Freelance fails to deliver on every front. Worse, it barely seems to try.

It’s full of flashy technique and ostentatious stylistic flourishes but has almost nothing of note to say about the supposed burdens of privilege.

While Pine is undeniably a charismatic actor, that likability can only generate so much audience good will in a production overstuffed with cartoonish caricatures lacking any sort of deeper connective tissue.

Sure, it’s entirely possible that the film will find a constituency who will love its mirthless, shouty performances, its tortured random plot twists and its appallingly shonky-looking CGI. But there is also a distinct possibility audiences will turn up their noses at this like it’s a fresh litter box deposit.

It’s a shame, because Cuoco’s well-honed comic skills are very much on display and Oyelowo, working in a lighter vein than usual, seems to be enjoying himself. Which is more than you’ll be able to say about the viewers of this tired action-comedy retread.

Some might be willing to find depth in his stylish, stylized but gossamer-thin depiction of a woman at the height of her performative powers struggling to bear the weight of her stage persona. I found it a bore — self-consciously cool but distancing and empty.

To their credit, the directors aren’t afraid to take things way too far — which could be considered a quality in and of itself, but not one that’s sustainable for nearly 90 minutes of action.

A sad demonstration that what was once considered outrageous, transgressive and anarchic now just seems crass, tired and witless.

Crowe himself, as usual, is the best thing in the film, once again upgrading less than optimal material with his indelible screen presence.

Roth’s messy storytelling is so anxious to get to the next blast of rote action — amped up by Steve Jablonsky’s hard-working synth and orchestral score and lots of shoddy CGI — that the characters have scant opportunity to form real bonds.

This is a high-concept, CG-saturated bore that lacks heart and infectious humor, even if it huffs and puffs its way to a little poignancy in the end.

Veteran television director Greg Berlanti (Riverdale, Everwood), who demonstrated real cinematic talent with Love, Simon, is unable to make any of this remotely convincing or, more problematically, entertaining. The wild tonal shifts leave the viewer in the dust, and not even the two stars are able to make any of it work.

Much of the original cast and creative team have reunited for this wholly unnecessary sequel, which once again proves that oversized animatronic animal figures, no matter how homicidal their behavior, are more laughable than scary.

Alas, the film is an inept, ill-made mess — or as my grandmother would call it, a mishegoss, so muddled and misbegotten it’s hard to perform an evidential postmortem, based strictly on one viewing, of where it all goes wrong.

A hodgepodge of movie clichés and overwrought scenes, directed with zero tact and plenty of pounding needle drops, actor-turned-director Lellouche’s third stab at the helm after his rather likeable ensemble comedy, Sink or Swim, is less a disappointment than a serious assault on the viewer’s intelligence.

Other viewers are likely to be more entranced by the film’s borderline magical realist elements, but for this viewer the story felt rote, on the verge of trivializing and exploiting the horrors of the Holocaust. Mileage will certainly vary, but for me there’s very little that’s either original or artistically interesting about The Most Precious of Cargoes.

Instead of being drawn in by Daniel’s spiral, we observe it from a distance. The result is that Longing, presumably intended as a cathartic meditation on grief, simply feels absurd.

As Shelby Oaks moves further away from its original conceit, it grows ever clunkier, ever more derivative. Stuckmann’s dialogue is stilted and generic; his storytelling and world-building even more so.

Like so many pictures about artists, be they visual artists or composers or even writers, Modi, Three Days on the Wing of Madness doesn’t dare to engage with any seriousness about craft, application and technique or any of the nitty-gritty stuff that truly makes their creations important.

Unlike so many of Anderson’s efforts, In the Lost Lands isn’t adapted from a video game. But it sure as hell feels like one, and not one that would be fun to play.

Deva is a diluted, labored retread.

This latest incarnation represents the sort of charmless, wildly chaotic animated effort that has the unintended effect of reminding us why cutting publicly funded children’s television is such a terrible idea.

For all I know, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey actually takes place on the Holodeck of the Starship Enterprise, so phony is everything contained within it.

A disastrous send-up of James Bond movies that featured KISS' Gene Simmons as a cross-dressing villain. [15 Feb 2016]

The charisma-endowed Washington and Sy do all they can to make the proceedings engrossing but even they are hard-pressed to make it interesting.

Like the first film, the sequel (directed by Kyle Newacheck) proves moronic, witless and relentlessly vulgar. Which is to say, Happy Gilmore fans will love it.

The comedy lacks the stakes to engage more than passing interest. And while there are plenty of sole-related puns, the film is so frenetic in focus that most of them don’t really land.

This version sacrifices the story’s powerful political and social themes in favor of by-the-numbers plotting.

It’s all about as predictable and rote as could be.

What truly hampers Regretting You is its inescapable unoriginality, its plodding, uninventive, unthoughtful attempts at swoon and heartbreak.

For all its visual stylishness, The Carpenter’s Son feels like such an essentially misconceived project that it seems destined for future cult status, with audiences at midnight screenings shouting out the more outrageous lines in unison with the actors. Which may not be what the filmmaker intended, but sounds like a lot of fun.

