Michael O'Sullivan

Returns to the wicked mix of transgression and positivity epitomized by "Pecker" and "Hairspray."

The movie suffers by taking itself a little too seriously. It's not just that it's a lot less funny than the book. It's also a lot less fun.

Engrossing, educational, amusing and disturbing. And who could ask for more than that from a film?

Comes across less as a fully realized work of storytelling than as a commercial for a corporation whose goal of entertainment has been replaced by that of making money.

There's so much pluck and gumption on the screen you can smell it. Flesh and blood? Not so much.

Save yourself 10 bucks, and an hour and 45 minutes of your precious time.

Genial rather than an affront to good taste. It's also pretty darn funny.

It's hard to say exactly what the point is to this sour tale.

The mixture of tension, yuks and horrific violence at times reminds one of nothing more than a poor man's "Pulp Fiction."

Goes nowhere fast.

There's a visceral, albeit somewhat goofy, satisfaction to this stuff.

Psychological suspense at its finest.

On the whole, Twilight works as both love story and vampire story, thanks mainly to the performances of its principals, Pattinson and Stewart.

I remained strangely dry-eyed up to the final shot.

Apart from the deja vu all over again, Lucky Break is no worse a film than "Breaking Out," and "Breaking Out" was utterly charming.

Neither funny nor suspenseful nor particularly well drawn.

Fascinating story.

Scorsese creates a film so resonant that it is both a work of great art and an anthropological document.

Rashomon has had such a profound cultural influence that there is even a psychosociological phenomenon named after it.

The psychologizing in Party Monster never goes deeper than what you might get out of Dr. Phil on a bad day.

A numbingly unfunny romantic comedy. I hated every minute of it

The comedy about a coterie of high school seniors plotting to steal the answers to the dreaded standardized test talks a pretty good game, but in the end the numbers just don't add up to much.

Yes, Knowing is creepy, at least for the first two-thirds or so, in a moderately satisfying, if predictable, way.

A hyper-violent, post-apocalyptic Western in the mold of "Mad Max" that can't make up its mind whether it wants to be corny or misanthropic.

The film does not jerk tears as much as it knocks you down and runs away with them.

Powerful yet ambiguous.

It's the rare 2 1/2 -hour film that doesn't make you look at your watch once. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is such a film.

Propelled not by characters but caricatures.

Jonah Hex may not be the longest 81 minutes you ever spend, but it might well be the most tedious.

What is perhaps most disappointing about this ham-handed film, though, particularly since it was directed by the screenwriter of the righteously raging "Thelma and Louise," is its crypto-misogyny.

Beltrn, for his part, makes a solidly believable Garca Lorca. The problem is with the man with whom he's obsessed. In Pattinson's performance, we never see what Garca Lorca sees in Dal.

It's a world where every emotion feels like the earth moving, and where the shifting tectonics of young lust and friendship, along with the lifelong lessons of a broken heart, have never felt more real.

Together, under the assured direction of first-time feature filmmaker Oren Moverman, these three actors tell a story that is at once hard-hitting and bizarrely gentle.

Argentine filmmaker Daniel Burman's shaky-camera, cinema-verite-style dramedy meanders in charming fashion.

As a whole, the film is a perplexing, dark and brooding exercise, which only makes its inappropriately cheery ending feel all the more slight.

But seriously, folks, if you're going to make a scary movie, shouldn't you be able to do it without resorting to both "Blair Witch"-style found footage and movie stars? (Will Patton and Elias Koteas also show up as, respectively, an angry sheriff and a psychologist friend of Abbey's.)

Works as both historical allegory and moving family drama.

This is the lightest, brightest and tightest film confection to come down the date pike in quite some time.

It would be one thing if Christmas With the Kranks were a satire on the assaultive, bullying nature of contemporary Christmas celebration in this country, but it's not. It's an ugly glorification of it.

It's just that, in this world of clanking, hissing machines, even the people seem like robots.

Plays more like a philosophical debate than a war drama.

Wild Grass might be the strangest film I've seen all year. Maybe all millennium. Is it any good? Quite frankly, I have no idea.

Not the sharpest political humor I've ever heard, but it gets my vote for the stupidest fun I've had in a long time.

This Window ultimately feels like one most of us have climbed through before.

There just aren't many laughs in this slack dramedy, and what yuks there are are fairly low-wattage.

