A clever and adorable original film remade with most of the charm wrung out of it.

It's as disquieting as it is unsatisfying, a slog through gender issues, surgery and violence - sexual and otherwise.

Truth be told, J. Edgar drags, even when it pays homage to the widely discredited urban legend that the guy liked to dress in drag.

This Paranormal doesn't tamper with the formula that worked in the first two films. It lacks the "money" moments that those films delivered and ends with a finale that is downright conventional. "Paranormal" reveals itself for what it has become, the "Saw" of found video thrillers.

The movie never convinces us that Forster is convinced himself. The director lines up this bad good man in his sights, but he never quite has the nerve quite to pull the trigger.

Jackman gamely does his best, Levy keeps the kid just shy of insufferable and just this side of kid-appropriate in his behavior and language.

Abduction puts Lautner in motion and never goes very far wrong as long as he remains in motion.

She (Parker) looks exhausted, first scene to last, and that fatigue spills off the screen onto us.

Lacks surprises.

This episodic romance works in fits and starts, and captures a bittersweet faux British turn by Anne Hathaway, plainly mismatched in being paired with real-life Brit Jim Sturgess.

Take away much of the myth, most of the sorcery and all of the humor of the 1982 John Milius-Arnold Schwarzenegger version of the sword and sorcery epic "Conan the Barbarian" and you've got an idea what the new "Conan" is like.

The trouble with The Change-Up is that it doesn't change-up enough of the formula to render this new.

The slapstick is very small-kid friendly and even the most adult-friendly jokes are pretty mild stuff.

Once you get past the cliched Spanglish dialogue and the sentimental tone of the early acts, A Better Life settles down into something both involving and moving.

James takes his comic lumps like a man. His Griffin suffers injuries and indignities and lets us laugh at him as he does. No matter where the script wanders and where the direction founders, at some point, James' comic instincts take over. And this time, they don't let him down.

It's a movie of thematic dead-ends. Director Azazel Jacobs and writer Patrick DeWitt give us a slow SLOW and somewhat morose tale that isn't remotely funny or profound enough to sustain that pace and tone.

Bad Teacher is a pulled punch, a pot-smoking/kid cussing/teacher copulating farce that is less than the sum of its parts.

Precious, protracted and pleasant enough.

A mild-mannered kids' comedy that makes for a pleasant-enough time killer.

Has a "been there, done that, jailed for it" feel.

Repetitious, tedious, and pretty much joyless.

Disney's Prom is to real high school what "High School Musical" was to "West Side Story" – all fluff, no edge.

The script is a mad, muddled blitz of one-liners and movie references. Some of the animation is a hoot, and a few voice actors stand out.

Take "Kick-Ass." Strip it of most of its wit and charm, amp up the violence, the sadism. Make it more crude and coarse and gory. And what you're left with is Super.

Whatever romance and charm Gruen summoned forth from these rough and tumble show people living by their own laws in a traveling, self-contained world of poverty and cruelty, director Francis Lawrence has hacked and ground them off.

It's meant to be faintly Pythonesque with a hint of bowdlerized "The Black Adder"...But it's entirely too slow of foot for that comparison to pay off.

It just takes a very long time to get going. Apparently seventh grade doesn't pack as much potential for amusing, scarred-for-life trauma as sixth grade.

It's a film of noble sacrifice and "good deaths" but surprisingly few chuckles.

Fitfully amusing or not, the whole demented enterprise of Rango comes into question when you're that tone-deaf about what's appropriate for children.

It's a solid, engrossing thriller, but a slack one.

3D or not, the film about the mop-topped Canadian - who turns 17 March 1 - doesn't let us get very close to "the talent."

The laughs - Doug tries to take up the pipe, a la Sherlock Holmes - are on the flat side.

Manages to deliver a striking, nicely detailed, visceral thriller built on a corny, old-fashioned script.

Only Hopkins, readily referencing his bag of tricks, seems to get what to make of this "inspired by trues events (and a book by Matt Baglio)" hooey.

An unsatisfying if often surprising experience, a less warm and fuzzy "Parenthood."

Too cute, too star-studded and entirely too long.

But as useful as it is to chew on ideas that don't hew to climate change dogma, Cool It leaves big questions about Lomborg unanswered.

The new creature feature Monsters is an intriguing mash-up of "District 9," "The Host" and assorted recent post-apocalypse road pictures.

A musical vamp on young LA's decade-long Pussycat Dolls fascination with tarting up like strippers and shaking those money makers, it's somewhat less than the sum of its parts. But those parts. Oh my.

