Chris Kaltenbach

This is harmless fun for the holiday season, but Tim Allen doesn't give movie the punch it needs.

What it is not is funny.

The result may not make for a great adventure, but it's sure a fun ride.

Must be among the most blatantly manipulative movies ever made. It's cold, calculated and treats its audience like its robotic central character.

The movie has its moments, and some are undeniably affecting. But even those seem artificial, relying far too much on our familiarity with and fondness for the film's stars.

A hollow, relentless mess.

Best advice: Just sit back and watch Freeman anyway. The man's a cinematic treasure.

Takes a great idea -- what if the inhabitants of a museum came to life at night? -- and milks it for every drop of fun it's worth.

Next may be the silliest movie of 2007.

For the most part, it's uninspired, not much to look at and laugh-free.

About as clunky as a movie gets. It lurches from scene to scene with no sense of narrative grace, gives its roster of prominent actors nothing to work with and screeches to a halt with all the grace of a sprinter whose shoelaces have been tied together.

Ella Enchanted is one cute movie.

It's hard to go wrong with a movie full of talking dogs. But the makers of Beverly Hills Chihuahua sure try.

What it does have is the laughs.

The pleasures of this slight caper film are strictly small-screen, as three talented actresses walk through quaint roles before they hurry on to the next project.

If John Witherspoon is among the funniest men in America, as many of his fellow comics say, why is he so painful to watch here?

Fans should be satisfied, but it's hard to imagine anyone else will be much interested in TMNT.

Movie lite, a clueless, formulaic paint-by-numbers comedy.

Torque isn't a movie, it's an 81-minute soda commercial.

Unless you think "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" was the height of genius, there's little reason to sit though another version.

Meet the Fockers? Avoid them would be a better suggestion.

If only La Mujer de mi Hermano had a dollop of humor and at least one character worth rooting for.

The movie is so confused about itself that it comes across as toneless, a bunch of characters wandering around in a story no one is controlling.

If only it had some funny lines, a focused plot and an idea that stretched beyond the initial setup.

Four Christmases works because of some genuinely funny setups, a pace that never dwells on one gag (or even one family) too long and a careful mix of slapstick and bawdy humor. But mostly, the film works because of the astonishing acting talent the filmmakers brought together to make it.

When Crews is onscreen, White Chicks is a film that fears nothing and no one. When he's not, it's a film too tentative and soft-hearted to scale the farcical heights to which it aspires.

To be fair, Friedkin does amp up the tension when called for. If only it were all for some purpose, or in service to a story that actually went somewhere.

An overly gimmicky and fatally repetitive terrorist thriller that quickly wears out its welcome.

The heartbreak comes not from watching her fail, but from realizing how easy it would be for her to succeed. If only she knew better how to try.

The weirdly exhilarating thing about Wicker Park is the reckless abandon with which it embraces the convenience of coincidence, and then the extreme measures it takes to reassure the audience that it's not a movie about coincidence at all.

Anna Faris, her deadpan comic timing still a joy to watch, returns as Cindy Campbell, one of two main holdovers from the first three movies.

No visual style, amateur effects.

More of a sales pitch than a movie.

There's an honesty to the film that elevates it a cut above standard slasher fare.

The Cell is eye candy - but it could give your brain a bad case of indigestion.

Paycheck is one of those movies in which all the ingenuity went into the original idea and none into its execution.

There's a moving, complicated love story at the center of Angel Eyes. It's too bad a peripheral plot line draws attention away from it.

The bad guys just seem like a bunch of X-Games rejects, and Blart's ingenuity proves way more effective than it has any right to be.

Fitfully thrilling.

Tries to be both poignant and wicked, and succeeds at neither.

Arthur and the Invisibles tries way too hard.

Kids, except for the very youngest, are going to be bored.

Simply go out and rent the original. In the thin ranks of killer-power-tool flicks, it's still the standard to beat.

A sword-and-sorcery saga that desperately wants to be another "Lord of the Rings," Eragon succeeds in being only the palest of imitations.

