Rebound is a sports comedy so by-the-numbers that you don't really have to watch it -- you can just check in on it every once in a while between trips to the concession stand and the bathroom.

The plot frequently resets/realigns itself in the fashion of "Lost" or "Alias," as good guys become bad guys, friends become enemies, and combatants become lovers. To portray confusion and uncertainty is one thing; to make a film this unsure of itself, wracked by its own faulty footing and reticence, is quite another.

With its mixture of high-profile talent and low-watt comic inspiration, Smother feels like the sort of misbegotten curiosity Comedy Central uses to fill its Sunday afternoon programming.

This remake seems to exist only to zap the original of its minor pleasures.

There's not a believable moment in all of it, but for a while the film chugs along on Ryan's innate charisma. Even so, no amount of movie-star twinkle could lighten screenwriter Cheryl Edwards' bizarre character arc, which finds Jackie turning, overnight, into a callous, possibly racist, ninny.

Aiming to elicit a last-minute shiver from the audience, Gaghan is likely to get instead a mood-destroying giggle.

There's greater consistency to it, and considerably more humor, with macabre slapstick and fun-house ghoulishness that, at their best, recall early Tim Burton.

Within a few minutes of the film's frenetic opening set piece, however, it's obvious that director David Kellogg and screenwriters Kerry Ehrin and Zak Penn have no idea how to capture the spirit of the source material.

Orlando Jones, buff and commanding, steals the film as Soul Train, a lawyer-biker, while Lisa Bonet, a sexy, enigmatic earth mother, is stranded in a movie that has no idea what to do with her.

The film needs strong characters and snappy dialogue to carry it through. It has neither.

Silly, derivative stuff.

A Man Apart isn't awful, but it is almost reflexively rote, evoking countless other outlaw-cop films that are smarter, tighter and more fun.

What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Offering neither the enjoyably preposterous auto-heroics of the Transporter movies nor the lithe, legible athleticism of even second-tier Hong Kong thrillers.

Life goes far past the boiling point for most of the characters in this hilariously overwrought ghetto soap opera from cult writer-director Buddy Giovinazzo.

The entire movie is an object lesson in diminishing returns: of nagging shock cuts and blaring sound cues used as indiscriminately as joy buzzers; of “look out behind you!” scares that wouldn’t make a Cub Scout flinch; of a blurry visual scheme that was far more terrifying in "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," where it sought empathy rather than empty sensation.

Remember the Daze has the irony-free, instant-nostalgia earnestness of your high school yearbook, but watching it is not likely to conjure your own youthful emotions -- it’s more like flipping through the generic memories of a complete stranger.

Don Calame and Chris Conroy's script is witty and peppered with good laughs, but cops out a bit at the end with an overly conventional resolution. As for Jessica Simpson... her character is virtually irrelevant, as is her acting ability.

Mo’Nique's character here is so underwritten that the actress doesn't get a chance to really capitalize on her extra screen-time. Her sassy forte may be talking so straight-up she sounds crazy, but she seems a little advanced to be doing "yo mamma" jokes.

Mostly, Shafer and co-writer Gregory Hinton lack a strong-minded viewpoint, or a sense of humor, about a world in which the DJ has the power to unify, if only for a night, men of godlike beauty and the mortals who worship them.

Old people are made to look ridiculous; clowns are brutalized; characters talk in rapid-fire vaudeville shtick.

It's supposed to be post-feminist breezy but ends up as tedious as the chatter of parrots raised on Oprah.

A nearly affectless Christian Slater, who carries a co-producing credit and seems to have lost his charisma along with his sneer, plays Tom, an armored-car guard who plays hide-and-seek with a gang of thieves, all of whom, outside of ringleader Jim (Morgan Freeman), are instantly forgettable.

Thunderbirds is devoted to the principle that character and story are but rude interruptions to the real order of business, an endless display of profound vehicle fetish.

This is efficient, soul-numbing moviemaking, diverting enough for blistering September afternoons when what's onscreen is secondary to how high they've cranked the air conditioning.

This wasn't a horror film the first time around, and LaBute makes sorry feints at effective creepiness, letting the story roam in circles just like Cage.

Scottish director Michael Caton-Jones continues to fritter away the last traces of his talent with this ugly variant on Fred Zinnemann's 1973 original, The Day of the Jackal.

It doesn't help that the level of acting in the film brings nothing but accidental humor to the mix.

The animation, incidentally, is half-a--ed, like they ran out of the $292.96 budget halfway through. Rip-off indeed.