Fame has today's usual gritty form of slick to it, but in every other way it's an Amateur Hour and a half.

It might sound intriguing to root the saying, "Physician, heal thyself," in the plight of a hypocritical self-help guru, but the romantic drama Love Happens suffers from acute irony deficiency.

Bullock does her damndest to be nerdy and instead becomes excruciatingly artificial - a malfunctioning verbal fun machine.

The only hope for Inglourious Basterds is that audiences will embrace it the way the Broadway crowd did "Springtime for Hitler": because it's so bad they think it's good.

But The Ugly Truth can't escape its own ugly truth, that the central characters are written to extremes both ludicrous and tiring.

The low points in this movie aren't just catastrophic: they're bewildering.

The whirl, bang and general bother of crashing gears and gnashing metal ends up suffocating the senses.

The film saddles Craig T. Nelson with the generally thankless role of Paxton's cold, distant dad. But when he feels like the only person who doesn't understand what's going on with Tate and his son, you feel like saying, "No, me too."

"Hello, I Must Be Going," sings Groucho Marx in a clip from "Animal Crackers" at the start of the film. If I'd known what followed, I would have followed his advice.

The Hangover is like an infernal comedy machine. Surrender your soul to its foul mesh of cheap cleverness and vulgarity. and you howl like a delighted demon. Resist, and you feel all sense and sensibility being crushed in its cogs.

Sheila Bernette, as an aged pickpocket, is less a stereotype than an escapee from some provincial British comedy of the early 1950s. But she steals necklaces and knickknacks with such finesse and gusto that she also steals the movie.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past displays nary a wisp of life, let alone an afterlife.

An awful film about an awful time.

17 Again errs not only by covering such well-trod ground, but also by doing so through a main character - played by a game but ill-served Zac Efron - who's about as dense as they come.

This film isn't the most awful comedy of the year (that would be Bride Wars or New in Town), but it may have the grossest antihero.

Will pop your eyes without tickling your funny bone.

It's a gore sundae with an S&M cherry on top.

The film's storytelling and image-making lack originality and vitality. Nothing sticks to your memory unless you come in with recollections of the book.

Even the great Lily Tomlin can't muster a funny reaction to a Polish joke. It's an everything-including-the kitchen-sink comedy -- and the sink has rusty pipes.

The problem with Confessions of a Shopaholic isn't conspicuous consumption. It's ostentatious idiocy.

This film isn't an enjoyable martial-arts extravaganza like "District B-13" or the "Transporter" films.

As a comic fable for hard times, New in Town is irredeemably moronic.

Look, I love dogs. But this film tried my patience almost beyond endurance.

Bride Wars has possibly the worst comedy idea since "Springtime for Hitler," with almost no room for redeeming camp.

Revolutionary Road isn't just a failed literary adaptation. It's a failure of the worst kind: It doesn't even make you want to read Richard Yates' deservedly legendary book.

Kids will get antsy, wondering why their favorite characters disappear for long stretches of the film, while adults will wonder just when this scattershot approach to storytelling will congeal into something resembling coherence.

The whole narrative is too hollow and rickety as well as gimmicky for Muccino to breathe much life into it.

It's no compliment to say a movie is "all of a piece" if the piece is all worn out. For all its surface harshness, this movie is a star vehicle at once rickety and cozy.