It's a story of jaw-dropping chutzpah, grim, mostly hindsight-based humor and more stomach-churning drama than you could find in 10 screenplays.

Feels like something I know is supposed to be good for me, but that I just couldn't stomach.

The kind of stunning and contentious work of art that will leave a lot of folks speechless.

Really, really good -- Yes, it's over the top, giddy and parodistic (God bless it). But it also takes a thoughtful, if surreptitious, look at what eight women might act like when men aren't around.

A small film of surpassing beauty and sadness. Yet its bittersweet flavor isn't artificial, but rather the product of the slow ripening of character.

One hackneyed, inauthentic, predictable scene after another.

Feels like a song you may have heard before, but one whose aching beauty makes it endlessly listenable.

Where Town and Country gets really good and weird – and I do mean good – is only after about an hour into it in deepest, darkest Idaho.

Could hardly be more suspenseful if it were scripted.

Miyazaki, like an evil sorcerer, has plucked the heart out of Jones's story and left it there to die.

Rollicks and rolls, thanks mainly to Roth's over-the-top depravity and Xiong's swingin', "Crouching Tiger"-style choreography.

Where it succeeds best is not in describing how Luzhin got broken but how love fixed him, albeit temporarily.

Trenchant and visceral, American History X may not be perfect, but it's a darn sight better than good.

For all its well-drawn lines between good and evil, Four Brothers is ultimately passive entertainment.

Derivative dumpling of a romantic comedy about Irish sexuality.

Overwhelmingly predictable despite its cute surprise ending, Tortilla Soup is a filling but unoriginal dish.

Maybe I should let a role of the dice determine whether I use a cudgel or a broadsword to put this puppy out of its misery.

A two-hour pleasure cruise.

Think of Phoebe in Wonderland as "A Beautiful Mind," only for kids. And with Elle Fanning, Dakota's little sister, in the Russell Crowe role of the gifted outsider, tormented by demons within.

So bad that I predict there will be drinking games set around viewing it someday.

A provocative and uncomfortable comedy.

The makers of Godzilla obviously devoted so much manpower and time and energy and money to the admittedly fabulous special effects that they apparently had no budget left over for actors.

A fun if dumb movie.

Modest but nonetheless devastating documentary.

The outspoken congressman is just as entertaining as his liberal fans already know him to be.

Wants to be about life, death and the red liquid that flows beneath our skin. It ends up being more about stage blood and stupid plot tricks.

Unfortunately, the dramatic potential of such a moral quandary is left largely unmined in director Joseph Ruben's monotonous parlor game of will-he-won't-he. [14 Aug 1998, Pg. N.39]

Their characters' desire (Scott Thomas and Zylberstein) -- no, need -- to repair their fragile bond feels as achingly real as the mother lode of hidden pain that gets exposed by the work of these two great actresses.

Here, common sense flies out the window, along with the hail of bullets.

The sprawling cast, the naturalistic, overlapping dialogue (here by screenwriter Jenny Lumet, daughter of director Sidney) and the swirling action: it seemed pure Robert Altman.

Unlike some of its recent ilk – "Spider-Man," for example – The Punisher is, no disrespect, a thoroughly morose and bilious affair. That is precisely what I like best about it.

The problem is not the credulity-stretching script. Or even that much of the movie just isn't all that funny. The problem is that it thinks it's freakin' hilarious.

It's both straight-faced spy film and sly spy spoof. That's a difficult balancing act, but director James Mangold gets it exactly right.

Unfortunately, the actors seem overqualified for their parts, delivering earnest monologues that come across as clumsy transplants from the proscenium stage.

Poignant, heartbreaking proof that, sometimes, love is just not enough.

Unfortunately, Nair's film doesn't so much end as fall off a cliff, the ultimate victim of viewers' heightened expectations that this briskly paced story will take them someplace -- other than around the block in a horse-drawn carriage.

Oddly off-balance, estrogen-powered dramedy.

Charming but slight.

Director Marc Levin's shaky, hand-held camera lends "Slam" an unvarnished, documentary feel. The script – credited not only to Levin, Bonz Malone and Richard Stratton, but to acclaimed performance poets Sohn and Williams – is dense and difficult.

Its important if inflammatory message will bore all but Chomsky's fellow travelers to death.

