The jokes in Extract play almost like afterthoughts, the last-second add-ons of a former animator who, until now, has always treated his flesh-and-blood characters a bit like cartoon caricatures and vice versa.

Heigl and Butler have genuine chemistry, and the writers have given the duo some bitchy, snappy dialogue. They probably had in mind such workplace comedies as "Desk Set," starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, but in this day and age, witty banter and stars with chemistry aren't enough to catch an audience's attention.

Biblically classical, tastefully vintage with aerial shots of wet umbrellas and Homburg hats and not a little staid considering its sensational source material, Changeling isn't so much dull as it is an open book.

Mostly dumb, no matter how desperately and even valiantly it aims for "thinky."

Rare is the star vehicle that is as poorly matched to its star as Drillbit Taylor, which casts Owen Wilson as a homeless Army deserter and con man, able to fool people into believing he's both a substitute teacher and a master of hand-to-hand combat.

The Kingdom is essentially "C.S.I.: Riyadh," starring Jamie Foxx in yet another movie his Oscar statue will watch with shame.

Overstuffed (three villains), overlong (at more than two hours and 20 minutes) and undercooked (plot points include amnesia and alien goo).

Whatever goodwill one harbored toward the first Pirates film is quickly dashed by its sneering successor, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, which is less a film than a two-and-a-half-hour trailer for the final installment in this accidental trilogy.

More "Pretty Woman" than "Working Girl," The Devil Wears Prada really lives to give its angel a high-class makeover.

Here, jokes are just as likely to end not in punch lines, but in uncomfortable silence, impenetrable irony or stomach flips.

There's a fascinating movie buried inside this story, but it's not the one the filmmakers decided to make. This Omen is simply too big for its britches.

By all accounts, Marsh has absorbed classic crazy-killer thrillers like "Psycho," "The Night of the Hunter" and "Badlands," but The King isn't likely to join such esteemed company.

The trouble with 12 and Holding, which pits four young protagonists in intertwining battles for spiritual (and, well, literal) survival, is that it's just too much.

Aside from a single jazzy image of Hunt taking a nosedive off a Shanghai skyscraper, Abrams' movie is too oppressive, too enamored of its brutality to deliver anything like real thrills; its deeply unpleasant tone nearly makes you long even for Woo's cartoon absurdities.

It works for a good while--probably half of the movie.

Your individual tolerance for Jimmy Buffett music will determine how well all the scenes set to his music go down.

Conversation is as meaningless as anything else in this barbarist take on "The Searchers."

Once you notice Ejiofor, you won't stop noticing--and Kinky Boots ensures that you will notice, thanks not only to the nature of his role, but also because there isn't much else here to get excited about.

Björk appears to have been a good influence on Barney: The soundtrack, which she supervised and participates in, is well worth the time for fans of experimental music. As to what the whole thing means, you're on your own.

Inside Man is irrelevant, another semi-high-tech mega-heist movie, the rhythms and tropes of which we are all as familiar with as we are with the wallpaper facing our toilets.

Farrell's performance possesses a touch too many mannerisms on loan from Tyrone Power and Clark Gable; you can almost hear the gears turning in his brain each time he cocks his head or raises an eyebrow in homage.

Aquamarine will likely please its undemanding tween audience--especially if today's kids are as unsavvy a crew as 20th Century Fox seems to think.

Ferrell and Warner, however, are distractions--the obligatory dose of "eccentricity" thrown in as seasoning to make the real story more digestible. But they serve instead as irritants; too much spice, if you will.

The movie is therefore better than it ought to be, but without Douglas, it ought not to be at all

Wacky, hodgepodge and decidedly homemade, CSA nevertheless is worth seeing. Sure, it veers off into nonsense, and there are times when the film loses its center. But the premise, the passion and the scathing political commentary ultimately keep CSA afloat.

Though it does cheapen itself with some dreadful moments of product placement, it doesn't instantly date itself with cheap pop-culture gags; it will play to our kids' kids tomorrow just as it does today, like something made for children who don't know to expect more from their cartoons than just pleasant, nostalgic mediocrities.

An occasionally amusing but wrongheaded remake that arrives more than four decades after the original blazed across the screen.

The real fault with this movie lies less with the clunky screenplay from Himelstein than with the acting, of which there is very little of note.

Like most films of its type, Something New is not tough to sit through, but the thought of paying full price to see it isn't especially desirable.

However you slice it, Bleep remains a work of naive invention and wannabe spirituality.

The best things about this numbingly predictable service-academy drama are its talented leading men.

