Cedric is certainly the bright spot in this movie - personable, silly and lovable, with just enough of Gleason's girth, timing and humanity to make you wish he'd driven Ralph Kramden's bus onto the lot of a different movie.

The story has a definite ick factor that detracts from even the small pleasures the movie might offer its teen audience.

Did Lane and John Cusack really have to put themselves through this? Here are two first-rate actors in the embarrassing situation of playing blithering misfits in a lame comedy of errors.

Flimsy and forgettable, but it does have a few worthy action and special-effects sequences.

The screenplay has no idea how to modulate the banter between the movie's talented stars so that it approximates affectionate and playful sparring.

The dullest exorcist movie ever made.

The teen actors grin twitchily as if tickled by sudden growth spurts, but apparently nothing can hurt their chances with the females in this libidinous zip code.

The problem comes when the movie turns into a tedious, faith-based diatribe against medical science.

The movie equivalent of a medical experiment gone horribly wrong and kept in a jar of formaldehyde as a warning to others: Comedy can be a deadly weapon in the wrong hands.

You may not realize just how much it takes to make a great mockumentar like "Waiting for Guffman" until you see Never Been Thawed.

The movie is quite off its rocker: Jerry Springer, Chrisopher Walken, Tom Waits as a roadside prophet, a miscast, nervous Lucy Liu as an FBI agent -- it's a feverish, violent jumble that's shot as if high on mescaline -- the drug, not the salad.

A gangsta rapper without fire in the belly isn't terribly interesting, cinematically or musically.

The humor is supposed to stem from the clash of kids who have been raised so differently and of partners with opposing views of child care. But there are just so many jokes you can make about who gets to use the bathroom when.

The wordless six-minute animé shorts - at the end of which our double-jointed heroine would always die - don't lend themselves to a 95-minute action movie where viewers might rightfully expect something to make sense.

Never gives us what it promised: a glorious, totally new sense of horror.

In documentary footage played over the closing credits, the real warrior is introduced to American fast food and returns to his people too fat and sluggish to spear himself a snack, let alone a missionary.

A dreadful animated movie stuffed with bad puns and little internal logic. More dangerous than the world icing over is the danger of eyeballs rolling back into the heads of parents accompanying kids to this.

Lohan's good work in movies like "Mean Girls" and the "Freaky Friday" remake is a faint memory as she struggles through antics, unfunny pratfalls and squirmingly bad set pieces.

Jazz is a good metaphor for Robert Altman's movies they're often improvisational, free-form and full of unexpected dissonance. Unfortunately, his movies also fall prey to the hazards of jazz they can be boring, screechy and endless. Thus, Kansas City. [16 Aug 1996, p.49]

In his new concert film, a train wreck of self-regard, self-pity and not-so-humble pie, Martin Lawrence doth protest too much.

The main problem with this whole Jerry Bruckheimer-produced mess is that they took a promising comedy setup and squandered it by trying to make a legitimate spy thriller out of it.

Crude and giggly.

It has a distinctive look but a few too many recycled ideas; better luck on the next crash-landing.

Lame children's entertainment.

You might want to sit out this season.

Silly supernatural Viking epic.

This self-conscious movie by Katja von Garnier is shot like a music video, stocked with quick cuts, lip-synching and fantasy performances.

Rickman and Richardson are excellent actors put to ghastly waste.

In this unpleasant mess of a movie, a heroin-like drug called "blue" is said to be "more addictive than air."

This dismally strained comedy defies laughs and doesn't contain an ounce of internal logic.

A desperately unfunny comedy that wastes a brand-name cast.

It's brain-dead start to finish.

A failed experiment in magical realism that makes you wonder where the magic went.

Never gets at what makes Quek tick.

If you haven't had enough of the Central Park rampage videos showing human nature at its worst, you could always pay to see Boricua's Bond.

Just about every race and creed come off badly in this small-scale thriller.

Unfocused and shrill.

If you want pretentious and unsavory, check out Buddy Boy.

There ought to be a law about transporting humor internationally.

Hell is sitting through a movie in which you have no respect for the protagonist and the "surprise" ending is as clearly lit as the exit sign.

