You'll have to swallow this gooey confection whole or spit it out after the first couple of bites.

The final sad joke is this: Weitz took a wonderful story about the danger of severing a soul from its otherwise empty body and did that very thing to his source.

Lee sleepwalks through his part, even in romantic scenes with equally bland Cameron Richardson.

The film is a saggy, oddly mean-spirited takeoff of "Walk the Line."

No movie this year will better embody Macbeth's description of life itself: "a tale ... full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Of COURSE it's bad. It was always going to be. But it's worse than necessary.

Director Doug Liman and a trio of writers eventually forget the rules they set up and hurl combatants to places they could never have seen or even known about: Who'd willingly project himself into the middle of a Chechnyan war zone?

Just Will Ferrell doing the same man-boy shtick he usually does.

The script by Kristofor Brown and Seth Rogen and the direction by Steven Brill have a careless, never-gave-a-damn feel that's as insulting to viewers as the film is dull.

Speed Racer is chaotic as a six-ring circus, gaudy as a transvestites convention and soullessly cute as a robot puppy.

As a film, it's flabby and utterly predictable.

Sandler proves even a hardened Israeli secret service agent can be an imbecilic juvenile.

It's neither dull nor stimulating, neither off-putting nor engaging.

We waited 10 years for a sequel to the movie version of "The X-Files" – and the best Chris Carter could do is The X-Files: I Want to Believe?

Solace is especially frustrating when it moves down interesting paths, then stops.

Allen's laziness is startling, even in so mechanical a filmmaker. He uses a monotonous narrator to tell us what the characters think and do, though he then shows them performing the actions that have just been described.

OK, so no plot, really.

The best way to sit through Max Payne is by using minimal brain.

A feel-nothing movie – a series of disconnected, implausible incidents that end as arbitrarily as they began, in an effort to inspire emotions the picture never justifies.

A brazen title card declares this " true story." (Wow, not even "based on.") However many facts may be accurate, the movie feels contrived, with climax piled upon climax.

Reviewers sometimes insult actors by saying they don't vary their expressions across an entire movie. But until Knowing, I never thought that could literally be true. Nicolas Cage does widen his eyes with about 15 minutes left in the film.

It's a terrible muddle unless you take it as a satire on the Age of Ellis, the Jacqueline Susann for that Flock of Seagulls era. That way, the unintentional laughs seem almost ironic.

Naive but ambitious, it comes across as a "Battlestar Galactica" vetted by pacifists, "Clone Wars" neutered for Saturday morning kids' TV.

The sequel to the 2008 hit “Twilight” makes no effort to satisfy outsiders. It's strictly for devotees who won't balk at plot absurdities, clunky dialogue and patchy characterizations.

Ronan, however, transcends the script. She's innocent yet wise, gentle yet forceful. She's the one thing in this picture that shows how great a movie The Lovely Bones might have been, had the people who made it believed in the book with all their hearts.

Angelina Jolie is definitely worth her salt as an action hero, but Salt is never worth its Angelina Jolie.

An unmemorable, frenzied, characterless hodgepodge that delights the eyes while numbing the brain.

The Critic's Code of Honor forbids me from explaining in detail why the storytelling is so inept, because I'd have to spoil the silly surprises. So I'll say only this: You can interpret the climax two ways, and both will probably infuriate you.

The sequel doesn't develop the characters, interject any warmth into its frenetic story or take us anywhere we haven't been.

The film's filled with inconsequential scenes and supporting characters who add useless atmosphere or by-the-book diversity.

The worst thing about the picture is that the people involved all seem to realize it's generic.

The movie that's meant to be his (Apatow) most personal turns out to be his most dully generic.

I hope his life was less dull than the movie he's made from it.

It begins as energetic, clichéd nonsense and ends as irritating, clichéd nonsense.

Like the Big E himself. It starts out fast, dangerous, sexy, confident, funny with an edge. It ends up confused, bloated, unable to leave the stage when it should.

The picture lasts 111 minutes, partly because of numerous false endings. Now, that constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

The movie's weirdness isn't organic; it's imposed, like barber-pole stripes painted on a prison wall.

Mostly, you get a pain in the head from the assault on your senses and déjà vu as thick as heartburn after an anchovy pizza.

Atmosphere goes only so far in a story where the major characters fade from memory.

"I didn't write this." In heaven, Graham Greene is mumbling those same words over and over right now.

And what of Roger Avary, the writer who shared the Academy Award for writing with Tarantino? He continues to plummet toward oblivion with The Rules of Attraction, which ranks with the Great Pyramid of Khufu as a monument to self-indulgence.

Totally underwhelming.

It's as French as a half-smoked Gauloise and, like a half-smoked Gauloise, it stinks.

I think this camp classic is an accident along the lines of "Showgirls": howlingly funny, filled with gratingly earnest performances, riddled with dialogue that will be quoted at parties.

It's the cheapest looking, least exciting, least funny Chan project I've ever seen.

It's the poster child for bad taste, not to mention bad construction.

It's a fable that descends rapidly into nonsense.

The plot's as thin as a debutante's cigarette case.

Self-respecting filmgoers will find this a "Walk" to dismember.

