Andy Tennant's flimsy but generally likeable comedy is tailor-made for Smith's cheerfully suave comic style, and the movie goes out of its way to avoid any hint of sleaziness.

Inside Deep Throat is more scattershot than deep, but it vividly evokes the days when the "sexual revolution" was supposed to liberate the American libido.

Peaks early, then descends into portentous nonsense.

Fails to rouse any passion. A potentially great subject is frittered away, though this being a Scott movie, there's style to spare.

As long as it stays focused on showbiz, Bewitched is light, frothy fun. But Ephron insists on turning Bewitched into a love story, and that's when the fun starts to seep out of the movie.

A topical thriller that manages to be watchable despite director Alan J. Pakula's best efforts to take all the fun out of it.

This fragile, precious chamber piece, co-written with Susan Minot, rarely seems worthy of the high style lavished upon it. [24 Jun 1996 Pg.83]

It's an expertly made film that, scene by scene, holds your attention. But both emotionally and intellectually, it doesn't add up.

This Man in Black is, frankly, a bit of a wuss. As a love story, Walk the Line can seduce. As a biopic, it treads awfully familiar Overcoming Adversity turf.

This scary, eye-opening documentary looks back from a post-9/11 vantage point to see how Ike’s prophecy has come horribly true.

The demands of the historical epic form seem to hobble Jordan's imagination. He's a director who's at his best when he can follow the dark logic of his own subconscious.

Pitched too broadly to get very deeply under your skin. Still, there are some smarts at work here, and it will make you laugh.

As a moral fable Click holds no surprises; as a Sandler comedy, it's unusually dark, occasionally touching and pretty funny.

Nightmarish scenes are intercut with interviews with the real men. These could be more probing, and the film's urgency can tilt toward shrillness, but nobody else has made the disaster of Guantánamo so painfully vivid.

When the satire stays focused on Streep or her snooty Brit assistant (Emily Blunt), "Prada" is malicious fun. But the central story about how smart, idealistic Anne Hathaway, as Miranda's drably dressed new assistant, loses her soul in pursuit of success and great shoes is dramatically anorexic.

Shortbus tends to work better in its first, comic half, than in its second, more serious stretch, where the characters' trials and tribulations flirt with soap opera. The actors, formidable with their clothes off, aren't always as expressive fully dressed.

Depp attacks his role with relish, stamping his boot heels and recounting improbable erotic adventures in a wonderful Castilian lisp. Unfortunately, Depp's the only one flying over this cuckoo's nest. [24 Apr 1995, p.64]

Zoo avoids any taint of exploitation, but it errs on the opposite extreme. I came away from it wanting a little less Art and a lot more simple reportage.

In the end, this Western is serviceable enough. Herod says if you're born bad, you're bad forever. The Quick was born bad, but it got better. [20 Feb 1995, p.72]

As the proud, independent young author, Hathaway is both subdued and alluring--it's her most mature performance. The movie goes down easy, but there's a thin line here: is this an homage or a parasite?

I Am Legend can't seem to make up its mind just what kind of movie it wants to be.

Like Norma Desmond in "Sunset Boulevard," Indy is still big; it's just that, in the new world of movie franchises, The Crystal Skull feels smaller.

Like all Stone movies, W. has energy and forward momentum--particularly in the pre-presidential sections, when Bush is in his loose-cannon phase. It's not boring, and Brolin is often remarkable.

The Reader can feel stilted and abstract: the film's only flesh-and-blood characters spend half the movie separated. But its emotional impact sneaks up on you. The Reader asks tough questions, and, to its credit, provides no easy answers.

"The Final Frontier" is not as witty as the last installment, nor as well made as "The Search for Spock." But it has the Trek essence in spades. [19 June 1989, p.63]

For Trek devotees, it's a supernova of unpredictable sci-fi thrills, though the earthbound may find this trip through the heavens a bit tiresome, especially when the movie tries too hard to wax philosophic. [18 Nov. 1994, p.88]

Charming cinematic bauble.

There are some very funny moments, and Coughlan is a delight as Leigh Anne's best friend.

When George’s fortunes start to go from bad to worse, so does the movie.

As long as Polanski keeps his focus on character and ambiance, the film is an eerie pleasure. But he doesn't, and it degenerates into a second-rate chase movie which takes its supernatural overtones either too seriously or too lightly to be convincing.

As preposterous as the movie gets, it's clearly reveling in its own hokiness.

