Washed away by drippy plot. [16 January 1998, p. 4D]

Been-there-seen-that wannabe laughfest.

Only a truly dreadful story could make 81 minutes seem like an eternity. And Space Chimps is just that leaden experience.

Audiences everywhere will tune out long before the projector does.

The movie spends too much time wedging the couple into a May-December moment, where Crystal cracks nostalgic about the good old days. It's sweet, but it grows old.

By the time the movie reaches its protracted conclusion, it feels like a slog. Pacino has a few funny lines, as does Leguizamo, but not nearly enough to save the film from collapsing under the weight of its own self-righteous tedium.

Each actor does his own thing for his own audience demographic.

A tribute to a giant leap for mankind feels like a clumsy shuffle backward for animation.

Conan the Barbarian lives by a pretty simple ethos: He lives, he loves, he slays. What he doesn't do, alas, is act.

This film is so superficial and shifts so jarringly in tone that nothing feels authentic -- not Bacon's hard-working husband and father, nor his maniacal vengeance seeker.

Alpha and Omega is one of those rarities in the modern era of Hollywood animation: bad.

The tagline for College Road Trip is "You Can't Get There Fast Enough." But for those who sit through this humorless and massively predictable movie, a more apt phrase would be: "You Can't Get Out of There Fast Enough."

As if this drivel weren't bad enough, the ending blatantly threatens a sequel

Perhaps Martin should go back to taking chances and writing original work.

Bonds are tested and feelings hurt, but who really cares? The story takes predictable turns, embraces clichés and dodges all humor.

You can't accuse this film of bogging down in cheap psychology, yet you come out dissatisfied and without a clue about what made this person tick.

Rambo III is hardly the first Stallone-y baloney to climax with a commie wipeout; it is the first to palm off its star as the product of a Buddhist monastery. Like, whew. Rambo in a monastery is almost as stomach-turning as E.T. in a brothel. [25 May 1988, p.1D]

There's nothing sleazier than sleaze that fails to titillate, and this drab blight on a hot cast is as sleazy as a preordained hit ever gets. [07 Apr 1993 Pg. 08.D]

Although about as authentic as Chef Boy-Ar-Dee, Martin at least gets to dress funny. Joan Cusack's D.A. looks dowdy and is misused. Carol Kane's grocery-store siren looks slutty and is underused. And as a cop, Melanie Mayron should slap cuffs on her hairdresser. [20 Aug 1990, p.4D]

Waterlogged trip to nowhere. [13 February 1998, p. 3D]

Don't expect the seventh Star Wars film here. Star Wars: The Clone Wars is more like a long Saturday morning cartoon.

This sequel to the clever and funny first "Transformers" not only is disappointing, it will give most people a throbbing case of metal overload.

It's unclear why the writers bothered to update the cartoon, unless it was to expand the possibilities for quips and jokey ideas. If so, they failed in their mission, as the movie elicits few laughs.

Flippantly hip without any solid laughs, Life strains to be the flick more offbeat. [24Oct1997 pg06.D]

There's not a cliché that isn't nailed.

Goo oozes without mercy in A Walk to Remember.

Stuffing painters, writers and, naturally, Gustav Mahler (Jonathan Pryce) into about 90 minutes, the film comes off as little more than a handsomely mounted scorecard of sexual escapades.

Post Grad is a collection of unfunny, insipid and predictable vignettes in search of a movie.

A moviegoer's nightmare. The story is incoherent, inane and interminable.

Should the desire to see a clever zombie movie strike, try the recent remake of "Dawn of the Dead" or last year's "28 Days."

Family Weekend is the kind of dark-for-dark's sake, wannabe quirkfest that proves indie films can be just as clichéd and vapid as the most soulless Hollywood movies.

Yogi Bear is a big boo-boo.

I cry for I Spy— or I would if this latest and laziest imaginable of all vintage-TV spinoffs were capable of engendering an emotional response of any kind. Comas are physical, not emotional.

