All this sounds like a surefire recipe for knowing, trashy fun, but something got burnt in the oven.

As hard as metal and just as dumb, Paul W.S. Anderson's Death Race couldn't be further from producer Roger Corman and director Paul Bartel's goofy, bloody 1975 original, "Death Race 2000."

Plunges into a watery grave early on and spends roughly the next 100 minutes gasping for air.

Cleverly titled but noxious British comedy.

With its belabored gags, misfired pop-culture references and garish visuals crammed together like so many disjointed body parts, this manic kidpic cranks up the annoy-o-meter early on and rarely lets up.

Softcore horror at best, failed allegory at worst, Mirrors reflects little beyond Splat Pack auteur Alexandre Aja's desire to push his genre into less punishing and more profitable territory.

An indigestible gumbo of Southern Gothic ingredients seasoned with snake oil, biblical hash and thoroughly unpalatable spice.

Conservatives score a few political points but aren't very funny in An American Carol, a cheesy spitball directed at the very large target of a Michael Moore-like filmmaker.

Stylishly made, armed to the teeth and ludicrous in the extreme.

The way the picture dwells almost exclusively on cinematically exploitable elements -- gangbanger crime, prostitution, honor killing, terrorism paranoia -- gives it a sordid patina that even the classy, able thesps can't offset.

What needed to be a taut, structurally sound psychothriller instead malfunctions from the start.

A shrill, mechanical comedy.

It doesn't help that Zellweger, in an unfortunate attempt to make the aud appreciate her character's uptightness, spends many of the early scenes moving about as stiff as a flagpole in January.

Overlong, ponderous and occasional risible.

With a low-budget look, cliched dialogue, a stale plot and so-so acting, this supernatural thriller is unlikely to achieve the phenomenal success of its fabled predecessor.

Like many aspects of An American Affair, the music and the lopsided dramatic priorities take the viewer right out of the movie.

Miss March is overall a raggedy, unfocused affair that wastes both directors' acting talent and feels like too much work between the laughs.

Unfortunately, Alter's often inventive work is kneecapped by a deliriously nonsensical script, which misses the mark as both over-the-top parody and straight-faced homage, and could have been intended as either.

A monumental piece of miscasting in the title role, and an apparently tin ear for the nuances of English dialogue by Gallic helmer Francois Ozon.

Mature in terms of production polish and pro performances, writer-director Rob Margolies' feature debut, Lifelines (until recently called "Wherever You Are"), stumbles in a familiar way: It crams in so many family dysfunctions and plot crises in search of cathartic impact that credibility is stretched to the breaking point.

Peaks early -- like, during the first three minutes -- and rapidly goes downhill from there.

Emerges as an oddly sour, unappealing road-trip scenario.

The result is a movie with an exceedingly narrow target audience that should test Will Ferrell's appeal among boys maybe ages 12-14 -- about the only demo likely able to endure this laborious mess.

On a moment to moment basis, however, picture continuously skirts very close to the ludicrous in its advanced-stage grimness and outre forms of torture foreplay.

What rankles most about Amelia is the timidity and lack of imagination with which Nair approaches one of America's most exceptional and intriguing celebrity life stories.

With an array of gory mayhem only marginally enhanced by 3-D and a plot as developed as a text message, The Final Destination may finally sound the death knell for New Line's near-immortal horror franchise.

The movie simply doesn't deliver -- living hard, selling hard and, before it's over, finally dying hard.

The finished product appears particularly stale, with an unfunny script that squanders its game cast, including a valiantly emotive Jason Schwartzman in the title role.

Special effects are none too convincing, while sound effects are of the cheaply jolting variety favored by producer Paul W.S. Anderson in his films as director ("Resident Evil," "Event Horizon"). Other tech credits are, like the pic as a whole, lazily derivative.

Simply fuzzy filmmaking of the worst sort.

An aggravating romance that runs only 78 minutes but ends not a moment too soon.

Lars von Trier cuts a big fat art-film fart with Antichrist. As if deliberately courting critical abuse, the Danish bad boy densely packs this theological-psychological horror opus with grotesque, self-consciously provocative images.

Feels larger in scope yet sorely lacking in originality.

For every engrossing rank-and-file story, there are endless self-congratulatory explanations and podium highlights.

An ungainly, at times cringe-worthy succession of tame, telegraphed romantic mishaps, well-intentioned if unconvincing sentimentality, and some of the least authentic teenage dialogue this side of the "Friday the 13th" franchise.

