Most of it is decidedly lame. The actors, however, are ingratiating.

Did nobody involved in this project notice that it was retreading a very deep groove?

Only Kerry Condon, as Freeman's geeky adopted daughter, plays anything approaching a realistic character.

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.

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.

Despite its formalistic failings and truly absurd Porn Moment, there's a morbidity here that feels quite genuine, and, after the movie is over, it amounts to rough-hewn poetry.

Oddly, the film's strengths -- its quiet, understated manner; its non-plot; the awkward speech patterns and uncomfortable pauses that suggest emotional isolation -- are also its weaknesses.

It's nothing more than a very long movie about someone, literally and metaphorically, having to get back up on a horse.

Isn't great; it doesn't come within a Yukon mile of its TV namesake. But it's agreeably bizarre.

Contact sure is pretentious. It doesn't deliver on the deepthink, and it lacks the charge of good, honest pulp. It's schlock without the schlock.

Kennedy is funny, but too cartoonish to ever identify with -- Diggs and Anderson are the real stars of the show, and need more screen time.

The Broken Lizard types bring the best out of Paxton, only to abandon him in the second half and focus on themselves. A bit more humility might have served them in better stead.

A disappointingly flat, disjointed affair.

Film critics are put in a difficult position when they see a movie that's well-made but features characters so unbelievably odious you wouldn't want to spend two minutes with them in real life.

As good as all the actors are, the scuzzy characters are so one-dimensional that the film falls flat.

Except for a few of his trademark time-sequence zig-zags, Tarantino's storytelling is boringly linear. At a running time of two hours and 35 minutes, it often feels like we're slogging through a B-movie that got too big for its sprockets.

Overly broad and silly at times, the film also has an "important" message to pass along to its young viewers.

Villain? Great. Verdict? Average.

Feels like two films that aren't closely related enough, either tonally or narratively, to warrant their intertwining.

Director Lee Tamahori (Die Another Day) has a shruggingly action-intensive style, which feels at once heavy-handed and lazy.

Starsky & Hutch is less homage to an old cop show than a tribute to the people who made the movie--a circle pat on the back. And no obvious joke goes untouched.

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

Against all odds, the American Pie movies have actually gotten a little better each time out, though that's certainly not to say that they're, uhhh, "masterpieces."

Essentially this is a pale imitation of "My Life as a Dog" or "Cinema Paradiso." It means well, but it's only a "feel-good" experience if your concept of that term involves being jerked around and doused in sap.

Condensing, paring and shorthanding the story elements can be daunting, and, despite the efforts of Kasdan and Goldman, two masters at wrangling unwieldy source material into shape, there is some awkwardness and confusion in the result.

In The Game, Fincher pulls back from the total gross-out but sustains a tone of aggravated anxiety. Hitchcock could have done this material and still made its perversities pleasurable.

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

Generally engaging.

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.

Yes it's a "family film," of the sort we've become increasingly accustomed to these days; cute dogs for the kids to coo over, and a plot just complex enough to keep the parents who've accompanied them to the theater from dozing off.

It seems like a slam-dunk pitch -- "Pretty Woman" with the genders reversed -- but there's one major problem: The whole hooker-fantasy bit is much more of a guy thing.

Jones seems to have trouble keeping up with the large amount of action he's required to participate in. And Del Toro seems ill-cast and ill-used.

What about the activists (gay and straight) who want to secure legal benefits for all citizens, not just married ones?

The real find-- is Rosario Dawson, who has appeared to good effect in previous smaller roles ("Kids," "He Got Game") and just about walks off with the movie.

It's a skillfully made film, but not especially fun to watch, and the apparent thesis that poverty justifies such acts doesn't quite wash.

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.

Where Bowling for Columbine is at its most valuable is in its examination of America's culture of fear as a root cause of gun violence.

If you've never seen a Sandler movie, however, this isn't the one to start with. Proceed only if you're sure you like the guy.

The love story, not to mention plot holes large enough to swallow entire platoons, so bogs down the story that whatever tension the Vassili-Konig confrontation creates disappears every time Weisz appears on-screen; she tears apart comrades--and the movie.

Drowns in vanilla carnality.

Ambitious in scope and humble in execution.

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

The producers of this glorified latter-day frieze have gone nuts for computer-generated extras without clinching the essentials of character and catharsis.

If the Star Wars movies have taught us anything, it's that waiting 20 years for a new sequel by a guy named George can lead to disappointment.

This half-hearted, half-witted remake of Robert Aldrich's compelling 1965 tale of survival, ingenuity, and teamwork generates no heat.

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

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 whole project feels lazy and half-hearted.

The various talents on display aren't enough to overcome the sheer blandness of the material.

A top-notch cast compensates for dubious credibility.

Moore's likable and Goode's good. But . . . so what?

