Betsy Sharkey

After the sharp bite and harsh light of most American-style guy-based funny films today, Paul comes as such sweet relief.

Smart isn't all it's cracked up to be and soon the movie is unraveling faster than all of Eddie's grand schemes.

Instead of breathing life into cartoonist Berkeley Breathed's cheeky kids morality tale, the movie - with all its 3-D motion capture animation flash - flatlines.

Gorgeously shot, smartly conceived, cleverly cast, badly executed - the lush medieval beauty here is at best only skin deep.

The city's skyline is blown to bits. Burning, broken, blackened bits. So if that's what you're in the mood for, that is what the film delivers, endlessly, but in that cheesy-campy way that can make a bad movie good fun.

There are risky plot choices all along the way, but the risks are what keeps the pot boiling as the complexities of the relationship triangle heat up and cool down.

Verbinski's greatest triumph is that he allowed the animation to free rather that confine him. There is indeed a new sheriff in town, with Rango destined to become a classic.

Overall Take Me Home Tonight represents a lateral move at best for its 24-hour party people, a step back at worst, and not worth your time either way.

Anderson spends most of his energy creating a mood - making "Vanishing" more cerebral than white-knuckle, though a few more shrieks (mine) might have been nice.

After scoring big in 1998 with "Mary" - the zipper issue, the "hair gel" mix-up, the roving troubadours - their (Farrelly brothers) raw inventive edge has never been quite as sharp. Hall Pass, starring Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis, continues that creative slide into everyday crude.

The appealing new kid-on-the-teen-angst block, reverberates with much of the same dark combustible mix of action and romance that's been fueling the "Twilight" vampire mega-franchise for a while now.

Like an exquisite minimalist painting - its beauty will move you, its simplicity will fool you. For there are layers and complexities to be found in the film, like the many mysteries it slowly exposes.

If that all sounds like a lot of good, clean fun, a word of warning. In what seems to have become the genre's raison d'etre, the dialogue is so blue at times that you'll probably feel the heat of the blushing cheeks on either side of you, especially whenever Reilly's fast-talking savant of smut shows up.

If you're a Sandler film buff, the comedy is classic Sandler and will probably satisfy. Still, the best thing about the movie remains Aniston - she is reason enough to just go with it.

It is a singular performance and a deeply affecting if imperfect film.

Sadly, an obsession with raunchy one-liners trips everything up, turning a clever conceit into something closer to a sleazy, cheesy affair.

What makes this intriguing, yet woefully uneven film so relatable is that there is nothing about Ned's experience that seems extreme.

Whatever the film's flaws, and like its protagonist, there are times when things get a bit out of control, watching Giamatti use Barney to wrestle with success, failure, friendship, love and increasingly with time is exhilarating.

What The Dilemma ultimately does best is create a platform for Vaughn to drag that iconic character of his into full-blown adulthood.

Sometimes it seems as if Iñárritu is literally carving out his actor's heart, so tangible does Bardem make Uxbal's fears. Iñárritu has so much that he wants to say - too much, in fact, and the film's central weakness - that he has created an emotional tsunami for both the actors and the audience.

That meandering dialogue can be difficult to control, and at times the film feels as if the director has stepped away from the vehicle, leaving it to veer off the path. Still, it's an experiment that works more than it fails by giving Gosling and Williams both the motive and the means to create something extraordinary, a valentine that actually says something true about being in love.

Oone of those movies that falls between complete disaster and loads of fun. Mild amusement is probably about right.

Country Strong is Feste's second film, and she infuses it with an earnestness that swings between too too much and appealing, the same earnestness that swamped her filmmaker debut last year with "The Greatest."

It is incredibly tempting to resort to the implied off-color word play made possible by the Focker name and suggest that this third edition is totally - but I won't.

Though the film is peppered with one-liners tailor-made for Spacey to sling with stinging effect, it doesn't so much leave you laughing as just weary, and wishing this weren't a true story at all.

New players, a new story line, a new director and nearly three decades of improved technology including all the whiz-bang-wow the latest 3-D has to offer. Unfortunately, there's not nearly enough new life.

More impressive than the multi-dimensions is Megamind's minimalist, modernist look. It creates a crispness that feels more contemporary than retro, which not only is very aesthetically pleasing but makes it easier to savor the film's many sight gags.

This is a disappointing turn coming from Phillips, particularly since "The Hangover" was such a fresh, bracing brew of black comic fun.