While we may ogle Tamara, blush at her charms and revel in her world, in the end Tarama Drewe is just a bit of Brit tease that doesn't come off.

The script piles the preposterous on top of the absurd and the film's thin charms dissipate, revealing the creaking movie star contraption underneath.

A barely serviceable romantic comedy.

A confident, cocky and often comic promenade down the same primrose path.

A well-acted tale of an underdog's triumph that sorely lacks an underdog, it teeters between pleasantly generic film biography and rank manipulation.

Cute, bordering on cutesy, yes. Light and shallow and inconsequential in a lot of ways. But funny? Rarely.

Devil is the sort of story Rod Serling would have taken for a spin in "The Twilight Zone," back in the day. Shyamalan came up with the idea, produced it and got others to script and direct this 76 minute exercise in movie minimalism.

There's an unexpected wistfulness, a bittersweet undercurrent to Going the Distance that could not have been in the script. This romantic comedy co-starring Drew Barrymore and longtime beau Justin Long was finished just as the real life couple was splitting up. For good, this time.

Its grisly violence and ridicule-religion tone make it sort of the anti-"Exorcism of Emily Rose."

The performers are given stock types to play, and Elba and Dillon, at least, can do a little with that.

The Expendables feels, well -- disposable, a movie whose nostalgia isn't enough to make this 50. caliber trip down Memory Lane worth the fake napalm.

The movie's central gimmick isn't enough, and when more supernatural twists that don't play by the movie's own fantasy rules kick in, it lost me.

It's so sentimental and sweet that you can almost forgive the kids' comedy Ramona and Beezus for not being nearly funny enough.

It's still a short-enough time-killer of a thriller -- not the worst of the summer, but a long way from the current state of the art.

All these years after Predator, these decades past the classic film, "Most Dangerous Game," that inspired this genre, it’s good to see the idea of the hunter becoming the hunted still gets the blood racing.

Brolin is so damned good in the saddle, in the hat and in the part that a half-sober viewer could half forget how half-arsed this movie he's starring in is.

At two hours and 15 minutes, the new Karate Kid takes an absurd amount of time to get to that “big match.”

It begins with such promise, a kinky modernist twist on a classical sci-fi morality tale. That it degenerates into conventional, genre horror is all the more disappointing.

If “the gals” have to bow out, at least they try to do it in a sprint -- in their Manolo Blahniks. It’s a pity nobody told them you can’t run in heels -- in sand dunes.

Forever After still goes down like warmed-over porridge. You don’t have to be Goldilocks to think that this time they’ve cooked their Golden Goose.

Kilmer makes a worthy, if somewhat underscripted villain. And some of the bits -- MacGruber idiotically setting traps that the bad guys never fall for -- tickle. But this still feels instantly dated, a "Hot Rod in a Role Models" era.

It has humor and a touch of charm, but plainly needed more love, more passion, more Shakespeare.

Jackie Earle Haley, the fans' choice to take on the role of Freddy Krueger in the remake of the 1984 boogeyman blockbuster A Nightmare on Elm Street proves stunningly, rousingly…adequate…for the job.

O’Loughlin is the very definition of comic dead weight. Imagine making Greg Kinnear carry half of "Baby Mama," or sending Tina Fey out with Matthew Fox on "Date Night" and you’ll get the picture.

An awkward blend of ultra-realistic violence, boundaries-bending satire and low comedy.

It’s not a great film, with some edge Sparks put in the novel left out of the script. But there’s real chemistry between the young lovers and an old fashioned virtue to the father-daughter, father-daughter’s boyfriend scenes.

Green Zone isn't so much a bad movie as a misguided one.

There are a few sensitive scenes, but it’s the big blasts of raunchy that deliver its laughs.

After "Zombieland," The Crazies struggles to find novelty and laughs, and must battle the overwhelming sense that we’ve been here, seen this too often and too recently to experience any real surprises.

For what it is and for whom it is intended, it’s not a bad movie, just an indifferent one.

Basically a bloody buddy picture that tries too hard.

An odd duck of a thriller. Quiet, talkative, with the occasional explosion of violence, it has ghosts and characters philosophizing, quoting F. Scott Fitzgerald or blurting insensitive non-sequiturs.

Extraordinary Measures isn’t extraordinary. It’s simply safe.

Whatever its virtues, Eli is a movie that can’t help but suffer in comparison to the much-delayed and much better "Road."

