Maitland McDonagh, TV Guide
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For 2,229 reviews, this critic has graded:
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43% higher than the average critic
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3% same as the average critic
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54% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 4.8 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Maitland McDonagh's Scores
- Movies
| Average review score: | 54 |
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| Highest review score: |
Critic Score
100
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| Lowest review score: |
Critic Score
0
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Score distribution:
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Positive: 722 out of 2229
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Mixed: 1,241 out of 2229
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Negative: 266 out of 2229
2,229
movie reviews
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Maitland McDonagh 20
Despite the futuristic setting, which relies so heavily on GGI effects that it looks like a feature-length production concept painting, this film is painfully predictable. -
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Maitland McDonagh 50
Though handsomely mounted, this parable of intersecting destinies and implacable tragedy is as lifeless as a wax tableau. -
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Maitland McDonagh 25
Ritchie wraps this folderol in cinematic razzle-dazzle, including animated sequences, reverse motion, trompe l'oeil production design and tricky lighting. But it's still claptrap. -
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Maitland McDonagh 30
There's some fun to be had in seeing two of TV's resident sweetie pies, Campbell and ER's Noah Wyle, play unrepentant sons of bitches, but it's not enough. -
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Maitland McDonagh 50
The film delivers lots of high-pitched hysteria but never manages to make its spoiled protagonists interesting. -
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Maitland McDonagh 20
The profoundly unconvincing CGI work only makes the sorry screenplay and lackluster performances look worse. -
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Maitland McDonagh 25
The lesson is that money can buy a vanity project, but it can't buy talent, imagination or an audience. -
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Maitland McDonagh 20
What really sinks the film, though, is the utter absence of chemistry between Perry and Willis. -
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Maitland McDonagh 0
Is there anything more irritating than an exploitation filmmaker with self-referentiality on the brain? -
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Maitland McDonagh 40
Shot in shades of steely gray and streaked with near-constant rain, this gloomy revenge thriller is a sadistic cartoon. -
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Maitland McDonagh 30
This is a terrible movie in its own right, tasteless and condescending -- if Sandler's character is an Everyman, than the Everyman of today is a boorish jackass -
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Maitland McDonagh 50
This package of three short films originally produced for German television is sex-themed without being especially sexy. -
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Maitland McDonagh 50
The politics get pretty short shrift, but cigarettes and liquor are everywhere. -
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Maitland McDonagh 50
Fart, feces and gonad gags notwithstanding, this knockabout comedy is no more vulgar than most contemporary children's films, and more good-natured than many. -
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Maitland McDonagh 50
Horror buffs looking for a novel twist on genre formulas should look elsewhere, but this body-count potboiler about a sinister video game and the poor dopes who make the mistake of playing it is the movie equivalent of junk food: It's not good, but it's predictable and even satisfying, in a low-expectations way. -
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Maitland McDonagh 30
Despite its provocative premise, this throwback to deliberately paced, low-tech chillers of the pre-CGI era is a dreary slog through haunted-child movie cliches -- portentous dreams, glassy-eyed stares, cryptic pronouncements. -
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Maitland McDonagh 30
This mean-spirited invisible man movie tries to hide its poverty of fresh ideas behind a load of state-of-the-art special effects. -
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Maitland McDonagh 20
This bare-bones plot is merely an excuse to string together a series of gross-out jokes involving bodily fluids, private parts, food and genetic deformities. -
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Maitland McDonagh 60
The result is sometimes strained, but often fresh and funny. And the sequence in which the entire cast sings "Avenues and Alleyways," bombastic '70s crooner Tony Christie's lush ode to thug life, is worth the price of admission in itself. -
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Maitland McDonagh 40
A straight-faced throwback to the glory days of mutant wildlife on the rampage. -
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Maitland McDonagh 40
Although the story is as predictable as can be -- "surprise" twist ending included -- the performances are better than those in most super-low budget horror pictures, and Jessica Gallant's super-16mm cinematography is surprisingly handsome. -
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Maitland McDonagh 20
Its misogyny, homophobia and overall grossness undermine the tired gags, and its relentless portrayal of African-American women as money-grubbing hootchie mamas (the sole exception is, of course, Dre's mom) would be wholly unacceptable if a white filmmaker had been at the helm. -