I know Empire is supposed to be a movie, but for a while, I thought I was listening to one of those talking books.

A feel-good us-against-them tale that panders mercilessly to its audience, yet displays a few moments of honest humor.

Children should enjoy Jungle Book 2 just fine. Adults will wonder why anyone bothered.

A mess.

The movie annoyingly waits until the end to reveal the names of those experts who have been doing all the talking; it would have been nice to know these folks' qualifications first.

So what do we have here? Lots of cars going very fast.

Its pleasures are slight and fleeting, and so many movies have done what it does, and done it much better, that there's nothing to get even remotely excited about - much less to draw audiences into theaters.

The best thing that can be said about this Yours, Mine and Ours is that it's inoffensive.

The story is a comic-book tale at its most basic level.

It ain't art. But as a cinematic house of horrors, it more than fills the bill.

Silly stuff, made all the more regrettable by the apparent skill with which the movie was made everywhere but in the screenplay department. The sheer lunkheadedness of Sebastian Gutierrez's script is impossible to ignore.

The out-of-control plot doesn't unfold gracefully or organically; it simply speeds along with no regard for anything other then getting to the next plot twist.

It wasn't shot in Annapolis and doesn't have an original thought in its head. Other than that, Annapolis is a fine film.

The setup is bad even by slasher-film standards: poorly acted, atrociously written and unimaginatively directed. But once Freddy and Jason have at it, the movie takes on a recklessly kinetic energy that finally delivers on its title's promise.

Best when DeVito plays off the supporting cast surrounding him.

This is a movie about guns blazing, men punching, speedometers straining and explosions exploding. On all those levels, it succeeds just fine - which makes for a great amusement-park ride, but perhaps not much of a movie.

Formulaic 'Chuck & Larry' is a crass, unfulfilling effort.

Analyze That is no surprise, and pleasant is about the most you can say for it.

For all Quek's insistence that she was seeking to ennoble women by helping them gain control over their sexuality, Lewis' film shows that all Quek really wanted was be famous.

Tedious almost beyond endurance.

It's relentlessly dumb and relentlessly humorous, and those aren't the adverbs it was after.

Crush is the kind of movie that gives friendship a bad name.

The astonishing brio and verve of street dancing deserves better than this.

Rocky and Bullwinkle have not only returned, but they've been placed in the hands of filmmakers who know what they're doing.

Rebound is determinedly lightweight fare that shamelessly resorts to every crowd-pleasing cliche it can think of to wring sympathy and laughs from its audience. To say it succeeds is not meant as a compliment.

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

Abandon tags Katie Holmes as a talented actor with surprising range and vast, untapped potential - so much, in fact, that watching her, one can almost overlook the film's many flaws. Almost.

Like its predecessor, Jeepers Creepers 2 is that rare modern horror film that remembers audiences are scared far more by what they don't see than by what they do. For that alone, horror fans should be thankful.

Standard-bore action stuff, in which a macho stud superstar blows away lots of bad guys while struggling to make the world a better place.

The Wicker Man is too loony to be a drama, too earnest to be a comedy, too predictable to be a horror film.

This is a movie that falls short only because it insists on grabbing for so much.

There's a funny premise at the core of Are We Done Yet? Too bad the movie doesn't do much with it.

All the young talent in Hollywood is not enough to energize a movie that takes forever to get nowhere.

Go to enjoy the technical expertise, and take a first-grader (and not a particularly savvy one) along to find something of value in everything else.

What's surprising is that the film has genuine laughs and smart-aleck asides that will keep even nonfans happy (although it helps if you at least like the genre).

A violent, dumb, offensive mess.

Greenaway's film is about making people's jaws drop.

There's a funny movie struggling inside of Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star. Too bad it never gets out.

Director John Stockwell ("Blue Crush") and screenwriter Michael Ross have only two things in mind: titillation and giving young audiences something gross to whisper about in school the next day. On that limited basis, Turistas may well succeed. But that's nothing to brag about.

About as good as the genre gets.

There's enough kinetic energy in Jumper to light a thousand houses. Unfortunately, there's no one home in any of them.

