The cinematic debut of Chicago theater director Marc Rosenbush, this 2004 indie comedy is an irritating exercise in ham acting, metaphysical patter routines, and rim-shot-style comic editing.

The premise is patently ridiculous, but the target audience of 12-year-old girls will be too charmed by the genre requisites to care.

It's all corny and contrived and usually sensitive. The filmmakers even dare to show the effects of illness--a subject frequently glamorized to the point of being insulting--in a love scene of rare honesty.

The filmmakers uphold an unfortunate tradition in movies based on TV shows by busily adding superfluous plot elements.

The cat is computer-generated, as are his one-liners.

It makes me sick all over again just describing this--the most affecting scene in a sluggish would-be comedy that reflects the dubious state of the art of fat male comedians exploiting themselves in 1997, the year its star died.

It seems almost impossible that someone could vulgarize and coarsen Tom Wolfe's best-selling novel, but leave it to director Brian De Palma, working here with a script by Michael Cristofer, to plumb uncharted depths.

What it doesn't have is the first movie's primal understanding of patriarchal violence and feminist rage, as both moral horror and exploitation gold. As a result, this is a much easier movie to watch.

Ice Cube tries his hand at family comedy in this phony story.

Thanks to writer-director Michael Patrick King, I now have a fair idea how it might feel to be stoned to death with scented candles.

Soporific comedy.

When the cast is shown during the final credits repeatedly cracking up in blown takes, one would like to think they were laughing at some of the lines they were expected to deliver.

I didn't buy half of the movie's scattershot gags, but the leads are sharp and the supporting cast sturdy.

When nostalgia, hypocrisy, and indifference to history converge in the kind of shameless Capracorn manufactured here, one can either be stupefied by the filmmakers' cynicism or fall for the package hook, line, and sinker.

Cinematographer Thierry Arbogast is the real superhero; his homage to noir thrillers compensates for the spotty CGI and rescues the movie from sex-kitten kitsch.

Has the spiritual and emotional depth of a Hallmark card.

Directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor were responsible for the delirious "Crank" and "Crank 2" but left the magic behind when they threw together this tedious mash-up of "Tron," "Rollerball," "The Matrix," etc.

Slack direction from Walt Becker (National Lampoon's Van Wilder) sullies this formula comedy, but the cast is agreeable.

An almost comically lurid tale of a little boy abused by his malignant hooker mother, malignant fundamentalist grandfather, and malignant surrogate dads.

In middle age Jackie Chan can't keep coasting on boyish charm, as evidenced by this dreadful family comedy that does him no favors with its opening title sequence.

Director Ronald Neame brings his impersonal British craftsmanship to this 1979 feature, so it isn't a complete bust, but it's a long way from the apocalyptic satisfactions of his Poseidon Adventure.

Another piece of phony uplift from producer Jerry Bruckheimer.

Ryan, barely refining her "When Harry Met Sally" persona, is a dud; Annette Bening, playing the best friend who sells her out to a tabloid, is better in the scenes she doesn't share with her.

This remake takes an alternate tack from the original feature, expanding the story of "The Sitter" to a full 83 minutes, but the result is dull and painfully generic.

The production values are above par, but as in Carpenter's original, seeing ghosts is less scary than imagining them.

I'm a fan of director Bob Odenkirk, but my high hopes for this comedy were dashed by screenwriters Ben Garant, Thomas Lennon, and Michael Patrick Jann, all alumi of "Reno 911"!

I expected this to be much funnier: Latifah coasts on her charm and Fallon seems incapable of playing an actual character.

This limp 1998 comedy tries hard to be both irreverent and ethical by suggesting that deceit motivated by self-interest is OK as long as no one gets hurt.