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Maitland McDonagh 30
As to the dream sequence featuring Lonnie's and Brandy's trash-talking babies, it's just creepy. -
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Maitland McDonagh 38
Steve Austin is conspicuously inarticulate and uncharismatic. Former soccer lout Vinnie Jones, whom no one will ever mistake for Laurence Olivier, acts rings around him. -
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Maitland McDonagh 30
Its real problem is that Matilda Dixon, apparently conceived as a cross between the Blair Witch and Freddy Krueger, is an oddly characterless bogeyman, perhaps because she's 100 percent special effects technology with no actor underneath. -
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Maitland McDonagh 50
Nathanson's script has a disheartening let's get on with it air, and the film feels like marathon training... -
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Maitland McDonagh 25
While the film isn't entirely amateurish -- shots are cut together and the cinematography is professional if not precisely stylish -- the story feels as though large pieces are missing and the characters behave so inconsistently that there's zero incentive to care about their tribulations. -
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Maitland McDonagh 30
Directed and co-written by country singer Dwight Yoakam, this film just screams "vanity project." -
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Maitland McDonagh 50
Bodrov's staging and cutting does a perfectly good job conveying their anthropomorphized feelings and motives; the spoken drivel is just a distraction. The film's human characters are largely inconsequential. -
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Maitland McDonagh 40
Allowing for the fact that any Pokemon movie is essentially a feature-length commercial designed to make little kids want Pokémon stuff, this one has its moments. -
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Maitland McDonagh 40
The movie's gossamer-thin plot, padded with dream sequences and flashbacks to scenes you saw less than an hour earlier, exists only as an excuse for obvious homages to better films, stunt casting...and what pass for clever remarks in circles unfamiliar with real wit. -
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Maitland McDonagh 38
Morgan borrows Christmas-specific nastiness from a wide range of fright flicks, but the result is less than the sum of its parts. -
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Maitland McDonagh 38
Postal's touches of wit are lost in the flying body parts, gross-out gags, and the full frontal spectacle of Foley's no-longer-private parts. -
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Maitland McDonagh 40
If Reeves weren't onboard this picture would have gone straight to video. -
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Maitland McDonagh 75
Driver and Renner deliver haunting performances in this story of crime and punishment. -
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Maitland McDonagh 40
This picture's b-movie values probably play better on video than in theaters. -
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Maitland McDonagh 50
The premise is pretty simple, and at two hours the murky sound, muddy low-light images and frequently dreadful acting are a little tough to take. -
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Maitland McDonagh 30
Maybe gross-out romantic comedy is a shallow well, and it was simply Rogers's misfortune to find himself with a bucket full of sludge. -
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Maitland McDonagh 40
Gets off to a pretty intriguing start before degenerating into a series of routine action sequences. -
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Maitland McDonagh 40
The bad news is that, though professionally produced on a micro-budget, Azita Zendel's ambitious writing-directing debut is undermined by an awkward script and some very amateurish acting. -
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Maitland McDonagh 50
Walks a thin line between refreshing irreverence and shameless exploitation of offensive gay stereotypes. -
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Maitland McDonagh 30
The less you demand of this bloody, by-the-numbers sequel, the more you'll enjoy it. -
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Maitland McDonagh 25
The laughs are low, the breasts are high, and the film is instantly forgettable. -
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Maitland McDonagh 30
It's all terribly schematic, thematically obvious and not in the least bit funny. -
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Maitland McDonagh 40
Ledger swirls his cassock glamorously, while Weller is clearly concealing cloven hoofs beneath his; Addy plays the fool and the one-note Sossamon is thoroughly annoying, as fey as Meg Tilly but without Tilly's redeeming faraway air. -
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Maitland McDonagh 60
Cunningham tackles a complicated subject, rejecting the stridency favored by filmmakers of the Spike Lee persuasion in favor of a more even-handed tone. -
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Maitland McDonagh 40
A lifelong baseball enthusiast, director and co-producer Mike Tollin -- persuaded many real-life baseball figures to make cameo appearances. -
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Maitland McDonagh 50
This convoluted, time and continent-tripping tale is heavy on the adolescent angst and swoony romanticism. -
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Maitland McDonagh 30
This coarse, nearly incoherent action picture apparently aspires to a 'Pulp Fiction"-like mixture of brutality and self-referential insouciance. -
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Maitland McDonagh 30
Hardman is a grating, mannered onscreen presence, which is especially unfortunate in light of the fine work done by most of the rest of her cast. -