A fine film; as an Ed Norton picture, it's a disappointment.

Offers easy wisdom and light-hearted fun.

Enough already with the faux documentary!

Labour teeters on the edge of the amateur. Yet it's hard not to root for its moonstruck spirit, or to succumb to the panache of the pastiche.

It's not as cool as it sounds.

In the end, it's just another novice-teacher-takes-on-inner-city-kids-and-nobody's-life-will-ever-be-the-same film

This slick, handsomely produced thriller only gets the pulse half racing.

This time out, Shyamalan the writer lets Shyamalan the director down badly.

Just because Sandler's Sonny makes little sense as an actual human being doesn't mean he won't make you laugh.

John August's trickily structured script owes an all too obvious debt to "Pulp Fiction," but Liman's film is more like kiddie Tarantino.

Poor Affleck. He doesn’t just have to singlehandedly save the world from nuclear destruction, he has to erase our memories of Ford and Baldwin. That’s a tall order for any actor, and Affleck, an expert at playing cocky, callow yuppies, just doesn’t have the heft.

A style so chic, studied and murky it resembles a cross between a Nike commercial and a bad Polish art film.

Robbins eschews leftist diatribes for a bold cartoon version of history. It's as crowded and energetic as a big parade...and just about as subtle.

Self-conscious to the point of suffocation.

There isn't an ounce of genuine affection on display. Fenton and Barbato already made a documentary of the same title about Alig, and their fascination with this vapid, charmless pied piper of decadence remains a mystery.

There's an ample sense of foreboding in Last Night -- but sadly, very little else.

Hughes is just treading lukewarm water. Stotz is the blandest of his teen heroes yet. [16 Mar 1987]

A slick but surprisingly empty genre movie that builds to a not particularly shocking shock.

Provides some great laughs, but founders when it tries to tackle more serious issues. Entitled "10 Dates," it might have been a much better film.

The film has its dumb points: too many shots of churning surf and lovers nestled in beach blankets, not to mention the premise that women find incommunicative, hulking shells like Blake the height of irresistibility. But it gets you.

Before it degenerates into Indiana Potter and the Chamber of Doom, the movie holds promise -- it hints at why the Harry Potter movies aren’t half as wonderful as they ought to be, why they feel created from the outside in. Magic isn’t made by committee.

Resoundingly so-so.

A flat, cliched film in a flat, cliched genre.

Why does this chronicle of a passionate life refuse to catch fire? For all of Taymor’s flashy embellishments -- surreal dream sequences, constructivist collages come to life -- it trudges through the Kahlo chronology with the dutiful step of a conventional Hollywood biopic.

Unless you’re 15 at heart, you may need anger management yourself after sitting through this aggressively crass comedy, which alternates between mean-spirited slapstick and arbitrary uplift.

There are inspired moments in this edgy, unstable comedy.

Comes off as surprisingly unmagical, with characters you only half care about.

Payback may not always be P.C., but it's not interested in making friends, anyway. Just killing enemies.

While the first half showcases an impressive new directorial talent, the last two quarters fail to score.

A decidedly mixed bag.

It does justice to its source material -- and that may be the problem.

Inside this numbingly formulaic action comedy there's a small, quirky movie not screaming hard enough to get out--the kind of movie that director and co-writer Ron Shelton (“Bull Durham,” “Tin Cup”) could have had some real fun with.

Strikingly devoid of suspense. It’s not always clear who’s the protagonist and who’s the antagonist. Nor is it scary—at its most intense moments, it’s merely yucky.

Slightly soggy.

Couldn’t have arrived at a better time: movies have been so bad lately that audiences are positively starving for something mediocre.

This is one of the silliest movies ever made--and lots of instantly forgettable fun.

It’s not half bad, with cool locations and a great stunt leap from the top of a Hong Kong high-rise.

In the end, artifice overwhelms art. Apt Pupil is too serious to work as a genre movie, and too contrived to be taken seriously. [12 October 1998]

There are pleasures to be had in the handsome, heroic The Last Samurai. But they' all on the surface.

Demme is understandably reluctant to linger on the horrors of slavery, but it's a dramaturgical mistake. The quick, shocking flashbacks of Sethe's brutalization by her white masters don't do the job--they're horrific, but with a B movie luridness.

Shot in crisp black and white, this homage to "La Dolce Vita" nonetheless lacks the charm and energy of Fellini's farcical original.