The "Made of Honor" screenwriters don't deliver enough jokes or feisty exchanges between the ill-matched traveling companions.

Terminator Salvation is one of the most visually impressive films in the series. The action is non-stop and the look borders on dazzling.... But ironically for a series that's supposed to be about an embattled humanity struggling against those who lack it, there isn't an emotional moment in this.

So while we can appreciate the decent effects, the bang-up settings and a good cast, we can only hope they got some sight-seeing in on their days off. Whatever magic there was on this shoot is probably in their home movies.

Casino Royale is just swell when Bond is busting up bathrooms in Prague, busting up embassies in Madagascar and busting a move in Nassau. But when he gets to, well, Casino Royale (here, in the former Yugoslav Republic of Montenegro), the film goes utterly flat.

In a lot of ways, Die Another Day is a return to Bond's bad-old-days, the early 1980s, when the plots were outlandish and haphazard, the stunts were fake and the whole enterprise was being treated as a cartoon.

The latest 007 extravaganza has enough plot developments, double-entendres, emotional underpinnings and, of course, Bond girls, action scenes and explosions to furnish at least a couple of Bondfests, with plenty left over for an episode of Nash Bridges.

It's not enough to have the characters act scared and then to throw in a bunch of special effects. It's absolutely essential to creep out the audience, and that's what De Bont neglects to do. [23 July 1999, p.17]

This rather basic story is really just a place to hang the action scenes, which should have been the movie's glory. But those scenes turn out to be the worst things about Mighty Joe Young, in which the action is edited, MTV-style, for maximum incoherence.

If I had to guess, I'd say that the big white "snow" thing is a flimsy combination of cheap plaster, recycled Styrofoam and some poor soul's false hopes. Pretty much like the movie itself. [11 Dec 1998, p.22]

Quest for Camelot is certainly no improvement on the studio's jangly Space Jam of 1996. [15 May 1998, p.21]

Where Fargo was cool and wryly detached, the zany new film is aggressively antic - more like parts of their Barton Fink or The Hudsucker Proxy. On occasion, in fact, the Coens' anything-goes approach can begin to get on your nerves. [6 March 1998, p.17]

Even if the Blues Brothers routine is a joke that has gone on too long, the music in Blues Brothers 2000 turns at least some of the film into an encore worth hearing. [06 Feb 1998, p.20]

Like its fallen star, Gang Related may not be perfect. But there's a lot going on here, just beneath the surface. [8 Oct 1997]

It moves along briskly and lightly, leaving little trace and doing no serious damage to boomer memories. [22 Aug 1997, p.19]

Basically, the film is a vehicle for the talent on board. And though the ship is creaky, it does stay afloat. [02 July 1997, p.E2]

Notwithstanding the hero's Superman similarities, Hercules isn't quite super. But it's strong enough to get the job done. [27 June 1997, p.17]

There's an air of desperation about this movie - a sense that the stars are yearning to do something so patently undemanding that it just can't miss.

But eventually, the soulless violence and shoddy plotting wear you out. By the end, you'll start to feel like one of the hostages. [17 Jan 1997, p.A2]

In a film that could have been called Grumpy Old Prexies, Garner makes a decent replacement for Walter Matthau. Garner and Lemmon, game troopers both, do what they can to wring laughs out of material that went out with the Eisenhower administration.

If the movie isn't a total loss that's because Jordan, Bugs (voice by Billy West) and their friends have an undeniable charm and because some of the classic gags that director Joe Pytka (a TV-commercial guy), producer Ivan Reitman (Twins, Junior) and the screenwriters have adapted from the Looney Tunes shorts are hard to spoil completely.

If Last Man Standing is a failure, it's far from a disgrace. Its intentions seem pure; its method, precise and painstaking. You might say this movie has everything. Everything but excitement. [20 Sep 1996, p.22]

I must admit that, all things considered, it's not bad. In fact, I liked it almost as much as the first one, which I thought was vaguely enjoyable, if somewhat too long. [23 Aug 1996, p.17]

She's the One has fewer rough edges than The Brothers McMullen, but it also has fewer of the weird little nooks and crannies of personality that were the best things about Burns' debut film.

A production that's strong on atmosphere but weak in the plot department. Watching this often-tedious film, you begin to feel as if you've been kidnapped - which is appropriate, anyway, since the story concerns an abduction.

Failed attempts at satire aside, John Carpenter's Escape From L.A. is basically a routine action picture. [09 Aug 1996, p.22]