Kirk Honeycutt

One can't escape the nagging feeling that the film doesn't dig deeply enough into its real-life hero. The film doesn't explore all those "whys" and "whats."

Sustains a few icy chills, but a mix of genres muddles the story.

Bram Stoker would be, well, horrified.

Landing somewhere between a generational comedy and soap opera, the film is forgettable fun.

Has its moments, especially when lithe, beautiful bodies twirl themselves around the dance floor with appealing athleticism. But as a movie trying to deliver comedy, drama and romance, you might want to sit this one out. It's not terrible, mind you, but it just isn't very good.

Here, due in large measure to a highly derivative screenplay, the director allows several reckless, unprofessional cops drive the movie into utter nonsense.

Enough goodwill has been built up in the early sections that most viewers will not take offense when the movie abandons its plot and characters.

Muddled and uninteresting.

Anne Hathaway's charms barely rescue this exercise in lame comedy and romance.

Unfortunately, the music is as irresistible as the tired story of a musician succumbing to substance abuse is resistible.

A formulaic yet clever chiller that offers generous doses of sex and violence aboard a luxury yacht.

So strong are the emotions - and, yes, the melodrama - that Snow Flower and the Secret Fan represents one of Wang's best films to date.

Jackson and his team tell a fundamentally different story. It's one that is not without its tension, humor and compelling details. But it's also a simpler, more button-pushing tale that misses the joy and heartbreak of the original.

It's too loose and casual, all too willing to trade the writer's trademark wit and literary mischief for slapstick comedy.

Because the entire audience knows what's going on, the filmmakers hope to distract viewers from storytelling weaknesses with an urgent sense of style.

The film isn't just not funny, it is off-putting.

The film starts out as a gentle Hollywood satire, shifts abruptly into a comedy of (bad) manners, turns into a crime story and deviates into a suicide attempt before it reverts to a Hollywood satire with a happy ending. No Hollywood satire should ever have a happy ending.

The millions of man hours put into producing this techno shock and awe must be staggering. Everyone got his job done, but somewhere along the way, the movie got lost.

The movie is awfully close to a video game with its own specific rules, but its characters are appealing and funny, "Aliens" doesn't have a mechanical feel that drags down most video-game movies.

Furhman plays pure evil with such supreme calmness that only her eyes shine with madness. Indeed, all of the child actors are superb, especially the expressive Engineer.

Despite an outlandish premise, Next suffers from being too conventional.

Michael Dowse's aggressively unfunny film which seeks the lowest common denominator in nearly every scene.

Nothing un-beguiles a fairy tale more than forced whimsy and labored magic, which is precisely what plagues Ella Enchanted.

Director Alex Proyas resolutely thinks in B-movie terms. Even with an A-list budget, he oversells every plot point and gooses the thrills with hokey lighting, bombastic music and serious overacting.

Every scene is on the prowl for laughs at the expense of the inherent drama in the lives of its colorful characters.

Lame and unconvincing teen comedy.

Improbable and generally unfunny comedy.

A tad too conservative and calculated. CGI delivers best on moody sets and a noirish atmosphere achieved by lighting, backgrounds and visual effects. But the characters look like plastic dolls, and the story is recycled sci-fi.

It plods along at a sluggard's pace through a weak premise with crude execution and even cruder characters to arrive at an unearned sentimental ending.

There's really not much of an audience for this picture. The movie demands that its viewers put the fragmented images and information together like an intellectual jigsaw puzzle, but it never gives those viewers a good reason to do so.

The film is only "superior" though, not great. The themes feel shopworn and devotee of crime fiction can point to the any number of antecedents for these characters.

A relatively lame exercise that never achieves comic traction.

Nothing is bleaker than failed black comedy, which this is.

Any movie starring Penelope Cruz or William H. Macy can't be all bad. And Sahara, which stars both Penelope Cruz and William H. Macy, proves the point: It isn't all bad.

Bad enough to create one of the most joyless Christmas movies ever, but then to go for an unearned feel-good ending adds insult to injury.

