Sean Axmaker

To call the haphazard string of gags a story is to give it far too much credit, but it is funny in a blunt, profane frat boy way, thanks to the bulldozing energy of Ferrell, the smarmy manipulations of Vaughn and the anything-for-a-laugh excess of Phillips.

It's too insubstantial to support its two-hour-plus running time, and too arbitrary to work as a story, so you walk out wondering not happened, but whether anything actually did.

Imagine Warren Beatty in "Shampoo" by way of a Jewish Rambo.

This well-meaning mistake gets lost in the metaphors.

It doesn't leave you much to hold on to in a comedy about apathy that can't even muster the energy to care.

Pleasantly modest, endearingly etched and briskly set to a pounding beat.

Is it too much to ask that the fictional scenes have at least some of the complexity and unpredictability of the real-life theater?

There's simply nobody beneath the derisive attitude worth caring about.

A canny but hollow pastiche.

A one-note farce that struggles just to remain on key.

There's no conviction among these self-involved folks who sidestep commitment with a quip and a grin.

Barely substantial enough for a feature but just light and tasty enough to satisfy.

A welcome return to the courtship, cuddling and sweet nothings of yesteryear.

Underworld opera of the bravura kind, this is driven, like most Hong Kong action, more by emotion than logic.

At best, it's an inspired piece of free-association pop art held together by sheer momentum, at worst a noisy mess of juvenile nonsense passing itself off as a movie.

Makes a great time capsule, a shot-on-the-streets glimpse into the texture of a bygone time, place and attitude, but a listless, lightweight odyssey.

The result is like a "Waiting for Godot" for the video-game generation.

Rock Star roars to life with a promise of something inspired and inventive whenever Wahlberg leaps onstage. Offstage, however, even he can't breathe life into this same old song.

A bubbly, high-spirited paean to the joys of pharmaceutical phun that grooves to a throbbing beat but constantly trips over flat, prosaic dialogue and literal, lifeless sight gags.

For all of the credibility of the performances (or at least the teens), it all feels like recycled social commentary.

Tries to both spoof the fairy tale and retell it from a fresh angle. Curiously enough, its strength lies in the clever approach, and not the goofy comedy around the edges.

Like many of Chen's movies, which are so precise and composed and lush, it's not really emotionally engaging. It is, however, a dazzling and dynamic spectacle that risks being ridiculous to create an unreal world of the romantic imagination.

Woven from such promising threads that you wish it was better.

It's the soulless quality of so many films that value devious plots, smug deception and quirky personality traits over actual story and character.

Weaver was half-heartedly pushed as an underdog Oscar choice. If the film was worthy of her performance, Weaver may have had a shot.

Aviva emerges undamaged for all of her trauma. That may be the most compassionate, human act Solondz has offered in his career up to now.

The contrast of the naive assurance of youth with the confusion and ambiguity of adulthood is sweet but simplistic and the wandering script hasn't much else to offer.

Burger is so respectful of the trio that he never gets under their skin. Apart from the generosity of strangers who pay tribute to the soldiers with little acts of kindness, you get the same generic observations of any road movie.

Sensitive and vivid response to the tangled issues of teen violence, race and self-esteem.

Does its job colorfully and entertainingly, as long as you don't lean too hard on such niggling details as logic, legality and the laws of physics.

The script is full of brassy lines.

Verbinski, Depp and company just want to make it the best ride you've had all summer. If that's all you demand of a frothy summer blockbuster, then this delivers the goods.

A sports empowerment fantasy of the best kind.

Eight Legged Freaks is a B-movie-and-proud-of-it thrill ride, probably the best of its kind since "Tremors." It does just what a good creature feature is supposed to do: It entertains with laughs, gasps, gooey spectacle and a bemused sense of fun.

Looks to be this season's family animal comedy.

Too bad the film, which Kennedy spun from a stand-up skit, remains as blissfully unaware of its possibilities as B-Rad is of his absurdity.

Under De Palma's cool disconnection is an anger, and it's this anger that drives his act of political theater.

At its best, it is self-effacing fun.But the cartoonish approach takes its toll: The random twists and contrived showdowns devolve into just so much abstract business, too silly to take seriously and too unmotivated to make sense.

It's the kind of stunt that gets Oscar nominations and accolades. Theron turns it into a raw, bristling performance that deserves them.

There's a real joy to this film, a love of the music and an appreciation of the band's eccentric humor.

