Lawrence's descent from hyperactive foulmouth to G-rated father figure has been in evidence for years now, but watching director Roger Kumble move from flawed but juicy projects like "Cruel Intentions" to pap like this is a depressing career development.

More dispiriting than the caricatured Italian families is the sense that, by picture's end, the filmmakers have neutered Angelo, so that his sexual energy is dulled, made non-threatening -- the perfect son after all.

There's no emotional weight to either character, or to this far-from-dangerous liaison. All you can do is watch the slight story sputter, and try to figure out whether Bèart's formidable lips were made by God or man.

For a movie aiming to play like some 1970s throwback, both in sound and spirit, the most depressing thing about The Wendell Baker Story is how messy and impersonal it feels.

Despite its origins, nearly every visual and storytelling idea in this green-and-black-tinted martial-arts fantasy seems to derive from "Mad Max," "The Matrix" and/or "The Lord of the Rings."

The result is something neither scary nor funny.

By the time the final gotcha plot twist unfolds, it's not the intended tears but a yawn that is produced.

Feels like a big-budget "Dharma & Greg" episode with toilet jokes.

Korean cinema may be a rising force in Asia, but Tube isn’t the place to take your first ride.

Slick, noisy thriller.

Owen, perhaps for want of any definition to his character, turns in a performance at once so blank and so bloated with lugubrious bombast, one wants to chuck him under the chin and make him giggle.

As to be expected, it's all very beautiful; too bad it's also often annoying, save for a heartbreaking final half-hour.

The film ultimately offers nothing more than people in an urban jungle needing other people to survive. Kane's character observes that "We’re all connected by love" -- and that sounds familiar, too.

The problem for director Keith Gordon is that Potter's script pares down to virtual nothing the very narrative threads that allowed us, in the full-length version, to identify with his prickly protagonist, and knocks us upside the head with a hyperkinetic, disorienting first act from which audiences -- especially those approaching this material cold -- are unlikely to recover.

This time around, writer-director Robert Rodriguez has stumbled badly, creating a clunky, gadget-happy film full of characters -- even returning ones -- about whom it is hard to care.

How much can one girl grapple with over the course of an hour and a half?

Oh, Mr. Craven, give us a "Scream."

Murray's gift for imperious indifference is the only reason to sit through a second for-kids-only movie about Garfield the lasagna-loving cat.

Until its dismaying final 15 minutes, this baseball redemption movie sails along on the charms of cute kids and a star who makes up in bone structure what he lacks in talent.

Slobbery wet kiss of a family movie.

The film is confidently polished, and thankfully more sweet-tempered than preachy, given that every narrative thread has an underlying theme of social injustice.

This is one of the most visually off-putting films ever made by a director who supposedly makes beautiful pictures.

The characters are put through worn-out cinematic paces, making both them and their tales tedious. Green Dragon plays as hollow catharsis, with lots of tears but very little in the way of insights.

The script (by Matthew Perniciaro and Timm Sharp) is trite, and the direction so flat that every scene looks like it was shot in a broom closet, but the bright young cast makes things more bearable than they should be.

In the studied excess of his Hong Kong action movies, Woo's swooning sentimentality plays like grand opera. With its dogged Hollywood naturalism and the inexorable passage of its characters toward sainthood, Windtalkers is nothing but a sticky-sweet soap.

The few real laughs -- all two minutes’ worth -- come courtesy of Russ Meyer veteran Charles Napier as Dick Lewiston, the angriest macho male anachronism of the year.

By the time we get to the big finish, it feels as if we've merely been poked repeatedly in the ribs with a really good-looking stick.

All in all, a striking, memorable disappointment -- not unlike so many first loves.