Fangs aside, it sticks with the same basic menu of T&A and lowbrow humor.

Though unrecognizable, Amitabh Bachchan is the star of -- and the only reason to go see -- Paa.

Overplotted and underwhelming, Breaking Point is the type of movie that finds it necessary to invent a far-reaching legal/political conspiracy just so one guy can redeem himself by overthrowing it.

Kevin Costner starrer boasts an impressive English-language debut from Spanish teenager Ivana Baquero ("Pan's Labyrinth") and a well-constructed first half, but its many cliches begin to undo its spell long before a ridiculous third act squanders all remaining goodwill.

Overblown and underwhelming, Bitch Slap is a desperately unfunny attempt to satirically recycle cliches and archetypes from sexploitation actioners of the 1960s and '70s within the time-trippy, multiple-flashback framework of a Quentin Tarantino. extravaganza.

Writer-director Nancy Kissam's inexplicably named feature feels a tad Frankensteinian, sewing second-hand ideas together most inorganically.

Just as representations of human sexuality on film are often unpleasantly twisted by the grotesqueries of the porn industry, so, too, are filmic representations of religious conversion homogenized by the faith-based entertainment industry. Case in point: Debutante director Brian Baugh's To Save a Life.

Underacted, overheated and uses a pair of purloined, high-end sneakers as a 400-pound allegory for getting your priorities straight.

A feel-bad film through and through. Chronicling a year in the life of a low-income Mohawk Valley family beset by external hardships and shockingly bad decision-making, the docu straddles the line between unflinching intimacy and invasive exploitation.

A contradictory creature, both insightful and dumb, sometimes innovative and sometimes just plain inept. Dreamy, funny but also weirdly disjointed, it’s as if the very film itself were stoned, just like its two pot-smoking sister protags.

The Lizard King is a bummer in When You're Strange, Tom DiCillo's disastrously inane documentary ode to reptilian rocker Jim Morrison and his mellower bandmates in the Doors.

This slavishly faithful update... fails to tap into anything culturally specific or uniquely funny in its Pasadena setting or its theoretically looser, livelier black cast. And because the characters are so flat, we couldn't care less about the blows to their sense of propriety.

Andrew Lancaster's helming bow looks smart but lacks confidence in its melodrama and, professional editing aside, resembles a meandering rough cut.

While the 1984 film has aged, its now-familiar jolts still pack more punch than this pic's recycled ones, which sometimes register so tepidly as to cause snickers.

Advocacy to the point of propaganda.

Despite the presence of Glen Matlock, Steve Dior and a handful of other punk rockers, plus a slew of oblique eyewitness who lurked around before and after the fact, the documentary soon bogs down in tiresome minutiae.

That the taste of Annemarie Jacir's feature debut should be bitter is completely understandable given the untenable Palestinian situation, but the heavy-handed, excessively didactic script plays like a primer for people only vaguely aware of the issues while overly confirmed in their righteousness.

The surprise twist brutally defies the opening narration and plot logic that preceded it, alienating viewers who willingly suspended disbelief.

Director Paul W.S. Anderson (who also directed the original) can hardly manage a hint of suspense or excitement. And excitement is exactly what the film ought to have in excess.

Manages to squander three generations of formidable actresses.

This ludicrous outing from helmer Christian Alvart ("Pandorum") and scribe Ray Wright ("The Crazies") takes its psycho-satanic babble much too seriously, and should elicit more laughs than frights.

It's a Wonderful Afterlife is a movie to make Frank Capra roll over in his grave from indigestion.

A tedious slog alleviated only by widescreen shots of the Portuguese capital and terrific fado singing.

Though stretched to a two-hour run time, Doctorow's socially critical tale is reduced to queasy spectacle.

Nothing short of preposterous, Jake Scott's film imagines a grieving couple (James Gandolfini and Melissa Leo) who play surrogate parents to an underage stripper ("Twilight's" Kristen Stewart) and spins it for the "Blind Side" crowd.

An object lesson in overconfidence and underdevelopment, almost as unbalanced as its central psychotic.

Garden of Eden sends sleek, half-nude bodies glumly cavorting through lush Riviera landscapes in a paradigm of unintentional camp.

This wrong-headed dramedy peddles forced warm-fuzziness and insincere sentiment on the backs of an all-star cast.

The story grows more desperate as it goes on.

Both overblown and undercooked, Season of the Witch is a fine example of a film that would've been great fun if only its creators had a sense of humor about the wild brew of absurdity they had percolating.

