Joe Leydon

Even though it’s easy to identify all the recycled elements — bits and pieces of several inspirational-teacher scenarios, ranging from “To Sir, With Love” to “Stand and Deliver” — in this “based on a true story” concoction, there can be no denying the feel-good effect of the finished product.

The adults do little more than provide marquee allure in brief bookending scenes that add little to rest of the pic. For the most part, Now and Then is a showcase for four fine actresses in their early teens.

A lightweight but likable fantasy that offers a playfully feminist twist to Arthurian legends.

With appreciably greater emphasis on action than its predecessors, and clever use of 3-D trickery to enhance storytelling as well as offer spectacle, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs could prove the third time really is the charm.

Picture benefits greatly from appealing performances by Jennifer Aniston and Steve Zahn, who deftly apply darker emotional shadings to their characters when necessary, and equally fine work from a small ensemble of solid supporting players.

Wildly uneven effort, which is notably more strained and slapdash than such earlier efforts as "Madea's Family Reunion" and "Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns."

An engagingly rambunctious toon Western that likely will attract herds of family auds, if not multitudes of teens and tweeners, to megaplex corrals.

A fey and frisky farce with a fabulous fashion sense, Straight-Jacket artfully balances broadly campy humor and ironically overplayed soap opera.

Although it sporadically errs on the side of sentimentality and simplification, The Case for Christ sustains interest, and even generates mild suspense, while offering a faith-based spin on the template of an investigative-journalism drama.

Family-friendly and abounding in uplift, The Mighty Macs is an undemandingly pleasant indie drama.

Aiming more for bemused chuckles than for convulsive laughter, Plotnick and his actors deftly evoke a faux Me Decade ambiance throughout Space Station 76.

A technically proficient and aggressively unpleasant suspenser about sadistic home invaders.

Since the new pic contains little that's genuinely amusing or minimally original, it likely will fail on its own merits.

McBride is good for a few chuckles during the first two-thirds of the movie and continues to contribute a fair share of funny business after the plot takes a not altogether persuasive serious turn. But Brolin remains the main attraction, and the saving grace, during this lost weekend in the woods.

Vacation Friends does earn a fair share of guffaws with its familiar mix of R-rated raunch and feel-good sentiment, and it’s lightly amusing to see the well-cast players breathe a satisfying degree of fresh life into a predictable scenario that recalls “Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates,” “What About Bob?” and a dozen or so similarly contrived comedies.

For the most part, Lemmon, like Matthau, recycles shtick from earlier, better pictures. But then again, their roles call for little else, and Out to Sea actually benefits from their stock turns. [30 June 1997, p.65]

Despite these flashbacks, however, God Spoke never really delves into the reasons and/or motivations behind Franken's transformation from monologist and sketch-comedy performer to political pundit and liberal activist. Indeed, even during intimate moments, Franken rarely comes across as someone given to explaining himself.

Decently crafted but oddly charmless.

A solidly made and conventionally satisfying Western.

A mildly pleasant, aggressively retro kidpic that should please undemanding moppets without unduly boring their parents.

Lean, mean and stripped for speed, Highwaymen fires on all cylinders as an edgy and unnerving road-kill thriller.

With equal measures of rock-the-house vigor and in-your-face attitude, Four Brothers proves usually potent and consistently enjoyable as an old school approach to what might best be described as the urban-Western genre of slam-bang, balls-out action-revenger.

The 2000 version is louder, broader and much, much bigger.

This understated period drama may lack sufficient star power and emotional wallop to score breakthrough success with mainstream auds during its domestic theatrical run, but pic could find a warmer response in the same international markets where "Kingdom of Heaven" redeemed itself last year.

Although cynics likely will reject The Ultimate Gift as warmed-over Capra-corn, this predictable but pleasant drama based on Jim Stovall's popular novel may be prized by those with a taste for inspirational uplift and heart-tugging sentiment.

Outrageously over-the-top gore doubtless will scare off all but the heartiest genre aficionados.

The sort of movie a lot of us need right now. It’s an undemandingly enjoyable and reassuringly predictable dramedy in which nothing, not even the sourball attitudes of its comically unpleasant malcontents, ever is allowed to get out of hand or unduly strain credibility. But it also is too playfully spiky and unaffectedly down-to-earth to come across as bland pablum.

By turns comical and compassionate.