Kinda Pregnant doesn’t deliver on charming main characters nor sustainable humor. It’s a staid affair, coasting on its zany premise and a handful of amusing moments.

He’s more than capable of handling the daunting assignment — he’s De Niro, after all — but the net effect is ultimately so gimmicky that it saps the movie of its intended seriousness. It’s a fatal miscalculation that consigns The Alto Knights, Levinson’s first theatrical film since 2015’s Rock the Kasbah, to being a footnote in the distinguished careers of both its director and star.

Made with love and acted with great empathy by a cast led by always dependable pros Olivia Colman and John Lithgow, Jimpa is nothing if not sincere. But to be brutally honest, it’s also kind of a cringey bore, like being stuck in a room with a bunch of oversharers from queer studies class.

This gonzo premise doesn’t have anywhere else to go, and to compensate, Twohy pads the screenplay with quirky antics that tax viewer patience and expose a narrative thinness that’s hard to ignore.

There’s a distinctive eye here, and a promising sense of ambition. But in its current form, there’s not enough meat on its (admittedly cool-looking) bones to justify its 106-minute run time.

This overly meta farce beats its mildly silly jokes so steadily into the ground that it’s not so much a case of diminishing returns as humor abuse.

It’s bloated, self-indulgent, rambling, crazily ambitious and commendably odd, but so overstuffed it becomes a lethal combination of baffling and boring.

I’m happy for DiFranco’s accomplishment while acknowledging that the visual document depicting it isn’t exactly one itself.

Fortunately, Prinze Jr. and Hewitt are on hand to provide some much-needed gravitas to the proceedings (which is not a sentence I ever envisioned writing). Both are in excellent form, providing connective tissue to the original film and its sequel.

While it starts out promisingly, it seriously devolves in its second half into a surreal phantasmagoria that’s more gonzo than chilling.

The very capable ensemble, all of whom have done impressive work elsewhere, mostly gets smothered by the over-conceptualized, over-intellectualized approach to the material.

Going way, way back, at least to The Great Train Robbery in 1903, the western remains one of cinema’s oldest genres — and certainly the one where it feels like everything’s already been done. It’s therefore all-the-more disappointing when a brand new western, like Richard Gray’s gunslinging geezer flick The Unholy Trinity, brings nothing original to the table, rehashing movies we’ve seen before and doing it in a way that feels altogether generic.

A forgettable blend of unearned saccharinity and unacknowledged sourness, the Michael Showalter-directed dramedy capably proves that Mom is the true angel of the season but falls well short of proving that Christmas is worth all her fussing in the first place.

The film leans into action-comedy, and for a while, coasts by on the pre-sold likability of its cast.

Although she lacks the imposing height and fierce muscularity of Nielsen, her predecessor in the role, Lutz makes up for it with impressive physicality and excellent thespian skills, the latter of which come in handy while she’s striving to keep a straight face during the absurd events here.

Anyone nostalgic for the director’s more memorable work might get a kick out of seeing him reunite with past collaborators Kavner and Albert Brooks. But almost everyone here is trying way too hard, with the exception of Mackey, who’s appealing and natural even when stuck in a phony world full of phony characters.

This documentary portrait of the hip-hop superstar certainly delivers what it promises — an unflinching look showcasing its subject’s many inner demons. But for those not fascinated by the twists and turns of Ye’s clearly disturbed mind, In Whose Name? makes for a painful viewing experience.

As in most of his roles since The Departed and The Fighter, Wahlberg shows little charisma, particularly when he’s flanked by an actor with the irreverent verve of LaKeith Stanfield, who steals every scene without even breaking a sweat. That’s not to say Wahlberg is the movie’s sole shortcoming. Not by a long shot.

While the Hulu release ultimately adopts a tone of triumph, its themes of empowerment ring hollow coming from such a thinly written script. It’s most persuasive as a portrait of the frequently toxic culture surrounding those apps to begin with.

Amazingly, very little of this is played for laughs, except of the unintentional variety.

The film moves swiftly enough, with the gags coming at such a consistent pace, that inevitably some of them land. And the performers certainly know how to sell the material, with Cohen amusingly leaning into his character’s humiliations, Pike appealingly reveling in her character’s dominance, and the top-notch supporting cast going through their paces like the pros they are.

This is designed to be a heartwarming comedy and debuting feature director Paxton is more assured with the outcome than he is about getting there.

Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, who have written much funnier scripts for the Zombieland and Deadpool films, are here working in uninspired mode. Balls Up loses comic steam the more it goes on, and although Wahlberg and Hauser have demonstrated solid comedic chops in the past, their laid-back underplaying fails to provide much juice.