This is the kind of film that will leave many audience members groaning with laughter -- and others simply groaning. It's skit/situation comedy that exploits stereotypes with a vengeance and knows no shame in borrowing from much better movies ranging from "Some Like It Hot" to "Tootsie."

Hop delivers plenty of wit, verve and surreal mayhem to entice even the post-adolescent crowd into this jolly (and strangely Christmas-like) Easter egg hunt.

Acting is similarly routine with the glorious exception of Hilton, who is so bad she steals the show.

At roughly the halfway point, the movie turns into a low-budget gangster picture, which sacrifices character and themes to the kind of action mayhem all too commonplace in studio thrillers.

What the film most damagingly lacks though is a sense of mystery and danger.

One can reflect on what the young Coppola, with his masterful camera work and vivid imagination, might have done with such an opportunity. Unfortunately, the present-day one produces only tepid and tired imagery that would not earn high marks in any film school.

The scenes between Pattinson and de Ravin exude genuine charm.

Since the movie lacks a vision of what Alexander was really about as a man and a figure in history, it falls back all too frequently on movie spectacle.

The humor emphasizes quantity over quality, but the batting average isn't too bad. And where else can you witness Leslie Nielsen do a nude scene?

If you're going to tell a wildly implausible tale of fortune hunting and unlikely heroes, you could do worse than National Treasure.

You do wish Pate and writer Thomas Moffett had gone for more wit given the outlandishness of the melodrama since it would be more fun to laugh at this than take it seriously.

Unconvincing melodrama.

A dramatic thriller with a large cast playing the hell out of some very juicy roles. Nieman's script shuffles nimbly among an array of colorful characters and offers unexpected twists that keep you off-balance.

The film is a misfire, which you feel more acutely given the talents of those involved, including director Rodrigo Garcia ("Nine Lives," "Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her") and rising star Anne Hathaway.

Despite the best efforts of stars Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly, this new "Day" is tired and corny.

A nifty science-fiction twist on the old amnesia plot where a guy spends most of a movie trying to remember what he did and why everyone is after him.

Rarely do films from Hollywood emerge in such an inane manner. Its rote characters are inevitably in predictable situations with no subtext or subtlety to any of their predicaments.

The final act hits like a gut-punch. Worst fears are confirmed, and the protagonist faces a moral dilemma no father should have to confront. Kormakur and his writers give their protagonist no easy way out.

The Change-Up bravely attempts to revive the dormant subgenre but it's a lame effort that grows increasingly frantic and foul-mouthed as the realization sets in that the gimmick isn't working.

It's disappointing the film is so sketchy and underdeveloped. The filmmakers may have sold their story short.

A popcorn movie that reaches back to the fantasy epics of old and forward into the digital future, where the word "unimaginable" no longer exists.

Lacks any of the socio-economic or political concerns of "The Big Chill." Indeed its shallowness is reflected in one character's abiding concern with his receding hairline.

Although wholly predictable in its every beat and featuring bland, unremarkable WASPs as romantic leads, "Life" is not without its charms.

Levinson diverts his film into a political thriller with its own conspiracy theory, an improbable romance and a curious subplot that feels like an anti-smoking ad. Little wonder his bewildered star, Robin Williams, looks confused much of the time.

Great comics from Jerry Lewis to Peter Sellers have turned pathetic into comedic. But James never seems to able to get beyond pathetic.

A slim idea for a pulp-fiction short story padded out to 81 minutes with random encounters and celebrity sightings.

Has little to say to moviegoers. Goldberg's direction is all flash and no substance, and his story and characters offer little reason for viewers to empathize with such self-pitying characters.

The result isn't an unpalatable pudding but rather a fair-to-middling children's film that is half CG-animation and half live-action.

The film, written (with Steven Rogers) and directed by Richard LaGravenese, is long and drags in places. But the chief problem is that "P.S." feels like a gimmick.

A perky though not terribly imaginative feature aimed primarily at youngsters.

"Stories" makes a better Christmas movie than those generic comedies manufactured this time of year. The hits-to-misses ratio for its gags is above average, the sentimentality is kept in check and the film plays well to its audience.

The heist itself is almost dull, and the characters aren't half as colorful or interesting as they need to be.

