Johnson Family Vacation is simply a bad trip.

It's outrageously stereotypical and weirdly personal, so loonily exaggerated it keeps surprising you.

Plagued by continuity problems, ham-fisted storytelling and a problematic voiceover by Da Brat, Civil Brand feels less like a prison movie than a prison sentence.

It's a murky, empty-headed dive into the depths of the Antarctic and the heart of monster movie cliches that leaves you praying for most of the cast to get killed off fast, to put them (and us) out of our misery.

A movie of good intentions and awful results.

Presumably, this movie was designed to be a fun romp, and in that it fails.

Amiable Gooding still smiles through it all, weathering the cold, physical abuse and implied racism, doing his best to make his audience believe that Snow Dogs isn't offensive mush. But he can't bring it off.

Although several of her (Breillat's) previous films were intriguing and provocative, this one seems styled more as raw material for satire on "Mad TV" or "Saturday Night Live."

Its jokes aren't funny. Its sloppy direction comes courtesy of Jordan Brady, who made "The Third Wheel," another reportedly failed comedy gathering cobwebs at Miramax.

Tom Lazarus and Rick Ramage should be ashamed to have written such nonsense.

I enjoyed Eliza Dushku's mad poetess, probably for the wrong reasons, but with a project this meager, you take your artful sneers and scenic diversions where you can get them.

Just Married is what industry people refer to as "January Junk," cinematic flotsam that gets tossed ashore once they have cleared the shelves of Oscar contenders.

A fatally compromised, half-realized execution. [ 10 Jul 1992]

Mind-numbing sequel to "Pokemon the First Movie."

There may be better ways to waste your time than seeing this movie.

Contains too little of the original's campy spirit and too many whistles, bells, explosions and screams.

This movie is crushingly ordinary in every way, which with Rand I wouldn't have thought possible.

Feels about 150 years out of date.

Isn't just the weakest of the "Die Hard" pictures; it's a lousy action movie on its own terms.

Nobody expects every holiday film to ascend to classic status; in fact, we're happy to let most fade from memory as soon as the decorations are taken off the trees. We can, however, demand they live up to a certain level of fun, thereby allowing parents to watch along with their kids without plotting the most direct route to the exit.

Rosenbush strives for a difficult blend of spoof and sincerity with Zen Noir. In the spirit of rebirth, let's assume that the next time he makes it, it'll turn out fine.

Accomplishes something I would have thought impossible. It made me appreciate its 1994 predecessor, "The Flintstones."

For years I've criticized Murphy for not working with the best directors or powerful female co-stars. But he does that here, and his movie is still a clunker. Relatives are listed in the credits; maybe he needs to stop trying to completely control the films he makes. Either that or it's time for another stand-up concert film. [27 Oct 1995, p.B]

It's not just the sound of crickets you hear watching this movie. It's the sound of dead crickets.

Therese's story would work better as a marionette show than on the big screen. The camera is best at picking up subtleties, and there are simply none here.

The "Showgirls" of superhero movies. This is not a compliment. A vacuous lingerie show posing as feminism, it's the biggest movie hairball this side of "Garfield."

Macy's character finds romance with the Madrid, N. M., diner owner played by Marisa Tomei. They're the only two people on screen who relate in any way. But there's no movie here. There is only a tired "City Slickers"-inspired idea for a movie.

There is some directorial skill here--Argento should be congratulated for a few interesting storytelling choices--but the end result feels grimy and strangely pathetic.

This is “True Lies” without the striptease or the Arab-maiming.

It's a high-powered cast, but it has painfully little to work with, apart from widely varying humor.

Only Biel and Greer lift it above the level of bleh.

It has a lack of ambition and energy that is almost total: It's the most this movie can do to roll over and ask for a little more lotion on its back. [22 July 1987]

A grotesque slumgullion of kung fu, studio schlock and pseudo-Dumas swashbuckling that leaves you longing for Doug Fairbanks --or even Don Ameche and The Ritz Brothers.

A lame duck.

The storyline isn't coherent, the music stinks, the characters are one-dimensional, the dialogue is insipid and it is neither funny nor romantic.

The sole memorable scene involving a little Focker in Little Fockers, though memorable doesn't mean amusing, involves Ben Stiller's male-nurse character administering a needle full of adrenaline to his dyspeptic and unhappily aroused father-in-law Jack Byrnes, played by Robert De Niro.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't laugh at some of this--though it's not as funny as Laurel and Hardy as toddlers in "Brats." But I wanted to slap myself whenever I did.

