MAD LOVE. Two Seattle teens, played by Chris O'Donnell (ever the perfect boyfriend) and Drew Barrymore (ever the flirty thrill-seeker), decide to run away and live a wild life on the road. But after a series of booming alternative music-filled travel montages, the love story becomes pointlessly morose.

THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE. Nigel Hawthorne has received great praise for his performance as King George III, who was believed insane when a nervous-system disorder briefly wreaked havoc on his temper. Hawthorne deserves the accolades: he travels from regal to rabid and back with believability as well as comic flair. But the movie itself is far from a fascinating piece of drama, and holds little interest unless you're British or find yourself enraptured by historical trivia about British royalty.

THE MASK. In this childish special effects movie, the comedic contortions of Jim Carrey and photorealistic animation of Industrial Light & Magic blend as seamlessly as the crotch in a pair of bike shorts. The story, about a meek bank clerk who gets to live out his fantasies when he discovers a magical mask, is nothing eye-popping; predictably, Carrey seeks out revenge, wealth and sexual omnipotence, and the film scuttles us through the usual complications involving police and mobsters. But who cares about story when Carrey's green, grinning mug is filling the screen? The Mask has just enough cartoonish goings-on to make up for its normal-movie drawbacks. Taken at face value--and there's a lot of face value--it's great fun.

MILK MONEY. The title, a double entendre, refers to the scenario at the beginning of the film, when three pre-pubescent suburban boys save up their Milk Money in order to pay a prostitute to expose her breasts. The inanity continues when one of the boys decides the prostitute would make a good wife for his widowed father, and begins scheming to set them up. Director Richard Benjamin, Ed Harris (as the dad) and Melanie Griffith (as the ho) work hard to cover up the bad taste of the story with a quality production, but that only makes the movie doubly absurd, like a cheap whore in an extravagantly expensive dress.

MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET. John Hughes, who wrote and produced this remake of the well-known Christmas movie, puts all the elements neatly in place--the twinkly eyed Santa, the excruciatingly cute child, the grumpy adults who need to be converted--and sends them laboriously through the motions. There's no originality or subversiveness here, and Les Mayfield's stiff, plodding direction doesn't help either. Although Richard Attenborough makes a believable Saint Nick, the ridiculous courtroom-drama climax turns him into a walking "symbol of faith," which drains all the joy out of the concept of Santa. Attenborough never gets to say "ho ho ho," and neither will you.

Mortal Kombat. There's nothing like 90 minutes of karate matches and techno music to make you feel stupid. This expensive and admittedly well-made advertisement for the Mortal Kombat video game doesn't have enough thrills to keep the simplistic comic-book story interesting, and you're left wondering why so many video games center around competitive brutality in the first place. The film is actually rather harmless, though, and good for a laugh or two, so if you're into fight choreography it might be worth a look. Just be warned: No one who sits through the film will be able to get the cheesy title song out of his head for at least a week.

MRS. PARKER AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE. Jennifer Jason Leigh gives yet another remarkable but downer performance as writer Dorothy Parker, a reliable fixture at the Algonquin Round Table, where New York's greatest literary minds of the '20s regularly met to exchange banter and amuse themselves. Director and co-screenwriter Alan Rudolph has a wonderful sense of time and place and attitude, but he slacks on story structure, and it becomes obvious that he is vastly more interested in the ways Mrs. Parker's "vicious circle" affected her comically cynical personality than in addressing the emotional forces that led to them in the first place. It's a colorful, quote-peppered and inevitably shallow celebration of a famous person's depression.

MURDER IN THE FIRST. Kevin Bacon plays a small-time criminal who was cruelly sentenced to three years of solitary confinement in Alcatraz, and Christian Slater plays the idealistic young attorney who fights on the prisoner's behalf after he is charged with killing a fellow inmate. In this showy attempt at courtroom drama, everything comes down to a question of whether it's wrong to torture people and throw them in dark little rooms. Bacon's performance as a man permanently stunted by his victimization is amazing, but Slater doesn't make a very convincing idealist (despite the fact that he appears to be wearing Kevin Costner's clothes), and the focus on the two men's friendship almost seems imposed on the material to make up for the movie's lack of a strong villain.

MURIEL'S WEDDING. This Australian comedy, like Strictly Ballroom and The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert before it, seems like its fashions came from another planet. The story of Muriel--an overweight ugly duckling who must overcome bitchy friends, a pompous father and her own misguided dreams of marriage in order to become a swan--would be perfunctory if it weren't for the style it was told in. How can you resist a film dominated by gaudy colors, ABBA songs, and an unnatural emphasis on Muriel's facial contortions while frowning and smiling.