Strictly for fans of free-form, DIY hit-or-miss humor (and those who prefer a miss to a hit), pic complacently parades its alienated amateurism in the mistaken belief that half a gag is better than none.

Making his directorial debut, screenwriter Christopher Landon struggles so mightily to offend that he forgets to supply a rooting interest in his characters.

Signaling a new low in post-modern smug superiority, Ex Drummer tries to pass off contempt as comedy and slanted lensing as creativity.

Perversely eccentric and frequently inert, screenwriter Mitch Glazer's directorial debut, Passion Play, will benefit from some of the well-known names attached, but the near-painful hipness of the production will yield poisonous word of mouth.

Chaos may not quite be "the most brutal, horrifying film ever made," as its garish ads promote. But it does contain moments as thoroughly sickening as any in Herschell Gordon Lewis' or Lucio Fulvi's bloody exploiters.

As is, the emotional elements explored by Cost of a Soul, and the devices it employs, seem trite and occasionally shoplifted from better-told tales.

Woefully amateurish psychological thriller.

Performances range from wooden to hysterical, and it's largely due to Mulroney's inexperience behind the camera.

Facile, formulaic and utterly charm-free.

Offering a fitfully funny sitcom plot clumsily stretched to 90 minutes, then goosed with increasingly tiresome doses of smuttiness and political incorrectness, The Best and the Brightest is neither.

Ultimately, it's a marketing pitch in search of a movie that proves punishingly flat.

In this shoestring outing, Susan Streitfeld ("Female Perversions") opts for an unsettling mix of low-tech cinematic tricks and temporal reshufflings to simulate the process of enlightenment to sometimes laudable, usually ludicrous effect.

More soap opera than high drama, the film is confused and confusing, and tedious to boot.

Bad dialogue and bad acting might convince some of the authenticity behind Bad Posture, but there's no getting around the tedious navel-gazing of Malcolm Murray's fiction debut.

Even at 73 minutes, the film is, well, too damn long.

Being pissed off isn't enough to convince in a film that reveals very little that's new; the picture's personalized approach and kitchen-sink structure don't help, either.

A cheap-looking, vaguely depressing echo of Robert Rodriguez's well-loved kidpic trilogy, assembled with minimal imagination or effort.

Lacks the delicate tonal control and subtle smarts required for such an intended half-surreal exercise.

Unlike his "Snakes on a Plane," director David R. Ellis' sharks-in-a-lake thriller displays little sense of its scenario's camp potential. Gore, too, is in short supply on account of the pic's PG-13 rating, which renders the attack scenes nearly toothless.

It's a picture that's akin to a terrarium of plastic flowers -- gaudily decorative, but airless and lifeless.

Resulting mish-mash of exposition and speechifying opts to summarize rather than dramatize; one spends nearly as much time reading indigestible lumps of onscreen text as one does listening to the often distractingly post-dubbed dialogue.

In the curious absence of religious satire, toilet humor isn't enough to constitute comedy, while the leads' grating performances make 81 minutes feel eternal.

A starry cast and glossier production values simply work against the black-and-white original's strengths in this stillborn thriller about a deadly game of chance.

In this case, Montiel's awkward appropriation of gritty crime-drama conventions results in a film that's contrived and implausible, at times absurdly so.

Grotesquely straining to ridicule and validate its hero simultaneously, A Novel Romance will disappoint even Guttenberg diehards.

Her (Wauer) attempt to relieve uncomfortable events with happy stories makes for a disturbing superficiality, and a "make your own Jewish grave" student project is plain offensive. Score is omnipresent and insufferable.

A weekend romp for four middle-aged buddies devolves into a drug-fueled, suicidal hell in Mark Pellington's ill-conceived and executed I Melt With You, a work of extreme self-indulgence.

A malformed, would-be horror shocker with a deliriously deranged performance by Dennis Quaid, who unfortunately seems to be the only one onboard who thinks he's in a comedy.

Plodding and repetitive in its efforts to maintain pressure-cooker intensity, The Divide resembles nothing so much as an extended "Twilight Zone" episode as it brings a sci-fi twist to a familiar scenario about stressed characters who bring out the worst in each other while trapped in close quarters.

Dustin Guy Defa's Bad Fever takes mumblecore to its reductio ad absurdum, featuring a hero whose utterances border on the unintelligible.

Doubly disappointing considering that it marks the first feature by Rwandan filmmakers to address the country's 1994 Hutu-on-Tutsi genocide, Kinyarwanda awkwardly and fitfully patches together a half-dozen story strands meant to provide a panoramic view of war and reconciliation.