Formulaic romantic junk.

In A Thousand Words the camera stays about two inches from Murphy's hyperactive face, and you start to see the strain and desperation in the actor's eyes.

An unabashedly bad movie full of cliches, claptrap, fairly good rock 'n' roll and stomach-turning gross-out gags.

Once the credits are done rolling it's a dour, enervated mystery, selling the old cat-and-mouse games.

The movie itself has no edge. It barely has a movie.

The result just might be the most hypocritical feature in the history of film as well as the history of hypocrisy, and along with serving beer, I hope they show I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell in hell.

Phantoms may have sold like hotcakes as a book. But this movie version is a grotesque fiasco, a confoundingly senseless story told with unexciting visuals, cliched dialogue and ear-bashing sounds... Watching it is a truly hellish experience. [23 Jan 1998]

It's rather sweet to think of Filth and Wisdom as Madonna's reconnection to her own boho Manhattan striver self a generation ago, and I did enjoy the last five minutes or so, when the movie essentially stopped and Hutz's band, Gogol Bordello, took over.

About as interesting as watching paint dry.

Their (The Brothers Strause) effects are pretty good, on a fairly limited budget. And that's about all you can say for Skyline.

An almost terminally sappy youth romance.

A whopper this isn't. It's not even a Whopper Junior. It's the paper the Whopper Junior came in.

Williams' grimace is starting to look desperate. Then again, no one comes off well in director Ken Kwapis' handling of this greasy screenplay.

A comedy murder mystery gone seriously astray, boasts an immensely talented cast .

Not only does American Outlaws distort history, but the filmmakers have created a dull, one-dimensional pop icon out of James' complex character and legend.

The situations and jokes are as predictable and as lowbrow as the endless pratfalls the boys take in their high heels.

Of all the teen performers out there, Duff has to be the blandest (especially since the Olsens hit the skids).

Certain scenes in When in Rome signify nothing less than the death of screen slapstick, but I’m hoping it’s one of those fake-out movie deaths where it’s not really dead, not forever.

Some actors steal scenes. Tom Green just gives them a bad odor. This self-infatuated goofball is far from the only thing wrong with the clumsy comedy.

Sadly, the concept of dialogue is totally lost on the makers of Venom, a laughably bad example of teen-scream movies.

Jason X conjures up more giggles than scares, assuming you make it through the first 15 minutes.

We've since seen plenty of self-satisfied smart alecks, and Freddy, as written and played, brings nothing new to the party.

You have to have faith that kids will recognize a bad movie when it's foisted on them -- and they don't get much worse than The New Guy.

Newbie director Richards shoots all the women like slabs of meat, and his self-seriousness throughout London--some of it tries to be funny, a lot of it is funny by accident--borders on the delusional.

One redeeming feature of this picture is that it will make great fodder for those make-fun-of-the-movie TV shows.

A fast, slick, outlandish fiasco that starts out well and then seems to drop right off a cliff.

Turturro is the one thing that's right with the movie. Perhaps the weakest thing about the new "Deeds" is its utter lack of a strong viewpoint and real emotion.

The first starring vehicle for shock comic Andrew Dice Clay, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, turns out to be the kind of detective spoof worn out 30 years ago by Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis, though refitted with salty language, graphic violence and an attitude toward women that makes the Marquis de Sade look like Phil Donahue. [11 Jul 1990, p.18]

Bride Wars really does not capture the mood of the moment. It comes from a different time, a different planet.

While director Eric Valette provides the occasional chill, the disturbing spooks aren't enough to make this boat float. Burns sleepwalks through One Missed Call totally devoid of charisma, and Sossamon muddles along, going through the motions.

It's tempting to call traveling on Juwanna Mann, except it never goes anywhere. This film fouls out.

Give David Arquette credit. He shares nearly all his screen time in See Spot Run with a clever canine and a cute kid and still manages to pull off his usual nutty-slapstick routine with gusto.

The folks who made this movie apparently had nothing inside their heads, either.

The Love Guru”does not bring out Myer's best, and aside from a deft early Bollywood parody, there’s nothing visually to help the fun along.

Just the same auld same auld.

The polite word for all this is "repurposing," a euphemism for "hauling someone else's garbage."

This is a generic action picture. What also is missing are scenes in which Nolte and Murphy could relate to each other quietly and with some wit. [8 Jun 1990, p.C]

The director is first-timer Mike Bigelow. Nothing's paced or shaped for maximum payoff; the shooting and editing rhythms add only clutter and noise, and the slapstick is strictly of the skull-banging, ear-splitting variety.

