Wall Street Journal's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
For 2,071 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 41% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 57% lower than the average critic
Average Movie review score: 59
Highest review score: 100 The Lives of Others
Lowest review score: 0 Step Brothers
Score distribution:
2,071 movie reviews
    • 39 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The devil had taken Reagan to the mountaintop and offered a world of spoils, from peace prizes to popular acclaim and a glamorous place in history. To reject it took more than guts. It took a man who put freedom ahead of his own glory. This is not a biography but the story of a man who faced off against the 20th century's "heart of darkness" and won.
  1. A small story, a monodrama with a hero but no antagonists.
  3. There's no zest to the general depravity, no coherence to the script or the spectacle -- clarity is missing in some of the camera work -- and, most important, no character to give a Greek fig about.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Like our two loose cannons with badges, the movie misses its target at least as often as it hits it.
  6. Mr. Gooding is out there in almost every scene, and the destruction of his once-promising career proceeds apace.
  10. This shabby enterprise gets so many things so wrong that it freezes your face into a cringe.
  13. Mr. Chan proves yet again that he has the virtuosic grace -- and goofiness -- of any of the great clowns of the silent era, and a complete refusal to abide by the laws of gravity. Do let us be clear, however, that the movie's plot, minus a few roundhouse kicks, is straight out of the Scooby-Doo playbook.
  14. This noirish, sourish thriller left me unmoving as well as unmoved.
  16. This slapdash farce, arriving three decades after Sellers last inhabited the role, sustains a baseline of good will that often spikes into delight at Mr. Martin's beguiling nonsense.
  17. Wayne Kramer's interlocking saga of immigration in 21st-century America definitely crosses over, from workaday mediocrity to distinctive dreadfulness.
  18. Ms. Berry works hard in her role, generating some excitement in the course of her distress. But the story's convolutions can't cover a deficit of substance, or sense.
  19. Amelia Earhart is still missing.
  20. Quirky. Wacky. Offbeat. Outré. The words that come to mind regarding Paper Man might prompt you run in the opposite direction. And perhaps you should, except for the performances of Jeff Daniels and Emma Stone.
  21. Manages the dubious trick of being both execrable and boring.
  24. Certainly grows in its own right, into a coarse-grained summer vaudeville that could have been much smarter and sharper without losing its target audience.
  25. A rube's-eye view of Hollywood, but the rube is weary, and those around him seem to be suffering from terminal torpor.
  29. Given the importance of that subject, the real mystery of Mr. Lee's movie is why it's so diffuse, dispirited, emotionally distanced and dramatically inert.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    In under two hours, the synthetic, insufferable I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry manages to insult gays, straights, men, women, children, African-Americans, Asians, pastors, mailmen, insurance adjusters, firemen, doctors -- and fans of show music. That's championship stuff.
  30. Lest my own reaction be misconstrued, let me explain that I didn't like a single one of these insufferable narcissists, the kid included.
  32. Sorry excuse for political satire.
  34. A gothic thriller called Cold Creek Manor extrudes an 80-minute idea -- I may be overgenerous here -- into 118 minutes that feel like an eternity.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
  36. The script's foolish contrivances crush its content.
  39. Mr. Smith's latest film is about nothing less than life and death, sin and atonement, and it takes the soggy cake for multiple layers of sentimentality topped by indigestible grandiosity.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
  40. The dialogue is clumsy, the tone swings between somber and silly and the whole bizarre venture eventually succumbs to rigor mortis.
  41. A shopworn studio contraption, slapped together from second-hand parts.
  42. It's all played for giggles, this grim anti-humanism. [21 May 1992]
    • 36 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Squanders endless opportunities for sharp satire, keeping to a steady course of tame, toothless comedy, and wrapping things up with the kind of vapid ending "The Brady Bunch" would be proud to call its own.
  47. This time he (Martin) goes through the motions.
  48. Domino is a new definition of a snuff movie. It snuffs out every vestige of feeling.
  50. My Blue Heaven is interesting as an example of how talented or at least experienced people can spend a great deal of time, money and effort on a movie that fails consistently, in almost every single scene. [30 Aug 1990]
  51. Brought down by repeated bursts of high absurdity.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Clone Wars will appeal only to the most tolerant, galactically minded children and their parents.
