An example of a movie review. negative.

A: The acting was bad, the script was bad and the ending was just terrible...the only good comment i could make about this movie would be the special effects and make up...but apart from that...this movie would be one of the worst movies of 2001...why on earth did they have to remake such a perfect movie and ruin it...why!!!!

An example of a movie review. negative.

A: I concur with everyone above who said anything that will convince you to not waste even a briefest of moments watching this amazingly amateurish movie. Very poor acting, offhand production values, utterly pedestrian direction, and a script so inept and inane it should never have been written, let alone produced. Even Hollywood "professionals" apparently go to work just for a paycheck, although no one should have been paid for this bad work. Careers should instead have ENDED over this inconsequential drivel.

OTH, there is something fascinating about watching something so jaw-droppingly bad. And Chad Lowe is terrifically and consistently bad.

An example of a movie review. negative.

A:
This 1973 TV remake of the Billy Wilder classic is inferior to the original. Surprise!

First, the good things. Lee J. Cobb makes a terrific Barton Keyes. He's not as good as Edward G. Robinson, of course, but he's the only reason to watch this. This remake's only improvement over the original is that it cuts down the role of Lola Dietrichson, the step-daughter of the femme fatale, Phyllis Dietrichson.

And that's it for the good things.

The bad things are many. The director records everything in an indifferent manner: if you watched the film with the sound muted you'd hardly get the impression that anything especially interesting was happening. Because of modern bad taste, the film must be in color instead of black and white. Because of 1970s bad taste, all the sets are distractingly ugly. Walter Neff's expensive apartment, in particular, is hideous.

The modern setting hurts in a lot of small ways. Train trips were a bit more unusual in the 70s than in the 40s, so Mr. Dietrichson's decision to take a train seems more of a contrivance. Men stopped wearing hats, which prevents Walter from covering up his brown hair while posing as the white-haired Mr. Dietrichson. Women in mourning stopped wearing veils, which robs Samantha Eggar of a prop Barbara Stanwyck made splendid use of in a key scene. (Oddly, Lola still has the line where she reveals that her stepmother was trying on a black hat and veil before she had need of them.)

Stephen Bochco keeps much of the Billy Wilder-Raymond Chandler script the same. But he makes a lot of tiny, inexplicable changes to the dialogue which leave the script slightly flabby where once it was lean and muscular. Outrageously, the famous motorcycle-cop banter is gone, but look closely and you'll see what looks like a post-production cut where those lines should have been. Bochco may not be to blame.

Richard Crenna is passable as Walter Neff. What might have made this version tolerable is a really splendid Phyllis Dietrichson. Instead we get Samantha Eggar, who comes off like a standard-issue villainess from "Barnaby Jones." But who can blame Eggar? With a director who barely seems interested in what's happening in front of the camera, how could Barbara Stanwyck herself have come off well?