and smile-coaxing aspects.

Frankly, it's excruciating to watch.

There are a few clever lines and Cleese has some sensational moments, but that's not enough to make the farce seem fresh.

The story is inspirational in a superficial way, but the filmmakers focus so exclusively on their attractive heroine that the picture loses any real connection with Africa.

Viewers of that age may overlook the contrived situations and the awful acting, which consists mainly of frozen grins. Nobody else will.

The cast is cute and the action is colorful, but the comedy isn't as captivating as it sets out to be.

The most entertaining scenes focus on the lovable louts and losers who share the boardinghouse where the protagonist - based on a comic-book character billed as a superhero without superpowers - prepares his grisly exploits. The rest is mayhem.

Suffers from a lack of chemistry.

This dark psychological story falls short in terms of filmmaking and acting, but it's original enough to stand out from the crowd.

The movie's heart is in the right place, but it looks and sounds regrettably bogus.

As dopey as its heroes, and the cast's admirable energy isn't enough to keep the story punching through the final round.

Sol doesn't knit the complicated story into a coherent flow, but there are many visually striking moments along the way.

This low-key drama is always warm and mellow, although it doesn't build much of an emotional charge.

Conjures up enough involving moments to create some drama.

Alex & Emma isn't nearly as clever as Reiner's classic "Misery," a very different look at a male writer and his female companion. But it's diverting fun.

The dialogue is dumb ('zilla has the best lines, "arrrrrggh" and "maaroarrr"), New York is waterlogged, and Godzilla isn't on screen enough.

Muddled screenwriting and uninspired directing.

Strains to be shockingly original but winds up as cheap and cheesy as its characters.

A few mildly amusing gags don't outweigh the trite situations and mean-spirited attitude of this comedy.

Quirky acting combines with Ferrara's dark, brooding style to give the throwaway story a noteworthy measure of dramatic and cinematic interest.

A dark comedy about a bachelor party gone awry, it is excessively violent, ghoulish, and gory. Very Bad Things is lack-of-taste taken to the extreme.

The movie works fairly well as a pitch-dark comedy, and very well as a dead-on satire of upward mobility and its discontents.

The comedy is shamelessly stupid and flagrantly vulgar by turns.

If the heroine really had seven days left, she wouldn't waste it watching stuff like this.

More concerned with quickening our pulses than broadening our minds.

Adam Sandler is funny as the volatile hero, and the screenplay is just abrasive enough to keep the story surprising.

Intermittently insightful, but a disappointment from the talented Munch.

The comedy as a whole is very slight.

Opium- addicted Allan Quatermain becomes none other than Sean Connery. At least he gives a real movie-star performance, which is more than the other gentlemen manage. Extraordinary? Balderdash!

At 225 minutes long, it feels like a trilogy in itself. That wouldn't be a problem if it had energy and imagination, but those qualities are missing, as is any sense of historical or philosophical context.

Beneath its regrettably banal surface, White Noise raises the creepy question of whether intimidating, even malign forces may be lurking in those fancy gadgets that fill our living rooms and offices.

It's as forgettable as they come.

As soon as I finish writing this review, I'm going to try traveling a few hours in the past. That way, I can improve my life by skipping this movie!

The story is a string of sub-Scorsese clichés, and if engaging actors like Malkovich and Hopper seem to be sleepwalking through their roles, imagine how unwatchable Diesel manages to be.

Ultimately, it's more an emotional hodgepodge than a compassionate look at real human problems.

So vulgar and incoherent that even Hackman's gifts can't score a touchdown.

The movie's one good performance is given by the house, full of ominous inscriptions, inscrutable chambers, and fiendish machines. The human characters are played with various degrees of manic overacting.

Santa Claus's bag couldn't hold as many clichés as the screenplay dishes out.

Polson's well-filmed thriller swims down the usual lanes for this sort of story, and everyone looks way too old for senior year; but many of the suspense scenes work fine, and Bradford is terrific as the endangered hero.

