Paula Nechak

This collision of popular Emmy-winning TV shows is strangely uninspired and, well, a bit dull.

What remains is a sumptuous-looking film that sniffs at but ignores deeper Freudian implications.

Racing Stripes is oddly torn in tone: is it an old-fashioned family drama, a coming-of-age story or a crass comedy? Live action or animation? Unlike "Babe," it fails to integrate its conflicting personalities.

Hunt and Johansson, two usually good actresses, are vapidly awful, teetering out of their elements in this shakily drawn period piece.

The film leaves an acrid taste with the viewer who sits through its long and winding tale of tortured courtship.

The restless, selfish, unfriendly people created by Lachow as protagonists only make the movie hard to warm up to. It's more akin to fingernails scraping a blackboard than an updated morality play.

The film is dominated by computer-generated effects and they're most of its problem -- they don't give us anything to emotionally attach to or invest in.

Strikes a universal chord, no matter what rung of the popularity ladder we were on in high school.

This bloodless, nuanced little thriller carries small weight save for Huppert's enigmatic, thrifty performance.

Certainly kept the toddlers (including mine) at an advance screening engrossed, but for parents and reviewers, it was more of a struggle.

This journey is clunkily rendered, clouded by an avalanche of murky symbolism.

If you can forgive some woeful casting and a plot that is as creakingly thin as an old staircase, you can enjoy director Christopher Nolan's The Prestige.

Feels the scratches of too much time and tinkling and is as disjointed as a dislocated shoulder.

Lawrence uses the stand-up forum less as a weapon to blast us with his incisive, razor sharp insights into life, sex and ethnicity than as a pulpit or confessional to chronicle his rehabilitation and reformation.

Flies coach instead of first class, despite a charismatic cast.

Not only did it not engage the adults, its lackluster story line didn't spread much illusion or magic over the kids in the audience either.

It has a frenetic, unsettled edginess that chafes against its serene, woodsy, upscale private school setting.

Works best when it devotes itself to the small group of main characters featured on the show.

Attempts to do for "The Big Sleep"-type detective movie and film-noir genre what "Blair Witch" did for horror films.

Though the cast is talented, the script is a mess. It's essentially a collision of missed opportunities.

There's not an original idea rattling around in the empty-headed but gorgeous-to-behold period film.

A pedestrian movie with a predictable romance at its heart.

A mystery that isn't mysterious, a thriller that's barely thrilling.

In the end, it trivializes the psychological complexity of the girl's post-traumatic stress and betrays a game group of actors who struggle to find balance between the alternately dark drama and the silly, over-the-top melodrama.

A mess of incohesiveness and fragmented storytelling.

Craig's got the stuff but the ending of this cake is soggy for its protagonist and audience.

Meanders as aimlessly as its drugged-out characters.

It's a methodical, friendly fairy tale in which everyone is good and the outcome is a given.

There are some nice ideas floating around this ambitious film, as well as attempts to say them in a unique way.

Unremarkable sequel to the 1967 hit.

Disney seems intent upon overdosing audiences with the little guy proving himself against a seemingly superior force.

Unfortunately, the life has been sucked out of DiCamillo's story about a brave, unusual little mouse.

Shakespeare's comical, all-too-human tale of lust, foreplay and wordplay is buried beneath bad taste.

Often unsettlingly funny, though it ultimately recedes into a dark womb of despair.

Would be totally unexceptional if not for its visual telling of the Apollo 11 flight and the fact that the movie is impressively shot - the first animated feature film in 3-D.

The Village goes up in smoke (and mirrors). It wants to find a profoundness that hints at something deep and dimensional, but it hasn't the courage of conviction to stay on course as an unabashed ode to innocence.

The film strains to achieve the comedic gait of "Wag the Dog" or the improvised, overlapping style that so defined Robert Altman's Hollywood movie, "The Player."

A low-maintenance crowd-pleaser, but we've seen the entire film, in thematic snippets, before.

We leave hungry for more of the film's substantial, if less physically perfect, subjects.

Tainted by cliches, painful improbability and murky points.

The film, despite the occasional gross-out joke, can't disguise the fact that it's a sweet old sappy -- even dated -- love story. Only Molly Ringwald is missing.

This is simply another in a long line of utterly unnecessary remakes that, having nothing new to say, clutch at crassness and dumbness.

