Travolta has dusted off his folksy Southern character from "Primary Colors" (one of his most acclaimed roles) and he has his moments with it.

The real bottom line here is that the character just doesn't make much sense.

The cozy, lived-in atmosphere created by the ensemble and the unlikely chemistry of Carell and Binoche are so genuine that you wish the rest of the film was just as effortless and authentic.

Director Casey La Scala directs with enough energy to carry the odyssey over the next ramp, but for all the eagerness of the performances, the conviction is strictly prepackaged.

Backseat satisfies itself with small observations and minor breakthroughs of self-awareness. In the scheme of their lives, this journey is just a speed bump, jolting them awake for a brief moment. The rest is up to them.

Mostly it's a series of dream-image clues scribbled out by juvenile seer Fanning, followed by super-powered smackdowns between agents and mercenaries with slangy titles like watchers, stitchers and sniffers.

It's about as convincing as any other Arnie musclefest, but has a little too much resonance with real world events and ultimately comes off as insultingly simplistic.

A beautiful angel of death (Virginia Madsen) meanders through the final broadcast, gracing beatitudes over the backstage romances and egg-salad sandwiches.

Grown-ups, depending on how in touch they are with their inner child, will be split during most of this, inspired to either smile or roll their eyes.

Inferior remake.

Its overall effect is distinctly underwhelming.

It's very slick and small children will enjoy it, but it has little of its model's special magic.

Director Alfredo De Villa doesn't play it for the kind of knockabout comedy so often seen in these films (like the shrill hit "Four Christmases").

It's the soulless quality of so many films that value devious plots, smug deception and quirky personality traits over actual story and character.

The holiday movie season's only epic fantasy adventure, certainly gets no points for originality. It's such a clone of "The Lord of the Rings," it probably could lose a plagiarism suit. There's also a heavy dash of "Harry Potter." All bases are covered.

As directed and produced by Steve Miner, the film is gory (eyes gouged out, a tongue bitten out, children murdered), but it also features better than usual actors (including Richard E. Grant as a 17th-century warlock-hunter who also jumps into the future) and has such a giddy sense of humor that it's hard to ever get too indignant about its splatter violence. [12 Jan 1991]

Feels like the effort of a tired artist reworking the same themes.

Just pretend the acting scenes are commercial breaks, and you'll be fine.

Black's apoplectic fits and sardonic rants are strictly a bonus for the parents dragged along for the adolescent shenanigans.

The film ultimately swindles its own story.

Pitches itself somewhere between "Bound" and "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels," trying to add a feminist twist to the spate of Britain's bloody gangster thrillers and never quite succeeding.

The story -- something to do with an ancient evil returning after 3,000 years -- plays like a multi-episode story arc of the TV series.

It also has been retooled to be a Farrelly brothers comedy, which means most of Simon's wit has been replaced with gags involving S&M cruelty, explicit bestiality, flatulence, nose mucous, people urinating on each other, and foul-mouthed old men (Stiller's father, Jerry).

Buscemi gets a fine performance from Miller and plays his part with a murky mix of self-pity, opportunism and arrogance. A few scenes crackle with their intensity. The rest of it wallows in glib acrimony and cynicism.

Paranoid Park is a movie about its teen hero's inability to express his feelings: to himself, to his parents, to his friends and, unfortunately, to the audience.

Selick proves a clumsy director of live-action scenes and never overcomes the muddled, half-baked script or the scatological gags.

In his determination to lighten the heavy subject matter, Silberling also, to a certain extent, trivializes the movie with too many nervous gags and pratfalls: to the point where his heartfelt drama comes perilously close to tasteless comedy.

Writer/director Michael McCullers sprinkles the film with sight gags and comic characters (the lisping birth coach becomes funny out of sheer doggedness), but his pacing is poor and doesn't know how to showcase the small-screen chemistry of Fey and Poehler on the big screen.