It's a silly, if simultaneously deadpan and stomach-churning, psychological portrait of one crazy lady.

I started out this journey actually liking children. By the end of the movie, I wasn't so sure.

Lacks "spark."

A syrupy Italian power ballad along the lines of the ones on the movie's soundtrack. Its tune is mawkish, bombastic but, in the end, not especially resonant.

It's a pretty compelling yarn, not to mention full of pretty pictures, and yet it could be so much more than that.

The laughs are few, far between and pretty darn faint in this comedy.

It's a lot more tightly focused than the first outing, and for fans of the demented comedy of Elliott and Cross, or the thespian chops of Woods (a last-minute replacement for an ailing Marlon Brando), it's worth putting up with humor that's the filmic equivalent of a big, spit-soaked raspberry.

Telegraphs its every move. There are simply no surprises.

There remains a maddening emptiness where the film's ostensible subject should be.

It becomes, after a while, little more than a mind-numbing bloodbath.

Old-fashioned moviemaking at its best.

Like its Southern California setting, the sunny semi-autobiography is tempered with just the right touch of Jenkins's smoggy cynicism.

Gently entertaining tale.

It's just more wry than funny, more a gently subversive comedy of modern manners than the simpering date movie it seems to be masquerading as.

The movie's half over before it really starts to whack at the funny bone.

With its wise understanding of the magnetic pull (and invisible polarities) of family, Junebug is an auspicious debut for Morrison.

A wondrous, funny and moving little film.

Part of this success is due to the exquisitely cast ensemble-composed of actors, not movie stars. To a man, woman and child, the unforced performers are spot-on.

Make no mistake. This is partisan filmmaking at its most gleefully unapologetic. Unless they're also masochists, Bill Clinton haters and Ken Starr fans will know better than to buy a ticket.

There's something that never quite works about the film.

Hilary and Jackie plumbs the cistern of family dysfunction and musical genius to profound and haunting effect.

It's so over the top, the top isn't even visible in the rear-view mirror.

A touching and unusual road movie-cum-buddy film.

Seriously, though, watching New in Town left me feeling as pained as Zellweger, playing Lucy Hill, looks.

Nosedive it does, abandoning all pretense of style and eccentricity for at-times laughable predictability and a parade of unconvincing red herrings straight out of Murder Mystery 101.

As filmmaking, it's a bravura performance, but as a film, it falls flat.

It is incomplete, contradictory, as multifaceted (and as brilliant) as a diamond.

This fairy-tale shtick, even when dressed up with a little class-war garnish, is hard to swallow.

Not everyone's cup of tea, but it's actually rather beautiful.

The wisecracks fly fast and furious

Satisfies and disturbs in just about equal measure.

As Balthazar, Cage doesn't disappoint. He's just manic enough to keep the character from becoming too predictable.

It is also, despite the all-too-rare focus on the Filipino American community, a creakily familiar take on an age-old family dynamic.

Brit actors can't even be bothered to speak with French accents.

The notions of the good man's complicity through inertia and of innocence tarnished by association are ones that have been more powerfully explored before.

A mostly unsentimental little gem.

For da love of God, spare me.

Sorry, stinging fire ants couldn't make me reveal the outcome of this witty and, yes, surprisingly suspenseful adventure.

An offering so endearingly lame it seems to have missed the past 10 years' worth of special-effects breakthroughs.

There are only two really good jokes -- or two really gross ones, depending on your sensibility -- in She's Out of My League. Both of them are stolen.

The film is a small study in the dignity of letting go.

There's nothing stodgy about these court jesters or their humor, even though their act is a decidedly grown-up affair.

An innocent comedic revenge fantasy that somehow manages to be sweet and wickedly satisfying at the same time.

Preaches most effectively to the converted.

The littlest children in your house may find something to titter at from time to time, but based on the reaction of a young screening audience, it won't be often.

With its spooky atmosphere to spare and a riveting central performance by Kingsley, an actor who manages to elicit both terror and sympathy, I was able to forget all those things, basking in the pleasure of my own goose bumps. So, for an hour and a half, will you.

Its one-sidedness flirts with propaganda.

As quintessential a story of American ambition as Welles' own "Citizen Kane."

Go expecting the very worst. Just don't expect to laugh.