Bland, inoffensive, formulaic and occasionally amusing - just like the animated kids' show that inspired it.

It should come as no surprise that the dogs are as cute as caninely possible. But is it conceivable that, once you've seen 101 adorable dogs, 102 seems redundant?

The cast doesn't impress, the story doesn't compel and the characters are too bland to make people remember them.

A listless, disjointed collegiate opposites-attract comedy.

If you do insist on seeing this film, don't arrive late: the clever, animated opening credits are a stitch, suggesting a sprightliness of touch and winsome wickedness of tone that's missing from the rest of the movie.

Plot-wise, this is strictly paint-by-numbers stuff.

A return to form -- bad form. Lifeless, unimaginative and almost determinedly uninspired, it's paint-by-numbers filmmaking at its dreariest.

There's enough here to keep the movie light and avoid the curse of interminableness. Will there be enough to warrant a third Scooby-Doo film? Must we find out?

The latest failed Hollywood attempt to make a movie from a video game.

Most of the fun to be had with Thr3e is to spot the movies from which it cribs. Beyond that, what one has is a conventional psychological thriller that cheats too often and depends on actors determined to play only one note.

What can you say about a film where Carmen Electra's performance is one of the high points?

Save for Jesus' skin color, which he shares with some of his fellow Jews, little about the story is re-imagined or re-evaluated.

Buy your ticket, sit yourself down, and let ol' John take you for a ride. You'll have a blast.

In this day of overstuffed action flicks and dumbed-down "comedies," (Snow Day) is kinda refreshing.

Strings of four-letter words are a poor substitute for dialogue, and it's not until the movie is almost over that someone realizes there's no reason, other than assumed macho posturing, for Cube's character to go after these bad guys so hard.

The only question is how many levels of meaning can be plumbed from the phrase "Let's party!"

Electric as Elektra, Jennifer Garner does a high-powered, blade-thrusting star turn as Marvel Comics' ninja-inspired superheroine, bringing such unbridled energy and sexuality to her performance, one barely notices the movie itself.

There's no clear plot, no memorable villains, no real logic. But there sure is action.

All the characters are writ in broad strokes, making it impossible to sympathize with, much less relate to, anyone.

Determinedly genial and relentlessly bland.

When Catch That Kid isn't careening from plot point to plot point, events turning on unseen dimes, it's trying to ingratiate itself with stunts and chases that its young audience have seen done better on Saturday-morning TV.

What makes RV work are some genuinely funny bits (one of which is not an overlong sequence in which Bob has trouble emptying the R.V.'s toilet) that should ring especially true to any parent forced to cajole a recalcitrant child into having a good time.

All this is out of the Haunted House 101 textbook.

It's supposed to be funny watching these two characters and wondering who'll be the first to start acting her age, but it's really just pitiful, watching two talented actresses...given so little to work with.

It's considerably flawed. It has a middle that's padded, a look that could use a few more light bulbs, a protagonist who never earns our sympathy, and an audio mix that leans much too heavily on the bass, often making it impossible to understand what's being said.

The movie finally comes to life when Liu turns up.

The Dukes of Hazzard may mark some sort of nadir when it comes to movies made from TV shows. It's an overlong, under-thought and numbingly one-dimensional extrapolation of a TV show whose pleasures were, at best, marginal. See it at your own peril.

Here's hoping your own dreams of Africa are more interesting -- and better acted -- than this movie.

There's a dollop of charm and a deluge of formula in Sleepover.

New York Minute isn't High Art, but it is highly entertaining, especially if you're a member of its target audience.

The Punisher punishes. That's what he does, and that's all this movie does.

There's nothing about The Wedding Date that isn't forced or labored; there's only a stubborn determination to embrace every cliche and make sure the stars photograph well.

Formless, feckless, mindless, directionless and at times stunningly humorless.

Its effects don't linger long enough to seriously detract from the raunchy good time had by all.

Benefits from an amiable chemistry between Harrelson and Banderas, and Davidovich always makes a good tough-as-nails dame with more smarts than any man will give her credit for.

