Neil Genzlinger

If you go, expect a diverting summer action adventure with occasional laughs, not a diverting stoner comedy with occasional action.

The animated feature The Boss Baby has some hilarious moments. If, that is, you’re a grown-up.

Everything goes pretty much as you guess it’s going to, but the conceit of seeing the whole story through the eyes of the videographer adds a dimension to the familiar goings-on.

Christoph Baaden, the director, loses sight of the fact that, for people who don't run, the cult of running is kind of boring.

Sometimes a film feels a bit too pat and yet is impossible to resist. The Mighty Macs, based on the national championship run of the 1972 women's basketball team at Immaculata College near Philadelphia, is such a film: lots of button pushing, but in the end you're glad you saw it.

The script never gives them the kind of memorable exchange that makes fans howl with delight. But all in all, Escape Plan does what it sets out to do.

With a manic performance by Jean-Claude Van Damme and an improbable but intriguing plot variation, Enemies Closer is an improvement over most hunt-or-be-hunted fare. A small improvement, but still.

A pretty young actress. A casting call. A private meeting with the lecherous man who has the power to give her the role. Starry Eyes tries to wring a horror movie out of this tired old setup but, halfway in, seems to realize it has nothing new to offer and becomes a mere gorefest.

Ms. Mann (Michael's daughter) does stage a bracing car chase, and Mr. Morgan makes an impression despite a story that's sometimes hard to follow.

The documentary Can We Take a Joke?, a one-sided look at a multisided issue, does a fine job of defending a comic’s right to perform incendiary material. It would be better if it also at least acknowledged the possibility that some jokes ought not be told.

The film, by Jody Shapiro, seems so hagiographic that when it finally gets around to its 20 minutes’ worth of interesting stuff, you’re not sure whether to trust it.

The film’s messages about friendship, acceptance and being yourself are clear enough for the young, and grown-ups can read the story as a warning about conformity and about going to war on false pretenses.

It’s a boilerplate plot like one you might find in any morning cartoon.

Though Cooties has a reasonable amount of laughs and frights, and though real teachers may find it an apt allegory for the zombielike charges in their classrooms, it’s not really funny enough to achieve grown-up cachet, and it’s too ugly and violent for younger viewers.

The film's most interesting aspects are its gimmicks rather than its frights.

Mr. Miller makes a questionable choice in setting the film against the backdrop of the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, and he lingers too long on an offensive fringe group that hangs out near ground zero with signs saying the terrorist attacks were God's will. But for most of the way, his treatment is substantive and evenhanded.

This is well-worn territory, and though the two leads are very good, the romance that is supposed to drive the story isn’t particularly well delineated.

The film, awkward and amateurish, is by Eric Merola, and at least it’s useful in explaining the differences among the various types of stem cells that are being explored for medical treatments.

It does have some sweet touches and a droll sense of humor.

Other Van Peebleses also populate the movie, and all are serviceable enough as actors; it would be nice to see them in less earnest, more original material.

Ms. Zeta-Jones is too elegant for the lowlife she's supposed to be, Ms. Ronan isn't endearing enough to be a ragamuffin, and, under Gillian Armstrong's direction, never for a minute do you believe they're mother and daughter.

These days, when paranormal-themed shows are all over television, Mr. Lutz sounds like just another guy peddling an unverifiable spooky story.

The movie sweeps you along with a brisk pace and even dashes of humor.

Its dialogue would probably fit on a couple of sheets of paper. But it sure is creepy, in a throwback sort of way.

The film, though generous with doses of Heifetz in performance, isn't entirely successful at illuminating the man.

The title character of Rock Dog isn’t likely to end up on anyone’s Top 5 list of animated heroes, but the film does have a thoroughly enjoyable rocker in it. And an appealingly nasty wolf, too.

Ray is courageous just for making the decision to change sexes. The film — which, by the way, includes a surprising amount of droll humor — would be better if it trusted the audience to recognize this, rather than piling ordeals worthy of the Labors of Hercules onto its protagonist.

The execution is a bit clumsy, but the documentary MIS: Human Secret Weapon shines a light on an interesting bit of World War II history.

Ms. Berry does a decent job with the role, and the film treats its subject matter respectfully, but the overall package doesn’t rise above ordinariness.

The film, though, is so padded with cheerleading that it doesn't have time for a serious exploration of poker's place in the broader culture or the consequences of its rapid rise and global reach.

All in all there’s not much to complain about here, except that — as with a lot of revisited classics — the story’s not as revolutionary as you remember it. For veterans of the 1982 Poltergeist, it’s more like scary but pleasant nostalgia.

The title character is a child, but two adult actors, Kathy Bates and Glenn Close, really give The Great Gilly Hopkins its considerable heart. This movie, though uneven, is affecting because of these two reliable stars.

For the first half of the film, amusing monster humor keeps things interesting; some monsters, it turns out, are better at party games than others.