You can always judge a sci-fi thriller by its aliens. What does Planet offer -- Space roaches.

Cloying and dated movie.

Shyamalan isn't drawing the caliber of performances from his actors as he used to. Who can forget Haley Joel Osment's haunting portrayal in The Sixth Sense or that of Toni Collette, who played his mother, or Bruce Willis in arguably his best role?

Clumsy urban thriller.

A Disney Thanksgiving movie that plays like a Halloween holdover is odd enough. Even so, it wouldn't be that bad if you stuck your hand into the trick-or-treat bag and found a hefty, succulently dressed and edible turkey instead of the other kind.

While it's billed as a "re-imagining" of the horror franchise, this Friday is more like a rehash, delivering just what you expect and nothing more.

A little soon for any movie this millennium to reunite overacting Matthew Lillard, underacting Freddie Prinze Jr., feigning mousy Linda Cardellini and the more obviously lip-glossy Sarah Michelle Gellar.

A bottom-rung Bette Midler vehicle disguised as a biopic of novelist Jacqueline Susann, the movie is a wannabe satire shackled by misplaced reverence.

Shot by a special-effects superstar making his first stab at directing, Mark Dippe, the result is dizzying in its unreality, and the visual tricks are impressive. [01Aug1997 Pg.02.D]

Within a few minutes into the ponderous prehistoric pseudo-epic that is 10,000 B.C., you find yourself longing for George of the Jungle to crash into a tree or the Geico cavemen to amble up and put an end to the droning seriousness of this tedious tale.

The film feels as calculatedly sentimental as one of those bland pink candy hearts.

Unless you have a craving to watch a sluggish Ski-Doo race or want to admire Chase dressed as a hula dancer, consider this the cinematic equivalent of yellow snow.

Despite its collegiate setting, 21 and Over is pretty much for people with an IQ of 21 and under.

Those who sit through this mindlessness get the booby prize.

The movie is raunchier than expected, and above all clichéd, formulaic and thoroughly sexist. Worst, it's just not very funny.

The opening frame of Jonah Hex should say: "Caution: Made expressly for the male teen demographic. Not suitable for anyone of any age who prefers movies with coherence, an original plot or characters they give a hoot about."

This road-trip piffle is basically a male version of a chick-bonding flick.

Actor John Corbett, so clean-cut in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" and "Raising Helen," goes surprisingly scruffy here as someone who apparently studied music under Grizzly Adams.

The actors take a back seat to computer-generated demonic images and apocalyptic special effects.

Imagine a movie so broadly conceived that it was written, directed and all parts were played by Charo — billed in her '70s heyday of Love Boat gigs as the "Cuchi-Cuchi Girl." That's what you get here.

The movie tries to be both comical and touching, as befitting the coming-of-age genre. But it feels forced, derivative and sometimes sappily sentimental.

A substandard ebony-and-ivory buddy pic.

Kid's tone is off 100% of the time. The young actors are irredeemably bland, and two of the adults (Michael Des Barres' bank president, James LeGros' Storm Trooper-like security guard) are hammy enough to make James Brown seem controlled.

Pytka may know how to push fizzy water, but he certainly can't make a punch line sparkle. [21 Aug 1989]

Unfunny, sappy and massively predictable.

In this Amityville, the performances are bad, the special effects ho-hum, and it's not even particularly scary.

The only good thing about Impostor is the appropriateness of its title for a film posing as the first 2002 release.

It's one bad apple.

This is not only unsuitable for children, it's a colossal waste of time at any age.

A contrived, unpleasant and very drawn-out affair.

This is about Meg. Only about Meg. Meg in the Middle.

Don't buy a ticket for this one, even if the theater is having a fire sale on Raisinets.

In Roy Orbison terms, enduring this movie is like working for The Man.

With its excessive sleaze and gross-out gags, Soul Plane overshoots effective spoofery. Mostly it's a foul, eye-rolling experience.

Face it. Parody comedies are no longer a laughing matter. [25 October 1996, p.5D]

The movie goes wrong from the start.