Recycles characters and plotlines from their show, along with badly made commercials and faux PSAs about inane subjects, a gambit that dates back to such comedy compilations as "Kentucky Fried Movie" or even "Laugh-In." What Tim & Eric has that those others lacked are the many sexually outre, scatological and degrading moments that seem intended to shock -- and perhaps will, if you're really young or really old.

The key to Seuss' tales, as with all good fables, is not only their cleverness but their surpassing elegance and simplicity, qualities that this busy, over-cluttered contraption of a movie seems entirely uninterested in replicating.

Alas, even Murphy's largely wordless, physically adroit performance can't redeem this tortured exercise in high-concept spiritualist hokum.

Its humor and sentimentality equally labored, this by-the-numbers picture will look better, albeit still not good, as a latenight cable or streaming time-killer.

It's a murky sea that surrounds Dark Tide. A soap opera with shark attacks, picture contains a few alarming sequences but loses its grip on its material -- and the viewer -- in a swirling vortex of visual confusion.

Woman Thou Art Loosed: On the 7th Day is crammed with enough melodramatic incident for three movies, all of them seemingly scripted by Tyler Perry in a very foul mood.

A picture so thoroughly generic as to suggest a contraption assembled from spare parts with the aid of a how-to manual.

All in all, it could have been worse. Puerile, crotch-fixated and very occasionally, inanely funny, Adam Sandler's raunchiest star vehicle in years has a small saving grace in Andy Samberg's performance.

Gets one's attention but doesn't keep it, due to ill-cued flashbacks, groan-inducing dialogue and wooden performances.

Yet another attempt to mix raunchy excess and romantic-comedy sweetness in an anything-goes raucous farce, The Babymakers offers a few big laughs between ho-hum stretches of frenetic vamping.

Much of this makes little sense, but it's hard to care.

The low-budget production feels chintzy and impossibly square, even by tyke standards.

Exploiting Lawrence's newfound fame is the only hope this ill-conceived, poorly executed venture has of connecting with audiences before poisonous word of mouth sends potential buyers in search of a more attractive address.

This crude, shrill day in the life of three ill-matched Manhattan women will prove as irksome to most viewers as it is to the protags.

Satirist and "Daily Show" ex-contributor Mo Rocca's faux-disingenuous tone and nonstop jocularity dominate the documentary to quickly grating effect, significantly diminishing its impact.

A technically competent but painfully broad dramedy about a larcenous mother-and-son duo in the Midwest. This gender-flipped, latter-day "Paper Moon" lacks that film's judicious restraint, among other things, alternating hick Americana cartoonishness with maudlin appeals to the tear ducts.

Unfortunately, with its unconvincing action, preachy script and flat performances, the picture winds up less moving than most typical journeyman documentaries on the subject.

A risibly overheated, not unenjoyable slab of late-'60s Southern pulp trash, marked by a sticky, sweaty atmosphere of delirium and sexual frustration that only partly excuses the woozy ineptitude of the filmmaking.

By-the-numbers slasher picture Smiley starts by borrowing the key concept of "Candyman," ends with a denouement heavily indebted to "Scream," and stuffs its middle with a dismayingly high quotient of lazy false scares.

This transparent piece of propaganda blatantly overplays its hand.

Manages the curious feat of being at once relentlessly energetic and almost continually uninvolving; the title more or less sums up the amount of pleasure to be had here.

Most of what Stevens has concocted here is hard to take, notably the characters' curious relationship with the rain that threatens to drown Missouri, and serves as a soggy metaphor. Sometimes it only rains in half the frame; sometimes people coming out of downpours are wet, sometimes they're not; sometimes they're wet and it's not raining.

The hit-to-miss ratio is less than impressive throughout A Haunted House, a frenetic and freewheeling satirical comedy that only sporadically scores a bull's-eye while aiming at easy targets.

While there are a few good jokes and sight gags along the way, the main impression left by She's All That is how numbingly consistent its lack of originality is.

The story ultimately feels too conventional, and the portrait of the artist is too shallow to stand as a compelling or convincing evocation of a complex mind.

The potential for screw-tightening suspense gets lost amid the ineffectual dramatics in Phantom, a feeble fictionalization of a crucial but little-known moment when a rogue Soviet submarine brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

Gummo is personal, honest and raw, but it's also erratic, self-indulgent and full of ideas that are not fully explored. [8 Sept. 1997, p.80]

Beverly Hills Cop II is a noisy, numbing, unimaginative, heartless remake of the original film...Murphy keeps things entertainingly afloat with his sassiness, raunchy one-liners, take-charge brazenness and innate irreverence.