Clearly, much care and intelligence have been lavished on discouraging, routine material.

There is little complexity in the social, cultural or political shape of this world. So this film, directed by visual effects master Stefen Fangmeier and written by Peter Buchman in a straightforward manner, cannot escape the rote nature of such a fantasy.

The cast, which includes Alfre Woodard and Debra Winger, manages to give thoughtful performances that salvage the film's integrity.

Alas, this is just film ugly.

We can be grateful to a stellar cast and some discipline on the part of Matt Aselton, a commercials director making his feature debut, that Gigantic doesn't go completely overboard. Nevertheless, the film will appeal mostly to festivals and adventurous audiences.

For comedy, director Peter Howitt relies on halfhearted slapstick as the script contains little of the sharp dialogue one might expect from a script written at least in part by Harling ("Steel Magnolias," "Soapdish").

First-time director Paul Abascal brings no style or personality to this B-movie exercise. Except for Farina, the actors go through the paces as if they too lack conviction in the proceedings.

The story is about musicians and how music connects people, so the movie's score and songs, created by composers Mark Mancina and Hans Zimmer, give poetic whimsy to an implausible tale.

Fails to find the genuine drama in its story of love and intrigue.

Documentaries have been coming down on humanity so hard in recent years -- from "An Inconvenient Truth" to the latest Oscar winner, "Inside Job" -- that it's refreshing to bask in a bit of optimism coming from a nonfictional film.

Paper Man is a bad idea, and the film, despite a few brave and good performances, never recovers from awkwardness of its premise.

The movie isn't nearly as bad as you would expect when the studio holds its only press screening the night before a national opening.

In the sadism-for-thrills sweepstakes, P2 is no "Saw," but it will get young women to clutch their dates for a week or so in theaters before fading to DVD shelves.

Be Cool is not really cool as "Get Shorty" was, but it's entertaining, a frivolous cocktail rather than a vintage wine.

The film wants to put on screen the sense of random play and concentrated games that fill a child's world for a few summers. In this it succeeds, but the film does not welcome others who might still retain memories of those NOT bummer summers.

Thanks to dynamic performances by Keira Knightley, Mickey Rourke, Edgar Ramirez and a strong cast -- sometimes all but buried beneath irksome stylistic flourishes -- this dark and absurd melodrama certainly has raw energy.

A smooth blend of visual special effects, exceptional stunts, fluid photography, sharp design and a possible best-selling soundtrack.

Carell is getting quite good as these everyman characters but lacks the audacity of, say, a Carrey or a Robin Williams. He is making comedy out of dullness.

Director Vondie Curtis Hall gives this virtually nonstop crime actioner, set against the mean streets of Los Angeles, pleasing noirish touches along with larger-than-life-size characters.

The film doesn't just fail, it actually gets sillier by the minute.

Odd too, for a film that wants to correct impression anyone had as to the abilities of black U.S. soldier in combat, are the ethnic cliches about Italians and Germans, to say nothing of rednecks.

The curious thing here is that Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor rewrote this long-in-development screenplay. Yet the authors of such smart comedies as "Sideways," "About Schmidt" and "Citizen Ruth" can't move the film away from the world of easy laughs and sitcom jokes into a realm where sexual prejudices and presumptions get examined in a whimsical yet insightful manner.

A complex and often compelling melodrama, at times almost verging on soap opera.

Audience can certainly find entertainment in this movie, so long as no one takes things too seriously. One suspects, however, that Zaillian and a vast team of producers and executive producers that includes political consultant and pundit James Carville believe they are making a serious commentary on American politics. It comes closer to kitsch.

Thanks to the great Helen Mirren as the wife and Spanish actor Sergio Peris-Mencheta as the boxer, the film does create a convincing portrait of a late-flourishing love that takes everyone by surprise.

It's discouraging to witness a filmmaker who clearly yearns for the indie world yield to the temptations of mindless movie manufacturing. At least Figgis made it as soulless as possible.

Suspect Zero has enough going for it to eventually develop a cult following. But compared to "Silence of the Lambs" and "Seven," it's still the minor leagues.