  54. This Transformers is a pile of glittering junk.
  55. Robert De Niro collects another stupendous paycheck for starring in another piece of exploitable junk.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
  60. A turgid recycling of Mr. Carpenter's remake of "The Thing."
  62. This horror-free horror flick sent me wandering through my own memory warehouse, where, at every turn, I bumped into images from similar -- and mostly superior -- entertainments.
  63. Stinker doesn't begin to describe this movie's character -- both frenzied and dispiriting.
  64. It may be lulling to know, almost from the outset, where the plot is going, but thrilling -- or even psychological -- it is not.
  65. Why is the movie such a mess? Will Ferrell plays a washed-up actor who's supposed to be a hopeless mess, but even his character makes little sense. Is it all supposed to be postmodern? No, it's post-postmortem, the dead spirit of a dearly departed show.
  66. A bizarre conflation of chick flick and "A Christmas Carol."
  67. Must be seen to be believed, though I'm not suggesting you actually see it.
  68. The Happening makes you wonder whether Mr. Shyamalan's own switch may have been flipped. How else to explain his film's befuddling infelicities, insistent banalities, shambling pace and pervasive ineptitude?
  69. If Detroit had produced an equivalent lemon, we might have been seeing the world's first one-wheeled, square-tired car with no cooling system, steering wheel or brakes.
  70. The only entertaining member of the cast is Terence Stamp.
  71. Mr. Osunsanmi's chutzpah exceeds his skill.
  73. Ragging on Town & Country is like shooting a school of fish that's already belly up in a fetid barrel, but the movie's ineptitude is almost incomparable.
  75. Five months after Sept. 11, the movie inevitably echoes those events, but in a loud and extremely cheesy way.
  76. Remarkably joyless, even though Ms. Jolie is a formidable presence with the potential for becoming a witty one.
  80. The 3-D is cheesy (2.2-D at best) the gags are gross (Gulliver urinates on an 18th-century palace to extinguish a fire) and the production abandons all hope of coherence when the hero fights a climactic battle with a giant robot out of "Transformers."
  82. By the climax, the adult has finally become a responsible though still charming citizen; the child has become age appropriate and, yes, even cuter. Tsunami swell of music. Roll the credits. Minus the charm, that pretty much sums up Uptown Girls.
  83. Goes down fighting, but it goes down just the same.
  84. Eye-blowing and mind-numbing.
  85. The movie's smugness is insufferable.
  87. YEEEEE HAAAAW! They've gone and done it. The feature version of The Dukes Of Hazzard turns a sow's ear into a bigger sow's ear.
  88. Punishes the audience with a flat starring performance; Mr. Jane finds few sparks of life in a hero who wasn't all that lively to begin with.
  90. UHF
  91. Mr. Rock's opening scene is very funny. After that it's a steep downhill slide.
  92. A sudsless soap opera with human misery as a backdrop for romantic banality.
  93. This dramatically, thematically and artistically bankrupt comic fantasy cost something in the neighborhood of $100 million to make and isn't worth the celluloid it's printed on.
  94. An ugly exercise in big-budget carnage.
  95. How could a movie with such likable actors be so deeply dislikable?
  96. Another dim adaptation of a bright comic novel.
  98. This joyless thriller runs the gamut from unconscionable through unwatchable to unendurable.
  99. It's a shrewd little comedy that uses good British actors to challenge its star, who rises to the occasion.
  101. Basically a soulless slasher flick, and one that demeans its gifted performers.
  103. I do wish Mr. Robbins's one-note co-stars had been worthy of his performance, and that some of the melodramatics hadn't been quite so slapdash.
  104. I have no idea how such shameless prattle found its way to the screen.
  107. Has many more downs than ups, but this ragged action comedy, with Martin Lawrence and Steve Zahn as mismatched buddies, rings some outrageously funny changes on a deadly serious genre of amateur video that began with Rodney King.
