Jay Boyar
Select another critic »For 372 reviews, this critic has graded:
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54% higher than the average critic
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2% same as the average critic
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44% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 1.7 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Jay Boyar's Scores
- Movies
- TV
Average review score: | 63 | |
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Highest review score: | The Age of Innocence | |
Lowest review score: | Revenge |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 191 out of 372
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Mixed: 134 out of 372
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Negative: 47 out of 372
372
movie
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
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- Jay Boyar
This lush classic is funny, dramatic, thought-provoking and always, always, always romantic. [20 Sep 1991, p.43]- Orlando Sentinel
Posted Apr 16, 2020 -
- Jay Boyar
Harrison Ford - that most decent of decent men - helps to carry the new film on his broad shoulders. With his blunt, Everyman features and sympathetically furrowed brow, he comes off as such a solid, good guy that it's impossible not to care about his upstanding character.- Orlando Sentinel
- Posted Jun 29, 2017
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- Jay Boyar
The main difference between Naked Gun 2 1/2 and Hot Shots! is that almost half the jokes in Naked Gun 2 1/2 were at least slightly funny while in Hot Shots! less than a fifth are any good at all. [2 Aug 1991, p.C5]- Orlando Sentinel
- Posted Jun 29, 2017
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- Jay Boyar
Three Amigos will never get any prizes for excitement or originality, but if there were an award for friendliness, this movie would at least be in the running.- Orlando Sentinel
- Posted Jun 29, 2017
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- Jay Boyar
The folks who made The 'burbs appear to be card-carrying members of the School of Non-Urban Humor. Basic to the philosophy of this school is the misapprehension that anything occurring outside city limits is intrinsically amusing.- Orlando Sentinel
- Posted Jun 29, 2017
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- Jay Boyar
Most of the time, Soapdish is fairly amusing in a zany, anything-goes kind of way. [31 May 1991, p.5]- Orlando Sentinel
Posted Jun 28, 2017 -
- Jay Boyar
Sid & Nancy is an honorable try, but it could have been better had Cox found a way to imbue the movie with some of the sheer zaniness of his Repo Man.- Orlando Sentinel
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- Jay Boyar
A dull-witted variation on the themes of the original Blue Lagoon, in which two young people (played by Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins) were stranded on a tropical island.- Orlando Sentinel
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- Jay Boyar
The Exorcist III isn't crudely exploitative so much as it's just unendurably pretentious. [24 Aug 1990, p.4]- Orlando Sentinel
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- Jay Boyar
This is the sort of picture in which people slap each other as they take their marriage vows, suddenly develop life-threatening diseases, and, again, have violent confrontations whenever there's a break in the action. Anything for a laugh, anything for a tear, and nothing much authentic.- Orlando Sentinel
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- Jay Boyar
Movies like this one - with its spoofy jokes, vacant characters and indefensible plotting - do nothing to keep the western form alive. Deal me out of this con game.- Orlando Sentinel
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- Jay Boyar
The movie contains Jane Fonda's first big-screen appearance since On Golden Pond (1981); if she doesn't quite find a character in Martha, she is nonetheless riveting. Anne Bancroft, too, is impressive. Finally, though, it is Meg Tilly who makes the movie live. Her performance, which works on both realistic and symbolic levels, allows you to believe in the story.- Orlando Sentinel
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- Jay Boyar
In praising Heart and Souls, I hope I haven't oversold the film. Really, it's kind of thrown together, but it's thrown together in a fun, unpretentious way that makes it an often delightful distraction for a rainy August afternoon. And it'll probably look even better when it shows up on TV. [13 Aug 1993, p.17]- Orlando Sentinel
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- Jay Boyar
Instead of displaying the grim wit of RoboCop, RoboCop 2 is crude and punishing. [23 June 1990, p.E1]- Orlando Sentinel
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- Jay Boyar
