Jude Dry

As the action progresses, the film seems more concerned with the hitting beats of the story than sending its characters on an emotional journey.

With Vermont jokes that read like the musings of someone who’s only ever been for ski season, and the embarrassingly half-baked attempt to critique sexism by writing a kind-hearted womanizer, every stroke of Paint misses the mark. Bob Ross deserved better.

Life of the Party is proof that even the funniest actors need good material, which makes it all the more disappointing that McCarthy wrote the script with director Ben Falcone, who is also her husband.

As a director, Harrelson seems to be grasping at elements of far better movies. The live component, while impressively executed, rarely alters the movie in any meaningful way.

The fast-paced dialogue and mature-but-wholesome humor creates a general aura of clever high school rapport, aided by a lively supporting performance from comedian Ayo Edebiri (“Big Mouth”). But in trying to be everything in between, the movie ends up being not much of anything.

While there are moments of committed physical comedy and a few good line deliveries, the circumstances are neither believable nor outrageous enough to add up.

Aside from not being very scary, the movie is littered with missed opportunities.

It’s a fittingly ambiguous title for a directionless film, late night fare that will be enjoyed by just as many horny men as horny teenage lesbians.

Jones clearly has valuable insights about being a Black woman in entertainment and has the chops to tell a captivating story. What any of that has to do with the sex industry is a total mystery.

A humorless melodrama about a woman haunted by her past, Malignant sits somewhere between a slasher, a ghost story, and a possession flick, never fully embracing either. The result is a confusing melange of genre archetypes that lacks a clear point of view, even a surface-level stylistic one.

The only bright spot about the odd timing of South of Heaven is that it’s so obviously a relic of pre-pandemic Hollywood, one that hopefully will stop making lifeless thrillers full of hackneyed dialogue and formulaic action.

With muted characters and a conventional structure, the movie struggles to find the fun or the spirit, humming between high notes and low notes to fall flat in the middle. While its heart is in the right place, Gay Chorus Deep South just doesn’t sing.

Entering boldly into this bunch is Happiest Season, a shiny holiday comedy which is by all accounts indistinguishable from the rest save for one little detail: It’s gay! Unfortunately, this tiny tweak isn’t enough to make a lasting impression on the genre, especially with a lackluster script that offers little in the way of surprise or delight.

Franco clearly enjoys playing the idealistic rabble rouser, and who wouldn’t want to direct a movie so they could cast themselves as a charismatic radical? Unfortunately, watching someone else play make believe is only fun if you believe it yourself.

Save for a few clever twists and winning performances from O’Shea Jackson Jr. and 50 Cent (née Curtis Jackson), Den of Thieves is the kind of bloated crime thriller that could have been made in any decade — which is not to call it timeless so much as way past its time.

Though Pugh valiantly muscles through the melancholy beats of Braff’s melodrama, there are too many other characters and plot threads to allow her to do much besides heave the story forward.

Once more for the people in the back, treating anyone’s identity like a costume is offensive and dangerous to an already-marginalized group. If the filmmakers wanted the movie to have a real impact, they should have cast a transgender actress. Instead, Anything is just a yellow lily-livered mess.

Though the movie is clearly enamored with its own creativity, it’s not fun for anyone else. The title alone has already inspired titters online, and the movie is just as clunky and overwrought.

"Saw" writer Leigh Whannell mixes metaphors in this limp remake, using gaslighting and privacy fears for his uneven sci-fi horror.

The War With Grandpa is a sluggish hodgepodge of slapstick humor that barely holds together its illogically motivated plot.

Rather than going out with a bang, however, the final installment in the franchise hinges its loose plot around the marital infidelities of younger, humorless characters so thinly sketched that it is impossible to care about them.

The movie is weighed down by too many secondary characters, which only serve to dissipate their flickering charms. No one in the film, even our heroine, gets more than a hint of backstory as the single-minded plot careens toward its predictable conclusion.

Like a Boss may preach friendship above all else, but sitting through it together would test even the strongest of ties.

Without the star power of Mandy Moore and the relative sophistication of the single location predicament, 47 Meters Down: Uncaged is just the last gasp of a shark saga that didn’t need to come up for air.

If this is the best Hollywood can offer these women, it’s not their fault for wanting to work. Instead, it’s on writers and studios to stop treating seniors like some sort of oddities to squeeze a few laughs out of before they croak.

Tyler Perry’s Boo 2! A Madea Halloween would be tone deaf, lacking in plot, and almost entirely humorless in any year. That is happens to arrive in theaters amid a cascade of sexual assault survivors sharing their stories about sexual assault doesn’t help its case.

For a movie with so much going on, (not even counting the CGI cougar Bella befriends), A Dog’s Way Home is wildly devoid of meaning or humor.

It takes truly terrible script to make such charming and accomplished comedic actors seems so wooden and lifeless.