Marrit Ingman

What do you get when you mix Adam Sandler with SPAM gags, a trained vomiting walrus, a wall-to-wall soundtrack of calypso covers of 1980s pop hits, and Rob Schneider in native-Islander brownface? You get a pretty crappy movie, but for one major mitigating factor: Drew Barrymore.

It’s part camp, part trash, and part cabaret, with a delightfully retro Hollywood Hills palette and zingy dialogue served up with relish.

It's not wrong to wish these actors were working in the service of a better script or more assured direction, but it's probably also possible to simply take pleasure in their performances.

Can someone dial down Cuba Gooding Jr. a few notches? He's so hyperactive during this MTV Films production - which is comedically indistinguishable from "Sister Act," but with more marketable music - that his Vegas-showgirl drag act in the dreadful "Boat Trip" looks like Bressonian minimalism by contrast.

This is your standard genre fare: Smart-a-- player gets schooled, finds love, and is redeemed in time for the final big game.

Final verdict: Cast is excellent; movie is OK; men and women are soooo different.

It's the snobs versus the slobs! And this holiday's no picnic!

Bizarre, even darkly comic at times. But it's also elegant and mannered.

This family melodrama is as subtle as a load of bricks and occasionally as painful, but it offers two of the most finely tuned acting performances yet this year.

The film lacks the emotional resonance that made "Big" such a sentimental favorite with audiences of all ages.

Depends on the two actors who all but carry it.

The real problem is that the story is just incoherent, and the faster it moves, the more frantic it seems.

A perfectly marvelous matinee option for young children.

Monk would probably make a nice rental on a dull evening, with some kind of salty snack and a drinking-game accompaniment. (Drink whenever Scott cries, "Oh, shit!")

The whole production is simply as mediocre and half-baked as Hollywood gets.

No doubt some viewers could find fault with the slack pacing, though it's hardly inappropriate for a film that's fundamentally about emerging from frustration and stasis into a state of grace.

It points a determined finger (a middle finger, almost) at law enforcement, which cannot or will not recognize kidnapping victims in our midst, especially if they are undocumented and brown-skinned.

A charming surprise, the kind of neat little low-budget movie that seems more like a collaboration among friends than it does a corporate investment.

It sounds high-minded, but 3-Iron is in fact simple and economical, blessedly straighforward, absorbing, and hard to forget.

There are football movies, and then there's this 800-pound gorilla of a gridiron weepie, which should be penalized for roughing the viewer.

Cute and toothless as a kitten, Seamstress doesn't inspire the same kind of fervent devotion its principals feel when confronted with art, but it does make a pleasant enough diversion.

Too bloodless to satisfy except as a political exercise.

The movie is kind of a mess – all over the place tonally, hastily paced, and overly reliant on the ostensible truisms of romantic comedy.

The first "Nightmare on Elm Street" was wickedly surreal, but the wacky dream sequences were offset by the sitcomlike, almost satirical flatness of ordinary suburban life; that was the really scary part. Freddy Vs. Jason is innocent of such nuances.

The film is a pleasant surprise.

It's got a good creative pedigree and confident execution – as well as nifty design, down to its Hammond-organ Photek soundtrack and desert chic – but this ensemble piece set in a rural mobile-home park steps off the trail into melodrama from time to time.

His (Law's) is the standout performance, probably because it's quiet and reflective and nuanced amidst the flurries of relationship talk.

For venturesome viewers, Jailbait would make a potent late-summer palate cleanser in preparation for festival season, even if you wouldn't make a meal of it.

Has its charms, but for a movie about loving radically, it sure plays it safe.

Faultlessly truthful in its observations.

One need not necessarily appreciate Darger's art to enjoy Yu's sympathetic, intimate, and often breathtaking journey into the workings of his mind.

Maybe America will prove me wrong by voting, but I felt like you were holding back until the end.

How can a movie narrated by Junior Brown and backed with wall-to-wall southern rock – a movie that at one point features co-stars Nelson and Carter tied together, surely a first in celluloid history – be so uneventful? Why, it's lazier than Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane's good-for-nothing hound dog, Flash.

