M. E. Russell

That cast is precisely what makes the new Arthur so frustrating.

The bad news? The movie is monumentally stupid. The good news? It's a fun kind of stupid.

By the film's end, you feel like you've spent two hours rapidly changing channels between a WB sitcom, the gospel-choir segments of the "Ladykillers" remake, an episode of "Law & Order" and a Mexican soap opera.

It's a cartoon that thinks it isn't one.

The end result is mediocre, slightly sloppy and a mild waste of a great cast.

Endless and tedious. It's also written-in-crayon, smack-your-face dumb, and edited so that every other shot is a close-up of a flailing limb.

I appreciate that talented people wanted to honor Shelly by making this film. They likely would have better honored her by mounting her script as a play.

After the initial charm wears off, the whole thing gets check-your-text-messages dull.

While you're in the theater, it's actually -- heaven help me -- pretty fun to watch.

Unlike its predecessors, this one doesn't even try to aspire to myth. It aspires only to merchandising.

Sets up a situation so weird, it's almost weirder that Rob Reiner directs it as a cookie-cutter romantic comedy.

Revenge of the Fallen almost feels like it's signaling an end-game for blockbuster movies: all sensation, no content, catastrophic expense.

Kind of a drag.

The deadly dull action-comedy Identity Thief is an infuriating waste of time, on all sides of camera and screen. I did not know I could yawn angrily. This movie somehow proved it possible.

The dialogue is almost primitive at times, almost every female character is an idiot and McConaughey grossly overplays the bachelor-sleazeball antics at the beginning.

The movie starts out as a potboiler with a troubling character arc; unfortunately, it ends up becoming a goofy, story-overwhelming Rube Goldberg contraption that would make the producers of the "Saw" series blush.

What damage could Michael Bay inflict on Jason Voorhees that earlier producers hadn't already inflicted on everyone's favorite hockey-masked serial killer? Well, Bay could make Jason Voorhees ... boring.

Beyond a couple of cool guns and one long, gory, clever first-person shot, Doom is something the video games have never been: dull.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers failed to replace sex, splatter and cursing with sharp dialogue, characters and plotting.

Sporadically clever and chilling.

We end up with a piece of B-grade junk in which Elektra exchanges "banter" with the unexceptional Prout between fight scenes so badly shot that even Garner looks like a stunt double.

Structurally, this is as by-the-numbers as rom-coms get, right down to the wacky best friends, played by Judy Greer and Dan Fogler. For a while, it's low-key enough to be tolerable.

With the exception of one long improv riff on a campground basketball court, Williams nicely underplays his role. Unfortunately, Sonnenfeld also underplays his. We should expect more of him.

It's been fascinating to watch the "intellectual" subgenre of the serial-killer movie -- the one where poetic evil geniuses elude the cops while leaving trails of art-directed crime scenes -- run out of ideas and start feeding on itself.

A movie of utter inconsequence -- a cinematic Listerine Strip that evaporates from the brain before you even get your popcorn tub to the trash.

I was stunned to learn that "Beth Cooper" was adapted by former "Simpsons" writer Larry Doyle from his young-adult novel and directed by "Harry Potter" helmer Chris Columbus. Rarely have two seasoned Hollywood professionals produced something so painfully, amateurishly, relentlessly unfunny.

I'm pleased to report the new Land of the Lost movie keenly understands that what was once scary is now ridiculous.

Yet another mediocre-to-lame thriller shot in Portland.