A sloppily scripted film that contains a silly and superfluous subplot about a crooked cop.

(Arteta's) yanked an eerily accomplished performance out of his lead actor.

Never offers much enlightenment through its message.

It's the script -- by director Mark Fergus (who also wrote the adapted script for "Children of Men") and Hawk Ostby -- that lets everyone down.

A decidedly mixed bag.

While the film shuns the glamour or glitz that an American movie might demand, Scherfig tosses us a romantic scenario that is just as simplistic as a Hollywood production.

The jokes run dry, the situation is redundant, the cast becomes tiresome and the running time is interminable.

Wenham and Porter make the film better than it should be.

The film is inherently calculated and cold, so smugly satisfied with itself and its surprise final trick that it seems to be running its own con to convince us the script's house of cards is actually substantial, original and slick.

Much ado about very little because it takes no stand and gives little insight into the Chopper's psyche.

There's something flat and obscure about this well-acted stalker movie.

It's not the direction that feels flaccid in this film. Surprisingly, it's the stories themselves, which provide a bit of a giggle but little else.

When a film has to blare its racially and incendiary stance as obviously as Lakeview Terrace, you know it's trying too hard.

Director Martha Coolidge attempts to keep the film grounded in reality, but the movie flutters away from her control.

Though it does present the facts of Susann's life, it skims them so quickly and with such glorious glee that we never get a sense of who this woman really was.

The teen parties and sidekick silliness are time filler, and not very good filler either -- why even Bruce Willis shows up in a scene that has nothing to do with the story.

The vapid plot line follows the same narrative arc as "Tootsie" but hasn't the heart or purpose of that film.

While the film is technically polished and visually breathtaking, it lacks depth and becomes little more than a lawless fairy tale packed with pretty people.

Outside of a smart performance by Shawn Hatosy as Tim Dunphy, there just isn't much that's enlightening or new in this intimate recollection.

As has been the case with most of Shepard's plays, transfer to the movies spells doom.

After its midway mark, just lumbers until it fizzles out.

It lacks, despite the remarkable techno effects by wizard Stan Winston, originality and charisma.

The actors navigate tough characters through emotional mayhem with such intense determination it's a shame they're undercut by the intrusive voice-over.

It's a well-acted but rote and strictly by the book "war movie."

You walk away wishing they had more than this scant and often shoddy material with which to enjoy their rollicking and racy good time.

The biggest tragedy about Milos Forman's foray into the life and times of Spanish artist Francisco De Goya is the waste of so much great raw material.

This sci-fi film noir craves a passionate center, an intoxicating core or some pulse that makes us want to keep taking that first step into dark waters, but it leaves us drowning in its quiet tedium instead.

What it lacks is the wit or even the cynicism to lighten the emotional load.

Is Queen of the Damned worthy of its hype or should it have a stake driven through its dark heart? The answer lies somewhere in between.

Takes itself awfully seriously. It feels a bit like a grudge piece, laboring to grasp at large themes, but it is as trivialized as the capricious world it explores.

"Shrek" had some refreshing, genre-twisting innovation but Cats & Dogs plays it safe and nice instead and, by not taking risks, doesn't quite make it out of the doghouse.

A heady, impressionistic mixture of biography, fantasy and social history in which it isn't always clear which is which.

A bafflingly unfunny comedy.

Starts slowly, takes a turn for the better for a couple of reels and then, not having much to say or anywhere to go, flatlines into something akin to "American Idol."

Can't find its rhythm and stride. It plays it far too safe and slick.

Pretty silly stuff, designed to appeal more to older kids and adults than the toddler brigade.

Predictable and surprisingly confusing in its ultimate message.

Kilner and crew cough up a mish-mash of contrasting tones and tempos and wind up a rather odd, misshapen curiosity that wavers into too many styles to avoid a slow death by overkill.

Maybury's attempt at a more mainstream movie is really just a simple love story cloaked in a lot of metaphysical mumbo-jumbo.

An innocuous, hit-and-miss affair.

While young Coppola is a pro with her camera, she'd be wise to brush up on her storytelling skills.

I scratched my head in wonder as to why this pair of one-dimensional characters couldn't find happiness in such a shallow story.

Despite his harrowing real-life experiences, Downey, good as he is, is simply too young for the part. This callow telling begs for a more mature approach.