Teresa Wiltz

Comedy, of course, is a complicated dance between rhythm and timing, but Talladega Nights drags where it should be crackling and popping.

If you saw "21 Jump Street" back in the '80s, or any of a number of shows featuring cute and cuddly cops, you pretty much know where this flick is heading.

Though we were wooed by Diesel -- notwithstanding that rug -- we were less enamored with the film's scraggly script. Find Me Guilty is a courtroom drama (much of the dialogue is culled from court transcripts) without a whole lot of drama going on.

Sure, Balzac meanders at too leisurely a pace. But the actors are charming; the story sweet

Slither purports to be a "horror comedy" but in embracing the hybrid, it falls flat, never committing full-out to mining for giggles or gasps.

The film can't get its rhythms right, fluctuating wildly between comedy and pathos.

Ultimately, The Hip Hop Project is all raggedy rhythm and long-winded discourse, a tuneless song in search of a hook.

This is a movie for a grade-schooler's -- a female grade-schooler's -- sensibility. It's earnest, silly and sweet, with just enough food fights and musical numbers to keep everyone else from gagging on the goo.

A masterpiece of mediocrity,

Nothing much happens here, and even less is resolved. You could make an argument that that's how life is, unresolved, but as a film, it makes for frustrating viewing, particularly when plot threads with the potential to bust open the story are left hanging.