Longo and Gibson have so little interest in the personalities of the characters that the actors seem like stand-ins for computer-generated images. [27 May 1995, p.A2]- Orlando Sentinel
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- Jay Boyar
If The Hunchback of Notre Dame isn't for younger kids, it's an ambitious, often stirring film that's easy to recommend for just about anyone else. [21 June 1996, p.17]- Orlando Sentinel
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- Jay Boyar
Bad Influence has a somewhat effective screenplay, provided by newcomer David Koepp. The dialogue is much sharper in Bad Influence than it was in The Bedroom Window - although the new film's plot could have used more work. [09 Mar 1990, p.5]- Orlando Sentinel
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- Jay Boyar
If I had to guess, I'd say that the big white "snow" thing is a flimsy combination of cheap plaster, recycled Styrofoam and some poor soul's false hopes. Pretty much like the movie itself. [11 Dec 1998, p.22]- Orlando Sentinel
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- Jay Boyar
If you get stuck at Striptease, my advice is to relax and try to enjoy its occasional pleasures.- Orlando Sentinel
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- Jay Boyar
Director Michael Chapman, an experienced cinematographer, is skilled in conveying ideas through pictures -- quite an advantage in a movie about people who aren't especially verbal. And Chapman's cinematographer, Jan De Bont, has a varied palette that responds to the visual demands of a world in transition.- Orlando Sentinel
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- Jay Boyar
Director Andrew Davis (Seagal's Above the Law) and screenwriter J.F. Lawton (Pretty Woman) handle the early scenes fairly well. As the villains are putting their plan into place, the plot is involving and the pacing brisk. It's only after the bad guys take over the ship that the film begins to degenerate. The staging falls apart almost immediately, and, before long, it's not clear exactly what is happening and where. [06 Nov 1992, p.24]- Orlando Sentinel
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- Jay Boyar
As it turns out, the three men in Three Men and a Baby haven't got a clue about diapers -- or bottles or formula or anything concerning babies. They're bachelors -- New York yuppies -- who share a fantastic (and, undoubtedly, astronomically priced) apartment in Manhattan. How the lives of the threesome are changed by the new arrival is the crux of this good-natured comedy.- Orlando Sentinel
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- Jay Boyar
They all help Malkovich to do his thing, and a remarkable thing it is. That terrific performance of his just might be a selling point, after all. [16 Oct 1992, p.17]- Orlando Sentinel
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- Jay Boyar
The big problem is the script by 24-year-old Jeffrey Abrams (Taking Care of Business), which is clearly intended as a parable about how a self-centered overachiever and his disintegrating family are redeemed by suffering and sacrifice. What it's really about, however, is how those people are turned into a '50s sitcom family - complete with puppy dog, spunky adolescent, devoted mom and dim-but-well-meaning dad.- Orlando Sentinel
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- Jay Boyar
What's special about Fly Away Home is the delicate yet unsentimental way that Ballard approaches the material. Working from a straightforward script by Robert Rodat and Vince McKewin, he seems to let the story tell itself. [13 Sep 1996, p.23]- Orlando Sentinel
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- Jay Boyar
Children will undoubtedly enjoy the ninja flick a lot more than their parents will, and it probably won't even give most kids nightmares. But couldn't a steady diet of this sort of thing help to desensitize very young children to real violence? If so, that's awful - not awesome - dudes.- Orlando Sentinel
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- Jay Boyar
A powerful film - the best and fullest expression of Mamet's brilliantly brutal sensibility to reach the movie screen. [02 Oct 1992, p.19]- Orlando Sentinel
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- Jay Boyar
The better you remember 1963, the better your chances of liking Mermaids. It's not so much a movie as it is a time capsule. The fun is in seeing what gets pulled out next. [14 Dec 1990, p.8]- Orlando Sentinel
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- Orlando Sentinel
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- Jay Boyar
Red Rock West is not, in any sense, groundbreaking. When you come right down to it, all Red Rock West really has going for it is its enormous entertainment value. But, hey, that's plenty. [14 Oct 1994, p.31]- Orlando Sentinel