Laura Sinagra

The real charm of this trifle is the deadpan comic face of its star, Jean Reno, who resembles Sly Stallone in a hot sake half-sleep.

A movie that's two-thirds flashback (and could have been called "Ex, Ex, Ex, Why?").

Unfortunately, during the inevitable "what every woman wants" breakdown, Zellweger can't muster Doris Day's detached fume.

Aiming for Almodóvar lite, the flick is more reminiscent of "The Love Boat" -- drenched this time in cheery polysexuality. Everyone is an angel (and a horny little devil) in this breezy earthly trifle, even if the zaniness never quite takes wing.

The total effect, of course, is abject sadness as we helplessly watch each enact a unique anti-success story in an inverted reality show.

Never really finds a fresh groove.

Spotting trains that left the station a few years back.

Echoes the trajectory of the post-Communist-bloc region itself, unmoored and at the mercy of pitiless capitalist forces.

If hopeless literalist Kasdan could have decided on a tone this could have been a gynophobe's "Independence Day."

Not only is there not enough panting to bunch any panties, this polite romp could use more of that other L-word: laughs.

With no irony and no plot beyond Girls Have Band, Voss reduces Kali and Fauna to earnest Janus faces of Hole's schizo aesthetic.

The barf stream of gay jokes, pussy jokes, fat wife jokes, more gay jokes, and walrus penis jokes ends up making you pine for Lucy's gift of forgetting.

Mostly, its unearned funnier-than-thou smugness plays like a DIY dorm-lounge homage.

Unfortunately, despite pretty-on-the-inside performances from the four kickass Clamdaddies, too many extra shake-ups end up crowding out the characters, and distract from the easy camaraderie and slice-of-life intimacy that lures us into their van to begin with.

Another in a line of Dogme half-wits whose madness is posited as a state of tortured grace, the young wife in Kira's Reason is a woman well past the verge.

As usual, Figgis coaxes moon-shooting performances, but all the furious improv lacks any sort of map.

Planned inanity never gets mad mad mad mad enough.

If Martínez-Lázaro, as he reiterated at the Miami Film Festival earlier this year, wants to expand the U.S. Spanish-language film market, one hopes he'll aim higher than this.

As wrathful health inspector, possessed choir director, and general castrating angel, Union wrecks store with a slew of ass-chapping teardowns that would make Cam'ron curdle.

As a gloves-off Erin Brockovich, Ryan never makes it into the ring.

With a character this dull--so dull that we're told over and over how smart and special she is--the resulting glut of date-ad losers seems like just deserts.

Moore's lip-glossed petulance never catches fire with Goode's canned drollery.

As Mom, Allison Janney easily dominates every scene she graces, as does Morning Zoo jock papa Peter Gallagher.

Unfortunately "My Left Foot's" Jim Sheridan, that reliable purveyor of Irish struggle-porn, anchors us in tedious exposition.

Really, any wit at all would have helped balance the playful but crass butt-seeking money shots.

Where the earlier flick (Garden State), in its smallness, felt like an honest representation of writer-director-star Zach Braff's struggles with notions of home, Crowe's is a hodgepodge of great ideas and moods in search of a plot to enrich.

Kuryla has her prole banter down, and moments like McKenzie's desperate dance on her jalopy hood when Turturro locks her out move beyond literary sting into kinetic and sympathetic gutter picaresque.

With a premise this screwy, nobody has any choice but to follow the savvy lead of Bebe Neuwirth, who, as Hudson's "Composure" editor, hams her queen-bitch-mother-hen role to glazed perfection.