Screenwriters look to many sources for inspiration. In the case of Saving Silverman, they looked behind them, and liked what they saw.

It's enough to encourage the aspiring film makers in the audience, no matter how wee in age, to yell "Cut!"

See it only if potty-training is still the most vivid life experience in your book of memories.

So lacking in insight and gravity that it makes Dahmer seem like a pesky, pasty-faced loser who just wasn't popular enough.

Certainly a dark spirit is hovering over this inane production. Something has sucked the life out of it.

Evans fumbles through painfully extended homophobic jokes, weak double entendres and agonizingly contorted double-takes.

Macaulay Culkin still can't act, and it's no longer cute. His performance in Party Monster is so embarrassing one doesn't know where to look.

Excuse me, but didn't Bette Midler already play this role?

A depressingly hollow vehicle.

It all makes the head spin -- in the direction of the exit sign.

The story is a mess, some of the images offensive, the acting under par and the dialogue silly.

To pay for all the explosions and stunt work, the filmmakers must have decided to skimp on the screenplay. The rule of thumb is that one page of script equals one minute of movie, but there is so little dialogue in Ballistic that it could have been written on a matchbook.

A movie that shouldn't be allowed on the same campus as "Animal House."

A cheaply voyeuristic story whose "twist" is hardly worth the wait.

Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant are distilled to the very essence of their annoying tics and quirks.

There are lame comedies, and then there is Big Fat Liar, which is so lame that it merits its own reserved parking space.

Recycles the most obvious jokes from similar comedies that preceded it, such as "Tootsie," but with the most rudimentary characters.

It's a difficult issue, one that is not well served by a hollow confection like I Am Sam.

Jackie Chan finally has met his match, an opponent so deadly that none of his considerable talent or charm can fight it -- a bad movie

Satire works when it's sharp and funny. When it's not, you get New Suit, an unremarkable sour-grapes comedy about the obsequious players and inconsequential products of Hollywood.

There's definitely room for a female Woody Allen, an accolade garnered by a previous film. However, Amy's Orgasm is chirpy, shrill and coarse, more in the vein of one of Allen's more depressed periods.

Both a fan's dream and a moviegoer's nightmare: It ends up being all about those who remember and interpret Philip K. Dick and not about the man himself.

Dismal time-travel comedy that makes "Big Momma's House" look like "Citizen Kane."

The audience for this chaste teen romance won't be film lovers, as the movie is sappy and listlessly paced. But it's just the ticket for people who want their movies sanitized.

Cuba Gooding Jr. can just return his "Jerry Maguire" Oscar right now. He has no excuse for making Boat Trip, a perniciously unfunny comedy.

Unless you live and breathe exhaust fumes, there isn't much to sustain a viewer through a lame story and dialogue so pathetic.

It's a humiliating comedown for Ford, and he looks creaky and grumpy, obviously aware that he is miscast and dreading every scene.

It's a movie that should have been called on account of boredom.

Overall the tone is dark and nasty, exemplified by the inelegant signature kung-fu move of the good guys -- a backward kick to the groin.

Serving Sara is D.O.A., with nary a laugh to be found.

Witless, insulting satire of sorority girls that shamelessly ridicules the mentally challenged. The filmmakers aren't exactly Mensa candidates themselves.

A hellacious stew of romance and tragedy that gives the words "screwball" and "pathos" a bad name.

Irritating wish-fulfillment movie.

The bubble-boy niche is thankfully small. John Travolta began his career playing one in a TV movie, but this movie will undoubtedly finish off the genre for good.

Exhaustingly manic but curiously unfunny movie.

Gigli is a disaster.

What really makes the jaw drop is the presence of so many talented actors in what seems like traditional TV treacle. Saddest of all is Debra Winger, reduced to playing the wife-as-wallpaper role. For this she came back to Hollywood?

Everything to treasure about that magical, slightly malevolent feline of childhood verse is obliterated in the coarse, charmless Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat.

A tepid comedy whose only saving grace is the face of Jennifer Tilly in a crystal ball.

The screenwriters claim they got the idea for this dreary thing by glimpsing a besieged Chelsea Clinton in the stands at a basketball game.