A furiously choreographed martial-arts spectacle wrapped in a fumbling narrative.

Doesn't necessarily offer anything new to the male/female dynamic, but it refuses to let Coles off the hook with an easy epiphany and a painless happily ever after.

Too hip to play it straight and too cool to resort to an actual story, Hartley turns the whole rambling spy game into a puzzle box where every certainty is thrown into doubt, every character has a hidden motive, and every clue is contradicted.

This vampire story is as soulless as they get.

The film half-heartedly paints their actions as rebel-chic heroism even when it has all the integrity of tomcats spraying outside their yards, and it ends up just as confused as the characters.

Almost 30 years later, it's just as primal.

Ultimately the ballet performances, and notably the work of Stiefel, a star with American Ballet Theatre, are the only moments that deserve center stage.

It all feels false and calculated, an overearnest attempt to find old-fashioned romantic innocence in the modern world by someone too jaded to believe.

Salles tends to explain rather than suggest, but he connects with the anguish and abandonment to give this ghost story an emotionally haunting core.

Director Wayne Wang stumbles through the awkward script without finding its shape or its tone, steering it toward maturity while the script falls back into slapstick sports gags and adolescent social politics.

If Laurence Fishburne could only have harnessed his fierce performance to drive his directoral debut, Once in the Life might have made something memorable of the done-to-death tale of small-time crooks on the run after a heist gone wrong.

For the most part the eruption of repressed anger is blindly destructive. There's little healing to be found in the bitter melodrama, but there is a small sense of triumph as the children face up and move on.

Grand and imaginatively designed epic that forgets that the spectacle -- and this is nothing if not spectacular -- is just the flourish.

It's as if Gondry lets his performers settle into their parts and feel their way through their stories. It gives the film an ambling pace and a unique chemistry that bubbles with strange and unexpected flavors.

For all its impressive set pieces and breathless momentum, it's neither passionate nor urgent.

It's weird, clean, good-natured fun, and it's far too subdued for its madcap milieu.

Competently directed by Christian music producer Steve Taylor, it's a sincerely (if not exactly subtly) performed spiritual drama with a faith-based lesson in humility and the practical charity of offering a helping hand.

Time travelers, hobbits, ghosts? Those I can buy. The impossibly quaint world of small-town innocence and Hollywood harmlessness in Win a Date With Tad Hamilton? Now that demands a serious suspension of disbelief.

They try too hard to be funny. It's hardly a damning fault, but it has a tendency to drown out their satiric observations.

The film attempts to put Zizek's philosophy into practical, accessible terms. Accessible, of course, being a relative term.

It's colorful and determinedly kooky, with "Kung Fu" references and an H.R. Pufnstuf interlude between performances.

The result is a heartfelt film brimming with ideas and passion but hampered by a literal approach that douses the emotional heat.

Finn Taylor's lark of a movie feels like two unfinished films awkwardly fused together and ever threatening to snap apart.

There's no comic spark under Showalter's drab direction, and no good argument in the film why we should ever wonder about the guy left at the altar.

There's an unconvincing warm, fuzzy happy ending, in which recognition is treated as cure and understanding heals all. But, until then, Phoebe in Wonderland is an involving and empathetic drama of mothers and daughters.

No more or less than it appears to be: a paean to the benevolent fate we'd like to believe watches over us.

Makes no effort to learn about the culture. It idolizes the idea of spiritual purity without offering any insight into what it really means.

"Time destroys all," claims the film, but the monstrous capabilities of human evil is the real culprit here, and Noe is determined to prove that the real evil that men do is not fodder for cinematic spectacle and cinematic entertainment.

As action movies seem to get more complicated and convoluted with international conspiracies and technological concepts, the "Transporter" franchise is refreshingly simple.

Scott, whose sensitive turn as a priest inspired by Ralph's conviction and commitment gives the film a touch of grace at the cost of revealing McGowan's drab direction of every other actor.

Many will find Griffin profane, sexist and decidedly offensive. Many more will find his raunchy insights inspired, his body language hilarious and his gift for mimicry and caricature worth the entire show.

Even a one-two punch from Australian stars Guy Pearce and Rachel Griffiths, who are wryly good in this crime caper, can't keep it from sinking into a cavern of cliches.

Most Bond parodies tend to flatten because they fail to evoke the production design overkill and slick cinematic style of its target. Johnny English is no different. Director Peter Howitt delivers action like a journeyman, but Atkinson saves him time and again.

It's so affected and arch it flops into self parody.

