Jon Voight, the all-purpose villain, does a pretty good job of imitating Marlon Brando imitating a Paraguayan snake expert, but the rest of the players--including Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Eric Stoltz, Owen Wilson, Vincent Castellanos, Jonathan Hyde, and Kari Wuhrer--seem to be in a hurry to pick up their checks.

Its paper-thin characters turned into caricatures by egregious hamming, this 1996 Japanese comedy-drama about shy ballroom dancers is sentimental goo and downright interminable.

But the inspirational aspects of the tale--which mainly has to do with the determination of Close to form a vocal orchestra at the camp, despite the class divisions between the women--never quite carry the dramatic impact they're supposed to.

Given the audacity, it would be a pleasure to report that the results are hilarious, but most of it isn't even funny, and the sense of "anything goes" hangs heavy over the film as it develops.

Neither PC nor crudely anti-PC, this tough and tender movie, like its characters, is prepared to take emotional risks, and the comic book milieu is deftly sketched in.

Apart from the script, it's the actors who make this a film worth seeing; all of them look and sometimes even act like real people rather than types or icons, and behind their interactions can be felt the depths of lived experience.

This insufferable romance-adventure includes vague comedy as well as unintentional humor, and its target audience seems to be preadolescents who won't notice the calculated enthusiasm with which it sidesteps sexuality.

With minimalist and universal fantasies as their points of departure, the superheroic deeds evolve only incrementally beyond the realistic -- a deeply satisfying process.

As a well-directed star vehicle with a couple of good action sequences, this is good, effective filmmaking, but I was periodically bored; when Ford and Pitt aren't lighting up the screen nothing much happens.

I enjoyed quite a bit of it, in large part because of the energy and charisma of Jennifer Lopez in the title role.

Carrey's attempted self-immolation in a men's room, which weirdly recalls certain Fred Astaire routines, may be a small classic.

Compared with the novel, the movie might seem predictable. But compared with other movies, it stands alone.

But despite a compelling opening, as a movie it loses focus and purpose as it proceeds.

In Private Parts Stern is clearly presenting a sanitized version of his story--he had control over every aspect of the film and vetoed more than half a dozen scripts before choosing the one that pleased him--in an attempt to reach a whole new level of stardom.

The humor is often predictable--minor characters are stereotyped only to be demeaned for easy laughs--but the movie impressively fulfills its larger purpose of making you look at your culture's conventions as such.

Depp conveys his character's ambivalence and ambiguity with utter conviction, and though the annoying score tries to throw Pacino's monologues over the top, his persuasive, low-key performance puts the violins in their place.

Impressive for its lean and unblemished storytelling, but even more so for its performances.

By the end Smilla has become a formulaic action hero--equally at home in an evening dress and blue jeans--not a marginalized victim seeking to uncover the source of her wound, and the film collapses around her like glaciers of melting ice.

There are moments of high hilarity in the slapstick that results when the characters attempt to minimize mucus-membrane contact during sex.

Properly speaking, this isn't a movie with characters but with figures, each of them as overblown as a plastic inner tube.

As a director, Singleton shares with Furious a didactic streak. Singleton is no demagogue, but his fast-action style tends to erase the nuances of interracial dynamics.

A piece of cheese without much flavor.

The Griswolds, headed by Chevy Chase, are taking what could be one of their last family vacations.

Though the climax of the story is a little forced and sloppy, with both lovers behaving way out of character, this movie is aware enough of the conventions it's using that it's more moving than cloying.

Nevertheless, the cast of mainly unknowns is so good, and Linklater is so adept at playing them off one another, that the two-hour running time never seems overextended.

This corny and manipulative movie taxes your ability to suspend disbelief and predictably punishes characters for their hubris--earmarks of a great disaster flick, if the tone is just right.

Some of it looks like a TV commercial, and the characters' motivations could have been generated by a computer, but the cast--Ray Barrett, Julia Blake, Simon Bossell, Saffron Burrows, Pippa Grandison, and Aden Young--is attractive and energetic.

May be amusing if you feel a pressing need to feel superior to somebody, but the aim is too broad and scattershot to add up to much beyond an acknowledgment of small-town desperation--something Sherwood Anderson and Sinclair Lewis did much better back in the 20s and 30s.