What it lacks in story, it makes up for with sharp dialogue and an amusing Walter Mitty-esque style.

Although far superior to recent American fare such as "Alex and Emma," the film takes actors with quirky charms and places them in a homogenized, studiolike picture. What a waste.

The plot's a trifle, but so what. Director Lynn (My Cousin Vinny) stages a series of seamless, ebullient show-stoppers that encompass every musical style from gospel and soul to contemporary R&B and hip-hop, and the choreography ranks with anything you'll find on Broadway.

If you're the sort who enjoys shedding such in darkened theaters, your must-see summer movie has arrived.

Undermines itself with tabloid-style narration, overly emphatic graphics, and a sensationalistic tone.

This sweet-tempered retelling of "Romeo and Juliet," which substitutes uplift for tragedy, gives off enough energy and light that the audience wants to believe in it even if society's impacted prejudices continue to say otherwise.

Offers considerable charm and an obvious desire to please.

A political film in the form of a thriller, rather than a garden-variety potboiler gleefully helping itself to stock political tropes from the genre's grab bag.

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.

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.

Cult auteur David Cronenberg crashes and burns--his talent, that is--in Crash, a vain attempt at a techno-age Persona.

Not too far from the version of "Serpico" staged by the Max Fisher Players in "Rushmore."

For now, it might be best to acknowledge this as an impressive debut and wait for the grown-up stuff to come.

Tea With Mussolini doesn't come close to John Boorman's captivating "Hope and Glory," which managed to address the terrible destructiveness and misery of the war as well as the magical adventure it offered its young protagonist.

Ultimately, it's the songs that energize this highlight, and lowlight, reel; you may forget the movie when you walk out of the theater, but you will do so while humming the soundtrack.

While the film bubbles with humor, sensual detail and heaps of plot, it never quite becomes more than the sum of its parts. It's well worth seeing, but it isn't transcendent.

The heroes are villains, the villains are heroes, and in between are the innocents who become casualties in their wars waged in the names of morality and righteousness.

His most thoroughly surreal work since Eraserhead, this two-hour-plus fever dream is more of one piece than Fire Walk with Me and less desperate and jokey than Wild at Heart.

Proves an absolute chore to sit through.

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.

Rent plays as a very long joke with no punch line, an exercise in mawkish sentimentality that's embarrassing to watch. Kudos to the actors for truly committing to their roles, but with this material, it might have been better if they hadn't.

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.

Manages to be fitfully entertaining, especially in light of its minuscule budget.

A spin-off of a sequel... It doesn't even try to be different, because it assumes the moviegoer wants only the same-ol' and then offers even less.

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.

A mildly amusing romp.

If you want to drift through emotional turmoil and a harrowing loss of security both personal and national, this project may provide some soggy satisfaction.

This brutal film borders on the brilliant. Beautifully structured and edited, with a chilling central performance by Ian McKellen and an exceptional score by John Ottman, who also edited the picture, it churns up emotions and leaves the viewer feeling stunned and depleted.

Moments of strained mirth indicate how false and fabricated the whole enterprise really is--just a couple of well-to-do superstars doing their darnedest to prove to us that they're regular folk. And failing.

The film has no form or function; at best, it's a 90-minute infomercial.

It tries to be both camp and action film--send-up and kick-ass. But it delivers so little on both fronts.

Brosnan proved his worth last time around; but, sad to say, the rest of Tomorrow Never Dies lacks the wit and inventiveness of GoldenEye, let alone of Goldfinger.

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.

Even though The Devil's Own reportedly cost close to $100 million, it comes across as a sleek, medium-grade character study occasionally punctuated by gunfire. If this is what $100 million buys these days, can $200-million movies be very far off?

Unspools slowly and erratically without ever hitting an emotional or comedic stride.

Hunter's movies never condescended to the audience; they never winked, never pretended to be a mere Playboy party joke. Which is precisely why Down With Love, which strives to be to "Pillow Talk" what "Far From Heaven" was to "All That Heaven Allows," is such a disaster: It winks so hard it lapses right into a coma.

This unstinting look at growing up in the 1990s never pulls its punches. Bridging the angst of Generation X and the uncertainties of Generation Y, Chick reveals the romantic traumas, career screwups and self-absorbed fantasies of a group of eastern college grads.

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.

"Homespun" is the first word that leaps in while contemplating Young's charming and moving treatise on provincial America and its deceptively simple denizens.

While tyro director Simon West fills Con Air with all the slam-bang action and well-honed wisecracks that were the more positive qualities of its predecessors, the film brims even more with all their worst qualities.

Bean represents a dismal dumbing-down of a very bright creation. Is nothing sacred?

It's unlikely that anyone will walk away unmoved.

It's not until the plot surfaces that Bring It On really begins to suffer.

Audiences will leave the theater ready to sign up for some dance classes themselves.

The film's intent -- contrasting the relatively benign craziness of a group of mental patients with the far greater insanity of war -- is worthy but obvious, while the execution is overly indulgent and at times precious.

Stripped of every major scary moment and restructured in what feels like a deliberate attempt to remove all suspense, this "horror" movie is now a domestic soap opera.

Part homage and part demolition job, Mars Attacks! is perhaps the funniest piece of giddy schlock heartlessness ever committed to film.

With Besson, it's all eye candy; despite all of his mythic posturing, his loop-the-loop camera moves and in-your-face fandangos are the true substance of his films. And that's not much substance. He's a dry-hump orgiast.

If you really want to live life to the fullest, step one is to avoid wasting an hour and a half of your life in a theater showing Last Holiday.

What makes the claptrap in Starship Troopers so flabbergasting is that it's monumentally scaled.

