Susan Wloszczyna

As movie-going experiences go, there is nothing worse than to sit through what purports to be a comedy and never have a reason to engage your laugh reflex. Exhibit A: The gender-switch remake of the 1987 screwball farce, "Overboard."

After sitting through this rather unpolished production as it lightheartedly bumbles its way around a serious subject, I mostly wished that I could un-see it. To say that Half Magic, in which Graham also stars, is half-baked would be kind.

Still, there is more pleasure to be had in the dwindling returns of CMT's “Nashville” than in this country soap-opera.

My most basic litmus test for whether a comedy is working is whether it makes me laugh. I groaned, maybe, but no chuckles emanated from me or from my lone fellow patron.

Yes, the casual-chic interior designs shine as much as her mom’s ever did. But I never really felt at home with Home Again.

Let’s look on the bright side. The running time is barely 90 minutes. And there are but three fairly amusing characters who save this inferior attempt at family entertainment, at least for me.

One doesn’t need perfect vision to quickly surmise that this sudsy affair among Manhattan swells is a glorified Hallmark Channel melodrama.

For far too long, nothing especially creepy or unsettling happens on screen.

How to Be a Latin Lover all too quickly devolves into a nearly two-hour slog showcasing Mexican comedy superstar Eugenio Derbez’s attempt to seduce U.S. audiences with a cheesy bilingual spoof of an ethnic stereotype long past its expiration date.

I don’t think I've witnessed a film this year that managed to so completely and utterly collapse into crass garbage in its last few minutes while abusing what little good will it has.

While the intentions behind Priceless might be honorable, the results are much less so.

Let’s just say I have been to wakes that have elicited more laughs.

With a few, rare exceptions, the attempts at humor in “Suicide Squad” land with a thud—that is, if you can hear such a sound over the deafening din of gunfire and the bombastic score.

The Angry Birds Movie isn’t a total turkey. The animation itself is OK and I did laugh out loud once.

As tedious as much of this sounds, an odd thing happened around “Allegiant’s” midway point. The fairly packed audience started vocally reacting “Rocky Horror”-style to some of the more overtly melodramatic turns with “oohs," “ahhs” and even laughter.

Rather than presenting something akin to the heady youthful cravings of Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes as contemporary versions of Romeo and Juliet, the equally tragic Marguerite & Julien often feels more like a version of Richie and Margot in Wes Anderson’s “The Royal Tenenbaums” crossed with the pre-teen runaways from “Moonrise Kingdom,” but minus the humor and insight.

But what might seem innocent enough on the written page is often downright silly if insulting on the big screen.

One of the loudest laughs arrives when we get to enjoy a scowling James re-imagined as a game character. Points for greater diversity in the cast as well, but, if there is a second sequel in the offing, please allow the women to be more than the sum of their body parts.

I kept thinking one thing during most of Don Verdean: What would Christopher Guest do with his company of ace ad-libbers with such material? And the answer suddenly came to me — probably toss it in the trash and start all over again.

It fails to provide the sorts of human inter-connections and deep revelations for which director Mitch Davis seems to be striving.

Although a surprising number of plot machinations from the original film remain fully intact, usually accounting for anything that seems remotely clever, what is missing is the type of hold-your-breath tension provided by good thrillers.

The more curdled-than-cuddly holiday film already had offended this former copy editor even before I entered the theater. Its crime? The lack of punctuation in its name.

To begin with, the very premise feels off. Peter Pan isn’t a superhero and doesn’t really need an origin story, especially one that opens at a London orphanage for boys during the Blitz and borrows heavily from the “Oliver Twist” handbook.

If this all sounds rather dull, that is because it is.

The story ends up being one wrong turn after another. A GPS hasn’t been invented that could get this plot-hole-riddled script back on track.

The two-hour-plus “Ride,” No. 10 in the series, at least offers a few intriguing new variations on the usual Sparks formula of pretty bland people falling in love against a backdrop of verdantly green landscapes most often located in coastal North Carolina.

Given Russell’s involvement and a fairly solid cast that includes Jake Gyllenhaal and Catherine Keener, just how awful could it be? Really awful. Unwatchably awful. As in, “Give it the Razzie now and be done with it” awful.

A comedy with no laughs. A drama disconnected from any known reality. It’s tempting to diagnose Are You Here with schizophrenic genre disorder.