The film is beautifully shot and well-acted, but, like the book, it never achieves anything like the import of the stories that inspired it. Balzac is even a little dull, especially toward the end.

Just another baseball movie hitting for average -- very average.

Yet another version of the conscience-stricken white soldier Kevin Costner played in "Dances With Wolves" and the Indian killer-turned-noble warrior Tom Cruise gave us in "The Last Samurai."

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

As detached and unfocused as a college pothead. And about as much fun.

Isn't a bad movie by conventional standards, just a boring one.

For the large-type crowd, one that prefers to have its "dirty" clean and silly.

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

This circumcised "Shaft" plays half-awesome, half-aw-shit; it exists almost as if to prove you can cram every Jewish joke in the Old Testament into a single movie.

Although Morrison's drama feels increasingly forced and manipulative as the movie rolls along, the movie is competent if painfully predictable.

Scary or not, there's energy in the way Carpenter frames and cuts his movies, and there's energy to spare in Woods' performance.

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.

Heartbreakers' implausible level of comedy just grows tedious, as it's neither smartly witty nor full-throttle absurd.

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

The low-wattage thrills, lukewarm jokes and unconvincing caricatures we encounter in The Big Bounce simply don't generate that kind of excitement.

It's pretty good fun, once it gets going, but still makes some of the same mistakes that have plagued other Hollywood films that interpolate the concepts of Hong Kong action.

I Am David is by far the best after-school special to hit the big screen this season.

It's a likable enough smorgasbord, from its trendy Irish locations to Andy Summers turning in a Beatles cover to occasional giggles and gasps.

Suffice it to say that Cruise never seems right in this part--never as treacherous as he should be, nor as mysteriously tortured. Foxx has his moments, but there's no room for his trademark humor, and we can never quite get our minds around the idea that the hit man has beguiled the cabbie.

As by-the-numbers as VCR instructions. And, inexplicably, it's also a blast.

It's perfectly effective, though only rarely inspired.

Initially artsy, then campy, then tense, it would have worked better if writer-directors Peter and Michael Spierig had kept everything serious and let the inherent absurdism of zombie attacks speak for itself without additional ironic comment.

Instead of the cat-and-mouse cogitations and psych-outs one might rightly expect from this high concept, we're fobbed off with a lot of sub-Die Hard theatrics and stinko plotting.

Fame this film ain't.

It lacks both the shiny surfaces that enlivened the director's earlier films and the depth of character that allows us, in a traditional film, to identify, empathize, or connect psychologically.

It's merely all right--very high-concept and on its way to interesting, but never there.

As usual, Hollywood hitmeister Bay is more interested in blowing stuff up than in addressing deep questions like the morality of science and the false myths of civilization, and these explosions go on for over two hours.

A clunky, obvious film, it makes the mistake of asking drama to do what documentary should.

Busch, responsible for the similarly hit-and-miss-that's-a-mister "Psycho Beach Party," has a good idea; two in one movie would make him absolutely fabulous.

What's most astonishing is that a film populated by two madmen can grow so wearying and dull; the movie crawls toward its climax, which is so barmy it's almost surreal.

And so the chief complaint one can lodge against Lyne's film is central: It's not that funny. Which is another way of saying that, for all its controversy, it's not that daring.

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.

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.

Unfocused. We feel cut adrift amid the various plot threads. This is exacerbated by some murky exposition. Characters, events, and the passage of time are not always clearly established.

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

You will leave Mona Lisa Smile with only the slightest hint of the grin every slick studio movie gives you--the grin of reassurance and superiority. But you will not be changed, only out about eight bucks.

There's nothing at all scary about White Noise, which goes bump in the night so often it's easy to mistake it for clumsy.

Whether or not you like this film may depend on how much interest (or patience) you have for the antics of a self-proclaimed prophet.

At times it's overly calculating, indulgent, amateurish, and, well, boring. Ultimately, a surprisingly personal memoir, and just maybe the best gift a father ever received from his daughter.

All set-up, no soul... Nothing here is that inspired, that clever.

It's not a movie one feels like hating, but the Hindi musical numbers aren't enough to elevate this over, say, "Pretty Woman."

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.

Instinct offers gorillas in the midst of one mediocre movie.

As the harried household head in The Out-of-Towners, the thrill is gone. Martin's character is dull, and his performance is fatigued -- Hawn, a trouper, locates all the available giggles and wins applause for her big tantrum scene. And John Cleese is riotously funny.

The film has a gritty, grainy look that matches the book's raw texture, and keeps the violence and drug abuse from ever looking slick or appealing.

What a shame to squander the dramatic riches of Jones's life on third-rate caricature and paint-by-numbers storytelling.

Standing on its own, it's comme ci, comme ça, self-serious when it should be adventurous, coy when it should be revelatory. One must afford it props, though, for its proud celebration of insanity. Now that is truly creepy.