As family reunion trauma flicks go, The Sea is by no means up to the standards of Thomas Vinterberg's "The Celebration," but it does make clear that Kormákur is a director whose evolution will be interesting to watch.

Cornier than the cornfields spread out in front of the dilapidated rural Texas manse inhabited by Robert Duvall and Michael Caine, playing grumpy old brothers with mismatched accents.

The ideas behind the story are intriguing and could prompt endless hours of lively discussion, but the film proves surprisingly drab.

A muddle—not amiably ambling, not affably shaggy, just a mess that gets messier till, at times, the whole thing looks improvised by amateurs more concerned with being clever than something resembling affectionate.

A football film made by a man who apparently has seen little of the game outside of movies, and not very good ones at that.

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.

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.

In the end, The Producers is an enjoyable romp, and at times--as when Hitler sings "Heil Myself"--it's hilarious. But it's not transcendent.

May not have the best script in the world, but it brings Jet Li to the big screen in a way that all action junkies, not just the video-store geeks, will appreciate.

The dumbed-down movie version of Frances Mayes' best-selling travel memoir Under the Tuscan Sun is a virtual case study of Hollywood's irrepressible urge to lower the bar in the hopes of upping the take.

Before things have even begun we know how they will end; this is pure Hollywood product, slicker than the insides of an oilcan.

The entire film takes its cue from Cage's spritzes and jags; it's a delirious performance in a delirious landscape.

What results ultimately plays like a feature-length episode of an HBO comedy series like Sex and the City -- gratuitous nudity and all.

It's dull enough to make a Mormon fidget.

It's easily the ugliest film Gilliam's ever made, a movie shot with a lens someone forgot to wipe. It's also his loudest: Every scene is amped up to 11, and every line of dialogue is delivered as though it's a cry for help from the bottom of the well.

Doesn't come close to matching the emotional depth and power of Frank Perry's 1962 "David and Lisa," the most involving and affecting film I've ever seen about teenagers and mental illness.

A lack of fire is ultimately the problem of the entire film. Six Days tries hard to recall Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn riding the rapids in "The African Queen," but the film falls short even of Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner in "Romancing the Stone."

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

At its best (which isn't much), Le Divorce blusters along with the tolerable tedium of had-to-be-there home movies; at its worst (which is about 90 percent), it illustrates why the French went and invented the word merde.

That's what separates good films from bad. And that's what makes Km. 0 stand out.

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.

Uou may choose to read My Date with Drew several different ways -- as endearing or frightening, as bleak or expectant, as the optimistic daydream of the naïve Everyman or the beginning of a problem that could only lead to a restraining order.

What isn't hard to say is that Noé really isn't a very talented filmmaker.

Little Ralph comes off like "Billy Elliot" on steroids. Still, this an energetic movie that can be truly hilarious in spots, and it captures perfectly the oppressive atmosphere of a Catholic boys' school in the ’50s.

What the movie mostly sends up is its star and screenwriter, Michael Myers. That's not all bad.

Obnoxiously dull.

We do glimpse the dynamic interplay between rising comedian Eddie Griffin's hilarious obsessions and the loving, screwed-up people who made him what he is.

What Lies Beneath is my head on the movie theater floor, snoozing through this film.

Wild Things reaches such dizzying heights of wretched dialogue, creaky contrivances, and panting performances, you're forced to wonder if the filmmakers realized how bad their script was and switched gears into pure camp at some point during the shoot.

The screenplay does enough sabotage on its own; the nose, perhaps, is there to give us something to focus on lest our minds wander and wonder just how we chose to kill an hour and 48 minutes giving this crime caper access to our pocketbooks. (Might be good on video, though. Or cable.)

The movie is more a loose collection of skits than a coherent whole. But then, it's never coherence we're looking for when Atkinson's exhausting imagination is cut loose from its fetters. The weird bonus here is John Malkovich's over-the-top performance.

This ain't no movie. It's a very long, very tedious infomercial for Phantom Menace action figures, on sale now at a Target or Toys "R" Us near you.

What's most disappointing is the almost utter lack of humor -- In the mindless action sweepstakes, however, there's still enough here to place The Transporter above big-bang gibberish like XXX.

Assassination Tango is Duvall's fourth, yet it still feels like a first film; worse yet, it feels like a waste of an undeniably great actor.

Does not measure up to its predecessor, but it's child-friendly and lasts only 45 minutes.

Plays like a greatest-hits remix; like "Die Another Day," it's bent on resurrecting a moribund franchise by recalling all the things you used to love about it till you grew into big-boy pants.

You're almost tempted to laugh at Birth by the end, but by then you're too busy cursing it to bother.

Its substance and high ambitions, salted with humor, make for a rewarding two hours in the dark.

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.

The Saint exists almost entirely as a vehicle for Kilmer's quick-change smarty-pants swagger, and it's inconceivable without him. He's great fun to watch--a squirish master thief with a wide streak of lewdness.

The entire remake has been dumb-dumbed by John Hughes, who wrote the script and produced.

Singleton's version is cynical and silly--one long set-up to a closing scene that promises, or threatens, a sequel.

For all its kinetic energy, for all its camera tricks, for all its dark humor, there's still something a bit off about these Rules, and it's not really Avary's fault.

What Constantine offers is a deceptively thoughtful tale tricked up like an action movie; it's beautiful to look at but even more lovely to ruminate over.

The movie is perhaps most successful as a preview of greater things to come from both Hughley and Union.

One of the season's biggest delights.

This mean-spirited little comedy actually isn't bad.

The picture's biggest problem is that no one is sympathetic.