The events of the movie are filament-thin and insubstantial but, like fine silk threads, they weave together a fabric of surpassing warmth and texture. [25 Sep 1998, Pg.N.63]

Works on two levels. First, it's a pure celebration of riding the waves. -- Second, Blue Crush is a clear-eyed portrait of the unique kind of power that women possess, a power that shows us that victory doesn't always mean vanquishing someone else. Either way, it's thrilling.

Wickedly funny.

Despite broad satire about racism and border fences that will appeal to some liberals, the movie doesn't line up neatly along party lines -- except in that other sense of the word "party." It's a movie that just wants to have fun.

Very, very funny, in that morbid sort of way that makes you laugh even as you shudder with horror.

It's filthy, funny and kind of sweet, if not quite up to the level of Judd Apatow's oeuvre in the burgeoning field of R-rated comedies with heart. You will laugh and blush in equal measure.

It does take half the movie before the story --really kicks in. When it does, it'll knock the air out of you.

From opening to closing credits, there isn't a single genuine moment -- as phony as a dime bag of oregano.

Is Along Came Polly a great film? No, probably not, but it is a very amusing one.

It never really feels like we've gotten to know the man himself, leaving the figure at the heart of I'll Sing for You a cipher.

It's also sweet, sentimental, rather funny and, as John Waters films go, surprisingly gentle.

Both wry and sobering, if such a thing is possible. In Jerusalem, apparently, it's inevitable.

Strikes several beautiful and lingering chords about the human condition, but the notes of the music ultimately never come together to form a coherent song.

Gets most of its juice from listening to groups of people who were students and activists in segregated Clarendon County, S.C., and Prince Edward County, Va., during the years leading up to the case.

It is, as with any cinematic joy ride, not the destination that matters, but the rush of getting there.

Sometimes a movie makes a point that's been made before, but makes it so beautifully and so quietly that it feels like you're discovering it for the first time. Hideaway does that, with the obliqueness of an off-hand comment. The glancing touch makes it all the more hard-hitting.

Hilarious.

A thoughtful and surprisingly affecting portrait of a screwed-up man who dared to mess with some powerful people, seen through the eyes of the idealistic kid who chooses to champion his ultimately losing cause.

What separates Calvin and Eddie from the typical comic hero -- and each "Barbershop" movie from the standard yuk-fest -- is that these folks know how to back up all the hot air with meaningful action.

Fairly fascinating little documentary.

Carrey is so gifted a physical comedian that even mediocre material shines in his talented hands, not to mention his talented feet, face, elbows, ears, hair and, ahem, derriere.

A comedy that looks like a documentary but plays like a horror film -- to parents of teenagers.

Cares not a whit for such arbitrary concepts as justice, crime or punishment. It understands the relativism of right and wrong and takes a kind of perverse pleasure in reminding us that there are some things we'll never know.

It's depressing enough to watch this family's struggles with life. But their pain really hits home when you think that the pants you might be wearing could have contributed to it.

Sappy but sweet B-ball Cinderella story that succeeds thanks largely to the outsize charm of its 4-foot-8-inch, corn-rowed protagonist.

An enormously entertaining visit to planet paranoia, but its escapist pleasures titillate only in direct proportion to the degree of persecution complex that you bring into the theater with you.

Moodysson's cornball sentimentality about the many shapes of the human family is tempered by his honesty about personal frailty and the silliness of utopian living experiments.

XXY is, in the best possible sense of the word, an awkward film.

Sweet without being saccharine and funny without being forced, the closely observed romantic comedy treats the culinary arts as a metaphor for personal healing.

Momma's Man takes that germ of an idea and lets it flower, in a way that is both odd and oddly compelling.

Corny? Oh, yeah. But it's also reasonably good fun.

Those who are only mildly curious, I fear, will be put to sleep or bewildered by the artsy and often pointless visuals.

With elegant, clockwork construction, Smith has transplanted his novel of greed, betrayal and getting what you deserve to the screen, where it is told by director Sam Raimi with a spareness befitting the whiteness of its snowed-in setting.

The jokes are lame, the set-up is stupid and Bullock, occasionally a winsome comedienne and here a co-producer, is annoying as heck.

There are a couple of good things about the film, chief among which is Land's naturalistic performance. But the overall sense of it, heightened by a folk-guitar score so spare it feels like part of the soundtrack is missing, is not one of poignant minimalism but emptiness.

