In its zeal to counter the negativity usually found in depictions of Mormons, God's Army eventually succumbs to overearnestness, sentimentality, and cliche.

The script is a little too clunky to serve Ricki Lake well, and Richard Benjamin's direction is a bit too sluggish to disguise her limited range as he crams this romantic fairy tale a little too forcefully into its predetermined mold. [19 Apr 1996, p.53]

The trouble with Grumpy Old Men is the patronizing attitude -- ageism, really -- that takes a too-broad approach to their geriatric world and renders it plastic. It is too cute and sanitized to allow its performers much in the way of opportunity.

while not without pleasures, I Love You to Death essentially seems a film in search of a tone. [06 Apr 1990]

Despite its lush photography, Green Card has the texture of peanut butter. It's more romantic than comedic, but there isn't an abundance of either. [11 Jan 1991]

It begins promisingly.... But the film has no center, succumbs to drift, and gets away from Hackford. [03 Mar 1984]

The movie seems destined to win a place in the nocturnal-cityscape-hell hall of fame. Its externals are brilliant, but The Hudsucker Proxy is virtually nothing but externals. [25 Mar 1994, p.52]

Mostly it's Paredes' imperious - then surprisingly generous - high-handedness that carries High Heels. [20 Dec 1991]

But despite the vibrancy of its images and the exquisiteness of its craftsmanship, Jefferson in Paris doesn't often light a fire under its material. [07 Apr 1995]

Cronenberg's direction is technically impressive, but he's better suited to stories based on surges of feeling between killers, not lovers. This M. Butterfly never takes wing. [08 Oct 1993]

Cronenberg hasn't so much filmed Naked Lunch as tamed it, turned it into entertainment, with oozy rubber bugs, big and little, that look left over from David Lynch's movie of "Dune," or the intergalactic dive from "Star Wars." [10 Jan 1992]

The strength of Jacob's Ladder is that we never know what the next scene will be. But that's also its weakness. We don't feel involved with the characters here. We just feel jerked around. Jacob's Ladder, finally, is bummer theater. [2 Nov 1990, p.73]

The enormously appealing Randle holds the screen even when the thinness of Suzan-Lori Parks' script becomes inescapably apparent. There isn't much vigorous narrative pulse, complexity or even faceting of Randle's character, and the arbitrary ending seems both forced and inconclusive. [22 Mar 1996, p.53]

The Man with Two Brains has moments, but they aren't inspired. [04 Jun 1983]

In short, when Buffy starts getting fangy, it stops being tangy. It gets all serious and earnest and flops as a teen-age love story and as a vampire thriller and even as a parody. It's not even a "Fright Night," much less a "Near Dark," and only hints at a "Lost Boys" ambience. [31 Jul 1992, p.38]

Vampire in Brooklyn isn't a disaster. In fact, it has some funny moments. But it's a long way from being the comeback movie Eddie Murphy needs. [27 Oct 1995, p.57]

The Fan isn't a strikeout, but it doesn't exactly knock the cover off the ball, either. It's more like a soft pop fly, taking its time before settling very predictably into a waiting fielder's glove. [16 Aug 1996, p.D3]

Slickly directed by Joel Schumacher, who sees that each and every button in this unabashedly manipulative film is pushed hard, Falling Down could have been deeply disturbing if it weren't so cartoony, so determined to glibly escape the moral consequences of the vicarious white-rampage fantasies to which it caters. [26 Feb 1993, p.25]

The film is content to remain at the level of the mildly entertaining, with no real surprises and not much sass. [04 Dec 1992]

Far and Away is a throwback to the handsome but stodgy historical romances Hollywood used to make, and it can at least be said that it's more ambitious than most of what we'll see this summer. [22 May 1992]

For all the care and craftsmanship that have gone into Hoffa, it's a superficial film. [25 Dec 1992]

It's acceptable Shakespeare - no more arbitrary than most stage productions, especially the willfully anachronistic ones, or the ones with political agendas thrust upon them. [18 Jan 1991]