It's a pretty twisted concept, bordering on offensive. But mostly it's just not funny.

The biggest mystery about Repo! The Genetic Opera is why the grisly Goth-horror musical is opening the week after Halloween. The second-biggest mystery is why this unfunny, unscary, preposterous bloodbath about organ transplants is opening at all.

A wan version of the same old tired serial killer story, despite its updated milieu -- cyberspace.

Despite an unlikely setting and a moderately intriguing premise, Chernobyl Diaries proves to be a generic horror flick where young tourists are systematically victimized in unoriginal and not terribly scary ways.

Sitting through this movie is worse than being locked in a room with a continuous loop of "Nip/Tuck" playing on a jumbo screen.

Max Payne couldn't be more appropriately named. Sitting through this stylish-looking but derivative, vacuous and bullet-riddled movie inflicts maximum pain.

A pitiful update that saddles poor Cedric the Entertainer with the unenviable task of taking over Jackie Gleason's premier creation, Ralph Kramden.

Superficial and lurid, Perfect Stranger is the cinematic equivalent of spam and should, like those trashy messages, be avoided.

That's My Boy is puerile, mean-spirited and charmless.

A glossy wisp of a cautionary tale.

Only the makers of "Freddy Got Fingered" might crack a smile because it now has competition for worst movie of the year.

Filmmakers must have been tripping pretty badly when they made High School, a flub that's about as lucid as a stoner at a spelling bee.

An American Affair is sordid business blandly portrayed and not worth meddling with.

No comedy this vile should be brazenly foolish enough to give itself this title. [25 November 1998, p. 3D]

Doesn't make the movie worth watching -- even if you're monstrously bored.

Life is a crock -- or something like it.

Director Kevin Smith's tweets, jokes and sharp commentary after being denied a seat aboard a Southwest Airlines flight because of his girth were a lot more engaging than Cop Out, his new movie.

Remarkably, the plot has much in common with "Hellboy II: The Golden Army," yet that bundle of fun has enough vision to make even its Barry Manilow interlude seem appropriate.

It's an unholy mess.

The screenplay is thin, the dialogue lacks nuance and the acting is often laughable.

The dialogue is beyond clichéd, and performances feel cobbled together from other movies.

You don't envy the three soldiers who get shot for desertion, but you do identify with their desire to flee.

The murkiest-looking movie since Ben Affleck's “Daredevil” and about as lacking in charm.

Director Christian Duguay's gimmicky "thriller" demonstrates that he has not begun to master the art of suspense.

Geared to 16-year-olds who can't name the governor of their state, this movie ought to be closed down by the health department.

White Noise is the celluloid equivalent of a bad cell phone connection.

If Sandler hopes to win over new fans, he may want to cork the scatological humor and let it age a bit.

A laughably bad horror flick.

A pathetically dumb attempt to string a bunch of second-rate skits together like a garland of rotten cranberries.

Sitting through the teen skateboard comedy Grind is, well, a grind.

One of those movies that goes for a jarringly new emotion every 30 seconds or so while the story's foundation is collapsing.

Any civilization that can produce a movie this stupid probably deserves to be hit by famine and pestilence.

The Wal-Mart of cinematic soap operas. One-stop shopping for your emotional movie needs.

There isn't much in the way of plot to get in the way of Sandler's world: There's poo, ripped pants and hot girls falling for fat guys.

Much as they would like it to, basketball can't save the youthful inner-city players here. Nor does the ultra-fast-paced street version of the sport save this movie from predictability and tedium.

In a summer filled with dumb comedies, this might prove to be the dumbest. Think "Road Trip" meets "City Slickers." Then dial the humor down a few notches, and you're left Without a Paddle.

Anyone who sees this movie is going to be 20 minutes ahead of it, though there won't be that many after Weekend 1. With domestic disturbances, someone calls the cops. With this DOA, someone had better call the coroner.