The story takes place in 2013, but you'd hardly know it from the age-old clichés Kevin Costner purloins to tell this overblown action yarn, which relies so heavily on ideas borrowed from John Ford westerns that the Hollywood giant should have been credited as codirector; too bad Costner can't invest them with Ford's kind of life and originality, though.

Animated version of the Rogers & Hammerstein musical.

Breillat is a smart, serious observer of sexuality's often disruptive role in human life, but this existential drama is sadly pretentious.

The film means well, but each scene gets clobbered by sappy screenwriting.

Skillfully acted, idealized, uneven.

Judged by the standards of ordinary filmmaking, it's as strange, suggestive, and surreal as other Lynch pictures have been. Judged by the standards of Lynch's own career, however, it's amazingly stale and second-hand… [and] contains not a single moment of genuinely felt emotion. [1 Sept 1992]

This intensely topical satire tackles a wide range of important issues, from corporate whistle-blowing to the toll sexual license takes on stable family structures.

The acting is sincere and the camera work is pretty, but this art-movie variation on "The Sixth Sense" doesn't have enough energy to fulfill the high promise of Berliner's previous picture, the enchanting "Ma vie en rose."

George Clooney looks great in a cape, but this fourth installment in the series has invested so much capital in razzle-dazzle special effects that it hardly matters whose head is under the pointy-eared helmet.

Blending animation and live action, this ferocious fantasy is hopelessly vulgar in ways never dreamed of by "Who Framed Roger Rabbit."

Admirers of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" and other Dick literature will enjoy this nonfiction look at the writer, his career, and his eccentricities, some of which were as bizarre as his fiction.

This romantic comedy is so awfully misjudged and ineptly executed in every department that, while it isn't quite a contender for the "so bad it's good" category, this critic was nonetheless dabbing tears of laughter from his eyes.

Repetitious teen-targeted fluff.

The sweetest thing about Sweet November (a remake of the 1968 movie) is the on-screen magic between Charlize Theron and Keanu Reeves. But that's pretty much where the magic ends.

As coarse, vulgar, adolescent action comedies go, Beverly Hills Ninja comes across as relatively tame - less profanity, less violence, less sex than typical for this "Naked Gun" wannabe.

The blend of live action and animation is competently done, but the subtly mean-spirited screenplay has more sour meows than hearty laughs.

Cube is cute and Long is lovely, but the youngsters are too brash and smug to bear. At least there's a heartwarming end to the excursion.

The film tries to revive the sort of good-hearted optimism associated with Frank Capra classics of the 1940s era, but pictures like "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" were never so simplistic, syrupy, or tedious to sit through.

The bad thing about A Guy Thing isn't the talent of its stars but the warmed-over triteness of the material they're forced to work with.

Cartoonish effects and overacting make this more corn than catnip.

Frivolous but fun, somewhere between a comic "French Connection" and the craziest Nascar race you never saw.

Everyone tries very hard to make the story sweet and funny, but the soggy screenplay defeats them every time.

Surely it couldn't be meant as dramatic realism! But it is. And amazingly, the movie gets worse as it goes along.

The acting is solid and the heroine's quirky dialogue is amusing for a while. But repetitious writing and a weakly constructed story turn the promising premise into a disappointing mishmash of crime, politics, and show business.

The movie starts with insights about the need for more humane values in health care, then buries them under an avalanche of frivolities, vulgarities, and clichés.

Most of the laughs come near the beginning, before Rick Friedberg's klutzy directing becomes annoyingly monotonous.

The movie has a well-meaning message about love and loyalty being the bedrock of real family values, but its good intentions sag as the story trades its air of mischievous comedy for trite sentimentality, arbitrary plot twists, and enough maudlin melodramatics to sustain a tabloid TV series.

Even the delightful Duff disappoints.