Instead of being moved by Christ's suffering, or awed by his sacrifice, I felt abused by a filmmaker intent on punishing an audience, for who knows what sins.

The main problem is the script, which has a few scares but little smarts.

Along the way, not just the storytelling but the original intention has gotten muddled. You leave The Alamo uncertain of what you're meant to feel: is this a celebration of patriotic sacrifice or an illustration of war's futility?

The dialogue is tacky, the characters stock and the special effects no improvement on anything George Lucas did 20 years ago.

These actresses are always worth seeing in just about anything, as is Tuscany. Together they are able to make up for the meandering plot and lack of dramatic oomph.

The fans who have kept John Berendt's nonfiction tale on the best-seller list for more than three years may come away feeling they've seen "Perry Mason" on Valium. [1 December 1997, p.87]

Mangold is something of a pseudo-Scorsese, assembling elements of other pictures like "Internal Affairs" and "Bad Lieutenant" into an eclectic mix that lacks its own vital reality.

The saving grace of Con Air is its sense of its own absurdity.

Never mean-spirited, A Dirty Shame has some big laughs, but it's a one-joke movie that shows its strain well before the finish line.

Roberts and Gibson form a "pas de deux," two lonely urbanites fighting vague yet common enemies in a plot that never quite comes together.

Ultimately, Huckabees doesn't work. But it sure does stimulate. This is just the kind of "failure" we could use plenty more of.

Director Mimi Leder fills the mindless-action-movie quota quite stylishly. The trouble is, The Peacemaker thinks it has a mind.

In Lost Highway, reality has become a dream. But Lynch has forgotten how boring it is listening to someone else's dream.

Sometimes stunning, ultimately stupefying epic .

The storytelling is cheesy, but action fans won't want to miss the debut of the Next Big Thing in martial arts.

It's sometimes hard to tell the characters from the candelabra. This lavish screen version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical is so chockablock with decorative detail the human figures are often competing with the decor for attention.

This clumsy attempt to merge Jane Austen's classic with Bollywood musical conventions falls painfully flat.

You're not sure where it's headed, but with an ensemble this good the aimlessness seems invigorating. It's when the plot kicks in that Newell's movie gets less interesting. It's frustrating to see such a promising premise, and such a delightful cast, wasted.

Harron sets the stage expertly, but her lack of a point of view ultimately enervates the movie. [6 May 1996, p. 78]

Howard redeems this lumpy fantasy. Soft-spoken and mysterious, he presides over the movie with a dangerous, feline grace.

The presence of Connery is pure balm, purring those Celtic tones like smoky single-malt Scotch.

There is too much disconcerting and nasty violence in this light-hearted caper, but when it sticks to its romantic guns, it is often charming.

It has a lovely score by Thomas Newman, stunning production design, striking costumes and gorgeous cinematography. Unfortunately, it just doesn't jell.

Slick and violent and reasonably tense, Ransom holds your attention without being the least bit interesting. [11Nov1996 Pg. 74]

Technology has squeezed character to a few measly pixels on the digital screens. Explosions have replaced dramatic climaxes.

But the tale has been squeezed to fit the mold of director John Hughes, which for long stretches makes it feel as much like the third "Home Alone" as the second "Dalmations."

It's gorgeous. It's epic. It's spectacular. But two hours later, it also proves to be emotionally impenetrable.

Soft to the point of squishiness, Phenomenon is rescued from terminal bathos by Travolta's radiant conviction.

Congo is basically the old African ooga-mooga movie brought into the P.C., high-tech age.

The movie does have somewhat more lilt and levity, much of it due to Jim Carrey as the Riddler. But there's still plenty of murk, physical and metaphysical, and more psychobabble about Bruce Wayne's obsessions and repressions.

Lurching uncertainly from slapstick to tears, The Family Stone works hard to warm the cockles of our hearts. The cast is attractive. The sentiments are commendable. But the love Bezucha wants us to feel for the family couldn't possibly compete with the love they already feel for themselves.

The theatricality is off the charts. Lane aims for the balconies; Broderick tones it down for the camera a bit.

At least in the new Omen, the filmmakers have the sense to keep evil Damien's dialogue to a minimum. His villainy is all in the dimples. But is it too familiar to be scary anymore?

Unfortunately, this narf's a drag: she talks like a fortune cookie and doesn't really do anything. Still, the multicultural cast is fun, the images have a painterly beauty and there are some beguiling comic touches before the story sinks into a swamp of solemn metaphysical glop.