A modest but amiable comedy.

I can't imagine how Smith can capture a big enough audience to pay off this private joke, but the inner geek in me had too much fun to care.

At times it gets lost in the backwaters, but the eccentric characters and offbeat humor make it an entertaining detour.

Captures the overwhelming and uncontrollable emotional assault of loving and living through captured moments and sensuous images.

An honorable and often enticing piece of personal filmmaking.

The Will Ferrell comedy engine is running on empty in Step Brothers.

Scott owns the film from scene one.

This is an unmistakably Asian variant on the action movie, a sleek, slick, entertaining espionage thriller in the John Woo mold.

Opens on a display of humiliation and human degradation at its worst and then rewinds, like a video surfer zipping back to replay a favorite scene, to the nominal beginning of the spiral.

It's inconsistent and it fudges the script's murkier details, but Lawrence keeps the story on track and doesn't cheat the world of Constantine."

Director Cherie Nowlan creates vivid personalities for the entire family and exposes the raw nerves of the biting humor.

It's still too shrill and silly to take seriously, but the high spirits and naïve message of tolerance and pride is oddly, innocently winning.

A loving tribute to Hong Kong stuntmen by one of their own, the directorial debut of stuntman-turned-actor Robin Shou ("Mortal Kombat") is a wince-inducing behind-the-scenes look at the way contemporary Hong Kong action cinema is created.

If Irwin is your bag, then this is your film. Otherwise, Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course is dumb, mate. Real dumb.

There's no slow descent into ruthless warfare and we get neither the giddy charge of their bad behavior, nor the guilty sting of complicity in their ruthless desire. All that's left is an idea still in search of a script.

It's not really scary, but it reaches a level of insanity so unhinged and dispassionately wretched that it defies description. Inspired, but not for all tastes.

Director Alfredo De Villa doesn't play it for the kind of knockabout comedy so often seen in these films (like the shrill hit "Four Christmases").

An alternately angry and sad portrait, passionate in its presentation and moving in its portrayal of individuals who sacrifice their love for the tenets of their religion.

A lively and lightweight comedy, the film finally connects with the real-life rush of playing music for a live audience.

Kassovitz keeps the film zipping along with solid pacing and just enough action to clear the credibility gaps as long as the film is rolling.

Uncompromising, unpleasant and emotionally brutal, this twisted love story of emotional bondage is oddly compelling.

It's more than simply a well-crafted piece of fake history.

Though it's rarely dull, first-time feature director Yasuo Inoue has a better eye for intriguing and unusual imagery than dramatic staging, and he illustrates his points long before he runs out of un-endings.

Burns' trite talk and familiar romantic conflicts doesn't do any of the characters any favors. Everyone comes off flat and forced, with one notable and lovely exception: Dawson.

Spottiswoode and Schwarzenegger deliver a clever and colorful conspiratorial thriller with high-energy action scenes, car crashes a go-go, spectacular technology and big explosions, packaged with ferocious glee and spoofing humor. Who could ask for more from Ah-nold?

The stylistic cleverness of the opening minutes settles into a self-satisfied flair.

For all the grace of the animation and visual splendor, the stilted script and emotionless "performances" give this digital artifact a distinctly stiff, wooden flavor.

No, it's not the big screen version of "24." For one thing, Sutherland is in the wrong role.

The anger and betrayal hanging in the wake of shattered relationships and conflicted identities leave an admirable untidiness where most films would force resolution. There are no easy answers here, and it's not for lack of questions.

There is no "why" in The Grudge, at least not an explanation that provides comfort or cure. It simply is. That's what makes it really scary.

The script doesn't always find the most effective way to the heart of the conflicts and Berg struggles to balance the mix of tones and the conflicts of man and superman, but he never sacrifices the integrity of his characters or their relationships for an easy ending. That alone makes Hancock the most adult of the new wave of superhero dramas.

At more than two hours, Kippur is something of an ordeal.

The snappy wit of the script make Ol Parker's British romantic comedy the equivalent of comfort food a pleasant cinematic snack.

What Spottiswoode lacks in subtlety and restraint, he balances with a heartfelt passion for the material.

All that's left are cute animals with animated mouths spitting out fitfully inspired one liners, sophomoric sexual innuendo and enough poop gags to last a lifetime.

Salva spins a backwoods serial killer setup into something really scary.

But if her wisp of a story rushes the simple connection between the women, the actresses fill in the details with an easy, unforced intimacy.