Unlike a Pixar cartoon that embraces as wide an audience as possible, Speed Racer proudly denies entry into its ultra-bright world to all but gamers, fanboys and anime enthusiasts. Story and character are tossed aside to focus obsessively on PG-rated action and milk-guzzling heroes.

The film's Italian director does achieve in his second American outing a pleasing blend of Hollywood professional sheen and European sensitivity to character details and nuances.

A teen comedy that possesses a wickedly satirical streak.

In the end, it isn't so much that the New Arthur isn't the Old Arthur. Rather it's the anti-Arthur.

While the film sometimes plays like an hour TV medical drama padded to reach feature length, Sawant achieves touching, naturalistic performances from a fine ensemble cast.

For those wearied by cliches about poverty, rote characterizations of minorities and shocks for their own sake, best to avoid "Cracktown."

The writing is rudimentary and the direction often awkward, but Mo'Nique would confound a veteran director.

The CG animation is nothing special, but the characters are surprisingly fun and the story is full of enough puns, wordplay and slapstick to elicit laughs from across the age spectrum.

There is no purpose to the film other than random blood splattering amid scenes of bondage, primitive savagery and S&M eroticism. The film is numbing and dumb with its hero indistinguishable from its villains.

Shyamalan does project genuine menace and suspense into this mundane location, especially in nighttime scenes. But the magic that would transport you from reality into fantasy is missing.

What is puzzling is the incompatibility of the two leads with their roles. Raven is supposed to be a high school senior on a road trip to check out prospective universities. But she acts like a adolescent on a sugar high during a weekend sleepover.

One either likes this sort of thing or not. Even fans might not buy the ending in which more people get wiped out than in Hurricane Katrina.

The movie is a mixed bag, with many of the elements fun and intriguing, but since this is also a Michael Bay-produced movie, CG monsters and cartoon bad guys gum up a third act.

Only Diaz shows spark because the actress knows how to simultaneously play nice and be a nasty character, thereby gaining audience sympathy. Everyone else hits one note, and it isn't nice.

Doesn't so much borrow from other movies as settle into a comfort zone of raising provocative questions regarding love, commitment and marriage only to dismiss them with a brush of a hand as so much dandruff.

The drama never comes together in a smart, meaningful way; indeed, most revelations border on the banal.

Comedies don't get much more unfunny than Father of Invention, a lame and somewhat preachy comic take on a father trying to get back into his daughter's good graces.

The film gives vivid reality to those photos of disappeared children on milk cartons by letting us peek into the lives of two abducted children subjected to sexual abuse and then prostitution.

Hollywood's latest virtual movie, features impressive action sequences -- all created through technology -- a thin story, cardboard characters and snicker-inducing dialogue.

Aniston gets marooned here: Her comic instincts are muted by all the identity angst, yet there isn't sufficient dramatic material into which she can sink her teeth. Costner strolls through this role with disarming ease.

The direction is as flat as the script is thin, forcing actors to stumble through roles that make little sense. Costumes and sets border on the grotesque. Mehta is a fine enough filmmaker that this one can be written off as an aberration. Sometimes East and West really aren't meant to meet.

An innocuous -- to the point of blandness -- look at the "hardships" of a recent college grad.

This creature feature is exhilarating fun, a richly designed and often quite funny re-exploration of the movie past.

Mild vulgarity and discreet nudity garner the sought-after R rating, but this effort feels forced. The real "bad" here is the sheer formulaic nature of everything. There are no surprises but for once you don't much mind.

All the while, the music screams and clamors like an ignored child because director Xavier Gens and writer Skip Woods can't pump suspense into this inept mess.

Simply weird. The funny has gone missing.

Yogi is still smarter than the average bear, but Yogi Bear is much less smart than most of the year's kid-friendly cartoons.

Jennifer Lopez carries this thin concept about as far and as well as she can, with Alex O'Loughlin in his first leading-man outing managing not to get lost in the shuffle.

The movie clumps through one witless if not wince-evoking sequence after another without the relief of laughter.

