For all of its minor pleasures, this encore lacks the depth of its conviction.

The kids have good chemistry, there's some fun oddball humor stuck in around the slapstick, and the gorgeous photography of the Gulf Coast beaches, waterways and wildlife brings their mission to life.

Rambling and easygoing, Nico and Dani is a modest but frank look at adolescent lust, both heterosexual and homosexual.

Outside of its star power, it reeks of indie film and doesn't hold much mainstream steam.

In some ways, De Niro does a competent job in his second directorial effort but his characterizations are clumsy, and his members of the Power Elite always seem less real people than stick figures in a propaganda movie.

The characters are uniformly repulsive, the cliche-ridden script builds no real tension or psychological interest, and the bottom line is that Lee's innovative but ultimately tedious and even ludicrous MTV-style visuals add absolutely nothing to the story dynamics.

Despite Clement's best efforts to make Jarrod a deadpan oddball nerd, it becomes apparent early on that excessive teenage eccentricity and terminal self-delusion isn't quite as cute in the adult male and absent father.

It never generates much interest in its story or affection for its characters, and it's simply not half as funny as it needs to be.

The cruel simplicity of the atrocity is made needlessly chaotic by artless camerawork that swishes rapidly back and forth across the action, to the accompaniment of a syrupy soundtrack.

What remains is a sumptuous-looking film that sniffs at but ignores deeper Freudian implications.

It's a movie brimming with good intentions, solid production values and searing performances. However, it never quite clicks into place with any real satisfaction.

It's in English, but the actors speak it with tortuous accents that are a constant struggle to understand and make them seem like foreigners in their own land. Spanish with English subtitles would have served this story much, much better.

Lacks the driving unity that gave "Gettysburg" its focus, dramatic arc, climax and catharsis.

Despite the scenic appeal of Mexico's Baja Peninsula, the film may prove too nerve-racking for casual viewers. It is a racing movie for the inside track.

When the film suddenly turns into "Rocky" -- as all boxing films of the past two decades invariably do -- it invalidates its theme.

There's also a terrific performance from Collette, who, in only a handful of scenes, wonderfully communicates the unusual resourcefulness of a demented woman who has spent her life assuming a succession of physical handicaps as a survival technique.

The supporting cast, peppered with seasoned pros like Levy, Smart, Betty White and a hilarious Joan Plowright, milk underwritten roles with gusto.

Full of sharp ideas and wry moments awaiting the inspired ingenuity of a screwball comedy to pull it all together. It never comes.

Sadly, it's a disappointment. Nicole Kidman could hardly be more enchanting in the lead, but the script is one of writer-director Nora Ephron's weakest.

Without the saving grace of comedy, Martin's natural abrasiveness is off-putting, and he just doesn't have the stuff of a romantic lead.

To be fair, Aronofsky has a knack for stylistic overkill, and his hammering onslaught is undeniably riveting, at first anyway.

Somehow the elements do not add up to by anything especially memorable.

Unfortunately, the goofiness never quite finds its groove. The romantic chemistry is tepid, the comedy misses as often as it hits, the picaresque plot keeps dogging down and even actors as skilled as Platt, Irons and Lena Olin fail to register strongly in their roles.

A rather dull movie.

In fact, when not kicking butt, (Li)'s kind of a blank spot in the center of the screen.

The script's labored efforts to push the proceedings into a thought-provoking military drama -- and draw some clear moral issue -- are, at best, flimsy.

Its animation is simply glorious, but its story and characters are trite.

Whether Mann's film will make a difference, however, is another question. He devotes little time to really exploring the issues, leaving the film a patchwork of assertions that, while they may be true, have to be taken on faith.