As a performer, Murray moves through the film with a lovely doomed aplomb. And his quick verbal wit is almost enough to pull Quick Change off. But as a director, his inexperience costs him. His camera isn't as quick as his tongue. [13 Jul 1990, p.29]

The Graduate is not subtle in its writing off of the parental generation as hopelessly corrupt. [Review of re-release]

Fusco's script undercuts whatever freshness it may have brought to its view of Billy the Kid with a steady stream of howlers, most of which involve Kiefer Sutherland, as the sensitive member of the gang. [12 Aug 1988, p.24]

Before long, it runs out of steam, playing like the pilot for a TV sitcom called "Baby Knows Best." [13 Oct 1989, p.37]

The best thing about the film is the way it allows Richard Pryor to rise above the demeaning buffoon roles he's been playing for the last few years and finally play a character with dignity and style. [17 Nov 1989, p.89]

The sheer intelligence and independence of spirit in Driver's busy eyes almost carry The Governess past its structural limitations. [07 Aug 1998]

Being Human isn't totally devoid of the gentle Forsyth magic. But it doesn't have nearly enough of it. Even Williams can do only so much with an assignment that calls for him to mostly stand around looking bummed out - in quintuplicate. [06 May 1994]

All Dogs Go to Heaven" has the right spirit, and its warmth will offset what for small kids might be some scary moments. But it does seem skimpy and warmed over. [17 Nov 1989]

The Adventures of Ford Fairlane is a nonstop gross-out contest of absolutely no socially redeeming value at all, unless you happen to value laughter. Ford Fairlane is funny garbage. [11 Jul 1990, p.41]

Although idiotic, The Evil Dead at least is propelled by energy and enthusiasm. It's scarier than many a more pretentious effort, and not everything in it is borrowed. [8 Oct 1983, p.Arts1]

Avalanches are nothing compared to the deadening touch of the stereotyping and audience-insulting simplicities in the scenic but brain-dead Vertical Limit.

Causes one to wish... that movies about the supernatural could make contact with supernatural script doctors.

Maudlin script mars teen love.

A sodden-looking film.

Trips early and never gets up off the floor.

Mostly a screenful of nothingness.

Larceny at its most labored.

Awful in ways that are just clever enough often enough to make it intermittently watchable.

Stumbles over its own clumsiness until it goes down for the count.

The images are pretty, and Gene Quintano's screenplay gets everybody from point A to point B, though with no discernible knack for wit or subtlety.

The problem in The One isn't the black holes in the universe, to which the characters refer at periodic intervals, but the black hole on the screen. The One is a zero.

It plays like a pilot for what I imagine will be network TV's first all-gay sitcom.

A fatally insubstantial film.

It seems endless. It's also unusually crude and stupid, even for an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

Takes a vacation from quality.

A lot of striking pictures in this would-be feminist "Braveheart," but a film that's pretty flat and earthbound because of the limitations of the figure at its center.

Writer and director Tim Disney raises a provocative point about how radical and inconvenient true faith can be.

Starts by cheating death and ends by cheating us.

A lame little flat liner.

Even allowing for differences in national styles, Kikujiro sprawls and stumbles. It's a road movie that turns into its own detour.

Isn't going to be a contender

Strenuously as it tries, and pulse-poundingly successful as the embassy rescue scene is, Rules of Engagement never engages us.

What the Hughes brothers have come up with is, to borrow another phrase from that bygone age, a penny dreadful.

Such an utter piece of fluff so conceptually barren it might as well be a music video.

Blurs the line between black comedy and black hole.

It's a lame and painfully overextended satire of homophobia.

Consumerism is running more amok than ever, but this satire of it isn't.

Sitting through it is like waking up on Christmas morning to find a stockingful of styrofoam.

See Spot Run isn't solely responsible for the dumbing down of movies, but it's part of the dismal phenomenon.

