Steve Simels

By the film's finale the descent into unintentional parody is all but complete, with a big death scene for Jackson complete with an angelic choir on the soundtrack -- the surprise is that they aren't singing "Dixie."

Manipulative but fitfully entertaining "Twilight Zone"-ish comedy of redemption.

The picture is nearly stolen, however, by co-star Greg Germann (of TV's Ally McBeal) in the role of Joe's company's resident corporate weasel. Germann's squinty-eyed insincerity is truly a marvel to behold, and it's an astringent corrective to the film's rather too frequent feel-good passages.

An often spectacular but ultimately rather tedious musical/adventure/comedy.

It's a good thing the two rappers are such utterly natural actors, armed with terrific comic timing.

Veers inconsistently between sit-com jokeiness and nostril-flaring melodrama.

The plot is Kate-Moss thin. Basically agreeable stuff, but not much more. And that's a shame.

A hick-town, screwball comedy version of "Dog Day Afternoon," and surprisingly palatable despite its sitcom soul and star.

To be fair, this is hardly the worst gross-out comedy ever made; it's nowhere as misogynistic as, say, "Tomcats," and in the end, it probably won't leave you in a state of utter nihilistic despair.

This broad, coarse farce is otherwise as insubstantial a piece of work as you could possibly imagine; in fact, a light breeze could blow it away.

An old-fashioned dinosaur opera, in the worst sense of the term. An obviously formulaic effort, designed more as a cash machine than a piece of cinema.

Episodic, pretentious, and more than a little silly.

A likeable, if somewhat whitebread, farce in the Woody Allen mode about love in the big city.

The real problem with the new film, however, is a certain lack of chemistry between the leads; Wilson is game, as always, but his part is seriously underwritten, and while Murphy raises trash talking to the level of a fine art, he seems to be operating in another movie altogether.

A genial and instantly forgettable sports comedy.

By the film's big finale, the whole thing has begun to feel distinctly ridiculous.

Acouple of well-earned laughs but ultimately overstays its welcome.

It's too bad screenwriters Gough and Millar didn't have enough faith in their premise to play it straight; if they had, they might have produced a classic rather than a "Blazing Saddles" without the courage of its convictions.

If this is even a reasonably accurate account of someone's real life, then we as a culture may be in worse shape than we imagine.

Something of a cop-out, lacking the courage of its convictions.

Saturday Night Live veteran Chris Kattan more or less steals the film as the racially confused Mr. Feather, a white supremacist bad guy whose speech patterns tend to get down and funky against his will.

This is essentially a glib soap opera whose main characters are two-dimensional cliches used as clotheslines on which to hang sitcom-level jokes.

A wildly overblown, unpleasantly smirky mess of a film.

Added bonuses: A nice selection of oldies on the soundtrack, and an amusing third-act cameo by Rosie Perez as Ray's second wife.

A shamelessly derivative, if basically likeable, kid's picture.

For every inspired bit -- Templeton playing chauffeur to 40 I Love Lucy-era Lucille Ball impersonators -- there's one that falls spectacularly flat.

A kitchen-sink realist coming-of-age story in the venerable British tradition, with all the good and bad that entails.

Let's be blunt: Bass can't really act.