Kevin Bacon and Marisa Tomei make the most of their limited screen time, injecting straight comedy into a movie that occasionally comes close to losing its sense of humor.

Director Jon Favreau keeps the tone light but, aside from the occasional low-key gag or one-liner, the humor is never allowed to upstage the more serious elements.

Captain America falls into the prevalent pitfalls of origin stories. So much time and effort is expended explaining how the protagonist gains his super-powers (and exploring his initial usage of them) that there's not enough opportunity to develop a compelling storyline beyond his "baptism."

The interaction between the three teenagers is well executed and plausible, despite the almost complete lack of a back story for any of them.

Unchallenging but easy to like. There's not enough here to capture the interest of those indifferent to romantic comedies, but fans - even of the casual variety - will find this to be a pleasant mid-summer diversion.

The humor - and there's enough of it that Tabloid could be categorized as a comedy - is unforced, arising as it does out of these truth-is-stranger-than-fiction circumstances.

Overall, Part 2 tells a more compelling and emotionally fulfilling tale than the one related in Part 1, although that could be a result of this movie having a conclusion - something its predecessor notably lacked.

For something like Horrible Bosses to sparkle, the actors have to shine... and shine they do.

The "special effects" employed to have the animals' mouths form words might have been state-of-the-art 20 years ago, but they're outdated today, and the gorilla looks like a guy in the monkey suit that was abandoned after the 1976 version of "King Kong." I guess CGI was too sophisticated for the technical crew.

Larry Crowne should not be mistaken for a masterpiece. It is summer entertainment: genial, undemanding, lightweight.

LaBeouf, who appeared to hit a low in "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," has sunk to greater levels of incompetence here.

Although it would be unfair to label Cars 2 as unwatchable, it is surprisingly tedious in parts and not as satisfying as one might expect.

The product is akin to a mediocre '80s sex comedy (with minimal nudity) and "daring" is a descriptor only the most naïve and puritanical would employ.

The result makes the movie seem assembled from bits and pieces of other superhero yarns rather than existing on a plane of its own.

The result is an effective portrait of a damaged individual uncertain about the meaning of love and commitment and the two key relationships in his life that teach him lessons about both.

Super 8 is in many ways a perfect summer movie: smart, exciting, heartfelt, and suffused with nostalgia.

The Tree of Life falls short of masterful but retains a power that far too many motion pictures lack. It's about SOMETHING and, even when it fails, it does so in a manner that is interesting and not infantile.

It's a deliciously amusing and sometimes surprisingly poignant look at the difficulties of being a 15-year old outsider whose chief goals in life are getting laid and making sure his parents don't split up.

The easiest way to summarize my reaction to X-Men: First Class is with a shrug.

A grim, thought-provoking drama. It aims to be both heartbreaking and (in an odd way) inspirational, although the former is more convincingly conveyed than the latter.

This is the most mature animated feature since "Rango."

It delivers what it's expected to deliver, and that's likely to make it a success with anyone who laughed his ass off two summers ago.

The film is constructed in such a way that suspension of disbelief isn't too hard because there's something universal in what Allen explores. Like Santa Claus, we know it's not real but the idea is so appealing that we go along with the fantasy.

As a movie, On Stranger Tides would have to be considered a failure. The story does not engage, the characters are stick figures, the action sequences are perfunctory, and the whole enterprise reeks of being a money-grab.

There are not a lot of laughs in Dan Rush's directorial debut, nor are there intended to be. Rush keeps the tone as light as possible, but no one would mistake this for anything other than a quirky, character-based drama.

Bridesmaids is bipolar filmmaking at its most disconcerting, with changes in tone so abrupt that they can cause whiplash. In part because of this and in part because the writing is often lazy and self-indulgent, the movie rarely works.

Perhaps the best thing that can be said about Thor is that it doesn't feel like a cookie-cutter superhero comic book origin story.

Overlong and at times tedious; the taste is gritty and lingers unpleasantly.