Will come off as insipid, unfunny and too serious at times for its own good.

It's a movie that puts Samuel Jackson in kilts, Robert Carlyle in a red Jaguar, and the audience -- if they have any sense at all -- out in the lobby, looking for another picture.

A real stinker. It doesn't have the courage of its own bad taste, or that of its villain.

Spends its first three-quarters confronting us with one of the most dislikable characters in recent memory.

A lamebrained attempt at horror that is just a derivative pastiche of ideas lifted from other bad films.

Its humor stems precisely from our enjoying its lead character's rotten behavior.

What we get, while rarely boring, is a succession of senseless scenes bathed in formula-thriller blue light, full of blazing Uzis, exploding helicopters and sentimental male bonding.

Stewart's insistently ironic delivery of every line becomes an irritant in a movie that is already monstrously irritating.

We have to take the sexual tension on faith, as with everything in this formulaic glob of a script.

Not without its humorous moments, but they are too few and far between.

The movie drags down everyone involved, regardless of their apparent talent.

Superman IV is a pathetic appendage to the series, a dull, shoddy film that makes the minimal 1950s TV series seem rife with production values by comparison. [27 July 1987, p.10C]

It's not particularly funny or trenchant, and its portrayal of noxious high school cliques never amounts to more than was shown in "Heathers." [19 Feb 1999]

Nothing in this movie is properly focused; everyone keeps talking about a character whom we never meet and does not matter; the tone keeps slipping around from indolent satire to thudding sincerity, and the Challenger shuttle disaster backdrop is queasy-making at best, offensive at worst.

Phony, disingenuous family entertainment, suffocated by its green bean casserole approach to Middle America, spineless cardboard characters and paper-thin plot "twists."

Sluggish and preposterous, full of violence and cliches.

[Chris Elliott]'s spoof of a young seaman's apprenticeship seems desperate as he piles special effects willy-nilly atop jibes at stupid old salts. [14 Jan 1994]

Aside from providing a lesson about movies with titles that provide their own bad review, Say It Isn't So gives low humor a bad name.

All the principals in this cinematic mess have had moments of glory on stage and screen, and one can only hope they got paid well for participating in this comedic embarrassment.

Haven't we seen the oh-my-gosh-my-spouse-is-secretly-an-assassin-but-you-know-a-nice-one routine once too often?

Neither drama nor comedy, Summer Catch is a long, slow lob of a movie that never crosses the plate.

The most horrifying film of 2007, Bratz is based on the popular line of collagen-lipped, doe-eyed slut-ette dolls and their male companions, "the boys with a passion for fashion ... and the Bratz!" (In other words, they're bi-curious.)

A mind-numbing, bloody, ridiculous experience.

Tries mightily to give these warmed-over cliches the proper seasoning, but in the end, these leftovers fail to satisfy. [12 March 1999, Friday, p.L]

As if by deliberate and vaguely sadistic design, Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil leeches the fun clean out of the first "Hoodwinked" (2005).

This one's a certifiable soul-sucker, dining out on its characters' venalities while wagging a finger at the horror, the horror.

Even with a new leading man and a more family-friendly rating, some things never change: The Mask still stars Industrial Light & Magic.

The Last Airbender (they couldn't use the series' "Avatar" title because another film got there first, without all the bending) is more about marshaling extras and interpolating tons of computer-generated effects and keeping the factions straight. It's a tough sit.

For all its promise of lively trailer-park humor, Joe Dirt digs, then lies in its own grave, killed by blah characters, lame jokes and cliches you can see coming a mile away.

So derivative and crass that it's far more entertaining to try to think of the dozens of films it's ripping off than it is to take any of it at face value.

The actors had little to work with in this passe social satire, but sharper performances might have saved Marci from total humorless ruin.

One of those frustrating movies that takes forever to get where it's going, and once arriving, the frustration is increased because one realizes how much better it should have been.

Worth your time and money? Fuhgeddaboutit.

Although a literal movie adaptation of Seuss' 1957 classic "The Cat in the Hat" might have run 20 minutes, is it too much to ask that the filmed material preserve the author's sensibility?

Children's films can be thrilling affairs for parents and kids. Unfortunately, this film is not likely to thrill either group.