To say that New in Town is the worst movie of this fledgling year is to damn it with faint praise. It may be one of the worst movies of any year. Not content to be merely inane and predictable, it is downright insulting, humorlessly deriding those who choose to live in rural America, labor in factories or have a strong Christian faith.

A race-car drama full of flashy but empty images and a soundtrack that makes you feel as if you're being shaken on a motel rumblebed.

All cinematic creativity seems to have focused on devising the most repellent ways to maim and murder.

The jewels in the buried treasure, once sighted, look fake. But the bigger problem is how artificial the whole story feels.

The best actor in Snow Dogs is a glowering Siberian husky named Demon. In fact, all the dogs in the movie do a better job than their human counterparts.

Drawn out and dishonest in equal measure, Sam fights it out with "The Majestic" for the title of worst "important" movie of the year.

The scariest thing about this appalling and seemingly endless movie is that you paid for your ticket and now have to sit through it.

Except for a brief episode in which singer Chris Isaak and Kiefer Sutherland make like an FBI Rocky and Bullwinkle, this is a morbidly joyless affair. You'll feel as drained as one of Cooper's mugs of joe watching homecoming queen Laura drown in a whirlpool of sex and drugs. [31 Aug 1992]

Underdrawn and overheated, Cool World will leave you cold. [13 Jul 1992]

Who would have thought an animated comedy satirizing the predictable nature of fairy tales could be so grim?

Fun for less than 30 of the 80-minute running time.

Despite its appealing stars, The Ugly Truth is a charmless romantic comedy.

The best thing about A Good Day to Die Hard is its title.

If you didn't know otherwise, you'd swear that Gentlemen Broncos was made by a disaffected high school student – and not a particularly talented one.

So imperfect that it may qualify as one of the summer's worst movies.

November is when we eat turkey, and Sweet November is pretty much a fat, juicy gobbler passed off as Valentine's Day date bait.

Now and again, the bizarre occurs, such as when Fred and Barney don showgirl outfits and seem to be doing their version of "The Birdcage." But mundane is more the norm.

The story is tedious, noisy and banal. It is also rather dark and convoluted for children, though it does have the familiar bombast of a video game.

Not even scaremeister director Wes Craven can awaken this story. Murphy's pale efforts are enough to make one fondly recall Blacula. Now that was one sucker who knew how to make a film that didn't. [27 Oct 1995, p.4D]

Not worth the ride.

An insult to the memory of the cleverly written show and its celebration of friendship, it's a slap in the face for the four gal pals (often photographed at unflattering angles) and an affront to Muslims.

Everything about this fish-out-of-water romp is tired.

Less a movie than a mind-numbingly dull road trip.

Hisses for Catwoman. Unfortunately for Oscar winner Halle Berry, this movie belongs in the litter box.

From the embarrassingly over-the-top performance of Ray Liotta as a tough-guy biker to the pratfalls of William H. Macy as a bumbling computer geek, this movie stinks of exhaust and desperation.

Chan has more chemistry with the kids than with Valletta, but the story is so insipid that it's likely to only sadden fans of the martial-arts icon and offer little enjoyment to its young audience.

Defanged and drippy, the remake of 1939's The Women seems to have been made for the dullard granddaughters of the sassy, sharp society matrons in George Cukor's campy original.

The shenanigans of randy soccer moms and their obnoxious blowhard husbands are intended as comic relief. But the sappy plot of this formulaic romantic comedy is just as silly as its inane attempts at farce.

Summer School is like summer school: you go, then quickly realize you would much rather be doing something else. [22 July 1987]

The premise was a yummy one in the Mexican hit "Like Water for Chocolate," but it's best to pack Tums in case of heartburn this time around. [5 February 1999, Life, p.11E]

This is by far Kaufman's worst outing since becoming a major filmmaker more than a quarter-century ago, and the fact that his only other stinker from this period is 1993's "Rising Sun" means that maybe he ought to stay away from cop melodramas.

It's so derivative, unfunny and thuddingly bad that it's one of the more cringe-inducing movies of a genre chock-full of clunkers.