Costner is convincing as the hero, ably supported by Joe Morton as a short-tempered supervisor and Kathy Bates as a feisty neighbor. Dragonfly has little chance of "Ghost"-like popularity, though.

The plot is predictable, the characters are cliches, and all the actors look and sound like refugees from a movie Martin Scorsese would have made vastly better three decades ago.

Strenuously unfunny sequel.

Three brief comedies filmed in English for a German television series. The most thoughtful is Seidelman's contribution, The Dutch Master."

The plot is hamstrung by trite formulas, and there's too much violence and family tension for very young viewers. Shaquille O'Neal is likable as the title character, though.

How could such a high-octane cast produce such low-octane horror?

This is fatuous twaddle with a nasty, misogynistic edge.

Violent and vapid, but the visual jolts may please horror buffs.

It's all idiotic but energetic, directed by Jan De Bont in his usual techno-action style.

One thing is certain: It's a bomb trying to be a hit, and at that it'll never succeed.

Unoriginal.

The picture's real interest lies in detailing the villain's sadistic crimes, though, and this is rarely fun or edifying to watch.

Its main message is that everyone should believe and behave in exactly the same way. Groupthink wins again!

Has moments of real visual creativity.

Shallow and sentimental in the sappiest Hollywood tradition.

The acting is weak, largely because many of the performers seem uncomfortable speaking English. The last half-hour works up a fair amount of action and suspense, though.

Not even veteran talents like Dukakis and Scheider can surmount the artificial dialogue, arbitrary plot twists, and wan humor of this disappointing comedy-drama.

Cumming's antic acting is the only asset of this boisterous comedy.

The Griswalds drive to Las Vegas "because half the fun is getting there," but the fun never begins in this disappointing sequel to the Vacation slapstick comedies.

A lovestruck Californian kidnaps a neighbor's dog as a way of getting her attention.

A private eye enters a horrific world of degrading sex and bottom-feeding pornographers.

Sordid and sleazy, although the lead performances are hard to fault.

Different viewers might find different portions worthy of anything from zero to four stars, but anyone with a faint heart or weak stomach should stay miles away from it. [24 Oct. 1997, p.13]

In all it's a pleasant surprise if not a great comedy.

What ensues is a Halloween-style blood bath accompanied by graphic sex scenes.

There are a few amusing moments, helped by subdued performances from Affleck and Gandolfini, but this is no "Bad Santa" despite its obvious ambition to play similar holiday tricks.

The slasher-movie genre may never die, but can't its perpetrators think up variations more clever than this by-the-numbers rehash?

The acting is uneven and most of the romancing seems so mismatched.

The junior Giannini, who has inherited Giancarlo's handsome looks, portrays his mercurial character with energy and flair. Madonna doesn't. Indeed, it's hard to remember the last time a certified celebrity gave a performance so monotonous, unimaginative, and all-around tiresome to watch.

Perry and Hurley don't have much chemistry, and the story is so dumb you might want to sue it for stupidity.

This boatload of clichés is strenuously unfunny.

Often trite and predictable but grudgingly likable in the end.

Everyone works hard, but the results are sadly short of style and personality or irony and intelligence.

Preposterous plot, bad acting, and dialogue that provokes more laughs than shivers.

Paying homage to drug comedies of the '70s, Half Baked is high on getting high and low on laughs.

Adam Sandler's creative songs and silly expressions on "Saturday Night Live" may have turned him into a celebrity, but this movie based solely on his antics doesn't work.

In its depiction of the Las Vegas nightclub scene and in its own cinematic strategies, the film is quite instructive about the intersection of sex, money, and entertainment in some areas of popular American culture. [29 Sept 1995]

Hop away from this one fast!

The thriller makes up in moody weirdness what it lacks in horror-tale originality.

Downright awful.

So stupid you'll wish you'd brought a duffel bag of your own.

Be warned that the results are in aggressively awful taste from beginning to end.

Fans of unregenerate underground moviemaking will have a ball.