This is a sequel so bad that even Cedric the Entertainer and Anthony Anderson didn't return for it, let alone Terrence Howard and Paul Giamatti.

If you're going to fall for this movie, you're going to have to buy not only the idea that adultery is excusable if you're "following your heart," but also that following your heart amounts to falling in love at first sight, a formulation that seems adolescent at best.

A particularly painful event for those of us weaned on Brooks' earliest films, Saturday Night Live shorts and vintage clips of his deadpan standup appearances. It contains precisely two funny moments.

In the end, the filmmakers strike a bad bargain between action and myth: In their obvious attempt to shoo everyone into the tent--romantic and roughneck alike--they don't serve either end of the spectrum very well.

Viewers still need a window into a character's soul if they are to connect on a deep emotional level. And that is missing here.

Match Point may well be a return to form but only for those who love "September" and "Interiors," movies populated by Bergman evacuees too inert and dreary to even crack a smile.

Instead of slick heroism, the saving grace of The Matador (which was obviously made on something less than a blockbuster budget) lies in the comic interplay between Brosnan's ignoble Mr. Noble and the hapless square he picks to serve his purposes.

It's too turgid and redundant to have any real impact. As a thriller, it barely thrills; as a lecture, it has nothing new to say.

Everything that happens proves just as predictable as before.

Carrey's brand of exhausting physical comedy is a far cry from Segal's useful bewilderment, so this ride is both rougher and loonier.

This romantic tragedy has the measured gentility of the M.I. classics, but its sheen of crass melodrama is startling, and its many metaphors run amok in a tangle.

A little too loud, and a lot too boring.

Jackson is merely indulging himself here, too, doing a thing not because he should but because he can. And maybe that's a good reason but not good enough. The girl still cries, the ape still dies and all you're left with is a ringing in your ears.

Director Rob Marshall, as he did in "Chicago," plays the movie as though it's all an embellished memory inside the head of geisha Sayuri (Ziyi Zhang), but why would she remember everyone speaking in choppy English?

The World's Fastest Indian is not likely to be regarded as some kind of masterpiece--far from it--but Hopkins once more keeps our ears open and our eyes fixed on the screen.

Kusama offers moments of inspiration, but it frustrates like hell that she couldn't nail it completely.

It's dull enough to make a Mormon fidget.

It's a dark lark, no more and no less, a caper comedy full of enough kinky jokes to remind the audience that, indeed, you're supposed to laugh at it every now and again.

All of the plot developments seem half-hearted -- which is a shame, because the star has the charm to succeed if given a better movie.

Where are our Tracy/Hepburn screwball combos? Part of the appeal of "Wedding Crashers" was that Isla Fisher truly did have the comedic chops to match Vince Vaughn, and Just Friends suggests that Reynolds and Faris have potential greatness together too. Just not so much in this film.

For all the affection Mangold feels for Cash and Carter, the movie feels oddly dispassionate.

Villain? Great. Verdict? Average.

This is inelegant storytelling, and it almost entirely cancels out what's good about the film: Max Minghella, for one thing. The son of director Anthony, he gives a very fresh performance, popping with energy that the other characters seem to drain.

It's facile, predictable, and contrived, but there's still something winning about this multicultural drama from South Africa.

50 Cent sounds articulate in his raps, but as a lead actor, he talks like his mouth is filled with food.

If Chicken Little were in 3-D, shown in a theme park as you sit in motion simulators, the lame gags might not be so much of a problem.

The title pretty much says it all: syrupy romantic comedy dripping with unearned sentiment.

It's a workmanlike adventure yarn, intermittently reverent to the canon but not very inspired, and it must be said that Banderas is starting to show signs of wear.

Younger, for whatever reason, simply can't abide their happiness, and so he destructs the relationship from time to time for no reason, using plot devices that wouldn't have been out of place in episodes of "Three's Company."

Some won't appreciate the mix of tones, but none of the humor cheapens the film's final blow, nor is it designed to condone terrorism in any way.

It reminds one of "The Constant Gardener," another globetrotting thriller bereft of thrills that looks more important in retrospect than on the screen. Certainly, one man's trash is another man's masterpiece, and more power to the viewer who can stick with this deadpan travelogue and make it to the ending that actually satisfies.

The movie ultimately cops out by culminating in a fistfight between two humans, with nary a cyborg missile-throwing devil in sight.

If you're a little girl in the Lisa Simpson mold, for whom the greatest wish-fulfillment in the world would be to have your own pony, then Dreamer just might be for you. Otherwise, no.