The problem is that all the various strands — the parallel tales — dilute our access to the characters, limiting their dimensions.

The actors are all likeable enough, especially the gamine Demoustier, but they are stuck with limp material that’s more twee than captivating.

The latest demonstration of the impossibility of making a good movie from a bad script is provided by When in Rome, a romantic comedy approved by the previous regime at Disney.

Simply weird. The funny has gone missing.

Insipid, predictable, broad comedy mixed with Disney Family Values makes for one exasperating sit.

Although the Tarantino influence still is tangible, this time around Duffy reveals himself to also be a big Francis Ford Coppola fan, but the cartoonish end result plays like "Godfather III" meets the Three Stooges.

Claustrophobic, tedious sci-fi thriller.

The movie is a letdown, stringing together pointless episodes to little effect. It's the kind of thinly conceived, quirk-for-quirk's-sake indie that gives indies a bad name.

A viewer is challenged to guess what the filmmakers thought they were doing. A 1930s screwball comedy with a modern sensibility? A misguided valentine to those who march to the beat of a different drummer?

Director Alex Proyas resolutely thinks in B-movie terms. Even with an A-list budget, he oversells every plot point and gooses the thrills with hokey lighting, bombastic music and serious overacting.

Despite the artistic flourishes, this is still an utterly repellent look at a psychopath who does not deserve the attention of the filmmakers or the audience.

After nearly two hours of nonstop mayhem, the film ends on a surprisingly muted note, though pains have been taken to make sure that the hoped-for sequel has been carefully set up.

Along comes Elektra to effectively lower the bar for Marvel Comics page-to-screen transitions.

Runs 96 minutes but feels like so much more. There is only one gag.

The sort of soft-core, erotic thriller that would benefit from a lot more trash and a lot more sex.

A lackluster affair, devoid of laughs and just about anything else one might construe as entertainment.

An examination of a sexual relationship that's about as viscerally explicit as hardcore can get...But as satisfying viewing experiences go, the film comes up mighty short in terms of story, interesting characters and technical prowess.

A bottomless pit of lame characters, horror-film cliches and improbable monsters.

An entirely dispensable, soapy caricature of a love story that comes complete with a jukebox full of music industry cliches plus Ashlee Simpson's big feature film debut.

Dirty Deeds is as feeble as a teen comedy can get.

Nick Cannon, playing an L.A. cop who goes undercover as a prep school student, provides the few sparks this wan action-comedy can muster.

This misbegotten horror film deserved to go direct to video. Or cable. Or oblivion.

Has little to say to moviegoers. Goldberg's direction is all flash and no substance, and his story and characters offer little reason for viewers to empathize with such self-pitying characters.

Just lousy.

Smultaneously silly, ostentatious and terribly boring.

A disturbing supernatural drama that leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

Surrealism is one thing, but The Intruder appears so ill defined and random that it ends up looking simply inept.

Attention, Ben Kingsley (I mean, Sir Ben Kingsley): It's officially time to turn in your Oscar.

Fails to exploit the myriad comedic possibilities, settling instead for broad, unconvincing slapstick aimed at 12-year-olds and gags Shakespeare would have rejected as ancient.

A disappointingly dreary affair.

Toilet humor, jokes about paraplegics and serious overacting make this lowbrow comedy an irritating watch.

Ultimately Adam & Steve mainly goes to prove that indie gay romantic comedies can be just as witless, vulgar and over the top as their straight, major studio counterparts.

You have to credit the filmmakers for at least acknowledging their level of dreck during the final credits, when Lovitz rhetorically asks, "This was a complete waste of time, wasn't it?"

The writing is rudimentary and the direction often awkward, but Mo'Nique would confound a veteran director.

An indie ethnic comedy clearly hoping to become the Jewish equivalent to "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," this well-timed offering, which arrived in time for Passover, is unlikely to have that sort of crossover appeal, or any appeal at all, for that matter.

A road picture mired by unsteady camera work, lackadaisical pacing and cumbersome speechmaking, Free Zone is an excruciating cinematic trek. Israeli director Amos Gitai's narrative, both visually and conversationally, is a disappointing dud.

Essentially a telenovela with cinematic pretensions, La Mujer de Mi Hermano (My Brother's Wife) is a vapid slab of soap depicting a love triangle among three remarkably uninteresting characters.

Lifeless and irredeemably sour. It is difficult to imagine much of an audience embracing it, despite a cast of well-knowns and up-and-comers.

A grim little drama about a young woman's experiences with a left-wing cult, Alison Murray's debut feature suffers from disjointed storytelling and myriad other problems, including a bizarre reliance on modern dance sequences to interrupt the action.