It's filled with Mann's signature macho verisimilitude, but essentially it's the stuff of what, in saner fiscal times, would have been a B movie. Miami Vice delivers the thrills, atmosphere and romance it promises, but it doesn't resonate like major Mann.

Alternately enrapturing and exhausting, brilliant and glib, this is a "Romeo and Juliet" more for the eyes than the ears. [4 Nov 1996, pg.73]

I might buy Babel if it had any real interest in its characters, but it's too busy moving them around its mechanistic chessboard to explore any nuances or depths.

You don't have to have lived through the period to find this wrenching. And you don't have to doubt Estevez's sincerity to find it emotionally opportunistic.

Attempting a frame-by-frame duplication of Warner Bros. '40s filmmaking--even the extroverted acting style apes the period--Soderbergh has produced a movie so self-conscious that it's drained of all life.

The longest, grimmest and least funny of the trilogy.

The movie becomes a crazy quilt of competing stories, none of them properly developed. You could cut half the major characters out of Mr. Brooks and never miss them.

Too bad the film ultimately fails to explore [provocative questions], falling instead to cliches.

The storytelling seems occasionally disjointed, but more important, for all the special-effects wizardry, that touch of film magic never surfaces.

If only the laughs were bigger, smarter and more frequent than they are.

Aims for a "Princess Bride" mix of whimsy and wonderment, the sardonic and the romantic, with only sporadic success. Both visually and narratively cluttered, the film diverts more than it enchants.

Penn's eye for landscapes is stunning, and his affection for outsider lifestyles is tangible. Hirsch, who carries the film on his increasingly emaciated shoulders, performs heroically, but there's an edge missing. The ideal casting would have been the young Sean Penn.

There’s a great, piercing story here, but too often you feel you’re watching it through the wrong end of the telescope.

Manages to take an urgent, important topic and turn it into standard Hollywood melodrama. What a waste.

The semifunny Semi-Pro is amiable enough, but you never feel there's much at stake.

The great '30s comedies had edge, bite and relentless forward momentum. Leatherheads is laid-back, amiable and terminally tepid.

Baby Mama is rescued by two scene-stealing veterans: Sigourney Weaver as the smug, patrician owner of the surrogate company, and a priceless, ponytailed Steve Martin as the self-infatuated New Age owner of Round Earth. These two aren't onscreen a lot, but the movie seems most fully alive when they are.

There's a quirky, honest movie struggling to emerge from Then She Found Me (April's Jewish heritage is refreshingly portrayed, and there are lovely, scattered moments when the characters surprise you), but Hunt, in her directorial debut, can't seem to decide whether she'd rather make a spicy ethnic dish or bland comfort food.

The more obvious special effects are downright hokey, such as a weird swirling water creature who looks like something out of a toilet cleaner commercial. As the outcome of all the sword-flinging and catapult-launching is never in question, it's hard to stay engaged with the movie once the fighting begins.

For me, there's a problem with The Hulk, always has been, though it hasn't seemed to bother the tale's legions of fans. When the sensitive, physically unprepossessing Banner/Norton turns into the gargantuan, muscle-bound, growling Hulk, there's a total disconnect.

Wanted has one good plot twist in store (though it makes little sense), and its sense of humor about its own silliness keeps the fantasy afloat for a while. But as the body count rises, so does the portentous tone, and the relentlessness of Bekmambetov's overamped style becomes oppressive.

I don't want to sound like a party pooper (or deny that there is something wickedly funny about seeing these middle-age adolescents beating the crap out of a playground full of little bullying kids) but there's something depressing about the never-ending celebration of eternal adolescence in recent American comedies.

Quantum of Solace isn't frivolous or cheesy, but it isn't all that much fun either.

Doubt stirs up a lot of stormy theatrical weather, but the stolid transfer from stage to screen does Shanley's play no favors.

How do you literalize heaven? It's a problem moviemakers have struggled with forever, and Jackson hasn't solved it.

An ambitious, intense, but overdetermined exploration of the varieties of ethnic intolerance.

No matter how important teamwork is on a job of industrialized entertainment like these ostensibly visionary films, the vision itself has to come from a single inspired sensibility. Despite some intriguing ideas, episodes and effects, that isn't the case with "Star Trek." [17 Dec. 1979, p.110]

It's not just that the movie is formulaic; it's disingenuous. It relies on Roberts's smile to erase all misgivings. But all the stardust in the world can't disguise the fact that this is more package than picture.