One of the most schizoid films in recent memory. It opens with crystalline originality, a shimmering comedy with meticulous timing and sharply drawn characters. Then it careens carelessly into syrup. How could he (Martin) not have noticed?

Levin's on-camera presence is warm, wry and even-tempered, and he never feels the need to rub anything in.

Has its heart in the right place, but its head seems to be lost in a swirling maelstrom of teen movies that have come before.

It's a mess, absolutely, more a collage than a narrative.

Again, Lohman's lack of power--and passion--saps the story of its life. It's a shame, because a bold performance would have given Firth and Bacon even more to work with, and the relationships between and among the members of that ménage à trois could have really begun to zing.

The movie's a bust in myriad ways, especially because almost every scene possesses the oily feel of manipulation and condescension.

Many of the dilemmas that are established never pay off, and there is no clear protagonist or antagonist. To make matters even murkier, the movie is poorly shot in visually uninteresting locations with constant soft focus. That said, it's also damn funny.

Into the Blue drowns before it even surfaces.

The film congeals from dripping sentimentality into emulsified schmaltz when it brings in the actual Ryan family, all 10 children (now in their fifties and sixties), for a final scene. The intentions are clearly honorable, and we certainly wish these people well, but this isn't a memorial service, it's a movie.

As the movie enters its final chapter, you will come to the sad, sickening realization that the filmmakers have played you for a chump. What seemed so smart, so well crafted and finely tuned, falls apart into a flaming heap of c---, and all goodwill is dashed.

Lee, who played the retro groove thang broadly in "Undercover Brother," dives so wholeheartedly and unironically into this movie about, yes, roller disco, that any faults seem minor.

Its smarmy resolution just doesn't work; the lessons learned are a bit too medicinal. But we're willing to forgive, since it's otherwise a good-natured and enjoyable ride.

Sometimes junk is junk, no matter how fancy the platter upon which it's served. Which isn't to say A History of Violence is useless junk. It provides a few pleasures and a few giggles; it's a comedy, after all, an action movie in which things unfold at a deadpan pace.

A disappointingly flat, disjointed affair.

Unfortunately, the movie fails to fully make sense, which may be because it's based on a French novel (If Only It Were True by Marc Levy).

Schreiber's edits gut the story of its power and punch. His film is strong on comedy and farce, enjoyable as a quirky-friendship gag, but it fails in its attempt at tragedy.

When all is said and done, you'll likely find you have nowhere to place your sympathy, no character worth rooting for.

Perhaps realizing that rare performances in snoozers like "The Horse Whisperer" and "The Last Castle" weren't doing him (Redford) any favors, he seems to have entered a new phase in his career, with a wealth of old man roles now open to him. He was very good in last year's "The Clearing;" he's better in this.

Well acted by an unusually likable cast.

The world of football riots seems rife with potential for the big screen, but Green Street Hooligans only periodically rises to it.

Some fairly standard shenanigans ensue, and when the clichéd high school culture clash stuff stops, there's clichéd cop movie stuff going on.

It's hard to see why her audience seems so much more rabid than that of other, funnier comics. The secret seems to be in her appeal to the gay community.

Most of The Constant Gardener is made with good taste and with respect for its African subjects. But when Fiennes flees a Kenyan village as bandits begin their merciless attack, it's hard not to feel a little uneasy with the medium. We're meant to get a thrill out of the chase, but it's not thrilling. Sickening's more like it.

Eternal promises kink and delivers next to nothing.

If you're one of those people who complained that "Memento" could just as well have been told in chronological order, The Memory of a Killer may be your cup of tea.

The voice acting is adequate, but it fails to convey the diversity or personality of "Chicken Run" or "Shrek."

If you love Kawasakis, Hondas, and Yamahas, and don't mind tin-eared writing, get down to the multiplex.

Ultimately, the filmmakers build toward a reasonably satisfying "Twilight Zone" climax, only they crawl toward the ho-hum ending; the movie appears to have been written and edited in a swamp too.

Definitely merits its R rating with a fearless approach that will earn genuine laughs as it turns a few stomachs. Yes, a Rob Schneider movie that's funny. Strange but true.

The movie's not great, but Mom might like it.

When it comes to World War II movies, you may never have seen one like this before -- if only because it's like three different movies at the same time.

The best you can say of Asylum is that it plays like a topless "Twilight Zone."

A film that aspires to join the company of its predecessors--smart, funny satires that skewered the hypocrisy and cruelty of high school life. But it won't. For starters, Pretty Persuasion commits a fatal error: It forgets to side with the students.

It's arguably more "artful" to move at a snail's pace, but at the risk of tedium?