The movie seems more like a '50s science fiction film of extreme paranoia or an episode of "The Twilight Zone" that even at a swiftly paced 90 minutes feels padded.

The script does create sufficient tension and intrigue to hook viewers along with a photogenic, hardworking cast.

Dennis Lee comes up empty. Kids, parents, siblings, an aunt and an estranged wife all bicker and yell, but the noise cancels itself out. The movie is one long argument, tiresome and repetitive, that produces more heat than light.

Charlie Hunnam and Terrence Howard put enough actors' oomph into these ledge mates to make them authentic characters even though the film fails to achieve anything like the same level of authenticity.

As one might expect, there are campy moments and far too much reliance on God-like interventions in the affairs of early man. Less expected is that 10,000 BC works just fine as an action Western with handsome actors in striking costumes and a few CG predators, which are giddy fun.

A laugh-starved comedy that seeks to plug into the comic stylings of Mo'Nique for its energy and humor.

Filmmakers have long recognized that high school makes a terrific arena for social satire and comedy in films ranging from "Heathers" to "Mean Girls" and "Election." There is a glimmer of such a comedy in Full of It, but this is quickly swamped in overextended gags and broad caricatures.

This remake turns a fondly remembered horror/thriller into a mild and tedious suspense film.

While not the worst in recent 3D films, Gulliver's Travels is more gimmicky than a crackling good yarn.

British writer-director Roland Joffé dips a toe into explosive material - the Spanish Civil War, betrayal, sainthood, Opus Dei - but all these big themes and characters slip from his grasp.

The biggest disappointment is the rigorously rote nature of the characters and story line in Geoff Rodkey's script

The movie so deftly mixes sentimentality, romance and bathos in just the right measures that her fans and maybe new ones will enjoy the new Miley.

Shorter and punchier but nearly as hokey as the original.

A perky comedy aimed at young women that gets the job done with crisp efficiency.

This implausible plot full of holes does pave the way for a series of Cedric the Entertainer skits and physical gags. None of these is very funny. A few are painfully unfunny. In either case, the movie comes to a standstill. It's a pity no one thought to screen old Bob Hope movies to see how to integrate comedy into genre filmmaking.

Who knew Samuel L. Jackson and Eugene Levy would make such a dynamic comic duo?

Cheerfully disconnected from the real world, bearing a great resemblance to screwball comedies of old.

There is certainly talent on display here, but their work fails to come together into a coherent entertainment.

To borrow a cliche from another medium, Santa might have jumped the shark.

Even assuming the best possible motives by its makers, Beyond Borders runs the risk of making human suffering exotic while glamorizing white disaster relief workers in the Third World.

Lame sketch comedy, an uninspired performance from Will Ferrell and an overall failure of the imagination turn Brad Silberling's Land of the Lost into a lethargic meander through a wilderness of misfiring gags.

The film doesn't know what it wants to be -- reality programming pushed to the max or a satire of reality TV? -- but it winds up as an exercise in the rankest sort of cynicism.

A banal revenge melodrama-cum-detective story, but fans of the video game on which it is based should not be alarmed.

A lackluster affair, devoid of laughs and just about anything else one might construe as entertainment.

The clumsy and cliched approach by writer-director Bala Rajashekaruni robs the movie of any dramatic punch.

There is little worse in the movie world than a spoof that falls flat on its over-costumed butt, but that's what you get with Your Highness.

A coming-of-age tale and a JFK assassination conspiracy movie. The first half of that equation works nicely...But the assassination story line is absurd.

A deeply dispiriting movie, not just because it is grindingly bad but because Jane Fonda actually chose this for her comeback after a 15-year absence from the screen. But it's worse than that. Fonda, one of the best actors of her generation, is downright awful in a role she could have -- and probably should have -- sleepwalked through.

A bland, formulaic picture where romance and comedy are noticeably absent. A more wooden and uninspired effort from talented people behind and in front of the camera is difficult to imagine.

Why Hugh Jackman was so excited by Mark Bomback's script to star and produce the film is as big a mystery as why such talents-on-a-roll as Ewan McGregor and Michelle Williams joined the cast.