Some movies are a joy. Some are a chore. And some are sheer torture. A good example of the latter is Virus. [17 January 1999, Metro Chicago, p.8]

The British intelligence operation at Bletchley Park that cracked the Enigma code is truly the stuff of great drama. But that story doesn't offer Matt LeBlanc in a wig and heels.

What's remarkable is how absolutely every character in the film is a movie cliche.

None of it is funny. It’s all pain and no funny.

Good Luck Chuck is this year’s low-ender to beat.

Such a low-class, low-laughs rip-off that it makes "There's Something About Mary" resemble a Noel Coward comedy of manners. [23 April 1999, Friday, p.A]

The point of all this nihilism and grotesqueness? You got me. Perhaps Korine thinks he's getting at some harsh truth in showing troubled youngsters running amok without positive adult role models, but that's malarkey. There's a difference between unblinkingly observing reality and wallowing in degeneracy. [6 March 1998]

So excruciatingly awful, the word "dumb" could sue for slander.

Has one point to make: Islam is a bad, baaaaaaaaad religion, and it's a miracle you're even alive and reading this, so intent most Muslims are on your destruction.

Like its parade of predecessors, this Halloween is a gory slash-fest. It can't escape its past, and it doesn't want to.

Offers the most onscreen explosions in recent memory. It's almost pornography for arsonists.

This was a mission that should have been aborted long ago.

The political movie satire from hell.

Put together enough pointless, random details, and you get Gigli, a movie that's less incompetent than bewildering.

One hopes that this is Hollywood's last go-round with Swept Away. Watching this fiasco, I kept having nightmares about a possible cartoon version, co-starring Cruella de Vil and Shrek.

The Devil Inside joins a long, woozy-camera parade of found-footage scare pictures, among them "The Blair Witch Project," the "Paranormal Activity" films and certain wedding videos that won't go away.

Technically it does not qualify as one of the worst American-made movies ever. It only feels that way. The movie's offenses are too numerous to catalog.

The preposterous 88 Minutes is a serial killer movie starring Al Pacino's festival of hair.

Boring and banal, overwrought and undercooked, Hudson Hawk is beyond bad. [24 May 1991]

There’s nothing wrong with All About Steve that a rewrite couldn’t fix, as long as the rewrite involved a different writer, a different character and a different story.

You watch the movie in a dumbfounded stupor. Why on earth was it made? [26 March 1999, Friday, p.A]

The film suggests Lohan probably (allegedly) should've gone after her agent the other night, not the mother of an ex-personal assistant.

So filled with illogical twists and ridiculous turns, that eventually it evokes unintentional laughs.

A pair of decent performances does not a movie make, however, as Mazur and Giovinazzo are surrounded by fourth-tier actors (Ventresca and Steven Bauer) and spotty directing of a mediocre script.

It's hard not to feel angry that you've spent almost two hours watching this moronic exercise.

As scary and minor-chord heavy as FearDotCom can be, there's no big payoff, no logical resolution.

In Harlem Nights, Eddie Murphy continues his one-man war against the female gender. Those women he doesn't kill outright are punched, maimed and slugged with garbage cans. But apparently they deserve it-there isn't a single female character in the film who isn't a prostitute. [17 Nov 1989, p.A]

The film's crude humor and violence -- cartoonish, but still violent -- should offend parents of younger kids. Yet its ultra-broad, pratfall-filled comedy will satisfy only the most indiscriminate teens.

Just a schlock romance pumped with testosterone.

Resembles an old Nine Inch Nails video. Missing from the mix are any characters with whom you'd want to spend one minute around a campfire.

Shallow and repetitive.

Unimaginatively recycles all the teens-in-the-woods gorefest conventions.

Some movies should never have been made, and high on that list is the addled new remake of Rollerball.

The sad truth is, I can say nothing to recommend this film.

Insipid, ineffective, inept and insulting to our intelligence.

The direction is on auto-drive, the dialogue lacks wit and the story logic is non-existent. [03 Nov 1995]

Bad decision after bad decision occurs over 93 minutes.

Not only is Slackers painfully bad, but it's also about as morally unpleasant as a teen sex comedy can be.

A disjointed film that, but for brief flashes of comedic verve, should skip theatrical release and go straight to video.

Most of the humor is aimed at 14-year-olds.

That this bit of pustulence is based on a video game of the same name is no surprise. It explains the thin plot, characters and abundant gunplay.

It's just a matter of holding your nose until the whole thing is over.

Verdict: not so hot

For the most part, The Gold Diggers is not even chuckle-producing. At best, it might warm a cockle or two or provoke a bit of a smile.