The male characters here are too thinly developed for this to be a top-notch survival thriller, but Ms. Aselton knows how to get the pulse pounding.

Those who care less about such stuff than about being entertained will find plenty to like in this ghoulish comedy, a droll take on one of the most notorious mass-murder cases of the 19th century.

The cast is surely capable of sharper comedy, but Will Raee, who directed, doesn’t get everyone on the same page. Ms. Cardellini and Ms. Schaal offer cardboard caricatures, while Mr. Ulrich, among others, plays it mostly straight.

Snow Blind calls itself a documentary, but it's really all about selling the product of snowboarding; it never stops feeling like the in-house channel on a ski-lodge television.

The film does a pretty good job of conveying the bleakness and pointlessness Eva and her fellow mutants feel, but it's as if Ms. Trachinger were reluctant to take the premise any deeper for fear of being accused of imitating "Memento" or "Groundhog Day" or any number of other trapped-in-time films.

New Jerusalem feeling like an acting exercise in search of a theater class.

If you’re relatively easily scared or are in a theater full of people who are, the film might be good for a few screams. But only if you’re the patient sort. It takes almost an hour to get to the good stuff.

Over all, the movie, directed by Dan Harris and featuring name actors like Kal Penn and Janeane Garofalo in small roles, has a focus problem that leaves its humorous moments obscured and its intentions hazy.

The Oscars are swell, but once in a while a film comes along that is so courageous it deserves consideration for the Nobel Prize. An entire generation has been born and gone to college since the Beastie Boys defined that most basic of civil liberties: You've got to fight for your right to party.

The actors do nice work before things derail.

[Amy Berg's] instincts about how to pace a true story serve her well with this imaginary one, and so do the performances by Ms. Fanning and especially Ms. Macdonald.

Not much here is new, but condensing it all into one zippy documentary makes for an ugly portrait.

Maris Curran had plenty of opportunities to insert a cheesy plot twist into “Five Nights in Maine,” her delicate drama about loss and its aftermath. Yet she stayed true to her intentions, and the result is a believable character study that may not draw crowds but certainly challenges its two lead actors.

Although the film has moments when it’s serious about exploring the challenges that someone in Travis’s situation faces, it ultimately prefers to be just another football movie with a hokey big-game ending.

Here, both the director (Denise Di Novi) and the writer (Christina Hodson) are women, yet that doesn’t translate into a reimagining of the tired formula.

The more desperate the characters’ flight becomes, the less interesting the movie grows. It does end with a witty flourish, though — one that makes good use of those glasses.

What follows seems like a nonstop car and foot chase, with Albanian after Albanian falling victim to Bryan's remarkable aim and hand-fighting skills. Foreigners bad, Americans good, box office busy.

There are enough good jokes in Fanboys, a road comedy about geeks on a "Star Wars"-related quest, to satisfy hard-core fans of that George Lucas franchise. But the film doesn't have the boosters, or thrusters, or whatever, to elevate it to more ambitious heights; it's weighed down by tired conventions and a general sense of having missed its moment.

In the end, though, Mr. Garbarski makes no judgments, which leaves this film feeling sweet but light: we already knew that Judaism, like most other religions, is an ever-evolving collage.

The movie’s flaw is that it mixes tones. Ruth, her relatives and her fellow workers are realistically played, but her gal-pal buddies are caricatures.

Even before a “do as I say, not as I do” twist costs it all credibility, Prescription Thugs is a not very good documentary about a very important subject.

Ms. Breslin and especially Ms. Henley are quite good, elevating a film that seems like an oft-told tale.

Dough is sweet, often funny and always nonthreatening, a movie for those who wish the intractable realities of the world would just disappear.

This film seems blissfully unaware that political obstructionists are paralyzing the legislative process; that deep-pocketed influence peddlers have a vested interest in maintaining the fossil fuel culture; that, in general, people resist change.

Rapture-Palooza has a promising setup and a cast with a good track record of bringing the funny, yet it never does live up to its potential.

This isn’t exactly “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”; it’s more like a film version of a TV series you could comfortably let your tweens watch.

Mr. Dern is fine in his crotchety-old-man mode, but the rest of the acting is labored, and the story is an unfocused mishmash.

Mr. Fisher-Cohen captures Mr. McMillan's transformation from a guy with a funny look and line into someone who believes his own hype and misconstrues his Warholian 15 minutes for widespread popularity and influence. It's a dismaying portrait and, here in the YouTube age, a direct hit.

The threads may not all be original, but they’re kept nicely distinct. Rather than awkwardly intertwining, they merely brush up against one another.

Ms. Rauch (who wrote the film with her husband, Winston Rauch) nails the portrayal admirably under Bryan Buckley’s direction. But that doesn’t mean Hope is anyone you want to spend almost two hours with.

Alas, the dancers have to stop sometimes to allow the utterly unoriginal story to be told, and the romance at the center of it inspired Amanda Brody, the screenwriter, to produce dialogue so cheesy as to be laughable.