  111. It neglects, for one thing, to make any sense.
  112. The kindest context in which to put Over Her Dead Body, which was written and directed by Jeff Lowell, is that of a training film, a public display of people trying to master their craft. The best way to see it is not at all.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
  113. Knows that it's junk and tries feebly to rejoice in its junkiness.
  114. Every so often a movie transcends stupidity and soars into the empyrean of true idiocy. John Q. is such a movie.
  115. It's a terrible life, and a terrible movie.
  116. In a truly terrible action adventure called The Tuxedo, a high-tech monkey suit turns Jackie Chan into an all-powerful cyborg, and will turn you into a boredborg.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Well, incredibly stupid is certainly what is delivered to audiences.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The movie is juvenile on many levels, and it's downright creepy to watch an hour and a half of dramatized neoteny -- a state defined by American Heritage as "the attainment of sexual maturity by an organism still in its larval stage."
  122. Timeline has negative energy to burn. There's even less of it by the end than at the beginning.
  123. It's too much for a feature film, and too little, but it certainly isn't dull.
  125. A brilliant but completely muddled concoction about the relationship between fantasy and reality. [16 Jul 1992]
  126. N'ever was an apostrophe so misplaced, n'ever was the prospect of good cheer so perversely defeated.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
  133. The worst would-be-big-and-Capraesque-but-actually-bloated-and-bloviating-beyond-belief movie of the year.
  134. Qualifies as top-grade catnip for connoisseurs of trashy camp.
  135. Wild Hogs, which includes a cameo by a live revenant from "Easy Rider," gives a bad name to carpe diem, but could have been worse; the trip might have started from Bangor.
  136. I haven't seen the original, but I can vouch for the clumsiness of the new version. As usual, though, Queen Latifah is an indomitable, if sometimes undirectable, comic force.
  137. All the same, it's a feat to find the lowest common denominator at 40,000 feet; View From the Top would be perfect as the first in-flight offering of the new Hooters airline.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    • 24 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
  142. The remake stumbles from a ragged start into a child's garden of worses -- worse than the original in more ways than you could imagine.
  144. Beyond being entertained, I was delighted by the movie's outpouring of slapstick invention (one crazed sequence in a pet store has all the pawmarks of a classic), and the genial energy of its star, David Arquette.
  145. The road taken by The Love Guru could hardly be lower, and leads nowhere.
  146. An appallingly tedious Hanukkah comedy that must have bubbled up from the Porta Potti of his subconscious.
  147. It's basically a cheerful slob job, one of those slapped-together features so often embraced by teenagers with more disposable income than discernible taste.
  148. Every now and then a movie's awfulness rises to the level of mystery.
  149. Bad can't begin to describe Christmas With the Kranks. It's sub-humbug.
  150. Daisy was written without irony, wit or any grounding in reality. She's a barefooted flower child in a flatfooted fiasco.
  154. Redefines the notion of a feature film another notch downward.
  155. As the hilariously foul-mouthed, sweet-souled Dr. S, he (Wayans) slaps Marci X to life every time he's on screen.
  156. An abomination, impure and simple.
  158. This comedy is harmless, too, when measured against the vast array of harms that the world has to offer. It's also stupid, strident, witless, pitifully inept and bad for what ails you.
    • 17 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    A head-banging excuse for a comedy.
    • 16 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    For the most part, the movie serves up an incomprehensible collage of high-tech voyeurism sprinkled with every hackneyed creep-out trick in the book -- from eerie little ghost girls to melting walls and scurrying cockroaches.
    • 14 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    The oddballs of Mixed Nuts are oddly lackluster -- starting with Mr. Martin, who ambles through the movie with a stunned look on his face. [22 Dec 1994, p.A12]
  160. How could a major studio -- in this case 20th Century Fox -- put its name on a production with a dim-bulb, tone-deaf script that piles howler on howler? Why couldn't someone save poor Ms. Carey from herself?
    • 12 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    This one could bring back Prohibition.
    • 9 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Unspeakably ghastly sequel to the merely ghastly original.