Where the Wayanses flogged every last chuckle from their belabored ideas, Zucker spring-loads his gags and lets them fly in rapid-fire succession. Not everything hits the target, but he tosses so many of them off with a wink and a grin that they catch you by surprise.

Inkheart feels a little confused in its tone and direction, but only a little, and I appreciate the way it both celebrates the power of literature and reminds us that stories have a life beyond the page, even if they are only in our hearts and minds.

Murders aside, Mac and Pat are the most fun-loving Shakespearean couple to hit the screen, and Morrissette's answer to Lady Macbeth's damned spot is brilliant.

Under the lingerie model façade beats the heart of a celestial Dr. Phil.

It lacks the invention of Pegg's comedies with Edgar Wright, which buzz and crackle with ideas and energy. This one simply plods through, just like Dennis. Only Pegg's doggedness gets this effort across the finish line.

It is charming and at times disarmingly surprising.

It moves so fast you almost forget it leaves the characters in its wake.

It's ultimately just numb, a sober wartime romance roused only by Blanchett's intensity and Crudup's passionate swings between righteous anger and moral zeal. The rest is just tired melodrama.

Cranks up the hysteria to screechy sitcom levels.

It's flashy, it's often funny ...,and it resembles a movie so much that soon it demands something resembling motivation, character, a plot, anything to explain the seemingly arbitrary connections between the stunts and the skits.

By the film's interminable, unforgivably embarrassing third act it sinks in a sticky swamp of sentimentality.

The ploddingly literal screenplay by John Logan doesn't help matters.

For a film so intent on the rules of engagement, this is hardly engaging drama.

For all of its weakness, Ju-On: The Grudge is creepy and unnerving, qualities in short supply in gore-filled American horror films.

It's often funny but it flails around like a chicken with its head cut off, flapping and squawking and making a spectacle, but never really going anywhere.

Von Trier is far more hypocritical than his straw-figure characters, and he's simply too cynical and insincere to be provocative.

A thoroughly ordinary drama of temptation, dubious redemption and easy revenge.

Ultimately less psychological thriller than polemic about the effects of living in an atmosphere of paranoia fed by daily threat-level assessments and round-the-clock TV news-channel coverage of fear-mongering speeches.

Shallow Hal begs for the Farrellys to unleash their arsenal of offensiveness, but they want to be liked so much they appear afraid to offend. The result is safe, well-meaning and dull.

There are some flat moments, to be sure, and Palansky's direction can be a bit unsteady and awkward, but he doesn't wallow in the eccentricities or the modestly self-empowering moral. This fairy tale feels pleasantly down-to-earth.

Amanda Peet exudes her patented mix of charm, beauty, humor and smarts as the best friend who may become more than a friend.

It wobbles between a conventionally quirky lighthearted goof and an oddball farce in which character is sacrificed for sight gags.

Sommers is a pure pop Steven Spielberg who's put his deft technical skills in the service of the ultimate rollercoaster movie ride. It's sometimes more exhausting than exciting.

Momentum, motivation and story are all swallowed by simple sensation, and the film finally exhausts itself for lack of stylistic imagination.

Has neither the raucous energy and impudence of "Animal House," the defiance of "If ...," nor the grace and wit of "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle."

Sivan makes it all quite beautiful with verdant imagery and tastefully melodramatic direction, but at the cost of emotional and social ambiguities, not to mention living, breathing characters.

Offers precious little inspiration, and the only irony it manages is surely unintended.

It all feels pretty empty.

It's a romantic fantasy of the gangster brotherhood and their doomed lives, executed with Takeshi's unique mix of stoic ruthlessness and giddy energy.

For all it's warmth and wonder, it carries little more power than a storybook fable.

Favors giggly juvenile humor over inspired satire and ends up not with a moral, but a moral vacuum.

Easily the least passionate romantic comedy I've seen in years.

An uninvolving film.

A strangely warm, affectionate look at bad behavior amid emotional damage and a stranglehold of identity issues.

It probably cost less than the catering budget of average Adam Sandler comedy and, in its own hit-and-miss scattershot fashion, it's about as funny. At least when it hits.

For all the color and lively music, it's an overlong, messy labor of love built on a sense of personal betrayal that rings hollow.

It's a bright, swiftly paced story with some spirited humor.

It delivers everything you expect on a timetable you can predict to the minute. It's filmmaking as a cross between a carefully choreographed dance and an elaborate pageant.