Garçon Stupide is interesting enough to merit an audience broader than its intended niche, though it isn't perfect.

Pardon the pun, but audiences will reap little from this satanic backwoods juju thriller.

Wistful voiceover explains too much, and, even worse, interrupts the requisite Teen Movie Climactic Speech.

There's a place in life for movies like this – goofy and lowbrow but never truly icky; the good guys are lovable losers and the bad guys have frosted feathered hair and unitards with inflatable codpieces.

It is wonderful for what it is: a delightful, thoroughly satisfying comedy of modern manners.

Perhaps future generations of film scholars will embrace The Quiet as a B-movie that problematizes the oppressive gaze, but for now, it's a misfire.

You don’t have to be a cynic to find Radio naive for suggesting that high school is a good place for emotionally fragile misfits, that racism is not a problem, that caring for someone is all it takes.

Its characterizations are as bland as sand.

The worst thing about Bounce isn't that it's bad but that it just isn't interesting.

The eye candy can't quite compensate for the murky mess of a plot.

No doubt this effort will find its fans, as it should, but there's a lot of lost potential.

The combination of high animé style and old-school heart gives the film a broad enough appeal to merit a wide release. Not that it isn't quirky.

Were it allowed to be dark, Duplex would probably be more interesting, possibly even with cult appeal. Call it a fixer-upper with potential.

There are bad movies, and there’s Boat Trip, a puerile comedy so appalling and unfunny, it’s like contracting the Norwalk virus at sea.

There is great material here and ample food for thought, but the presentation is lacking.

The film’s simplest pleasure is its naturalism – the illusion it creates of observing the animals undetected.

Ruffalo makes a dent as a dogged narcotics detective, and the Spanish superstar Javier Bardem appears as a crime boss. Overall, however, Mann seems content to play games with his fast cars, cool streets, and loud rock, leaving Collateral squarely within the action genre.

The end of the film edges toward camp, and the sudden arrival of surreal dream sequences threatens to push it over the side. The movie is more sophisticated when it’s not trying to be complex.

Less a movie than a longform, live-action Celebrity Death Match between its leads, this wheezing comedy may herald the death knell of the interracial buddy-cop farce.

There's a genuine sense of loss when dreams go unrealized, and in these moments Dig! transcends the typical "rock movie" format and aspires to something greater: an examination of why we create and what we receive from art.

If you like "Maxim," you will love The Island. It is glossy. It is expensive. It has lots of slick ads for Aquafina and Cadillac.

There's nothing terribly wrong with Surf's Up, except maybe the part where one character calls another a "dirty trash can full of poop." But the movie isn't terribly robust, either.

The quest for sexual happiness is a radical notion in these repressive times, as well as a legitimate basis for storytelling, but Shortbus doesn't quite delve as deeply as it ought into its characters' emotions.

Comes across as stiff and uneven.

More factual rigor wouldn't hurt, but directors Quinn and Walker delve instead into the lives of their subjects with a fly-on-the-wall candor, revealing as much about American life as they do of African life.

The best surprise is Yuan, the daughter of Hong Kong actress Cheng Pei-Pei. She has great screen presence and invests Lichi with a mix of kitty-cat cuteness and hellcat ferocity.

There's also a little something smarmy about the interactions between the lawyers and their clients, all of whom are poor.

A compelling small-scale drama, and Lapica is a talent to watch.

Cuddlier and more charming, this alcoholic-hitman comedy isn’t your typical Dahl noir (The Last Seduction, Red Rock West), but it is offbeat, lovably deadpan, and just tart enough.

It is funny at times – the teams for dodgeball break down into "popular" and "unpopular" – but Chicken Little is painful to watch for all ages.

Tamyra, Tamyra, Tamyra. I didn't recognize you at first!

The film has lovely moments – Gehry buildings can be extremely photogenic, after all – but it doesn't sink its teeth in the way it probably should.

