Chris Kaltenbach

When the film is not focused on Wilson, it's really not focused at all. This is a comedy ever holding itself in check, filled with plot threads and asides that seem as though they should be funny but almost always fall short of the mark.

There's not a moment in Against the Ropes where you forget this is perky Meg Ryan up onscreen, talking trashy and acting tough.

As it is, Hoot doesn't accomplish anything a picture book of the Everglades and a few well-chosen Jimmy Buffett tunes wouldn't do better.

Imagine a Three Stooges short with a feel-good ending, and you get the idea.

It would be nice to say that Bruce is hilarious, rather than merely (and fitfully) funny; certainly, the premise suggests laughs more consistent and outlandish than are present here.

Misfires on nearly every possible level.

It's easier to accept a breakup when it's clear that the two parties are mismatched, but a better, braver film would reveal what caused the initial attraction.

Think you know where this film is going? You do, and the best thing about Must Love Dogs is that it takes only 88 minutes to get there - short enough to enjoy the film's modest, well-worn pleasures, but not so long that you feel your time could have been put to better use elsewhere.

Equal parts fantasy and cautionary tale, a film that manages to be uplifting and off-putting simultaneously -- fortunately, more the former than the latter.

The latest in a line of quirky, feel-good British comedies, Greenfingers fits right into the breezily entertaining mold but doesn't expand it.

Lighthearted fluff, not piercing drama. Still, a little shot of reality -- or at least an acknowledgement of same -- could have done this film wonders.

Put simply, Mona Lisa Smile is too much of a stacked deck -- a movie too concerned with ensuring that audiences feel a certain way to risk anything like nuance or interpretation.

It's like a Harlequin romance trying to pass itself off as something deeper and more profound.

A low-level hoot.

There's pleasure to be had in a film that suggests teen life can be hard without necessarily being tragic.

Fortunately, this film doesn't have to depend on off-screen dalliances to prove its worth.

Unlike Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman," Lopez seems a little too comfortable in her new duds, which prevents the audience from rooting for her with passion, rather than just appreciation.

Two of the most insistently unlikable movie creations to afflict audiences in some time, a pair of self-obsessed anti-romanticists who spend some two decades doing stupid things at each other's behest. They also whine a lot.

The emotions seem genuine enough, even if Sandler is not a talented-enough actor to always pull them all off.

You get the film's message, that mankind does not react well when challenged by unpleasantness it can't explain away, within the first 15 minutes -- leaving more than 100 minutes to ponderously belabor the point.

The result is a charmer that boldly marches where lesser movies - at least since the heyday of John Hughes - fear to tread.

Cameron Crowe crams at least three movies' worth of plotlines into Elizabethtown, and gives short shrift to all of them.

When it sticks to the subject, the movie is sad and affecting.

Novocaine is neither funny enough to be a comedy, nor dark enough to be a true film noir. Like the drug of the title, it just kind of leaves you numb and anxious to taste the good stuff once again.

Though lovingly crafted and beautifully photographed, the movie does little to make Jones seem compelling, or even all that good.

Most of the humor is both determinedly puerile and unfunny, performed by a generic cast.

It's hard to figure where it's going, and when the movie's over, it's even harder figuring where it's been. But the careening roller-coaster ride calling itself Smokin' Aces is such a hoot to be on, who really cares?

McConaughey and (especially) Hudson manage to make it all work, maintaining their likability even in situations where they inevitably end up acting like jerks.