The concept is unoriginal, the scenarios aren't funny, and its message is banal. Plus, Murphy alternately hams it up and phones it in.

Even by teen gross-out movie standards Van Wilder makes "Sorority Boys" look like "Some Like It Hot."

The 1992 phenomenon was creepy, tense and sexually charged in a bold yet tawdry way. This sequel lacks even a shred of those elements.

The movie's biggest drawback is a failure to deliver what's promised.

This unfunny, über-misogynistic adaptation of Tucker Max's audacious best-seller of the same name is unlikely to please anyone.

Poor Sharon Stone! Poor Sidney Lumet! [22 January 1999, Life, p.11E]

Earth to Earth's young director, Mark Piznarksi : It's tough turning straw into gold, isn't it?

It tries to pass itself off as a film about feistiness, forgiveness and the bonds of motherhood. Instead, it deals lightly and inappropriately with promiscuity, alcoholism, drug abuse, grief and child molestation. Georgia Rule doesn't make you feel good; it makes you queasy.

The bad-taste murder farce is just an excuse for a bunch of actors to go slumming and ride about in - ha, ha - Yugos.

Friedberg, who previously made Nielsen's golfing video and rental car commercials, knows only the low road -- and gets lost anyway. [24 May 1996, Pg.04.D]

Desperately conceived by even the most insipid standards of contemporary teen-queen cinema, A Cinderella Story operates under a rotting pumpkin of a supposition.

When the most notable thing a film offers is the sight of Dennis Farina in drag, you can't expect much.

A moviegoer's only defense against Jason is to avoid theaters showing this gruesome and derivative movie.

As buddy pics go, this is pretty much not even worth a single look, let alone a double take.

Filled with laughable dialogue, Abduction goes nowhere.

Too much. The hackneyed story about an affluent damsel in distress who decides to fight her bully of a husband is simply too overdone.

Gere has never seemed more squirrelly.

The cliché-laden dialogue, schlocky special effects and predictable plot are derivative; the movie is overwrought and lacks suspense.

When it comes to being brainless, The Skulls is at the head of the class.

Bride Wars is about as funny as a cringingly awkward wedding toast.

Someone should have treated See Spot Run like a bone and buried it.

Ultimately the title is most revealing. It's hollow, man.

Maybe for the next installment, they can go off to college and find something better to do than making these silly movies.

Furry Vengeance is a slapstick stinker, easily the worst movie of the year.

A comedy that has one good joke, four strange cameos and a spirit so juvenile kids may wonder what Sandler's deal is.

Tedious, unromantic, sophomoric and only sporadically funny.

Really just an update of the kind of hapless grade-Z effort that once played the bottom half of a drive-in double bill.

Here's ringside entertainment for those who think TV wrestling is too intellectual and restrained.

This is the worst kind of movie, one that insults its audience by purporting to condemn violence while simultaneously reveling in it.

Burdened with so many poky scenes that it approaches the level of the distributor's "Drowning Mona" and "Whipped," both candidates for the year's worst.

The filmmakers, who include the hitherto ace action director Jan De Bont ("Speed", "Twister"), have neither hearts nor minds in gear. [13Jun1997 Pg.04.D]

Myopic Whitey, continually passed over for a lifetime achievement athletic award, bears a passing resemblance to Columbia's all-time No. 1 animated star, the nearsighted Mr. Magoo. It's nice to think that if he ever went to this movie, he wouldn't be able to see it.

Steven Seagal's acting style is so minimal that we can almost believe a script that tells us that his character's near-death experience left him flatlined for 22 minutes.

Love Stinks is what bad network TV comedy would be like if there were no censorship and less talent.

That's what The Bounty Hunter has rustled up -- along with a listless rom-com, a feeble thriller and a supporting cast of clueless characters.

This Paramount release doubles the insult because it rips off the title of one of the studio's best-remembered Jerry Lewis comedies.

Not just stupid, but brain dead.

