Tom Russo

The best moments come in seeing Galifianakis’s costars try to keep up with him as he finally, frantically lets loose.

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

Audiences are going to want to brace themselves, too – for a movie that refuses to recognize when it’s going too far, with its wince-eliciting jokes about jailhouse rape in particular.

Angelo Pizzo knows inspirational sports drama. As the writer of “Hoosiers” and “Rudy,” Pizzo has made a career out of mining the genre and its themes of underdog determination and locker-room brotherhood. But he’s overmatched in his directing debut, the well-intentioned football biopic My All American.

Among the ingredients “21” is missing: the infectiously random silliness of a Zach Galifianakis, the smug hunkiness of a Bradley Cooper, and any sort of Vegas-y gloss whatsoever.

A movie that passably ambles along in generic-melodrama mode before finally insulting audience intelligence one time too many.

The riot of color here brings to mind what the makers of “Ice Age” delivered with “Rio,” which in turn reminds us that these animators certainly aren’t just one-trick talents. Could be time for them to show us some new ones.

For all the adrenalizing positives in this reworked Point Break, inadvertent silliness remains

It just feels misguided, not clever, when John Waters is dragged out for a cameo. That’s when you know the filmmakers must realize how hopelessly they’re caught in a loop-the-loop of punchless comedy.

This doesn’t even feel much like Tris’s story anymore, just generically overdigitized combat. The main thing she’s diverging from at this point is the tone that hooked us in the first place.

It’s tough to stay focused on the provocative bits when soapy talk of teenage yearning and angst keep making us snicker.

You’ll have to be satisfied with a modest assortment of energetically comic moments here, because the story sure isn’t a reason to catch this encore, and neither are who-asked-for-’em cast additions such as Ken Jeong.

There’s nary an honorable death that resonates, although we do get some creative visual perspectives on enthusiastically digitized brutality. But wasn’t the game good for that already?

Director and Team Besson member Camille Delamarre (“Brick Mansions”) speeds us from one action sequence to the next with a style that alternates between routine, clunky, and modestly inspired.

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.

In the end, the movie leaves us stuck with unmoving drama and increasingly numbing carnage.

As a combat action spectacle, the movie takes a straightforward, gritty approach that makes for mostly solid viewing.

Funny thing, though: The sunnier that Barrymore gets in her scenes with Sandler, the more the iffy elements and leaden bits seem to just melt away.

Enjoy the sense of never quite knowing when the movie is going to stick another pin in its balloon of sincerity, and you’ll like the Coopers well enough.

Some entertaining inventiveness, before nagging limitations finally drag it down.

The squirminess stands out here because there's so little going on the rest of the time.

An Australian crime yarn with a solid cast and tone, but not enough freshness — or enough of Pegg’s waggishness — to be memorable.

Eckhart doesn’t really do any of that classic grunting as Frankenstein 2.0, but maybe he should have.

None of this is as riotously zany as it wants to be.

Returning director Sean Anders strings together mayhem-filled moments that just aren’t the howlers that they’re clearly scripted to be, never mind the fatherly foursome’s chemistry, or the tobacco-stained guffaws Gibson keeps busting out to sell these bits.

Compared with last time, the returning team of director Steve Pink and writer Josh Heald practically doodle the gang’s motivations and worse, their surroundings.

For the sequel, London Has Fallen, Butler and director Babak Najafi (HBO’s “Banshee”) strike a tone that’s more consistent — consistently dumb.

Quaint and crass get together — or would that be “bump uglies”? — with awkward, thoroughly flat results in The Big Wedding, an ensemble comedy with a tonal cluelessness as surprising as the name cast that signed on for it anyway.