There's just not enough real heart to go along with the cutesiness.

A playground for Malkovich – enjoyable enough but not terribly deep.

If you like the character – his tooty yellow Mini, his busily working beetlebrows, his tendency to point and grunt and eat shellfish whole – then you will be rewarded with 90 minutes of such.

Funny Ha Ha is often offhandedly funny, and Bujalski has a knack for letting scenes build and then cutting out abruptly, duplicating the flow of a life in flux.

An intriguing export with crossover appeal.

Goofily funny, oddly tenderhearted mock-documentary.

Will likely test the patience of all but the most devoted fans.

This could be a pilot for the WB. Hollywood choreographer Fletcher makes the jump behind the camera but displays a greater aplomb for staging than drama, and the movie is as fleeting as the last weekend of summer.

It's a call to arms, a call to pick sides in the deepening cultural, political, and spiritual schism between the two Americas of the 21st century.

A singularly distasteful campus romp.

If Tears is indeed too weird to take America by storm – Miramax bought the film after Cannes and shelved it until it is now being released by Magnolia – it should neither be considered a cult item, approachable only to film nerds (though they will appreciate it best).

It is a rewarding tale for public educators, parents, and kids with big dreams.

Moments of black comedy break up the melodrama – a newsreel depicts the song's "victims" and a Nazi secretary rages against her Duden grammar manual – but the overall tone is still that of a four-alarm weeper.

The film is more of an old-school wartime yarn, crackling with the expected camaraderie among the hardscrabble volunteers.

Not content to merely be lowbrow and stupid – there's room in the world for lowbrow and stupid mass entertainment – the film is pushy and might actually cause chafing.

It's a magnificent film – thoughtful but not distant, aesthetically and technically sophisticated but staged with restraint and delicacy.

The real problem isn't that Anacondas is bad – it's just so bland, so unremarkable, so by-the-numbers, and so instantly forgettable that bad might be a step up.

The movie doesn't quite add up beyond its performances.

The film veers toward sheer silliness at times, losing the sweetness that defines its strongest moments.

It's too bad Shafer spent his budget making a fiction feature instead of just shooting a documentary about the scene. So much of the film is melodramatic kitsch, but there's still a movie in here.

A pleasant, often beautiful, and surprisingly light-hearted film that affirms the human traits of resilience and intelligence while clearly denouncing the bellicose tendencies of nations and factions.

The story is simple and true-to-life, and the technique is naturalistic, using nonprofessional actors, photography that emphasizes the characters' environment, and deliberate narrative pacing that mimics real-time events.

The characters are mechanisms who move along the plot arc from Point A to Point B. They’re not particularly memorable individuals.

A good bet for family viewing. It's got a charming, simple plot, a smart Alan Menken score, and enough subversive humor to wring a chuckle or two out of Mom and Dad.

If the sensitive coming-of-age love story is a well-worn tradition in gay cinema, Come Undone is at the very least a superior example of it.

Never mind the fact that romantic comedies about gay African-American and Latino men aren't exactly plentiful, let alone ones this good-natured.

Less subversive and infinitely less intelligent than 1999’s Wahlberg-starrer "Three Kings," this movie does blow lots of s--- up real good and punish contemptible public figures otherwise left unaccountable for massacring African villagers.

“This is just like a video game,” observes rapper-cum-actor Ja Rule, taking aim during one of the myriad firefights that comprise this lunkheaded, vaguely dystopic actioner. Man, is it ever.

This is not a family movie; the kids will be bored by it. This is a guilty pleasure for thirtysomething stoners with ironic dispositions and large nacho platters.

The real shame in the storytelling is that the people in this film are interesting and inspiring enough to warrant a real film about them.

My cynical half hated it, despite the presence of Lane, who is so magnetic that she could prance around the countryside in the absence of plot and still be compelling somehow.

You could call this film repugnant and abrasive, and Solondz would probably agree.

It helps that J.K. Rowling’s third book in the series is full of spooky stuff that translates beautifully to screen.