OK, Time Warner, a joke is a joke, but the time of tolerance has passed. Get your creatures out of our faces unless you're willing to regale us by afflicting them with Mad Pokémon Disease.

An air of self-congratulation hangs over the empty tank of gas called Jawbreaker, as if writer-director Darren Stein just can't wait to dazzle us with the gaudy visuals he's soldered onto a standard-issue black-comedy script.

Sitting through New Year's Eve is like attending a crowded party filled with pretty people who have nothing to say.

Can't decide what direction it's going in. Some of the time it seems to be a standard teen sex comedy. Occasionally, it appears to be spoofing the genre. It concludes on a romantic, almost honorable note.

For a comedian (Allen) who often seems to be calling it in, he's more lackluster than usual. Curtis is a bigger disappointment, especially after "Freaky Friday," in which she was funny, smart and cheeky.

As a condescening moron who natters on non-stop in this simplistic comedy, Elliott doesn't just wear out his welcome, he nukes it. [14 Jan 1994]

It's so-so. As in mediocre. Even gross-out comedies need the stink of genius.

This genre stew throws in so many ingredients - including sundry body parts that are cut off and go flying, and heads that explode - that the result is a tasteless mash-up that's hard to stomach.

Suspense takes a vacation in sequel. [13 November 1998, p. 6E]

Would not even make a decent five-minute TV sketch. At any length, it smells.

Killers is dead on arrival: miscast, horribly paced and murderously uninvolving.

Too bad the movie didn't take its own advice and risk coming up with a fresh story.

A silly movie that's essentially a series of clichés strung together into a semblance of a movie.

Even if this movie wasn't based on a computer game, Starship Troopers' reputation would still have just shot up another 50 notches. [19 March 1999, Life, p.11E]

Memorable for being one of the most obnoxious animated movies of recent years.

Shocking is the fact that three highly regarded actors -- Kim Basinger, Mickey Rourke and Billy Bob Thornton -- chose to star in this dreadful film.

Saw V is a terrible combination: grisly and tedious. Let's just call it bloody dull.

While he gets points for addressing the debate, the way in which Stein goes about it undermines his efforts to be even-handed and intellectually rigorous.

Icky and incompetent (special effects aside) in equal parts, this groaner makes 1994's "The Mask" look like something you'd study in a film graduate course at NYU.

Structured loosely enough to work in all the excrement and incest jokes necessary to seem hip these days.

What snookered Slater (not to mention Donald Sutherland) into this film is a wonder, because there's not a genuine bone in it. Think the Bourne franchise meets the Bond franchise, without the wit or action.

The movie was postponed from 1998 and shielded from critics. (They were ot allowed to see the movie before the opening, usually a bid sign.) [15 January 1999, Life, p.8E]

That sound you hear is from jet engines gassing up, about to zoom Underclassman to DVD-ville.

This is not the Travolta of "Pulp Fiction," nor is it the Williams of "One Hour Photo." Though no animals were harmed in the making of Old Dogs, the lead actors were defanged. But like a pair of Labradors, they have a playful rapport.

In "There's Something About Mary," the gross gags were hilarious. Here, they're just vile.

This is a movie in which you rarely know where you are or who's doing what to the next person.

Some screwball moments elicit a chuckle or two, but the script is weak and the characterizations clichéd.

Good actors seem plastic and plastic actors seem worse in a knockoff of every rocket-ship movie you've ever seen.

A nose-bleeding mass murderer wears a mask that suggests Roger Ebert is knocking off a group of lifelong female friends.

An embarrassing debacle...the rare movie that never seems to take off, but also never seems to end. It tries hard to titillate, but ends up making audiences want to avert their eyes.

t's far too soon for an actress as vital as Jessica Lange to stoop to Bette Davis-Joan Crawford horror-hag histrionics. [6 Mar 1998, pg.04D]

Romantic screwball comedies are supposed to be at least a little romantic, but there's no chemistry between Perry and Hurley.

The only thing a movie this unrefined needs is a vaudevillian in baggy pants and someone hawking peanuts in the aisle.