The movie, which opened last week in Seattle and opens Friday in Los Angeles, isn't so much getting a release as an escape. The movie is directed, shot, acted and outfitted with special effects -- such as that guy (Michael Deak) in the monster suit -- so as to make American International horror films of the late '50s and '60s look like sophisticated gems.

A bottomless pit of lame characters, horror-film cliches and improbable monsters.

The new gimmick here is that all the flying body parts and absurd impalements come in 3D. And that's about as inspired as anything gets in this edition. Story and character get chucked to the sidelines as the arena has room for only death scenes.

A complete wipeout.

It is truly a mess.

Vin Diesel is out of his element in this lame family comedy.

Nothing anchors the lighter-than-air story as it drifts away under the direction of Stephen Norrington ("Blade") into an FX stratosphere where wit, character and vigorous storytelling cease to matter.

Geoffrey Sax, a British television director making his theatrical debut, lavishes enough craft on the paranormal thriller to send more than a few chills down the spine.

The scariest thing about this film is how desperate the makers are to earn a scream.

This isn't so much that the story and characters are weak -- though they very much are -- but that animatronics and computer animation so anthropomorphize these critters that they bear more resemblance to cartoons than actual flesh-and-fur animals.

What finally undoes the struggle to maintain suspense is Goyer's dialogue, which is consistently hokey.

What the problem comes down to is a group of filmmakers making misguided choices in an effort to broaden the movie's demographics beyond those who attend X Games.

An entertaining piece of supernatural nonsense whose sheer audacity disarms all (well, nearly all) skepticism.

How can a director as savvy as Lee make so many errors of judgment regarding taste, tone, intention and dramatic structure?

While Kirkpatrick does a fine job in establishing a gritty inner-city milieu and a collection of more than credible street characters caught up in an endless cycle of crime and violence, his body count reaches the proportions of the worst sort of studio schlock. Going for a shock effect, he instead strains credulity and risks unintended laughs.

Glorious so-bad-it's-good entertainment.

No best in show but a decent family comedy.

A dull actioner that looks like a bad video game.

The fifth outing for the slime-dripping, shape-changing creatures, the Aliens are looking a little dogged, perhaps ready for the Alien Retirement Home. Meanwhile, the Predator warriors, who never achieved the artistic heights of their counterpart, look better invisible. When visible, they resemble robotic can openers gone berserk.

Nicely balances action and adventure with American Indian wisdom and a modest romance to provide a graphic-comic-book movie experience for males in urban markets.

Has no inherent laughs, so an extremely versatile and talented cast struggles mightily to make something funny that simply isn't.

Moshe, who wrote and directed, creates a boldly Expressionistic alternate reality to background this heavy-on-the-action story, but neglects narrative and character beyond the most basic strokes.

Dirty Deeds is as feeble as a teen comedy can get.

Cage supplies energy but no depth in his portrayal of a disillusioned knight. Ditto that for Perlman, who never feels comfortable in the sidekick role so he pretty much goes through the (exaggerated) motions.

The sheer nastiness of the jealous one-upmanship and angry sabotage puts a damper on the yuletide comedy. You're much better off watching a DVD of "Bad Santa."

It's a chick flick with a vengeance but even in its most sentimental moments, stars Hilary Duff and Heather Locklear make this feel-good-about-yourself movie feel ... well, good.

Runs 96 minutes but feels like so much more. There is only one gag.

The result is not the train wreck one might anticipate from surfing the Net. The catfights, overacting and Berry's swagger in a skimpy, tight, leather outfit that would be right at home at a Hookers Ball make for campy fun.

The technical barrage of visual and digital effects, quick cuts and strobe lighting does produce something akin to the sensation of playing a video game. So why, one wonders, don't potential viewers simply play one instead of watching this pale imitation?

This thoroughly repetitive, ill-conceived and poorly executed effort -- with an emphasis on the word "effort" -- defeats these two talented people more often than not.

Combining the ludicrous with the lurid, Twisted is twisted all right.

Morrissey gives a stiff, awkward performance, while Stone moves dangerously close to overplaying the femme fatale. There is little if any intrigue in the story or the characters. Even the murders don't even seem to matter much.

