Tom Russo

Disappointingly, this scruffy indie doesn’t live up to its promise either, despite a few flashes of subversive inspiration.

The movie may feel tonally consistent with the first, but it’s also overlong and thoroughly routine.

What starts out as a lowbrow gag very typical of a pedestrian ’toon gradually balloons into absurdity that Mel Brooks would probably love. Here, at least, the Angry Birds fly.

This franchise might be all about shedding light on lost details, but “Mistress of Evil” sometimes leaves us in the dark.

Between Josh Gad’s charmingly earnest voice-over performance and more of the arthouse gloss that Hallström has drizzled on everything from “The Hundred-Foot Journey” to “Hachi: A Dog’s Tale,” it’s a weepie that can be tough to resist.

One quibble: For such a legendarily elusive spot, the snowmen’s Himalayan hideaway seems awfully well trodden these days. If you thought the similarity between, say, “Coco” and “The Book of Life” was a case of animators not looking resourcefully enough for inspiration, how about the trifecta of “Smallfoot,” “Missing Link,” and DreamWorks’s upcoming “Abominable”?

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.

It’s a sequel that sticks to more routine territory of action, angst, and dystopian gloom — mostly a sound approach, thanks to the consistent strength of franchise lead Shailene Woodley and a mix of intended and inadvertent surprises.

Cooper swaggers as convincingly as always, the food-prep montages are mesmerizing, and we even get a couple of solid twists and an education on the sous-vide trend.

The best we get here are modest action diversions.

Consider it a predictable movie with flashes of unpredictability, one that actually coaxes some early laughs with, yes, scatological wit, then makes us groan when it shamefully takes the low road back to poopville a bit later on.

To Chu’s credit, he does work hard not only to legitimize 30-somethings’ halcyon recollections, but also to make the material relevant to a new generation.

For all Kendrick's stolidity, he delivers a couple of wrenchingly tender scenes.

But when there's such a lighthearted, boys-at-play manner about the story's established aspects, it creates an odd disconnect from the World War II tolerance lessons that the filmmakers seek to add. War and persecution are bad, kids - except when it's all in good fun.

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

Rodriguez does a fair job of keeping the zaniness coming: Vergara’s machine gun bra, Gibson delivering exposition in a “Star Wars” prop, bad guys offed by helicopter blades in dementedly creative ways. It’s enough that you’ll hope Rodriguez makes good on that new faux trailer — for “Machete Kills Again . . . in Space.”

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.

Hart’s clowning here is that rare case where louder is, in fact, funnier.

Butler serves the cause well, considering. Think that cause is a thankless one? Shhh, don’t tell Secret Service agent Channing Tatum or president Jamie Foxx, headed your way in June with, yes, “White House Down.”

Anderson’s stab at rendering the Mount Vesuvius catastrophe with a 3-D “Titanic” gloss.

It makes for a structurally glitchy inspirational exercise whose climax carries all the goosebump-making drama of a Pats preseason game.

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

Chappie boasts so many entertaining elements, particularly the lead motion-capture performance by Blomkamp’s go-to guy Sharlto Copley, its shortcomings don’t sink the movie.

Kudrow and Robinson are intriguing casting and they get some sharp Bickersons material, but the movie unconvincingly shorthands how they got together. And Revolori’s horndog just feels like the film coasting on his quirky persona from “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”

The loosey-goosey fun might be a bit much at the finish, but it’s still a laugh watching McCarthy try to get back on her feet.

A new misadventure whose negligibly refined formula somehow ends up being more consistently entertaining.

The crew doesn’t much look the part either, save for Schaech’s Stalin ’stache. Yet the movie does show the ability to get past this, even with the weight of all its narratively risky conspiracy theorizing. It’s a shame the intrigue has to get torpedoed by elements that mostly feel correctable.