Neil Smith

The doltish, messy and frequently incoherent result bears all the hallmarks of a botched and compromised endeavour.

Pimped, primped and dressed to the nines, Joe Wright's Tols-toy story looks the business. Like a disappointing Christmas present, though, the pleasure quickly evaporates once you remove the shiny paper.

A ploddingly predictable, gore-lite yawner.

"What are you going to do?" wails Maggie. "What I do best!" growls Liam. Yet while it's fun to watch him take out the Eurotrash, we've seen him do it better.

The Gearbox title gamers loved has spawned a frenetic and disorderly shambles they’re likelier to loathe. Claptrap? You said it.

It’s left to the leads to keep us engaged, a tall order given their film’s old-fashioned, fusty feel.

Long before the film reaches its action-packed, train-based climax, however, adults will be questioning if its three writers have so much as seen an actual Garfield comic strip, given how removed their work feels from its activity-averse inspiration.

The first Meg never pretended to be anything more than a shamelessly imitative, big-fish smackdown. Yet even that low bar proves too high for this listless, mechanical follow-up.

Taste and laughs are in equally slim supply in Jennifer Lawrence’s latest, from which only her fresh-faced co-star emerges untarnished.

It takes more than two Avengers and the director of Fast & Furious 8 to make the MIB hip again.

Can’t decide if it’s a broad farce or a poignant portrait. Small wonder then, that it falls short on both counts, failing to earn either Bridesmaids-sized laughs or nods of recognition.

That every jibe lands woefully wide is no surprise, though we’ll give leading lady Ashley Tisdale credit for giving her all to a film that mercifully won’t be around long enough to do any lasting damage to her post-High School Musical career.

A-list sad-faces abound in a film where absurd concept is rivalled only by banal execution.

The Big Wedding isn’t telling a story so much as selling a lifestyle – one that, rather like Heigl’s morning sickness, makes you want to vomit.