Minkoff lets the fight scenes go on for a while, which is nice, and all the best bits are in the middle, when Jackie and Jet spend a lot of time playing off each other.

Make no mistake: This isn't a relentless button-pushing joke machine like the best Apatow schlumpy-man comedies. I guess I'd describe it as "agreeably ribald."

Confused, morally queasy, self-important mess.

No doubt this is a sincere film. But its wobbly technique prevents it from ever reaching a point.

The ensemble can't bring enough, though, to overcome the unoriginal setup and predictable story arc.

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

The combined effect is, as I say, small but sincere. McCarthy may prove to have something bigger in him, or he may be a miniaturist content to build little stories and fill them with all the humanity they can bear. If that's the case, there are far less worthy ways to spend a career.

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.

If Young at Heart were merely a cheeky presentation of codgers belting out inappropriate tunes, it would be a curiosity and nothing more. But by getting inside the lives of a few of its members, the movie ultimately paints a moving portrait of senior citizens who believe it's better to burn out than fade away.

Ultimately, though, it's hard not to feel like Hou is saying more explicitly and expansively in nearly two hours what Lamorisse managed to convey in only one-fourth as much film.

Football, they say, is a game of inches, and so can be moviemaking, and Leatherheads is a completely charming film that comes a few inches from being a great one.

It's a stylish and sweet film with moments of affecting brilliance that counterbalance its flaws.

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

An altogether astounding testimony to the band's longevity, vitality and verve.

A modest little caper film that satisfies chiefly because of its relative familiarity and lack of ambition.

The humor tends toward the mildly crass -- bare buttocks and inappropriate scratching are Schwimmer's go-to comedy staples -- and the story is ridiculous. But Pegg, who co-wrote the script, plays to his strengths. You can't help but root for the loser.

21 isn't insultingly stupid. But there's a gap between what we're told about its characters and what we can see for ourselves, a gap that gets larger and more frustrating as the film goes on.

If Schaefer's intent was to provide some sort of insight into Chapman's character, some hint of explanation for this senseless tragedy, he fails, probably because there's none to be found beyond one lonely guy's addled brain chemistry.

Though it's well-cast and convincingly captures the look and feel of its era, the film loses steam as Accio's story meanders to a predictable conclusion.

It's a fun and attractive ride.

Pierce never pulls these pieces together satisfyingly, and the result is a botched effort to put a human face on a genuinely alarming situation.

Do yourself a favor. Rent "My Bodyguard" instead.

The oddball cast, by the way, includes Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, who is infinitely more convincing speaking Cantonese than she is in her (presumably native) English.

There are small pleasures, but not many. It especially underwhelms when you consider how Penn seemed to have found a new paradigm for this now-hoary comic form.

There's real chemistry between the two actors.

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.

First-time director Patricia Riggen uses parallel story lines to tell the mother's and son's tales...It's a storytelling technique that's meant to emphasize how mother and son are utterly unaware of the other's struggles, but instead it robs the plot of tension, making the inevitable reunion seem schmaltzy.

After the terrifying grotesques that were the live-action "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and "The Cat in the Hat," it was easy to dread a feature-length Horton Hears a Who!. But -- surprise -- the computer-animated "Horton" is largely funny and faithful to the spirit of the Dr. Seuss book.