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Maitland McDonagh 40
Despite the handsome production values and best efforts of the attractive young cast, it's hard to get deeply involved with the frantic "what's going on?" sturm und drang. -
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Maitland McDonagh 20
Frenetic and cheerless action aside, the film's real problem is the Cat, who looks most unmagically like a second-string college sports mascot and conducts himself like a risque baggy-pants comedian. -
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Maitland McDonagh 50
The script, based on a Dark Horse comic-book series, is hugely predictable, but the robot effects by veteran Phil Tippett are nastily entertaining. -
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Maitland McDonagh 50
A welcome alternative to such hyperkinetic drivel as Pokémon. -
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Maitland McDonagh 20
Even Spade's most dedicated fans would probably be better off staying home and watching a "Just Shoot Me" rerun. -
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Maitland McDonagh 60
Character actress Lin Shaye, usually relegated to grotesque supporting roles in mainstream comedies, is a revelation as Buono's embittered, cancer-ridden mother. -
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Maitland McDonagh 25
It fails utterly as a horror picture, although it delivers plenty of PG-13-rated flesh and unintentional laughs. -
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Maitland McDonagh 30
The tiny, impassive-faced Liu is a disaster. She looks cute in her custom commando gear, but she's not actress enough to make Sever's ridiculous, faux hard-boiled dialogue sound like anything but the formulaic nonsense it is. -
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Maitland McDonagh 40
Director Rick Rosenthal ("Halloween II") seems to have forgotten everything he ever knew about generating suspense, relying on cliched shadows and grainy, handheld images supposedly shot by the increasingly terrified students. -
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Maitland McDonagh 30
Though there's some trashy fun to be had in the film's first half, this cynical sequel -- devolves into space junk even faster than the unfortunate Ross. -
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Maitland McDonagh 50
The result is 93 very long minutes' worth of admirably committed actors putting themselves through the emotional wringer to very little end. -
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Maitland McDonagh 20
This big budget mish-mash is almost unbelievably derivative and shockingly cheap looking. -
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Maitland McDonagh 20
Director Jamie Blanks "Urban Legend" appears to be carving himself a career making slasher movies for a new generation; unfortunately, he's in no way improving on the originals. -
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Maitland McDonagh 25
Why do moviegoers and gamers keep going to see video-game-based movies when neither group is ever happy with the results? -
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Maitland McDonagh 25
An all-but-incoherent mess whose main components are palpably fake-looking CGI effects, video-game-style action sequences and Milla Jovovich's admirably taut abdomen, Kurt Wimmer's film epitomizes just about everything wrong with post-MATRIX, comic book-/video-game-inspired, Hong Kong-action-style sci-fi thrillers. -
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Maitland McDonagh 30
The script, by co-writers and -directors Douglas McGrath and Peter Askin, is intermittently clever, but their direction is leaden and assassinates every gag with a lethal accuracy the CIA could only hope to achieve. -
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Maitland McDonagh 20
The spectacle of the near-naked Ricki (Lopez) striking sexually provocative yoga poses while floridly extolling the virtues of female genitalia is particularly mortifying, but it's only one of many horribly miscalculated scenes. -
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Maitland McDonagh 40
The effectiveness of this kind of issue-driven give and take relies heavily on casting, and Ritchie puts himself at a disadvantage: Madonna looks terrific in a bikini but she can't act, and the younger Giannini is stunt casting. -
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Maitland McDonagh 38
This trashy, overwrought thriller gets itself worked up into a fine, sleazy lather that recalls the matricidal glories "Die! Die! My Darling!" and "You'll Like My Mother", then wimps out at the end. -
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Maitland McDonagh 20
The pacing is slack, the comedy has an oddly sour tone and frankly, no matter how hard the script tries to paint Sean as a petty martinet with a stick up his butt, it's hard not to sympathize with him. -
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Maitland McDonagh 20
Surprisingly, Hurley comes off better than either of her demonstrably more versatile co-stars; she's not much of an actress, but she has an engagingly saucy swagger and her open-mouthed expression of outraged disbelief is priceless. -
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Maitland McDonagh 25
Hippolyte subsequently reinvented himself first as a director of baroque erotic thrillers and then as music-video maestro to pop tarts like Britney Spears, but stalk-and-slash horror -- for all its porn-movie rhythms -- appears to have defeated him. -
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Maitland McDonagh 30
The dramatic scenes are frequently unintentionally funny, and the action sequences -- clearly the main event -- are surprisingly uninvolving, especially given that director Christian Duguay is an extreme skiing buff who habitually shoots dangerous stunts himself. -
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Maitland McDonagh 50
Formulaic to the core, this reworking of the fondly remembered high-school slasher picture works surprisingly well on its own terms. -
