What keeps the Fantastic Four franchise alive is the Human Torch's emotional fire and the Silver Surfer's melancholy ice.

The film may not be art, but it's got a beat and you can definitely dance to it.

Things may work out predictably, but The Ultimate Gift does not yank on the heartstrings so much as pluck them gently.

Anna Faris, her deadpan comic timing still a joy to watch, returns as Cindy Campbell, one of two main holdovers from the first three movies.

Jerry Seinfeld's foray into feature animation will delight young kids and leave their elders alternately amused and bemused.

What it does have is the laughs.

Blethyn's performance belongs in another movie, not this bipolar comedy-drama.

It's a thrill ride not to be missed.

The sprawling canvas ultimately dwarfs the plucky title figure and makes him seem too small in every way.

The movie has a lot going for it, including wonderful sets and locations - in Bucharest, Romania! - that create a heightened-reality English hamlet with pub, church, manor and shops (make that shoppes!). And the lead actor, Ludwig, registers the growth spurts of the stripling hero with the sensitivity and precision of an emotional seismograph.

The timing couldn't be better for a thriller that focuses on assassination, international war scandals and U.S. agencies of enormous influence and wildly varying competence.

What makes RV work are some genuinely funny bits (one of which is not an overlong sequence in which Bob has trouble emptying the R.V.'s toilet) that should ring especially true to any parent forced to cajole a recalcitrant child into having a good time.

Apart from the movie's moments of flesh and fantasy, it lacks the lyric impulse that would make the swank fantasy take flight.

A derivative little tale with enough good intentions to recommend it, but not enough substance to embrace it.

If the movie were as funny as it is well-meaning, this would be one for the ages.

Jackson creates a searing study in reverse nobility as a character with a battered, street-poetic presence and subtle powers of sympathy that come into play even when he appears to be a rogue.

The emotions seem genuine enough, even if Sandler is not a talented-enough actor to always pull them all off.

Although the structure is clunky, the ensuing parliamentary machinations prove witty and fascinating.

A film that climaxes in Shanghai shouldn't go down like a meal in Shanghai. But an hour after you see M:i:III, you may be hungry for a real movie.

Generally, this writer-director is too sensitive for his own good. He never lets his boy-hero lose himself fully in his new world - or relinquish hope that his parents will return.

It's the wrestling match between the banker and the bad guy that fuels the audience's adrenaline.

There may be a plot somewhere in William Goldman's script, and there might even have been a structure, but Mel Gibson, James Garner and Jodie Foster are so highly charged, as they slide through riffs that have nothing to do with anything except their own enjoyment in being invited to the party, that it's magnetic -- at least for most of the time.

Bland, inoffensive, formulaic and occasionally amusing - just like the animated kids' show that inspired it.

The real strength of Return to Me is Hunt, who knows just when to retreat from the film's overriding sweetness and inject a cynical moment or two.

A smart comedy about a smart blonde -- that would be a sensation. But a dumb comedy about a smart blonde turns out to be not bad.

Watching Guy Ritchie's British-underworld farce, RocknRolla, is like being compelled to pay attention to a nonstop rock station you normally use as background while you're doing chores. The words are catchy and the beat keeps you awake, though all of it quickly fades.

Combine the title with the image of a dazzling female and a frazzled male, and you've got the movie perfectly.

The one thing most sorely missing is movie magic.