All the jazzy effects and jumpy editing merely move us quicker to an otherwise predetermined tragedy.

The charisma of L'il Bow Wow's spirited screen presence turn a contemporary Cinderella gimmick and a by-the-numbers script into a better film than anyone would have expected.

A slick, smart-alecky rat-a-tat crime comedy.

For all its good intentions in exploring the grace of death, November never creates a life outside of its all-too-obvious inspirations and the mystery becomes little more than a groaner.

That may be enough to keep the kids bobbing along -- and there are worse heroes for a kid to have than Arnold -- but apart from the shenanigans of civil-disobedient senior citizens, this movie offers little to keep accompanying parents interested.

This isn't the Bollywood blast of color and song or the brassy razzle-dazzle of "Chicago," but a quieter, sweeter approach that works against the chaotic comedy while humanizing the characters.

Writer/director Jordan Roberts aims for heartwarming drama and settles for tepid entertainment.

The humorless and self-important execution attempts an operatic scale but only succeeds in sinking the remnants of the story's integrity. By the time it makes landfall, this incoherent production has blown itself out.

Presents itself as a sassy twist on "Taming of a Shrew," but what looks like just another contrived sex comedy becomes, surprisingly, an insightful and sensitive look at knots that family ties create in adult romance.

Full of sharp ideas and wry moments awaiting the inspired ingenuity of a screwball comedy to pull it all together. It never comes.

Not extreme enough to skate the edge of tasteless farce and not straight enough to play the material for edgy satire, The Ringer is a cheat right down to the final stretch. Breaking the rules should be more fun than this.

It's so ruthlessly witty and meticulously plotted -- unexpectedly so, given its messy dramatic sprawl -- that it delivers a satisfying kick.

A highly entertaining film that still packs much of the punch and the quirkiness of Willeford's novel.

A spirited, screwball crime-thriller with a sly heart.

The kids have good chemistry, there's some fun oddball humor stuck in around the slapstick, and the gorgeous photography of the Gulf Coast beaches, waterways and wildlife brings their mission to life.

Be warned that what looks to be a family comedy pushes its PG-13 rating to the edge with blatant sexual references and creatively crude sexual metaphors.

The filmmakers piece it together with almost clockwork perfection and deliver it with masterful misdirection, creating the most ingenious, eccentric and brazenly jaundiced psycho-thriller to come along in years.

He's (Carrey) a marvelous Grinch in this spirited, bustling and mostly faithful spin on Seuss.

Bright, bouncy, kooky and comically tone deaf, CJ7 is the most bizarre kids movie I've ever seen.

The guys of the Broken Lizard comedy troupe (of "Super Troopers" fame) are neither subtle nor especially ingenious. But in the age of gross-out gags and high-concept gimmicks, they throw themselves into the raucous, rude style of '70s film comedy with shameless glee.

It's a pretense of even-handedness. The true story has been reduced to a case for faith. It merely sacrifices all reason to get there.

Resembles nothing more than an overstuffed, undernourished "Brady Bunch" episode, only not as funny.

The movie's a little thin for the two-hour running time, but likable enough for its schoolgirl audience and painless enough for the adults doomed to be dragged along.

It feels like a peek into the closet of a pedophile and it's genuinely discomforting.

The new parody from the comedy troupe Broken Lizard, takes another swipe at the corpse armed with the same old weapons. This time, rigor mortis has set in.

Evening is so distanced from the emotions of the story that it never breathes on its own.

The disingenuous attempt to give the tawdry story some kind of social import only makes the tinny caricatures more insincere, while his erotic display of 15-year-old girls isn't a satire of a sexualized culture, it's just dirty.

A tired tale that never comes to life.

Hartley's soft spot for offbeat romances is trumped by irony and sloganeering dialogue.

The insistent crosscutting suggests there is something powerful between the two stories, but apart from vague connections of jealousy, emotional tension and conversations that constantly dance around the real issues, they don't resonate across the years.

Diverting, at times even visually impressive, but has neither the spirit or style of "Spider-Man" nor the ambition of "X-Men."

"Network" it's not. Weitz doesn't have the killer instinct for merciless satire but he knows how to stage a gag and deliver a punchline.

Favors pageantry over substance.

You can feel the debt to Sidney Lumet's '70s studies in police corruption and cop brotherhood, but O'Connor never captures the edge of danger, anger and moral stands being ground up in compromise.

At least Lin's local color make the idiocy fun to watch.

