Lake Placid

The whole movie's a giant croc.

An almost mystifyingly bad movie!

Pullman once made a career playing bumbling idiots, but now he seems to play only dashing leading men. He was better at bumblers.

Laughably stupid, only fitfully scary.

Dull, jokey, and insubstantial!

Ludicrous premise and slim thrills!

A light-hearted monster movie that offers up plenty of laughs, Lake Placid is still a really fun and well-made creature feature that doesn't ever treat its characters- or the audience- like morons.

You either find the nasty-minded writing amusing or you don't, and there's nothing left for the film to draw on if you don't.

'I'm rooting for the crocodile,' announces Betty White. The line is funny and revealing: The film is smart enough to admit the monsters are usually the most interesting characters in these movies, but it's also smart enough to make the people interesting.

Well worth the watch if only for its attempts to inject levity in what's just a simple nature run amok horror comedy.

An old-hat but somehow still fresh horror-comedy that wins its audience over by the personalities onscreen.

It's neither Jaws-scary nor Tremors-funny, but genre-movie fans in 1999 did have a chance to feast on the year's talkiest, most neurotic horror movie. They respectfully declined.