This amateurish drama about street-dance contests and busted friendship is about as real as Lil' Kim's chest.

A really lame attempt to expand the marketing reach of the PBS-TV series.

Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ is the most virulently anti-Semitic movie made since the German propaganda films of World War II. It is sickening.

Has some good music and hot dancing -- filmed choppily -- but it completely lacks the magic of its predecessor.

Filmmaker Josell Ramos has his heart in the right place, but his camera is usually in the wrong place, complete with bad lighting and all-around lousy tech credits.

The funny thing about this unfunny movie is that the cast is brimming with actors who are usually quite engaging. The Whole Ten Yards must be very potent chloroform, indeed, to make Willis, Perry, Peet and Pollak such zombies.

Attempts a coolness quotient it can't pull off.

Gross, nearly unwatchable comedy.

Thanks to that dog-torture element, Garfield may be too upsetting for younger kids. Meanwhile, older kids (let alone parents) will want to put this movie behind them like yesterday's hairball.

It's just as well that John Carpenter makes horror movies, because here's a horrifying thought picture James Woods as an action hero. [30 October 1998, p. 44]

Don't see The Inheritance if you're already depressed. This airless downer from Danish director Per Fly is about an heir who makes one wrong decision from which even lousier decisions effortlessly flow.

The story is tired, the comedy forced and the mother's larger-than-life quirks are an acquired taste.

Its shapelessness and the cultural differences in acting style will keep this version filed under "cult oddity."

Not only achingly dull, it has no respect for its origins.

It is not the worst movie ever made, as some critics claim, but it does a passing imitation.

Features even more toddlers acting in a way only collectors of velvet paintings will consider irresistible.

Ben Affleck's goose is cooked with Surviving Christmas, a movie that makes "Gigli" look like one of the crowning moments in his career.

A gore movie with no teeth.

The gimmick is that the script is based on the real-life experiences of actress Stephanie Bennett, who plays Samantha.

The movie is paint-by-numbers with several numbers skipped.

What if you made a pornographic movie with a real story line and better acting but didn't show any sex? You'd get The Fluffer, a movie that sounds and feels like the real thing but isn't.

For devout fans of the greenish monster and for those looking to shoot fish in a barrel.

An abysmal comedy that should have been strangled in its crib.

What Short does not deserve - and neither do we - is a feature-length movie about Jiminy.

A dreary comedy in the same mold (as "The Bad News Bears," only moldier.

Gore fans will dig the makeup effects and some of the tongue-in-cheek slice-&-dice.

This stripped-down premise made the first "Transporter" fun: It's all about driving skills and choreographed fights, not logic. Even with so few requirements, Transporter 2 runs on empty.

A remedial comedy for idiots.

It wastes no time getting to the punching, kicking, stomping and zapping that passes for a cinematic event. [22Nov1997 Pg. 35]

A weird, unpleasant little movie.

The fog also does something genuinely eerie: It causes everyone in the cast to deliver dreadful performances and display inappropriate reactions when their friends are drowned, burned, stabbed or thrown into glass display cases.

Shot on digital video, made on the run whenever Watts was available between gigs, the movie is a pointless, tedious eyesore.

There's no drug potent enough to make Grandma's Boy worth 87 minutes of your life.

The esteemed actor Derek Jacobi goes slumming as someone who pulls that metal badge from the chest of a cadaver. Shakespeare it's not.

The film would be totally unwatchable without the very real charisma of Diesel.

Virtually plotless, the movie does its best to be offensive, but not in the service of any particular theme. The use of mentally impaired youngsters as actors is cheap and exploitative. You can only wonder about the emperor's new clothes, and how much Hollywood paid for them. [17 Oct. 1997, p.52]

The actor's directorial debut is a lugubriously poetic homage to the famed Chelsea Hotel, which is to New York's artistic and beatnik past what Ellis Island is to the story of American immigration.

Profoundly depressing.

This needlessly vulgar exercise in overuse of the n-word bills itself as a comedy. Even the outtakes over the closing credits don't live up to that.

Talk about waste products; think of the time, effort and money that went into this movie.