The resulting political thriller is more intriguing than riveting, flattened by Jewison's plodding direction and distracting use of British actors to play French characters.

It's nothing new, but Hawke captures some evocative textures and honest moments.

Apart from the gender twists, there is one notable difference between the traditional slasher flick and this gay take: Here, even the nice boy gets it on. And he doesn't even get punished for it.

Inspired, inventive and funnier than it has a right to be, Larry Blamire's loopy spoof of 1950s bargain-basement sci-fi and horror knock-offs gets it right where so many well-meaning efforts go wrong.

Drowns promising ideas in a sea of missed details and unconvincing motivations.

For an ostensibly personal film, this plodding portrait of the self-involved flailing for meaning in a mercenary world has little of Soderbergh's insight, empathy or generous personality.

Yet for all the debauchery, there's a juvenile candor in its knowing embrace of teen sex comedy cliches, as if the entire film is just one of Scott's fantasies. You half expect him to jolt awake at the end, and why not? The film fades just like a half-remembered dream.

Smokin' Aces isn't a story, it's a premise with a madhouse of characters flung into a collision course that ends at the same finish line.

There's just no juice to this thing, merely a bunch of fitfully funny gags and a climactic football match that, under Skolnick's direction, fails to show us why the Europeans find this so exciting.

Playful, predictable and more than a little precious, this entertaining if slight romantic farce makes it's hard not to mourn the loss of the adult romantic comedy.

Willis and Breslin are stuck in a charmless, predictable picture they can't escape.

The Rock manages to play both with a crude candor more genuine than the entertaining if contrived spectacle around him, and a surprising big-screen charisma and ease that makes him a natural-born screen hero.

Ben Stiller provides a jolt of personality as a past victim who rouses himself from exile, but otherwise Todd Phillips' fitfully funny script never delivers the crude creativity or the raw energy that feeds this genre of proudly crass male-centric comedies.

The best scenes belong to Tucker and director Brett Ratner keys in to his timing, whether it's a Chinese twist on "Who's on First" or a seduction scene in which Tucker blurts out every impulse.

With a title like Chaos Theory, one might expect a little runaway energy or a dash of wild spirit under the antics, but there's little punchy anarchy in this controlled experiment.

Breiman brings nothing new or insightful or even all that clever, for that matter, to the familiar questions of love and sex.

It's messy and painful, eased only the admirable modesty of Stockman's writing and direction.

There's a gripping thriller between the gaps in logic. Director Florent Siri has a tough style and an unforgiving attitude, but it drowns in the queasy blood lust.

This is one family reunion where you need someone to act up or pick a fight, anything to bring a little life to the party.

Sober and serious and downright glum, ultimately an all-too-familiar portrait of lonely souls unable to break through their own isolation.

When Rock hits he's dangerously funny. If he didn't try so hard to be liked, he'd be even more dangerous.

So familiar you may have moments of deja vu.

Never quite shakes itself free of the tired cliche that street people are quirky, sometimes cute, and somehow privy to a spiritual purity lost to us social folk.

For all of its admirable intentions, the awkward melding of movie-of-the-week tragedy, non-denominational salvation drama and teen sex comedy mistakes banality for conviction.

Utter lack of irony and curiosity.

This larger-than-life cartoon of a trained dog has more character than the two-legged co-stars.

For all of its good-natured guff, Jersey Girl chooses uncomplicated sentiment over the messy complications of real life.

Michael Winterbottom's erotic drama isn't so much a story of a love affair as an anatomy of a sexual relationship.

Hot Rod is a cousin to the comedies of Will Ferrell (for whom it was developed) with a younger skew, a kooky '80s nostalgia (complete with a pitch-perfect synthesizer score by Trevor Rabin) and a low-key amiability that keeps you rooting for Rod and company to triumph.

Hardly sophisticated, but it's as inspired as teen sex comedies get.

Beautiful but empty.

There's every reason to believe the creators stopped taking it seriously a long time ago. What's bothersome is that they don't take the audience seriously enough to deliver an actual movie.

There are too many unearned runs to fully embrace this underdog triumph.

It's often helplessly hilarious in its adolescent gross-out way, yet the cast periodically invests the film with sweetness.

Black's apoplectic fits and sardonic rants are strictly a bonus for the parents dragged along for the adolescent shenanigans.

Director Bill Duke may believe the message but he never invests himself in the characters or their story, which becomes an illustrated lesson with reflective interludes and comic relief.

