Anyone with a sizable role in Dodgeball gets mired in the script's dissipated tone. Two of the climactic jokes involve "Happy Days" references. How tenuous is that?

Not as consistently or uproariously funny as "American Pie," but it does have a Zen zaniness that gives it center as well as edge.

An overobvious and underwhelming satire about American consumerism run amok.

Idle it is not. Wild it is most assuredly. Set in Prohibition-era Georgia, Idlewild boasts yesterday's style, today's music, and the Harlem Renaissance's romanticism.

There are so many things wrong with Luhrmann's Great Gatsby - the filmmaker's attention-deficit-disorder approach, the anachronistic convergence of hip-hop and swing, the choppy elision of Fitzgerald's plot, the jarring collision of Jazz Age cool and Millennial cluelessness. But at the crux of things, the problem is that it's impossible to care.

Clare Lewins' dizzyingly disjointed documentary, I Am Ali, has one thing going for it: its subject, boxing immortal Muhammad Ali.

Old School has all the ingredients of an uproarious campus comedy, but it lacks a boisterous short-order cook who could whip up a food fight or three.

Has a glorious good time satirizing the extravagant lengths to which the military and intelligence establishments will go if they think there's a payoff at the other end.

A movie so dumb it raises serious questions about our place on the evolutionary ladder. [12 Jan 1996, p.12]

For all its visual delights, Magic in the Moonlight, the 44th feature written and directed by the admirably industrious Woody Allen, has to be one of his bigger duds.

A heady stew of psychological disorders and classic tragedies, borrowing from Shakespeare, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and the Greeks.

Despite the charismatic efforts of the British actor Ahmed, The Reluctant Fundamentalist gets bogged down in proselytizing and plot.

Oh so slight and forgettable.

No one should be expected to endure 115 minutes of this nonsense.

You might be occasionally dumbfounded by The Messenger, but you won't be bored.

While Imagine That falls short of its feel-good aim, its feel-nice vibe is a good Father's Day diversion for Dads and their spawn.

The momentum Stiller has built up - his character's globe-trotting derring-do, the care and consideration on display in his directing - carries the movie a long way. Falling short of fantastic, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is still a fantasy to enjoy.

With its rebellious themes and pharmaceutical props - Ritalin, Prozac, Xanax all get doled out - Charlie Bartlett isn't going to win any awards from parent-teacher groups. But the underlying message of the film, with its nods to "Catcher in the Rye" and - '70s throwback here - "Harold and Maude," is a good one.

Less like "The Waterboy" and more like "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry," only funny.

Throw in some business with the CIA, add a small army of Serbian thugs and a mysterious Croatian beauty, and The Hunting Party picks up speed, careening through the forests where the Fox may or may not be hiding out. Whatever fate awaits, it can't be good. But it can be fun.

Bee Season is lit by human sunbeam Flora Cross as Eliza.

It's all head-spinning and lovely - and a little exhausting, too.

One of the problems with The Dark World is that its monsters and angry armies and visual effects are interchangeable with Peter Jackson's Tolkien pics, with Clash of the Titans, with The Avengers, with Man of Steel, and on and on. These superhero movies. These Middle Earth movies. These mythic god movies. It's getting hard to tell them apart.

The contrast to Ramis' last picture, the inspired Groundhog Day, is marked. [12 Apr 1995, p.F03]

Almost certainly, The Last Stand will not be Schwarzenegger's last. For better or for worse (and this is somewhere right in the middle), he is back.

Ultimately, it's the romance that feels forced and phony, not the group meetings, the confessions, the anguished moments alone.

Unfortunately, it lacks a compelling story or characters of any complexity.

Parker has honored the core of the work and in the process turned a great memoir into a memorable movie.