As shocking and deliberately manipulative as the original movie and -- some may reckon -- even more pointless.

Significantly lacking in star wattage (including Perry’s own), this sluggish, relentlessly downbeat portrait of a young couple in crisis should play well to Perry’s fanbase.

Even die-hard Trekkies may be disappointed by Star Trek V. Coming after Leonard Nimoy's delightful directorial outing on Star Trek IV, William Shatner's inauspicious feature directing debut is a double letdown.

A schlock supernatural shocker.

Picture has some redeeming features, like its glossy, fashion-shoot-inspired black-and-white look, and a clutch of respectable performances among some very poor ones from the toothsome young cast, but the script is a mess, the characters barely sympathetic.

Straining to be a distaff “Deliverance,” indie thriller Black Rock is unable to shock, much less convince.

The resulting film is a trite piece of storytelling, with character development and plot points that feel not so much lived in as borrowed from other movies.

Reducing an immensely disturbing, politically byzantine tale to a series of cartoonish vignettes, this celeb-studded biopic squanders a gutsy performance by Amanda Seyfried.

This scrappy, draggy study in soul-crushing failure and disappointment is noteworthy primarily as a showcase for its lead actor’s most quintessentially Keanu performance in years.

The burning topic of Muslim (mis)representation in U.S. media is not well served by Michael Singh’s amateurish and ill-defined docu Valentino’s Ghost.

Director Jon Turteltaub's insistence upon hammering every point home with giant closeups and relentless musical underlining makes this insufferably cloying and sickly sweet.

The proper mix is never found. Ill-conceived and expensive project that winds up looking like a bunch of talented thesps slumming it.

Viewers who sit through Exit Wounds should at least do themselves the favor of staying for the end credits, which feature some truly funny off-color banter between Anderson and Arnold on the latter's ostensible talkshow.

Young teen girls will flock to pic in droves, dragging their boyfriends or other girlfriends.

Almost every element in Art of War is slightly off.

Bringing absolutely no fresh angles to a time-tested formula that's seemed particularly overworked of late.

A useless remake of Mike Hodges' 1971 British gangland cult classic.

Awfully lame bigscreen debut for pop diva Britney Spears.

Appears headed for a deep-space rendezvous with audience indifference.

Senselessly long at two-and-three-quarters hours and with a protracted climax that eradicates any goodwill established in the fastidious first couple of reels.

Roman Coppola's first film has sympathetic aims but is distressingly lacking in flair, style, wit or fun.

In outer space, no one can hear you scream -- of boredom.

The question isn't where is the love but where are the laughs?

Shrill, strenuous and entirely without charm, Ron Howard's attempt at a Christmas classic is an elaborately wrapped empty box that will fool many people into buying it but will not greatly please its recipients.

A muted coming-of-age piece that more often reflects rusty movie conventions than it freshly observes real-life struggles.

A shamelessly sappy family meller that bears the schmaltzy sensibility of Nora Ephron.

Hectic, sketchy and finally dull.

A staggeringly misguided stab at making the past come alive by people who have absolutely no feel for period filmmaking. Banal at best and laughable at worst.

The unsophisticated, even crude result is not likely to win over too many tots.

Lacks the comic style or abandon to make its cynical turn on male-female relationships anything more than a short-lived stunt.

This tepid comedy-drama is, lamentably, aptly titled.

The resulting film is one of too much reverence and not enough satire.

Fires nothing but blanks.

Most discomforting of all is the sight of world-class actors stuck in such threadbare material.

May hold some appeal for Latino auds in the Southwest but will fold after a couple of rounds in the big arena.

Ambitious but flawed comedy.

While good to look at, is devoid of psychological depth or credibility, and further marred by weak, often risible performances.

A collection of sentimental and emotional moments in search of a movie.

Strictly a minor-league late fall entry.

Has nothing much to say.

Plays like a movie where the script went missing on the third day of shooting.

A 2½-hour demo of auteurist self-importance that's artistically bankrupt on almost every level.

Has shown its true colors as less a serious religious-themed film than a moth-eaten tapestry of foreign intrigue and badly miscast international stars.

This small-scale, chamber piece, which boasts good acting from Moore, Skarsgard and Fichtner, has a strong built-in appeal for women but may experience harder times in going beyond the specialized arthouse circuits due to the narrowly-scoped, undernourished script.