A mish-mash of special effects, tasteless comedy and pointless action.

Relax and enjoy the brain candy.

It's a gorgeous bad movie, the folly of a great visual stylist.

Has its heart in the right place, but its funnybone is out of joint.

May only be remembered for featuring the first homoerotic nude bathing scene in children's animated movie history.

An adult love story that's trying for stiff-upper-lip poignancy.

The actors attack their roles with commitment (Hartnett’s understatement is impressive), but their fervor can’t hide the movie’s implausible, often confusing storytelling.

This is an elaborate production, but all the jazzy sets and explosions in the world can't disguise the story's complete lack of urgency.

The General's Daughter purports to be a serious examination of the seedy underbelly of military life, but one has the uneasy sensation that it simply wants to show as much of it on screen as possible.

This is a movie afraid of its own shadows.

Gorgeous but curiously weightless.

All the state-of-the-art technology in the world is no help to an actor saddled with Lucas's tinny dialogue.

Torn between moody grandiosity and cartoonish mayhem, Daredevil tries to have it both ways, and succeeds at neither.

Too facile to resonate deeply. Shouldn't a movie celebrating Nash give you some idea what his mathematical work is about? Fishier still is the suggestion that the cure for paranoid schizophrenia is love.

In the end, the film lacks the skill of its actors and ends up feeling disjointed and confused about its own message.

The film's claustrophobic, color-coordinated dourness yields little illumination, and as the surging violins accompany our heroine's un-raveling mind, the movie comes queasily close to romanticizing suicide. I knew I was supposed to feel something, but what?

Newell, no hack, tries not to milk the cliches shamelessly, and that may be the movie's final undoing. Lacking the courage of its own vulgarity, Mona Lisa Smile is as tepid as old bathwater.

BASEketball feels stale and inert. Still, Parker and Stone have a nice, giddy rapport, and it's a kick to hear traces of Cartman and Kenny in their dude-speak.

There are no ideas, just repartee. Snoop Dogg, as a superfly snitch, and Vince Vaughn, as a drug lord, are wasted in obvious supporting roles. It's harmless fun--and too lazy to be more.

An over-the-top thriller, too loosely tethered to reality to be a lesson about anything other than the limits of popcorn consumption.

Von Trier, however, undercuts the universality of his own message with his meretricious closing credits, set to David Bowie's "Young Americans," which explicitly turns Dogville into an anti-American screed.

A noble but supernaturally dull movie.

Unfortunately, none of this is very much fun. The cinematography is dark and depressing. The dialogue is stilted. And for some reason, director Antoine Fuqua has even ditched the Arthur/Guinevere/ Lancelot love triangle.

The entire solemn, portentous edifice that is The Village collapses of its own fake weight. Just about everything that makes Shyamalan special misfires here.

A paint-by-numbers old-fashioned romantic epic, Head in the Clouds is neither romantic nor epic, but it does succeed at old-fashioned.

It's poppycock, but well directed: Ruben delivers two or three guaranteed jolts, which almost make up for the copout of an ending.

Maybe you have to be 14 to find all of this terribly clever.

Midler's performance does not stand out. She remains very much Bette Midler.

Onstage, trapped in the mini-wasteland of the parking lot, the creeped-out kids crackled like lightning in a bottle. Linklater's meager attempts to open up the movie drain its energy.

We've seen it all before and such familiarity kills impact.

Kill is a disappointing movie: slow, overpopulated and muddled in its thinking.

Ultimately, this is a war of boorishness vs. sensitivity, and the filmmakers waffle.

But Die Hard WAV lacks the freshness of its two predecessors: we've had it with gassy police psychiatrists and supersmart terrorists.

Trying too hard to grab our attention, he (Marshall) loses it. The art of the geisha prizes subtlety, stillness, grace. Why doesn't this movie?

The movie plays like a clumsy assault on post-9/11 paranoia. It references "America's war," uses imagery direct from Abu Ghraib and contains dialogue likely to offend anyone who's not, say, a suicide bomber.

This stiff-in-the-joints movie has little feel for its setting or period, and crucial chunks seem to have been left on the cutting-room floor. Robert Rossen's Oscar-winning 1949 version has nothing to fear.

There's an inspirational, hang-on-to-your-dreams message, but it comes only at the very end of a long, grim, painful journey. Holiday cheer is not what this movie is offering.