MY FAMILY. This epic-length tale of a Los Angeles Mexican family is divided into a triptych centering on three men: the '20s father whose endurance allowed the family to take roots in this new land; the '50s son whose rejection of his father's values leads to tragedy; and the other, younger son who in the '80s must reconcile his identification with both men. Jimmy Smits gives a strong performance in the latter role, and the film's storybook quality has appeal. But too many corny, watered-down or otherwise ill-conceived scenes rob the picture of any real impact outside of being a fond family memoir.

NELL. Jodie Foster transforms into Foster Gump for this ridiculous tale of a backwoods "wild child" who must face the inevitability of dealing with civilization. The movie is a showcase of Everything You Ever Wanted to See Foster Do But Couldn't Imagine She'd Ever Lower Herself To Do: run giggling through the forest, screech in spasmodic fear, cuddle up and coo next to Liam Neeson, dance jubilantly in circles with her shirt pulled up, and look in the mirror while voguing and talking like E.T. Luckily, when Foster isn't stretching credulity, she and costar Neeson actually manage to draw a few moving moments out of the self-important script.

NOBODY'S FOOL. Paul Newman plays a limping loser who comes to appreciate that his life as a misfit in a snow-caked northern town has not been in vain. Though the picture appears at first to be little more than a star vehicle for Newman's aging persona, the assortment of distinct, well-written supporting characters gives the story a low-key grace. Jessica Tandy shows us exactly why she will be missed, Bruce Willis and Melanie Griffith turn out uncharacteristically good performances, and the other players--who include an alcoholic lawyer with a detachable leg--ensure that the small town remains an interesting place to visit with or without Newman's charisma.

The Net. Once again, Sandra Bullock gives a top-notch performance as the accidental victim in a fast action thriller. This time she's on her own, as the introverted, computer program analyst who stumbles into the twisted world of cyberterrorism. Sci-fi fans and computer phobics alike will appreciate the implications of an Orwellian future in which our entire identities are stored on the Internet, where the war of the Information Age is waiting to break out. If you can willingly suspend your disbelief, this one will keep you frozen over your popcorn throughout.

Now and Then. This coming-of-age comedy about a tight-knit circle of friends in small-town America is hardly a female-version of Stand By Me, but it does succeed on its own cinema-lite level, thanks to fresh performances by young guns Gaby Hoffman, Thora Birch (My Girl), Ashleigh Aston Moore and Christina Ricci (Casper). Now and Then follows the nostalgic flashback formula, with a chain-smoking Demi Moore narrating as she hurtles down the highway toward a dreaded reunion in the master-planned suburban setting of her childhood. Thankfully, most of the film winds through the delightful and melodramatic summer of '69, sparing us the agony of watching too many scenes with Demi Moore and Melanie Griffith side by side. While at times Now and Then promisingly touches upon the social upheaval that lurks behind all those perfect suburban lawns and single-family homes, these themes are never developed. Rest assured, this sentimental journey comes with the requisite happy ending, tying up all loose ends with a big, pink bow.

OPERATION DUMBO DROP. In this high-concept Disney movie, kids will be sure to love the scenes in which elephant barf, human barf and elephant poop play key roles. They may also love the funky spectacle of an elephant being parachuted from a plane, which as funky spectacles go ranks right up there. But neither kids nor adults are likely to get too wrapped in the picture's strained Vietnam-era story, the shrill friction between Danny Glover and Ray Liotta, Denis Leary's one-note sardonic performance or anything else that fills in the gaps between elephant excretions.

OUTBREAK. Wolfgang Peterson, hot off of directing In the Line of Fire, that elaborate star vehicle featuring Clint Eastwood, directs this even more elaborate star vehicle featuring Dustin Hoffman. This time, the threat is that a fatal African virus, not John Malkovich's method acting, will grow out of control. Hoffman plays a feisty Center for Disease Control official whose determination to stop the virus from destroying a small town is further fueled by concern that his ex-wife, Rene Russo, might be the next victim. (A dead town is bad news, but the idea of Russo's beautiful face covered with zits is unthinkable.) The movie does build a strong level of suspense around its Andromeda Strain-esque story, but the ending, which has Hoffman zipping around the globe in a helicopter while searching for a cure, is straight out of cartoonville. Also out of cartoonville is Donald Sutherland, playing a military baddie who at one point can be seen displaying projections of how long it will take the virus to overrun America. Haven't we seen him do that before?