It's a timely, noble undertaking ill-served by a dry, history-textbook style that is at once too much and not enough.

Fails to stir the emotions despite its heavily melodramatic drive.

Visually gratifying but dramatically weak, the film falls short of its aspiration to be a sweeping romantic epic.

A woefully under-realized story of small-time boxers enjoying perhaps their last moment in the spotlight.

Will greatly peeve many hardcore fans.

Not bad enough to qualify as a memorable dud, multinational production nonetheless misses mark on every level.

[Parillaud] remains a totally uninteresting figment of Besson's blinkered movieland imagination, especially when she's in the company of Karyo and Anglade, who provide balance to her overacting.

A relentlessly annoying clay duck that crash-lands in a sea of wretched excess and silliness.

An erratic, psychobabbling jumble of scenes that never builds to any discernible point.

Much of the confusion, as well as the lack of dramatic rhythm or character development, results directly from Bay's cutting style, which resembles a machine gun stuck in the firing position for 2 and a half hours.

A silly, hackneyed college suspenser put across with all the contrived banality of a bad '70s TV movie.

Misbegotten, unimaginative buddy pic.

The sheer raggedness of the plotting -- and the pic's cynical disdain toward audiences -- is staggering.

Depressingly parochial.

Screwball elements feel overly theatrical -- one can almost see the actors waiting calmly in the wings for their breathless entrances.

Evinces no interest in such niceties as credible dialogue, character motivation or forward momentum.

Rates a notch below the KISS-centric "Detroit Rock City" and a couple above Jerry Springer's "Ringmaster" -- in other words, closer to stupid-fun than stupid-toxic.

The hallucination sequences are among the pic's creepiest.

A strident, painfully repetitive and hopelessly stage-bound drama about self-indulgent twentysomethings on the fringes of the L.A. film scene.

A hillbilly romantic comedy in which the hillbillies show up but the romance and comedy never do.

Action pics rarely come much more blandly generic than Extreme Ops, an instantly forgettable snow-and-stuntwork extravaganza.

Simple tale is made unnecessarily complex by script's desire to give everything a metaphysical flavor, characters are across-the-board disagreeable and portentous art-school atmospherics are barely redeemed by occasionally good dialogue and a strong visual sense.

Pity the children for whom this is their intro to the world of Grimm, for while pic stays to basic outline of the original story in opening and closing sections, the large middle is stuffed with badly staged slapstick and painful stabs at hip dialogue in an arch attempt to cater to modern kids.

Exuberantly rude and crude, but generally more frantic than genuinely funny.

A very earthbound comic fantasy, a racially flip-flopped "Heaven Can Wait" redo stuck in a purgatory with just enough meager laughs to keep it from a more fiery fate.

A consistently silly, occasionally funny but mostly forced account of how a mild-mannered teacher from Connecticut unwittingly triggered the Bay of Pigs fiasco.

This deliberately pre-'90s slice of rock 'n' roll-tinged sci-fi horror, decorated with anything but the latest in special effects, seems particularly grungy and marginal.

A perfectly dreadful film.

Lacks sufficient appeal beyond niche aficionados of its featured performers.

A sign that the Sandler comedy empire is expanding and reaching new depths of pure gross-out stupidity.

Much like a botched souffle that fails to rise, Simply Irresistible is a bland confection that remains doggedly earthbound while attempting flights of romantic fantasy.

Feels entirely a part of an already faded go-go era. Pic is too late by a mile and rightly dumped in a few theaters by Fox, which will doubtless send it to video bins faster than you can say gigabyte.

Sadly symbolizes the decline of the Western. The 36th bigscreen version of the exploits of the James-Younger Gang is one of the least convincing.

A comedy in the last century and a drama in the new one. At least, that's the dumbfounding impression left by writer-director Oliver Parker's utterly miscalculated film adaptation of Wilde's play.

Yet the overall look, though derivative ("The Matrix," "Blade Runner," "Waterworld," etc.), rates as Battlefield's one non-guilty pleasure.

A lineup of comic actors running on empty long before the dust settles.

There's an appalling amount of talent at waste up on the screen, starting with Jackson and Carlyle whose tall/short, silent/motormouth double act never clicks.

Over-long, under-written and needlessly obscure instead of genuinely atmospheric.

Remote, non-involving and finally incomprehensible.

Has the stench less of rotting flesh than the whiff of a thoughtless quickie.