A souped-up roadster of a film, a relentless action flick that looks great and moves with more grace and speed than seems possible.

Lane gives the film her best shot; she's pretty much the only reason to see it. There's an intelligence mixed with ferocity that makes her performance compelling, far-more-so than anything else in the film.

The best thing about Black Knight is when it finally says goodnight.

Humorous but much too predictable send-up of reality TV and the sheer banality of it all.

At least The Honeymooners is not one of those remakes that looks bad compared to the original. It's just bad, period.

Instead of heightening the intrigue in this psychological thriller, the labored twists and out-of-leftfield turns will leave audiences more weary than wary.

The strong young cast keeps the film from being a total waste.

Cheerful and unpretentious.

Should make comic modern-day fanboys happy, what with its dark undertones, its beat-it-to-a-pulp action and its sly winks at comic greats past and present. Everyone else, including fans of Will Eisner's original Spirit, may find themselves wondering what all the fuss is about.

A hopeless pastiche of timeworn plotlines, hackneyed dialogue and stultifying direction; to call it amateurish is a slap in the face to amateurs everywhere.

Congratulations, Renny Harlin. You've successfully exorcised all the horror out of The Exorcist.

Surprisingly funny, a deep-down-good-hearted take on that oldest of comedy conventions, the ill-prepared rube caught up in a situation that somehow never gets the best of him.

So, here's the problem with The Butterfly Effect: It's silly.

Malkovich acts as if he's doing Shakespeare, pontificating, enunciating and generally overreaching.

A mess, but it means well.

A film made by people with more heart than skill.

Even in a world where stupidity mixed with cliche is all too often mistaken for humor, this movie barely meets expectations.

Bullock is so good, working hard to pull off the transition from grief-stricken wife and mother to reluctant time traveler, you want to pull for her. So it's possible - not easy, but possible - to overlook the script's inconsistencies.

Sttrictly movie-of-the-week stuff. And not very good stuff, at that.

Lame.

The mystery is, how the filmmakers still managed to come up with a movie that will satisfy almost no one.

What we have here is a film where the first 20 minutes are repeated again and again until everything comes to an absolutely predictable end.

Turns into an amusing showcase for two of Hollywood's most appealing young actors.

Method Man and Redman just don't have the comic timing to pull off 90 minutes at front-and-center.

The material has a definite "haven't-we-been over-this-before?" feel.

Engaging though flimsy, lively though occasionally tone-deaf, it's a movie that thrives on the strength of its affable co-stars and a sense of adventure that provides just enough brio to get audiences through some energy-sapping rough spots.

All this might be forgivable if Just My Luck had a little more substance, but it never moves beyond the single joke of its premise.

The vocal canines appear for about 30 humorous seconds, in a dream sequence, and are then never seen again. Unfortunately, the same can't be said about the rest of the film, which runs an additional 98.5 excruciating minutes.

Still, it's hard not to long for the Pooh stories of old, those endearingly anarchic little tales that captured the wonder of a child's world without ever once condescending to it.

Ghost Ship would have been so much better if they'd just let the ship do more of the acting.

Will keep kids happy and parents mildly entertained.

But The Ugly Truth can't escape its own ugly truth, that the central characters are written to extremes both ludicrous and tiring.

When the women are onscreen and their relationship is on display, Head Over Heels trips merrily along. But every time the focus shifts to Prinze, the film suffers from a bad case of fallen arches.

Brimming with values that should serve its young audience well: altruism, friendship, self-sacrifice, responsibility.

Garfield the comic strip stopped being funny about 10 years ago. Garfield the Movie makes it to about the 10-minute mark before tedium sets in.

Go see Crossroads if you want to hear Britney sing or see her wear next-to-nothing. But otherwise, avoid this train wreck at all costs.

Catwoman is a mess, there's really no other way to describe it... It doesn't work as high art, and it's too ponderous to be truly high camp. As a fashion shoot for the pin-up crowd, however, it's the cat's meow.

Doesn't display a single deep thought, or even a middlingly profound one.