The most interesting thing about Beowulf, alas, is its technology. It's the work of a man who has fallen in love with his toys, but I miss the wicked satirist who made "Used Cars." And the truth is the motion capture in Beowulf comes across as an unsatisfying compromise between animation and live action.

if you're trying to make us believe we're watching "reality" by using a faux documentary style, you need actors who never look like they are acting, and this is where Redacted stumbles.

In this distressingly generic spy spoof, it's not Maxwell who's clueless, but the filmmakers.

Speaking as an admirer, but not an apostle, of the graphic novel, I thought the Watchmen movie was confusing, maddeningly inconsistent and fighting a long, losing battle to establish an identity of its own.

It's a little late to be spoofing Westerns, and most of the high-noonery in BTTF III falls flat. [4 June 1990, p.82]

The Wrath of Khan is a small soap opera about a man coming to terms with age and death and a son he had never acknowledged. It's really "On Golden Galaxy," and it would have made a lot more sense as a modestly produced hour of television. [7 June 1982, p.53]

Everything in Rounders is right there on the surface. Watching it is about as exciting as playing poker with all the cards face up. [14 Sept 1998]

So bland and un-lived in you want to pour Tabasco all over the screen.

Rapidly veers towards tired 80's territory rather than offering anything new and fresh.

A half-hearted comedy whose jokes are far from a knockout.

Bad, but not criminally so.

This is a farfetched premise, and the movie pays a price for it.

All shots and no scenes, which is nice for a picture book but deadly for drama.

Despite some funny lines and situations, this comedy falls short.

A lumbering, self-important three-hour melodrama that defies credibility at every turn.

Every role is miscast. Whose idea was it to have the boyishly British Bale play an illiterate Greek peasant, or the elegant Hurt a gruff-voiced country doctor? Cruz’s run of bad luck in American movies continues.

This echo of the WWII internment of Japanese-Americans is the only new gimmick in Edward Zwick's entry in the cliche- terrorist genre.

Neil LaBute’s Possession is bad, but not spectacularly bad, which is disappointing.

Flat, distressingly witless -- To put it bluntly -- the thrill is gone. Nobody did it better. But that was then.

Cameron Diaz, Christina Applegate and Selma Blair are asked to humiliate themselves many times over in The Sweetest Thing, and they do it with such game good spirits that they ought to get the actor’s equivalent of a Purple Heart.

You know a romantic comedy is in trouble when you root for the hero not to get the girl.

As adroit and charming as Witherspoon is--and she gives it her all--she cannot rise above the embarrassingly broad, witless material.

Irreversible takes an adolescent pride in its own ugliness. “I Stand Alone" told me something about the world; this one tells me more than I want to know about the calculating mind of its maker.

Sarah Thorp’s lazy script lurches from the lame to the ludicrous.

It's punishingly dull for fully half of its two hours and 45 minutes.

An empty videogame of a movie about interplanetary pest control.

With the talent involved in Sphere -- director Barry Levinson, novelist Michael Crichton and actors Dustin Hoffman, Samuel L. Jackson and Sharon Stone--how could it fail? Somehow, it does.

Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman has written quips, not characters and Joel Schumacher still seems miscast as a Bat-action director: he stages the mayhem confusingly and the comedy too broadly.

Downright repetitive! [30 May 1983]

The film suffers dearly because of the two underwritten, emotionally unavailable characters at the film's center and when all is revealed at an amateur dance contest, the music — and the modicum of tension the movie has created — dies.

It's just a standard, mediocre horror flick that wants to be taken seriously. The creators missed the point entirely: even teenagers know that there's no audience for this type of film anymore.

The special effects are definitely the best thing about this curiously bland disasterthon.

If only the movie itself had so much spunk—Flubber bounces but it never flies.

Once the film devolves into teary hospital scenes and courtroom shtik, you might pine for Thelma and Louise's daring road to oblivion. [20 Feb 1995, Pg.72]

The superhero genre screams for a makeover, or at least a smart deconstruction, but Hancock isn't that movie. It just ups the foolishness ante.

Trying for a tone somewhere between an art film, an absurdist comedy, a horror movie and an old Saturday-matinee serial, he's made a handsome, cripplingly self-conscious thriller that's devoid of any real thrills. [3 Feb. 1992, p.65]

The flick's ultimate flaw? For a movie about space travel, it's an awfully uninspired trek.