A raunchy and frequently hilarious follow-up to the gifted Korean American stand-up's "I'm the One That I Want."

The bad news? The story, which rumbles along like an unattended wheelchair on a gently sloping sidewalk.

A protracted and only sporadically imaginative menu of ways to be murdered.

It somehow feels richly, hilariously real, even -- at its most bizarre -- familiar.

Actually underserves its star, who is better than schlocky material like this would lead you to believe.

Troubling and powerful film, lingering on screen well into the final credits and in the minds of its audience long after the house lights have come on.

It's not brilliant by any means, but bright enough to light up an overly familiar feel-good story.

Henry Fool, the fascinating and often infuriating new film from the idiosyncratic Hal Hartley. [24 Jul 1998]

This time-travel scenario is by now shopworn, and the normally riotous Lawrence, a manic and gifted clown, is hamstrung in his efforts to eke humor from the anemic script.

In almost every way that I can think of, L'Auberge Espagnole is a perfect movie... It is a film that feels alive.

May, at times, be deadpan to the point of stiffness, but it's far from dead.

If anyone can sell the idea of ... some psycho "Sherlock Holmes," it's Samuel L. Jackson.

Fitfully amusing comedy from director and one-time sitcom king Garry Marshall, the fantasy is alive and well among little girls of all ages.

What sticks in my craw -- just a bit -- is the way the film doesn't fully trust the true story's inherent power.

The movie may leave its audience feeling a little battered (some might say betrayed) as well. Still, the film's honesty, along with its refusal to pander to Hollywood happy endings, is well worth the beating.

A sweet, true and, at times, universal love story it is.

There is still a self-consciousness and a forced quality to much of the humor that this TPT redux just can't shake.

What a shame, therefore, that in its puritanical treatment of the only strong female character, the otherwise politically correct police story is blithely unaware of its own closet misogyny.

A tale so raucous, raunchy and punch-drunk with love for the rebellious spirit of rawk -- and so disdainful of those who have tried to squelch it -- that it pretty much negates any claims to objectivity, let alone factuality. In other words, it's not a documentary.

Regardless of the silliness of the situation -- or, in truth, because of it -- they're a joy to watch.

Coupled with the fact that the plant and animal life (hoopoes, zorilles and ground squirrels, among other beasties) really look African, and that the film's original score is by the great contemporary Senegalese musician Youssou N'Dour, Kirikou and the Sorceress's surprising honesty about the banality of evil makes the movie -- even with all its magic -- feel truly authentic.

What it suffers from most is the sense of offhand storytelling that lies halfway between creative laziness and cost-cutting sloppiness.

Tells a tale of fortitude that comes not from muscle but from the ineffable, bungee-like sinew that is the human spirit.

Strangely moving film.

Charlie St. Cloud, like its star Zac Efron, is a gorgeous, unblemished thing. Both would be much improved with a tiny flaw or two.

Presents an America that is as much about the pathological display of imperial power -- a showmanship of arrogance and violence -- as policy.

Startlingly erotic and surprisingly moving.

Cinematic sleeping pill.

Yes, it's essentially a remake of a sequel, albeit a sequel that happens to be one of the greatest horror movies ever made, but it more than surpasses the original.

Is Spartan a perfect, or even a great, movie? Probably not. But in its prickly irascibility and deeply unsettling intelligence, it makes for a very, very good one.

Super Size Me is an anti-junk-food screed that manages to entertain even as it informs and alarms.

Good old-fashioned movie storytelling that steadily builds, over the course of nearly three hours, to a white-knuckle conclusion that satisfies on nearly every level.

A modest yet moving fact-based drama.

Most of the comedy, such as it is, consists of the uppity Chase acting "street" and the ghetto-fabulous Tiffany putting on moneyed airs. But, if you've seen the trailers, you already know that.

A charming, poetic and at times surreal stop-motion animation co-written with Etgar Keret and based on the Israeli writer's short stories.

By going back to its origins and dusting itself off, the King Arthur story has proved itself to have a very contemporary resonance.

A limp and exceedingly uninvolving melodrama.

A blend of gentle comedy and poignant drama.

The dialogue is often drowned out by engine noise.

Surprisingly brusque yet likable film.

An energetic if empty-headed adventure based on the popular video game.

Sure, I laughed. Yes, I cried. But mostly I just wanted to throw up.