Haggis drops exclamation points after his symbolic gestures, but in the rush to drive home his message on the confused mission in Iraq he offers a queasy revisionism that all but denies the legacy of Vietnam. Considering Deerfield is a Vietnam vet, it feels doubly false.

This is one of those capers doomed to unravel in comic chaos, but it finally plays less like a con gone wrong than a long, lazy, insubstantial shaggy dog story coasting on nothing but charm.

It comes out less like a spoof than a smart-aleck remake of "Meatballs," minus the energy of Bill Murray.

For all its energy and inspired moments of giddy goofiness, Psycho Beach Party gets stuck in the sand.

The most insipidly innocuous film ever made about facing mortality and living it up before passing away, The Bucket List has as much poetry and poise as its clumsy, clunky title.

Iliadis is more visually sophisticated than Craven was in 1972 and works hard to sustain the mood and tension while still hitting the audience with blunt scenes of wincing violence. (It gets grisly and grotesque enough for gore hounds.)

This film is satisfied merely to wallow in women in peril, cinematic sadism and the spectacle of violent death and dismemberment.

It's bright, colorful and udder-ly unmemorable.

A bland Bond.

It's hardly original and rarely laugh-out-loud funny -- the filmmakers constantly fall back on the sight of bounding balloon Jimmy squeezing his way out of one situation after another.

The film lacks the nerve for any genuinely nasty fun or comic bite.

Its one saving grace is Godzilla himself, the James Bond of giant monsters.

The story -- something to do with an ancient evil returning after 3,000 years -- plays like a multi-episode story arc of the TV series.

More than painful to behold, it's simply insincere in a film determined to undermine gay stereotypes.

Backseat satisfies itself with small observations and minor breakthroughs of self-awareness. In the scheme of their lives, this journey is just a speed bump, jolting them awake for a brief moment. The rest is up to them.

Splashy and sweetly romantic, if hopelessly unimaginative.

Yet for a film so affectingly steeped in loss, resignation and the ghosts of memory, the revelation that pulls it all together, while satisfying and even touching, lacks emotional resonance.

The few genuine moments of connection -- are as refreshing as they are out of place. They only highlight how false and affected the rest of the film is.

Neither clever nor heartwarming, Four Christmases is the coal in the stocking of holiday movies.

For a film that uses race, class and sexual stereotypes as the starting point, this is disappointingly skin deep.

Overlong, unscary, poorly paced and banally written.

If only Outlander was as fun as the premise makes it sound on paper.

All about the thrill of the chase, and Friedkin challenges the antiseptic spectacle and fantasy flamboyance of computer-enhanced blockbusters with a lean, mean manhunt thriller and gritty, hard-edged style.

The curiously stylized piece, shot in a muted palette with performances to match (the cast is perhaps too restrained given the theatrical framework), is dramatically colorless, but the moods and moments are crafted with kinky grace.

Too bad Igor didn't jolt the film to life with his Frankenstein shenanigans.

Selick proves a clumsy director of live-action scenes and never overcomes the muddled, half-baked script or the scatological gags.

Think of it as a buffet of romantic comedy comfort food: the good old American standbys complemented by bland international dishes.

This a rapid-fire romp through "War of the Worlds," "Saw," "The Grudge" and "The Village," cut up into skits and pieced back together in some mutant jigsaw puzzle with a few pieces missing, delivers a barrage of low-minded gags with high-spirited energy.

To be fair, Clockstoppers isn't a bad film, merely bereft of creativity and personality.

Pitches itself somewhere between "Bound" and "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels," trying to add a feminist twist to the spate of Britain's bloody gangster thrillers and never quite succeeding.

There are some surprises to be had amid the cruelty (inflicted by both Jigsaw and his test subjects), but this time around the ordeal is less grueling than simply distasteful.

There's not enough insight to the social phenomenon presented onscreen, but that doesn't make the utterly human horror of this thriller any less unsettling.

Has all the telltale signs of desperate re-editing: mismatched shots, clumsy transitions and a devastating car wreck that occurred either on a dry sunlit day or in the midst of a nighttime downpour, depending on the flashback.

Even as the prosaic script gets lost in the intoxicating fantasy of the bloodless revolution, the hot heartbeat of the music drives the film with pure energy.

A perfectly competent, if undistinguished, action film that smoothes over all the most interesting bumps in the drama.

While too bland and stupid to be offensive, Never Back Down spouts a hollow message of nonviolence while celebrating the brutal satisfaction of beating the crap out of someone.