It is also unabashedly one-sided and is short on solutions, other than the usual "Call your Congressional representatives." But its message, despite the hyperbole, certainly warrants examination and discussion.

Ms. Meester and Mr. Shatkin mesh beautifully, so much so that you might feel a little cheated at the end.

Despite the preachiness, however, they have still made a moderately enjoyable film, thanks to some engaging performances.

You don’t need an animal-rights group’s boycott to give you permission to avoid A Dog’s Purpose. You can skip it just because it’s clumsily manipulative dreck.

Only a couple of times do the stunts have that extra ingredient - wit - that makes this kind of thing amusing to watch.

The film is part psychological thriller, part horror movie, and the horror elements deliver some solid frights. Mr. Brody isn’t asked to stretch much, but he does his usual thing adroitly.

Sometimes the movie, directed by Josh Gordon and Will Speck, is too obviously just a framework for its stars to deploy goofy schtick, but the overall package is naughty, inappropriate fun.

Lazer Team ends by setting itself up for a sequel, but that’s mighty wishful thinking. There’s not a big demand for laugh-free comedies.

It is insight-free and cliché-heavy, with the five sharing obvious reminiscences about the thrill of superstardom, visiting haunts from their youth, shooting baskets and occasionally rehearsing.

What follows is a decently structured story of personal demons and culinary competition, with a couple of nice twists thrown in, but it’s built with materials that at this point in the life cycle of this genre are mighty shopworn.

The Taqwacores aims for a provocative, anarchic cool by juxtaposing Islam and punk rock. But the storytelling is so muddled and the filmmaking so unpolished - and not in a good way - that mostly this movie is just unpleasant. It's also not nearly as insightful as it thinks it is.

American Hero starts off seeming as if it is going to be a fresh take on superheroes, but Nick Love, who wrote and directed, turns out to have nowhere to go with his intriguing premise.

The changes — goodbye, white suburbia; hello, gritty diversity — recharge the batteries somewhat. But there’s no escaping that the found-footage phenomenon has gone from fresh and original to just plain annoying.

The actors, none of whom have much experience, are quite convincing, but the story — Jed falls, then sees the error of his ways — is an oft-told one.

Cold Turkey has some fine actors who put effort into their roles, but it’s getting harder and harder to care about or laugh at adult characters who have botched up their affluent lives and are still obsessed with events from childhood.

A comedy that's too late to the Ponzi-scheme party to be topical, and not outrageous enough to take advantage of its own setups.

So overwhelmed by its own based-on-actual-events tale that it can’t find the tone to tell it effectively.

It still has enough scary moments to satisfy horror fans, but you’re left wondering whether it might have been more disturbing had it stayed on its original path.

The script, by Sally Phillips and Neil Jaworski, mocks celebrity culture but never turns too caustic. The movie, like an island vacation, passes pleasantly and all too quickly.

There are a few sweet moments early in Jem and the Holograms.... But then the movie’s lumbering, overstuffed, unfocused plot shows up, and whatever high hopes we might have had for this latest exploitation of 1980s nostalgia are slowly ground away.

A horror comedy that proves that with the right actors you can make an amusing movie even if a lot of your ideas are borrowed.

The scriptwriters, Kane Senes (who also directed) and John Chriss, keep the family secrets too bottled up, but the actors, who include William Forsythe as the McCluskey patriarch, play it with dark vigor.

This kind of movie is all about the special effects. They start out great - cool helicopter crash, very convincing giant lizard - but grow more amateurish as the film goes along, with a flight sequence on giant bees proving particularly clunky.

It catalogs agony without making you feel it.

The film’s director, Jon M. Chu, executes a pretty good high-altitude fight scene. Still, there should be a “Fans Only” sign at the door of every theater.

Has a plot as unambitious as a macaroni dinner, familiar and easy to eat and not particularly nutritious.

The plot twists are easily guessed, and the film goes on for one predicament too long, but there are some good laughs.

The earlier “Alvin” movie made more than $217 million just in the United States. It’s hard to imagine this somewhat confused sequel doing as well.

Once the proselytizing takes over, so does the predictability.

It’s not clear whether The 9th Life of Louis Drax is deliberately inconsistent or merely an example of confused filmmaking. One thing is certain, however: It sure leaves an unpleasant aftertaste.

The film, written and directed by Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon, rarely dares to be smart, settling instead for familiar gags that would have the Devil himself yawning.

It’s not clear what Aram Garriga thinks he is accomplishing in his simplistic “American Jesus,” but he’s not accomplishing much.

The samples of Mr. Abu-Jamal's writings aren't generous enough to establish whether his is a singular voice or just a prolific one, with Mr. Vittoria instead letting the film wander considerably.

A drippy ending erases all the hopes you've built up and forces you to conclude that this wasn't such a well-thought-out film after all.