The nail-biting quality of Shackleton's true story outdoes any dramatic fiction on the market.

Did I laugh? Yeah, I did, half a dozen times. Not a great percentage for a film with something close to 300 quote-unquote jokes.

It doesn't satisfy in the way a good thriller ought to.

A little more literary than lifelike, House of D is a story that feels too pat, and too perfect, for its own good.

Little Voice may be more of a confection than a square meal, but it's proof of how good a dish can be when the ingredients are of the highest order.

Maybe Thomas Wolfe was right: You can't go home again

A fairly straightforward, if preachy, tale about environmentalism.

What becomes clear is that Trumbo's humor is only one thing that helped him survive the professional and personal hardships of the blacklist, which drove more than one of his Hollywood friends to kill themselves and took a toll on Trumbo's children.

The insecurities that seem to feed Rivers's often angry humor -- and that have left her face looking like a mask frozen in horror -- are left unexamined.

One overly busy (not to mention shopworn) story, which regurgitates everything from H.G. Wells's "The Island of Dr. Moreau" to the herky-jerky monsters of Ray Harryhausen to James Bond to "The Mummy."

Morning Light, sailor's delight. All others be forewarned.

Blade's stomach-turning special effects, bone-crunching martial arts and cynical humor will more than satisfy any action-film addict's need for a fix of eye-popping escapist adrenaline.

The spare and unsparing tone of I'll Sleep When I'm Dead makes it as existential -- and as original -- a whodunit as they come.

Guaranteed-to-bum-you-out conclusion.

A sweet and funny take on the crossed-wire romantic couplings of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.'

As exhausting as it is exhilarating to watch, the film in the end is less than fully satisfying.

Offers little in the way of originality, real excitement or even genuinely transgressive behavior.

Fitfully amusing and ultimately kind of heartwarming in a twisted sort of way

A considerable cut above the crop of recent features by other 'SNL' alums.

For the most part, The Other Guys is seriously silly stuff, in the best sense.

Deliberate disorientation keeps the audience constantly off balance, and it's brilliantly effective.

It's part sugar, part spice (cayenne, not nutmeg) and all-around brilliant.

The filmmaker drowns his trademark edgy stew of smutty humor, stiff acting and dime-store insight into human nature with a gravy of glutinous bathos, making for a singularly unpalatable dish.

If Guess Who were either a whole lot funnier, or a whole lot less funny, it would be a far better film.

Do not be concerned if laughter trickles out of the scary parts or boredom creeps into the funny parts; this is to be expected.

It is this sense of real life blurring with make-believe that Allen's film is really playing with, like a kitten toying with a scared mouse. Back and forth he bats the subject, moving between reality, illusion and the imitation of reality with a deft touch that may bruise but never kills.

As Primer progresses, it just gets murkier and the experience of it more drudgelike.

A blackhearted little film. What's being marketed as a frothy French confection about jealousy (specifically the jealousy of a regular guy married to a famous movie star) also just so happens to be a portrait of a marriage going down the toilet.

Not terrible so much as terminally silly.

It also has heart and soul, two commodities all too often in short supply in the field of garden-variety cinema verite.

The gratuitous vulgarity is just one more reason that Scooby-Doo should never have left the pound.

Scrupulously unpreachy, it resists all attempts to distill a moral or message, seeking truth in the honesty of its characters and their process of self-discovery.

Needless to say, in the age of inferior remakes, this would-be homage -- a sort of Wim Wenders Lite -- is a mawkish debasement of its source material.

The strongest magnet in this psychedelic morass is Johnny Depp who, as the story's antic, disgusting and seductive spirit guide, is impossible to look away from.

Clumsily under-written and feverishly overacted, it's as embarrassing to watch as it is perplexing.

The pleasure is entirely like eating cake made from cake mix. It's not like you don't know how it's going to turn out, or how it tasted the last time you ate it.

Watching Tea with Mussolini is probably a lot like having tea with Mussolini would be: never dull but neither, I imagine, an entirely pleasant experience.

In attitude, if not aptitude, Robert Pattinson in Remember Me comes across like a latter-day James Dean.

Shakespeare asked, "Or in the heart, or in the head?" It's not a new question by any means, but it's one that is given a fresh and refreshing adult twist by Decena's heady yet steady-handed Dopamine.