So grim and humorless that the first half almost sinks into silliness.

Disarmingly funny in its own naive way.

There are cute flourishes, but much of the cleverness is smothered by tired dialogue and doughy animation, which gives the animated characters the personality of mannequins and the look of cheap merchandising knockoffs come to life.

Fat Albert's originality is lost on the big screen.

A collision of medieval fantasy and commando action movie, where you can almost believe in the high-concept mix-and-matching.

Like too many films of faith, it mixes its message, proclaiming that a life given over to God is a reward unto itself, and then handing over victories to its faithful like some overtime bonus.

Quaid and Russo outshine the script with their presence and chemistry alone.

For all the bludgeoning insistence of Kramer's contrived plots and blunt direction, there's not much conviction to the outrage.

Dracula, who, as played by Dominic Purcell, has all the dark charisma and burning threat of a baked potato.

Little Nicky will please Sandler's fans and likely won't win any converts.

Kassovitz directs with an unrelenting intensity that helps you to suspend disbelief almost all the way to the credits.

There is such a joy of play in the film that it's easy to overlook the overdone performances and the lazy script shortcuts.

The underdog story doesn't miss a cliche, even though it never figures out whether it's a boxing picture or a military drama.

The minor pleasures of P2 lie in the simple effectiveness of the sleekly unshowy direction and the clean, unadorned script, which pares away extraneous distractions like motivation and complicated back stories to get on with the mechanics of tension and the obligatory jumps and startles (which stand in for genuine scares).

John Travolta is nothing if not cool as Chili Palmer.

It simply isn't that funny or clever. For a comedy, that's about the worst that could happen

You'd hope God would think bigger for His divine intervention in American politics.

It's all too much and too little: a history lesson in institutional racism that falls into character cliches, a human drama that gets lost in melodramatic detours, a war movie put together by a fan rather than a filmmaker.

A good-natured movie.

Director Troy Beyer, who adapted the original screenplay, can't seem to decide if this is a morality play or a music-video fantasy.

It's kind of like "Tootsie," only without the drag. Or the class. Or the laughs.

Welcome to the tawdry end of paradise, where no melodrama is too obvious and no conflict too contrived.

First-time director Billie Woodruff, a music video veteran, busts his moves in the dance scenes while the movie throbs to the beat of the wall-to-wall soundtrack.

It's the chemistry between the women and the droll scene-stealing wit and wolfish pessimism of Anna Chancellor that makes this "Two Weddings and a Funeral" fun.

The result is a film with an identity crisis, a fluffy romantic farce that gets progressively darker, more destructive and finally so downright demented that the featherweight story line is crushed under the weight of brutal, unpleasant truth.

For all the testosterone-driven soap opera, this entertainingly confused coming-of-age story is a seductive fantasy, a rare portrait of urban underworld machismo without the violence and the viciousness.

A B-movie goof on an A-minus budget, Returner is a mini-epic tweaked with computer effects and one blazing gun battle after another and set to an anonymous techno-beat.

Best enjoyed by keeping in mind the latest cinematic proposition that apocalyptic disaster doesn't bring out the worst in people, only the stupidest.

The unchecked enthusiasm of McGinley as the touchy-feely renovation guru gives slow-burn Cube the perfect foil and mellows the malicious comic tone. The rest is pure slapstick.

Campbell fans will get a kick out of it. The rest of the world will likely find this spoof a little too insular and indulgent.

Who is Cletis Tout? Who cares?

Taking on the sneeringly blase Alig may be a cagey career move for Culkin, but it's a disappointingly thin performance.

The result of this blender mash of exotic horror isn't much of anything at all, neither suspenseful, terrifying or inventively gory: Turistas is dead on arrival.

It plays like a big-budget, after-school special with a generous cast, who at times lift the material from its well-meaning clunkiness.

Mostly it's a series of dream-image clues scribbled out by juvenile seer Fanning, followed by super-powered smackdowns between agents and mercenaries with slangy titles like watchers, stitchers and sniffers.

It might be impressive as a made-for-DVD production, but coming from producer George Lucas, it makes for a cheap excuse for a big-screen spectacle.

Mehta's feisty, featherweight romantic comedy makes the case that even the most flamboyant cinematic conventions are as universal as they are exotic, especially when they conspire to produce that glow of happily ever after.

Takes itself seriously enough to pull off a clever bit of sleight of hand, but doesn't have much to offer once the twist comes out of hiding.