Tom Russo

This is mythology that’s famously transportive in every sense, but the animators struggle to take us anywhere truly captivating, or even clearly defined.

The movie grows easier to like in the later, straighter going, as it stops pushing so aggressively to be naughty and lets its characters try on some introspection.

As tiresome as the relentless, indulgent inscrutability and lack of story momentum can be, it says something for the movie’s visceral power that there isn’t an urge to quit on it.

Not that there’s all manner of comedy craftsmanship demanding study here, but the movie does seem to be a funny jumble of contradictory impulses.

How funny that Pryce, a tweedy Brit playing a bad guy, should be the one person doing anything remotely heroic for this dud.

The repartee, as ever, is weak. Even with all the extra layers of digital detail, it’s still tough to keep these four straight. And the CG characters’ slimy rendering and motion-capture expressiveness could go down with “The Polar Express” as a study in inadvertent, technologically misguided screen creepiness. Wackier would have been OK, guys — it’s the Ninja Turtles.

This chronicle of an ’80s high school cross country coach leading a team of Mexican farm laborers’ kids to competitive glory may be based on a true story, but the forced drama doesn’t help it to feel that way.

The cast does capable work, but you’ll wish the movie concentrated more on the comedy, which has some zing, rather than the straighter elements, which quickly start to drag.

He (Barinholtz) works hard to creatively lampoon a nation divided, and his first-timer’s ambition and thematic investment are admirable. Disappointingly, though, he lacks storytelling chops, aiming for wildly provocative satire but instead churning out a technically spotty screed.

Writer-director Boaz Yakin delivers his conflicting elements mostly as intended, and with obvious ambition. But he fails to take care of certain fundamentals - most problematically, coaxing out the emotion he's seeking from Statham and young newcomer Catherine Chan.

Despite a few diverting moments and some ambitiously dramatic themes, this one is simply too uneventful and too populated by thinly sketched characters to keep its target audience engaged.

Unfortunately, Mann also leans on ill-fitting story elements that he might easily and smartly have avoided, and the movie’s rhythms and credibility pay for it.

The film’s lone strength is the fleeting dramatic scenes offering a little back story — and pathos — on Rafe’s home life with his sweetly understanding single mom (Lauren Graham, who you’d guess wouldn’t have bothered otherwise).

After a fast, funny start, the new sequel, Johnny English Reborn, proves to be more of the same.

This last angle had us thinking back to “Risky Business,” as did the Chicago setting and the reveling gone off the rails. Here, though, there’s no edge to the wildness, nothing memorable.

If only there were more genuine rah-rah fun involved, instead of just endless, thudding, seen-it-all-before mayhem.

Home “again”? It seems that first-timer Meyers-Shyer isn’t setting so much as a piggy toe beyond familiar territory, and this listless rom-com shows it.

Monster Trucks might not be a complete lemon, but it’s hardly cherry.

Boston University product Gary Fleder (“Kiss the Girls”) directs the action with grungy efficiency, and the movie does hook us with a certain lurid anticipation of just how far things might escalate.

Funny about retribution, though - it's a tricky thing to make time for when you've still got mutant zombie hordes after you. The real premise turns out to be a busy rehash of the first movie's story line.

Just one more touch of “realism” in a sexual melodrama played so straight that it’s nuts.

However well-intentioned the movie may be, it spills over with flat cutesy humor, making a slog out of an experience that should be filled with wonder.

Alba, meanwhile, is again ridiculously shoehorned into a comedy gig, although she does have an amusing opening bit spying while nine months pregnant. If only diaper bomb gags weren't the inevitable follow-up.

All over the map in the details it throws at us, and the level of immaturity it aims for.

The plot doesn’t take clever turns, the visual thrills aren’t all that thrilling, and you’re ultimately left to get your heist-movie kicks elsewhere.

The Wild Life, while pleasant, is just too flat to meet the challenge.

Alpha and Omega is sweet, if not fresh.

The script’s messy seams also show in the parade of sidekicks that passes through Kaulder’s door as a new threat develops.