So strained in its "charm" and "pluck" that you grow weary by minute 15, hoping that the teens whose lives it depicts will stop being so darn peppy or sweetly confused or irritatingly dramatic.

For what's essentially a bad movie, Street Kings is fairly tight and energetic.

The film is sugary, simplistic and riddled with cliches -- yet it still manages to absorb you in its story and even carry you with some of its emotions.

It's not as if empathetic peeks into the lives of America's poor white boys aren't valuable, and Hellion has nothing if not empathy for every one of its characters. But without a more original story or a distinctive visual presence, it's hard for it to rise above a crowded field.

Turns out this is a thoughtful, well-acted film that manages to view this most inconceivable of travesties through the eyes of child without being childish itself.

It's nice that Demme reveres the Hollywood classic, the French cinema and the glamour of his actors. But nice is all The Truth About Charlie is -- a nice mess.

Manages to tell the story in generally taut, credible fashion, rising frequently on the strength of a gallery of fine performances even when the screenwriting becomes ordinary and Schumacher's touch becomes, as so often, crude and obvious.

Legend offers two Hardys for the price of one but delivers less than a satisfying whole despite the efforts of its star(s).

If the two most gorgeous people in the world alternately bantering and making out isn't enough to compel the attention of the average American moviegoer, then we are truly doomed.

The Visit is not a head-scratcher, like so many of Shyamalan's movies. It's more of a shoulder-shrug. That's it? That's all you've got?

Three stories in one. This might be two stories too many.

The Hundred-Foot Journey fails to replicate the sensation of sharing a quality meal. Movies of this kind should leave you feeling hungry. Compare the Indian love story "The Lunchbox" from earlier this year. You'd swear you could smell the tandoori chicken while watching it.

In a world in which "Borat" is a global brand, there's certainly a place for Tenacious D -- who, after all, are merely the greatest band in the world: Just ask 'em.

Mixed messages are the order of the day in the conflicted British drama Irina Palm. At first blush, it seems like another entry in the saucy-but-safe Brit genre, a la "Calendar Girls," "Saving Grace" or "The Full Monty," but it turns out to be both more ambitious and less successful than those diversions.

Sometimes complicated, sometimes incredibly simple, the film explicates or fawns over the human condition with occasional charm and poignancy but too often it's just cloying.

Wahlberg's The Gambler is California Lite.

Written and edited by Sayles, "Casa" is certainly the artist's baby, but he crams too much into a relatively brief running time. Worse, though it should be longer, we're not especially unhappy that it isn't, for being around these women gets tedious.

What this alteration says about societal trends of the past three decades is open to debate, but the change is a tiny hint that earnest fidelity to the source was not a top priority.

The rhetorically stacked deck, and some unconvincing third-act plot twists, get in the way of this movie's efforts to reach the cinematic promised land of true greatness.

With its lackluster surfaces and thin core, his (Russell) film displays neither heart nor brains enough to earn its whimsy.

Overheated claptrap that takes an issue of vital national importance and turns it into an inept cartoon that emboldens the worst instincts in our national character.

As a chronicle of an extreme surfing subculture, Bra Boys is semi-fascinating. As a chronicle of rough-and-tumble street life, it's appallingly biased and self-glorifying.

There's plenty of blood and screaming and mayhem, and it's not particularly well-staged, shot or cut -- though I suppose actually caring about film craft denotes one as a spoilsport in this context.

They could have made a harder-hitting, more realistic film, but then no one would have gone to see it.

Surprisingly charming and well-acted.

This coming-of-age movie is the sweetest, frothiest fantasy in some time. [28 Jul 1995]

A painlessly light introduction to Bollywood moviemaking, but it far too often feels like run-of-the-mill Hollywood fare.

Though the film occasionally rises to moments of genuine emotion and wit, it slips appallingly into corniness and hokum before coming to an abrupt and unconvincing end.