Full of atmosphere and visuals, it's empty of anything that really matters.

Meretricious without being entertaining, it's an easy game -- and an easier film -- to sit out.

Sadly unworthy of Douglas.

So heavy and lifeless that you keep waiting for those three little front-row kibitzers from "Mystery Science Theatre 3000" to appear at the bottom of the screen to start goofing on it.

You couldn't ask for a better setting for a horror movie. What you could ask for is a better script.

Offers little in the way of pleasure, even to its target audience -- the easily pleased and undemanding.

Isn't as funny as it is crude, and isn't as crude as it is labored.

The tame, confused script eventually sinks the film, although Field shows skill directing actors.

It's "Beach Blanket Bingo" revisited, but with a Eurocast and more exotic locations.

The screenplay, with its relentlessly schematic characters saying relentlessly schematic things, is so moronic that it makes you long for a documentary on the real Cape League.

It's two hours of slumming in a vision of hell hatched from bourgeois comfort. That, and not its unsavory subject matter, is what makes it bummer theater.

One could argue that ''Lock, Stock'' and Snatch are essentially the same movie - crime comedies marked by an outlandish visual style. Which raises the question of whether Ritchie has the range to do anything else.

Never having decided whether it wants to be comedy or a sentimental hand-wringer, it tries to be both and winds up being neither.

May not emerge as the biggest disaster of the holiday movie season, if only because we haven't yet seen all the other year-end films. But it is a huge high-energy misfire, bringing Tom Cruise, Penelope Cruz, and Cameron Crowe to earth with a thud.

Occasionally wills itself to rude, crude life. But most of the time it's pretty limp.

Isn't even worth a glance.

Berlinger has approached Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 with intelligence and even a bit of thematic heft. But, frankly, the cheap thrill is gone.

Hits mostly flat notes, then a few really sour ones.

The action is mostly witless and predictable. One measure of its desperation and lack of respect for its audience is the frequency with which it labors to wring humor from flatulence and excrement gags.

It's not boring to watch, but in the end it's too lame and too tame. [21 Apr 1995]

An abundance of style and an almost total lack of substance make Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together a visually arresting but ultimately unrewarding excursion. [31 Oct 1997]

Except for a few coups de style, Amateur is a screenful of cool nothingness. [05 May 1995]

Flirt has its moments, and Ewell and Nikaidoh are auspicious additions to the Hartley rep company. But Flirt will appeal mostly to Hartley completists. [23 Aug 1996]

Mixed Nuts is that cinematic oddity: a film that's pretty awful, yet almost perversely endearing -- despite the tiredness with which it plays out its labored jokes before bringing them together in a gooey Christmas ending. [21 Dec 1994, p.94]

By now, Rocky of the drooping eyes and damaged brain has turned guru, emphasizing heart, soul and family ties when the evil promoter starts goading him and playing mind games with his protege. Stallone, said to be following Arnold Schwarzenegger into comedy, is starting earlier than anyone realized. [16 Nov 1990, p.78]

There's no getting around the fact that it's an uneven exercise that shows signs of having gestated too long. [04 Jun 1999]

The Dead Pool is not a subtle movie or a bloodless one, although it does manage to put its own twist on the usual car chase sequence. [13 Jul 1988, p.59]

The Disney people have taken such obvious care in making Return to Oz that it's a shame it didn't turn out better. It has its moments - mostly visual - but when it isn't a grim downer, it's largely inert. [21 Jun 1985, p.21]

Despite its good looks and expertly turned performances, it trivializes Kafka and his work. The simplistic optimism behind it is more terrifying than anything we actually see on screen. Sitting through Kafka is like watching somebody staff a suicide hotline by telling callers to just lighten up. [21 Feb. 1992, p.28]

The sequel goes down the tubes by spreading itself across four time zones and inviting comparison to the original by spending most of its time back in 1955, where another mess must be set right. [22 Nov 1989, p.35]

A crass, witless knockoff of better films.