Taxi's only saving grace is an inexplicable, though delightful, turn by Ann-Margret as Andy's ever-tipsy mom. She's a stitch, and about 100 times better than her surrounding material.

At least "White Chicks" had a point behind the humor.

Watching this movie, with Diane Keaton cast as the ne plus ultra of irritating, overbearing mothers, is roughly the equivalent of listening to fingernails on a chalkboard for nearly two hours.

A very funny movie ... in some alternate universe, maybe.

It's turned Stone's Catherine Tramell from a warning sign for the dangers of wanton sex into the last thing you'd figure - a bore.

The most amazing fact about Supercross is that it took three people to write it. Two chimpanzees with a typewriter could have done just as good a job.

The movie includes a few good one-liners, but that's really all it is -- a forum for putdowns and sassy dialogues.

A ham-fisted cautionary tale of religious fanaticism that would have been hooted out of even 19th-century theaters as melodrama of the most lurid kind.

Nothing in this film -- even Robin Williams, alas -- is funny.

It's a sad day for film lovers when the best thing that can be said about a Western is that it's pleasant.

The story is without an original thought, the characters little more than caricatures (unappealing ones, at that) and the filmmaking so uninspired that it's hard to imagine anyone embracing it with anything more than a shrug and a wonder why they didn't wait to catch it on TV.

Watching a Pokemon movie is like drowning in a sea of cute.

Painstakingly painful.

The Mexican is its own worst enemy, consistently undermining its best efforts. The result is an over-long series of quirks, a film that's far less than the sum of its often amusing and ingenious parts.

The New Guy doesn't have a new idea in its head, but it trods over the old ground with such wit and heart that its lack of originality can be overlooked, if not entirely forgiven.

Retro in a refreshing sort of way, a return to those sci-fi films of the 1950s, filled with cheesy special effects and over-the-top acting, but with a gem of an idea at its core, and all done with just enough wit and inventiveness to keep audiences in the cheap seats happy.

Bottom line: Juwanna Mann is a drag - in every sense of the word.

Godsend is two-thirds of a good movie, with a final third that's just downright awful. So much wasted potential only makes the whole thing that much more painful.

In its own B-film, let's-make-them-jump-out-of-their-seats way, Bats is quite the hoot.

It's hard, bordering on impossible, to evaluate this movie without stepping on people's beliefs.

Oh, this is all so terribly not good.

Unfortunately, whenever Beautiful threatens to work as parody, it veers uncomfortably into pop psychology.

Stupid. Illogical. Simplistic. Pandering. And those are its good points.

It's hard to figure who this picture is supposed to be for. Although a cartoon, it's way too mean-spirited and crass for young kids (parents, be forewarned!). And the idea that any substantial number of adults would find this sort of thing entertaining ... let's pray civilization hasn't come to that.

A story about unmotivated characters trapped in an ill-conceived plot.

Christmas with the Kranks is so calculated that it's pathetic, a warm-hearted holiday greeting card with not one scintilla of honest emotion inside.

This sophomoric film has little to do with Elvis, and everything to do with putting as much carnage as possible on screen under the guise of art, poetry, choreography, taxidermy.

An awful film about an awful time.

Doing a sequel to "The Mask" without Jim Carrey sounds like a really bad idea. As Son of the Mask proves, it is.

There's little that's special about Underclassman, certainly nothing that Murphy and Eddie Griffin haven't done better in movies far funnier than this.

This movie doesn't play; it just lies there, waiting to be kicked around by anyone unfortunate enough to have shelled out good money to see it.

Relentless in its crudity, so indiscriminate in its pursuit of tasteless laughs, so pure in its determination to offend, one almost has to admire it. It's even funny. Sometimes.

A grade-B rumination on what a nasty guy the devil can be.

Just plain bad.

Gets credit for avoiding the easy path. Too bad the path it chooses doesn't lead us anywhere we want to be taken.

Glitter does no one any favors.

An odd little movie. And not in a good way.

Hands-down, the best James Brolin-in-an-Italian-accent movie ever.

An underlit, overlong, underwritten and overloud albatross of a movie.