A painful bore.

A three-hour-and-10-minute exercise in slight characterization, pointlessly showy editing and vapid plotting.

Director Ivan Reitman used to know how to tell a silly story, back around the time of "Stripes" and "Ghostbusters."

Let me say, in my desire always to be positive, that Serving Sara is the funniest film I know where a man sticks his arm up a bull's rectum to massage its prostate.

Embodies all that's wrong with the sellout culture of Hollywood.

Affleck simply wasn't meant to play action heroes or tough guys. He's about as tough as tapioca pudding.

Spike Lee's films have been provocative, blunt, thoughtful, misguided, daring, sentimental, funny, honest and silly. But 25th Hour earns the director two new adjectives: irrelevant and tedious.

Designed to appeal to people who thought "She's All That" was too mentally demanding.

I don't know if Nispel and Scott Kosar, who make their feature film debuts here, are the worst director and writer in the world, though they might well represent the United States if anyone holds a competition. I do know they deliver a total of zero laughs, scares or surprises in this remake of the infamously creepy 1974 picture.

Campion has no clue how to sustain suspense and no actress of the caliber of Holly Hunter, Nicole Kidman or Kate Winslet (her recent leading ladies) in the main role.

As a British politician said of a corrupt but articulate peer, "The Cat in the Hat" is like a rotten mackerel seen by moonlight: It shines as it stinks.

Studios can release movies even more insultingly dumb, crudely assembled and cheaply produced than this one, though such an achievement will require some effort.

Does David Arquette have a career? If so, what's he doing in this unintentionally hilarious gangster movie?

You won't see a single joke here you haven't encountered before, all in funnier forms.

Writer-director Reverge Anselmo has created a movie of ineptness so perfect and unified as to boggle the mind.

Represents everything that over-budgeted Hollywood can possibly get wrong in a period piece: It feels both long and slow, it's unfocused and self-contradictory, its generic characters are played too broadly, it's anachronistic..

Pitof can be blamed for the 89-cent digitized sets, the jerky or rubbery special effects, some clunky performances and more continuity errors than I could count.

Emotionally stultifying and brain-dead.

Birth, which should never have been conceived, is obscure in every way: visually, philosophically and psychologically.

This movie is an act of hubris so huge that, in Alexander's time, it would draw lightning bolts from contemptuous gods. Today it will get sniggers from stunned critics and a collective yawn from a public unlikely to share Stone's egomania.

Slater narrates as if reading a restaurant menu. Reid seems to have learned each long sentence in segments, so she wouldn't be overtaxed.

Messing may simply be one of those actresses who's the right size for TV and the wrong size for the big screen.

Everything here has been done better in other books, other movies. The lone remarkable thing is the level of violence, which exposes the cowardice and hypocrisy of the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings system.

Weak, obligatory stabs at humor make it more generic than it might've been.

Even if we leave aside the obvious time travel paradoxes, we can have a good horse laugh at the rest of the plot's inanities.

Not even the repeated sight of Jessica Alba in a bikini, the camera caressing her like the eyes of a strip-club patron, can lift this leaden refuse off the ocean floor.

Goes awry within moments and never gets on track. The scripters and director Harold Ramis have no idea whether to aim for cynical humor, film-noir romance or post-crime tension, so they miss all three targets completely.

Babbit clumsily underlines emotional moods.

Its main feature is incessant, unimaginative profanity...Take out the cursing, and you're left with a plebeian drama about angry, aimless potheads, sloppily directed by the man who wrote it.

As close to perfectly unwatchable as it can be.

Once again, something that might have been a faintly amusing sketch on "Saturday Night Live" -- maybe even a tolerable 30-minute short, had the writing been more clever -- gets tortured into the shape of a feature film.

Bertino directs at a funereal pace. Speedman remains comatose, though Tyler flickers fitfully to life. The mournful look on her face suggests she's remembering the days when she was given more psychologically complex scripts, such as "Armageddon."

I'm afraid it just stinks.

The most catastrophic misfire in a dreadful movie season.

I do have one overpowering Y2K fear: that Hollywood will keep belching out movies as excruciatingly dull, brutal, mindless and overlong as End of Days.

Whenever the music subsides and the characters speak the Coens' lines, the film turns back into mush.

About 45 minutes into Swordfish, the picture degenerates permanently from drivel to sleaze (only a short drop).

Just when the story reaches its idiotic nadir, Neil (Diamond) shows up to save the day with a song and a smile.

The worst horror sequel of this or many another summer.

It's bombastic, chaotic, plodding, visually dreary and patchily written.

Zomboid, convoluted excuse for a thriller is among year's worst.

It's an uncoordinated, flailing hodgepodge of music videos, chases, crashes and moronic plot twists.

This script by the husband-and-wife team of Leora Barish and Henry Bean is hopelessly contrived and takes forever to get to the point. (I warn you: The film does not absolutely identify the killer.)

Bad actors, bad music and bad plot make it a hellish bummer.

It's well-shot and well-edited by Hollywood standards, though special effects don't reach the top Hollywood level. The stars have their hearts in their work: Cameron and Johnson don't have great depth but give their all. Currie makes a subtle villain.