For all its antic grasping it lies flatter on the screen than its graphic novel source lies on the page.

A supernatural thriller that is neither super, natural, nor thrilling.

A sequel whose time has come - and gone.

The kind of comedy that takes the fun out of stupidity.

Slides instantly into the realm of the forgettable.

Gooding plays the worst role I've ever seen him play in a movie...he perpetuates a kind of black stereotype that should have become history years ago.

The most dumbed-down mob comedy in years. It's the kind of movie you tie around the ankles of a stiff you're tossing into deep water and never want to see again.

The flat tire of summer movies.

A flagrantly retro example of a tired genre that would vanish in a puff of smoke if anger management classes were to enter the picture, or if it would ever occur to any one of its endless stream of victims to reach for a light switch before proceeding into a spooky place.

A reassuring little cheeseball of a movie.

Should have been an inaudible man movie. Every time the characters open their mouths, they hammer it deeper into the ground.

The question in Red Planet isn't whether there's any life on Mars, but whether there's any life in the film. The answer is no.

A lame romantic comedy that is neither romantic nor comedic.

Pretty lame stuff. Already it seems to be passing with the speed of light into the limbo of utterly forgettable "who-will-I-take-to-the-prom?" movies.

French Kiss is a French miss. It's got the settings, but it has little magic, less charm and almost no chemistry between Meg Ryan's heartsick American innocent and Kevin Kline's shady Frenchman. [5 May 1995, p.57]

Van Sant winds up with disconnected, dispirited pieces that never come together and lift off the screen with a whoosh of sly high spirits. [20 May 1994]

It plays like a crude "Godfather" parody, the sort that might amuse as a 10-minute sketch on "Saturday Night Live," but curdles and collapses as a 143-minute film. [09 Dec 1983]

Staying Alive, the sequel to John Travolta's "Saturday Night Fever," plays like wet cement. [16 Jul 1983]

Although the limits on Beverly Hills Cop III are pretty obvious, it's not a total write-off. Still, it's time to stop making movies about Murphy's Motown cop and start making one about Serge. [25 May 1994, p.69]

Its squandering of talent makes Class Action a film that deserves to be disbarred, not reviewed. [15 Mar 1991]

Lethal Weapon 3 is a big, dumb, noisy, comic strip of a movie that begins and ends in flames.

The concept of Air America is refreshing, but its enactment goes nowhere fast. [10 Aug 1990]

Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte are back in Another 48 HRS., and so is some of the chemistry between them. But although this sequel is more amped up than the original "48 HRS.," most of the thrills are gone. [8 Jun 1990, p.35]

It's amazingly suspenseless and devoid of substance. [05 Mar 1993]

Nightwatch quickly declines from creepy to silly. [17 Apr 1998]

Johnny Suede is too devoid of content to sustain our interest. [19 Sep 1992]

The only thing that keeps Cool World from imploding is that Bakshi turns it into a series of animator's riffs, with little explosions of toon action erupting like video game novas into the foreground of the story that isn't happening. [10 Jul 1992]

This one is hollow and caves in on itself, growing wearisome and posed, ending in a burst of salvational violence and a coda of sentimentality masquerading as transcendent toughness. [13 Jan 1995]

Phar Lap wastes its brilliant potential through embarrassingly inept acting, a cloying soundtrack, stereotyped characters and pedestrian direction. [13 Jul 1984]

Virtuosity doesn't really compute, but there's going to be more of its kind of cyberaction, not less. [4 Aug 1995, pg. 51]

Back to the Future III has no future. The reason is that it never works up much of a past as it sends its gull-winged DeLorean time machine back to the Old West. In effect, it goes back to the Age of Steam and runs out of gas. [25 May 1990, p.45]

The buzz was that Fair Game reshot its ending. They should have reshot its painfully fabricated beginning and middle, too. [03 Nov 1995]

Plummets into the realm of ludicrous failure.