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Maitland McDonagh 38
The most shocking thing about this ludicrous serial-killer shocker, released the week troubled 21-year-old former child star Lindsay Lohan was arrested on DUI and cocaine-possession charges, is that it's the kind of film actresses generally make when their careers are well and truly on the skids. -
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Maitland McDonagh 20
The air of low-budget Eurotrash is unmistakable. Almost everybody has an unidentifiable accent. -
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Maitland McDonagh 30
Preposterous plotting and interchangeable young actors. -
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Maitland McDonagh 50
The plot is simply an excuse for a string of good-natured dope jokes (come on -- you have to love that their hookah is called Billy Bong Thornton) and goofy sight gags inspired by everything from Jerry Garcia to Jerry Maguire, most of which are undoubtedly funniest if you're eight miles high. -
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Maitland McDonagh 30
There's a germ of an interesting idea here, but it's smothered by gloomy cinematography a la "Seven" (1995) and grating implausibilities, like the fact that everyone lives in the kind of cavernous, dankly art-directed dumps that only internet millionaires and trust fund twinkies can afford in the real New York. -
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Maitland McDonagh 40
Unfortunately, Flicker wasn't able to rise above the limitations of his microbudget, and his message is compromised by student-film production values and performances that range from adequate to pretty awful. -
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Maitland McDonagh 25
Director Uwe Boll sticks with what he knows -- how to turn video games into dull, cheap-looking movies. -
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Maitland McDonagh 30
This sour coming of age story is a testament to his self-centeredness and dogged perseverance. -
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Maitland McDonagh 30
Unfortunately, the mystery isn't mysterious and the characters are caricatures; the wintery New England landscape is the most striking thing about the film, but it's not interesting enough to justify watching it for 100 minutes. -
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Maitland McDonagh 40
An amazing artifact; the decor and lighting mix '70s tackiness with odd '50s touches, the sound design is elaborate. -
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Maitland McDonagh 20
An arty fright flick that's neither artistic nor the least bit scary. -
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Maitland McDonagh 40
Jeremy Irons, giving what is, hands down, the worst performance of his career. -
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Maitland McDonagh 40
The music is lavishly overproduced pop pablum of the first order, and there's a deeply shallow irony in the fact the film's most memorable tune, KC and the Sunshine Band's 28-year-old "That's the Way I Like It," is easily twice the age of its target audience. -
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Maitland McDonagh 50
The greatest mystery, though, is how this thoroughly trashy picture wound up opening theatrically, rather than going direct to video. -
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Maitland McDonagh 20
The less said about the story's twists and turns the better, except to warn that they become increasing preposterous with each passing minute. -
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Maitland McDonagh 40
No one expects a light teen romance to be "Madame Bovary," but this is Colorforms filmmaking. -
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Maitland McDonagh 40
The film isn't even enjoyably sleazy: It's just dumb and tacky. -
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Maitland McDonagh 30
This big-budget bore looks lovely but is so miscalculated that you can't help but wonder whether anyone involved had ever seen the original. -
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Maitland McDonagh 20
The gags are familiar collegiate stuff, involving horny young men, horny old whores -- horny young tramps -- silly foreigners, uptight authority figures, homosexuals and sassy fat women. -
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Maitland McDonagh 30
This picture is just shapeless and shrill. It's disposable, forgettable and aimed at an audience that doesn't care. -
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Maitland McDonagh 20
This tedious hodgepodge of martial-arts mayhem, bogus mysticism and computer-generated special effects doesn't even pretend to have a plot. -
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Maitland McDonagh 20
This amateurish comedy features some amazing sequences shot in Moscow. But everything else about it is second rate. -
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Maitland McDonagh 20
The story's broad strokes are painfully clichéd and its details make no sense at all. -
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Maitland McDonagh 25
The musical number that runs during the closing credits funnier than anything that precedes it, which isn't saying much. -
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Maitland McDonagh 25
The lighting and makeup are exceptionally harsh; all the women look shockingly rough beneath their garish makeup. -
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Maitland McDonagh 0
Preposterous, disingenuous, remarkably unfunny and genuinely distasteful. -
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Maitland McDonagh 30
Production values are low -- though, mercifully, the sound recording is clear -- and overall the project smacks of juvenile hijinks. -
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Maitland McDonagh 0
Vulgar doesn't begin to describe it: Try one of the foulest, least funny films ever made under the rubric of black comedy. -