Eric Hynes

It also serves to undercut fine performances by Connelly and Harris, whose choices are constantly destabilized by scripted swings between comedy and drama, realism and fantasy, genuine catharsis and indie-film ornamentation. Black's overactive melodrama is more than a representation of schizophrenia; it's the embodiment of it.

The film strives to cinematically reanimate that shabby underground lair; instead, it proves to be the most bastardized souvenir bauble of all.

No amount of eccentric Americana (or slyly marginal inventiveness) can salvage this strangely lifeless - and largely laughless - gonzo comedy, which is doomed by a flimsy script, one-dimensional characterizations and distractingly inept child acting.

Bunraku aspires to be "Kill Bill: Vol 3"; it's more like an ornate pitch for a "Dick Tracy" reboot.

Inane dialogue, extraneous scenes and wooden performances make for an experience that's less edge-of-your-seat than one very long, amateur hour and a half.

Cloyingly crude and dispiritingly typical ensemble Hollywood farce.

Except for two brief summits between Alba and Messina's pillowy lips, however, An Invisible Sign fails even to pander effectively.

Outside of a few spirited celebrity cameos - Favreau seems convincingly affronted by Dax's ineptitude, Bradley Cooper gamely tussles with him on a suburban lawn - this meta-vanity project isn't funny so much as counterproductive. It's no less a work of wankery for winking at us.

A mess of arrhythmic editing, mopey first-person inserts and distractingly choppy narration, all making a heady topic that much more difficult to follow. To focus or not to focus should have been the first question.

Only old pros James Brolin and Jane Seymour, as Eva's colorfully squabbling parents, occasionally rouse the film beyond its fate as fodder for a Snuggie-wrapped slumber.

Convention plays like 11 cameras in search of drama.

It's an inspiring narrative-as are the interwoven stories of three students hoping to earn that educational gift-but the doc itself is more of a telethon-ready fund-raiser than a work of dramatic reportage.