Bottom line: A soft-hearted gross-out pic. If you're not a male between 17 and 23 and don't find the chance to see R-rated rejects from "America's Funniest Home Videos" a good thing, The Long Weekend will be a long and pointless haul.

Once the initial round of breast-feeding and rectal thermometer bits is fired off, the picture starts to give off the funky whiff of unattended Pampers.

Zoom is a movie that would make Dr. Frankenstein proud. Put together with parts from so many other movies, the thing positively clanks.

Beerfest is tedious and, at 112 minutes, too long to sustain a sophomoric, one-joke comedy even for the presumed target audience of older male teens and the college-age crowd.

For the most part, the proceedings are slow, solemn and tedious.

The track records of the performers are impeccable, but Issit has obviously never watched an awards show or similar event where comedy actors appear unscripted. Placing the weight of such a preposterous storyline on their improvisational shoulders was a disaster waiting to happen. And it happened.

Sharing its title with a historic Reno hotel that's seen better days (or maybe not), El Cortez is a clumsy lump of ponderous pulp fiction with "Cooler" aspirations.

A misconceived washout of a darkly gothic story of madness, addiction and child abuse made all the more unpleasant by Gilliam's trademark intense visual style.

Let's Go to Prison ultimately feels as long as a stint in the big house.

There are a couple clever touches here and there, including one sequence in which the end of a candy cane has been carefully licked into a highly lethal weapon, but for the most part the accompanying histrionics feel more regressive than retro.

A low-rent monster movie that could well have been released by American International in the early 1970s, Primeval boasts a level of cheesiness that should well merit it a regular rotation on late-night cable.

A tepid ghost story filled with all the usual things that go bump in the night minus the somewhat crucial element of suspense, this bland effort from Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert's Ghost House Pictures is surprisingly devoid of the creepy, claustrophobic atmospherics that haunt the brothers' Asian work.

All of [Cages's] natural charisma is unable to compensate for the plodding narrative and thin characterizations.

At best a kitschy "Catch Me If You Can" and at worst a tedious comedy that grows more tiresome by every self-consciously irreverent minute.

Loaded with obtuse symbolism, the film is not only hard to understand, it isn't much fun trying to figure it out.

The star wattage quickly dims in this slick-looking but ringingly hollow affair that starts off generically at best before collapsing into a convoluted heap of shrill screen cliches.

The hilariously dirty insult comic Lisa Lampanelli shows up all too briefly as Engvall's shrewish wife.

Proves to be more prone to malfunction than dysfunction.

Overlong and overstuffed with cliches -- the movie doesn't seem to realize how close it comes to comedy.

Pretentious to the core and lacking any context or credible characterizations.

A thoroughly undistinguished addition to a genre that probably reached its peak a quarter-century ago with "An American Werewolf in London."

Ultimately this is utterly forgettable stuff, not even managing to fulfill its mandate of mindless summer fun.

Any scrap of charm or honest-to-goodness humor already possessed in limited quantities by the original has been relegated to the outhouse in this sorry follow-up.

The sad result is a karaoke nightmare. Loud and pointlessly crude, the film takes the disintegration of a dysfunctional working-class family and gives it the song-and-dance treatment.

While this actor-filmmaker has delivered such worthy films as "A Rage in Harlem" and "Deep Cover" in the past, this misbegotten effort would be instantly forgettable if not for its potential as future camp classic.

Trade is an earnest attempt to dramatize the network of Internet sex "tunnels." Unfortunately, the film's horrific and important subject matter is distilled into a lackluster lump of generic buddy-movie/road-picture components.

All the while, the music screams and clamors like an ignored child because director Xavier Gens and writer Skip Woods can't pump suspense into this inept mess.

The English term "shambolic" best describes a slow-paced, bloated and self-indulgent picture that combines science fiction, sophomoric humor and grisly violence soaked in a music-video sensibility.

The film's pretentious style and fractured storytelling preclude any audience involvement in the coy melodrama.

The direction is uninspired, acting is lifeless, and the script borders on the inept.

Poorly structured and at times incoherent.

A top-notch varied group of actors, no doubt attracted by the colorfulness of their roles, has been assembled, but their hardworking efforts are ultimately done in by the supremely pretentious nature of the material.

Ultimately best suited for the confines of late-night cable.

Straight out of the slice-and-dice school of filmmaking, Vantage Point fractures chronology and perspective in a vain attempt to disguise its flimsiness.

At least a fright-wigged Joe Mantegna, delivering an execrable cameo as a whacked-out doctor, has a good excuse for his presence; the writer-director is one of his former film students.

A particularly nasty slice of medical-themed horror, Marc Scholermann's film is the sort of thriller in which the tenderest scene depicts an autopsy.