A muddled and routine murder mystery tricked up with a science fiction gimmick that wouldn't pass muster for a "Twilight Zone" episode. The writing is poor, but the direction is even poorer. This is a film to delete from one's memory bank.

Zoom is a movie that would make Dr. Frankenstein proud. Put together with parts from so many other movies, the thing positively clanks.

Working from a flawed premise with characters lacking credibility and plot turns more moronic than funny, the movie flatlines in about five minutes.

Without Antonio Banderas, The Big Bang would be a whimper of a movie, too awful to watch.

From its uninspiring title -- and certain turnoff for young males -- to its limp slapstick and uneven acting, A Cinderella Story arrives with a dull thud.

Every move is telegraphed well in advance thanks to desultory writing, routine direction and ample musical cues.

Garcia has his moments as a wild man but the script never really allows him to plumb the artist's emotional depths.

The film's pretentious style and fractured storytelling preclude any audience involvement in the coy melodrama.

A gloriously lead-footed excursion into time travel with all the accoutrements of 1950s science fiction: an absurd plot, cliched characters, corny effects and a race against time to save mankind.

Things spin swiftly out of control with uneven acting and misfired physical gags.

A lame comic idea poorly executed dooms Sex and Death 101 to failure.

Never gets off its high-concept stool long enough to explore what makes weddings so exciting and nerve-racking and treacherous. It flounders instead in juvenilia and bitchiness.

A passable horror-thriller for the young crowd, assuming a movie can lure them away from PlayStations.

Not only does the film stumble badly from one skit to another, the skits themselves have too much dead air.

A good idea for a sophisticated comedy lurks within the latest Jon Favreau-Vince Vaughn collaboration, Couples Retreat, but the filmmakers lack the courage of their convictions. So the payoff is mixed at best.

The claustrophobic and poorly executed Caffeine is either a play in search of a movie or a movie in search of a play but, either way, it's searching for the wrong thing. What it desperately needs are laughs.

The mishmash ends up as a thoroughly unfunny adult cartoon.

Won't likely disappoint fans of men-in-drag comedy but doesn't offer much that's original or funny.

Joel Schumacher's Twelve, the latest expose of self-indulgence among privileged teens, is sleek, giddy fun.

A Christmas comedy where laughs and even Christmas joy are in short supply.

Few films have ever ended on such a low, anti-climatic note as The Zodiac.

Even during the climax, the film still is struggling to introduce the world of the film and its strange rules.

Over-the-top -- and ultimately tiresome -- female mud-wrestling, kick-boxing and cat fights in a parody of old exploitation movies.

Emerges as a lackluster and nearly charmless affair.

Insipid, predictable, broad comedy mixed with Disney Family Values makes for one exasperating sit.

The Swedish video and commercial director seeks artistic adventure but winds up with pointless self-indulgence.

A lame comic premise, a tiresome-bordering-on-obnoxious protagonist and a script devoid of humor is a lot to overcome for any movie, and Surviving Christmas is not the one to do it.

The film lacks a controlling point of view to guide an audience through so improbable a tale. Nothing in the movie is funny -- aside from giggles provoked by misfired jokes -- or romantic or dramatic.

A viewer is challenged to guess what the filmmakers thought they were doing. A 1930s screwball comedy with a modern sensibility? A misguided valentine to those who march to the beat of a different drummer?

The film might amuse some, especially fans of Alfred Hitchcock, but is likely to annoy almost everyone else.

Not much to laugh at.

Here's the deal: The worst sex cartoon in Playboy's long history can't compete with the sheer vacuousness of this inane comedy.

This family film is willing to tackle important issues such as burgeoning sexuality, alcoholism and a troubled home life but does so in a bland and unconvincing story.

A rousing fable drenched in Indian "magic realism" pays tribute to the enchantment of movies.

In The 5th Quarter, the filmmakers' hearts are in the right place but the execution couldn't be more wrong-headed.

Zokkomon gives Indian youngsters not only their first super hero but, even more tantalizing, he is a young boy "terrorizing" susceptible adults in a small village to the increasingly delight of the town's children.