Laborious and dull, I Can Only Imagine 2 only comes to life in the comedic scenes featuring Ventimiglia, who buries his handsomeness in a buzz-cut, full beard, and Buddy Holly-style glasses to resemble Timmons.

Sadly, there’s no trace here of the authentic fondness for his characters that illuminated Hill’s directing debut, Mid90s. Just a load of solipsistic L.A. brain rot trying to pass for satire.

The Dreadful is the sort of film that prides itself on being a slow burn but ultimately more resembles a fizzle. Except for Marcia Gay Harden. By all means, give her character a sequel.

After a very effective opening scene, it starts to go off the rails and finally derails completely.

Everything about the film is fussy, from the direction to the lighting and camerawork to the chiming score. It’s all so studied and lacking in teeth that it lurches into melodrama.

The lame gags, ineptly staged, don't produce anything in the way of genuine laughs, though there is the occasional funny line.

Snyder and writers David Hayter and Alex Tse never find a reason for those unfamiliar with the graphic novel to care about any of this nonsense. And it is nonsense.

A cloyingly sentimental story that rings false in every moment.

Loud, mean-spirited and generally obnoxious, Son of the Mask makes the boisterous 1994 original look downright demure and refined.

Cursed, a modern-day werewolf tale that fails to provide either Craven's trademark chills or Williamson's trademark satirical wit, is a distinctly subpar film that, but for the current boxoffice streak enjoyed by such formulaic genre entries, deserved to go direct to video.

A desperately strained comedy.

A deeply dispiriting movie, not just because it is grindingly bad but because Jane Fonda actually chose this for her comeback after a 15-year absence from the screen. But it's worse than that. Fonda, one of the best actors of her generation, is downright awful in a role she could have -- and probably should have -- sleepwalked through.

Amateurishly shot, written and acted, the film lacks any redeeming values to compensate for its horrific aesthetic.

A gloriously lead-footed excursion into time travel with all the accoutrements of 1950s science fiction: an absurd plot, cliched characters, corny effects and a race against time to save mankind.

An embarrassment to all concerned, the film was written, directed and produced by Soderbergh for reasons that are not readily apparent.

There's absolutely nothing fantastic or transporting about London, an endlessly ponderous relationship picture that also has zilch to do with the British city.

The latest entry in the "This film is so bad we're not screening it for critics" genre.

Witless, soulless and joyless, it displays its video game origins throughout.

The movie, which opened last week in Seattle and opens Friday in Los Angeles, isn't so much getting a release as an escape. The movie is directed, shot, acted and outfitted with special effects -- such as that guy (Michael Deak) in the monster suit -- so as to make American International horror films of the late '50s and '60s look like sophisticated gems.

An acutely misguided, purported satire dealing with the prickly subject of child molestation.

An embarrassingly meager comedy.

The sheer nastiness of the jealous one-upmanship and angry sabotage puts a damper on the yuletide comedy. You're much better off watching a DVD of "Bad Santa."

So blatantly not funny that it might as well have been called "National Geographic's Van Wilder 2."

While the 1986 edition was no classic, it's light years better than this update, which naturally opened without being screened for those ultimate villains, the critics.

A monumentally unfunny time-waster.

It's all quite a mess, with awkward performances, worse dialogue and a painfully protracted running time conspiring against any chance of enjoyment, even in a so-bad-it's-good guilty pleasure way.

Racially insensitive, politically incorrect and beyond crude.

The claustrophobic and poorly executed Caffeine is either a play in search of a movie or a movie in search of a play but, either way, it's searching for the wrong thing. What it desperately needs are laughs.

D-grade "Running Man" ripoff.

Fails to live up to even the feeble potential of its premise.

Working from a flawed premise with characters lacking credibility and plot turns more moronic than funny, the movie flatlines in about five minutes.

Writer-directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer basically reprise the tired formula from their earlier efforts, which is to throw in as many pop culture references as possible to cover up the lack of any real wit.

The result is a slacker comedy that goes slacker by the second, trying hard to be rude and crude but suggesting an old John Candy-Dan Aykroyd movie with bongs and more swearing.

A lame comic idea poorly executed dooms Sex and Death 101 to failure.

This ridiculous thriller would be hard-pressed to last much longer than its title in theaters before doing time on DVD, as is already the case in many overseas territories.

Paints a surprisingly sour portrait of nearly all its characters, so much so that even the final-reel redemption rings hollow and forced.

It is truly a mess.

Real disaster movies have more laughs than this spoof.

Ragged, uneven and potholed with some dire dialogue and performances.

By-the-numbers retread.

Never gets off its high-concept stool long enough to explore what makes weddings so exciting and nerve-racking and treacherous. It flounders instead in juvenilia and bitchiness.

What seemed sharp and pointed onstage comes across pedantically in the film, which treats its subject with a clumsy heavy-handedness.

Cena is no Jason Statham. His stolid seriousness sucks the life right out of any scene in which he's required to speak. It's a bad sign when you repeatedly wish a runaway trolley would silence the hero.

Completely lacking in visual, narrative or stylistic coherence, the film also suffers from cheap-looking visual effects and poorly staged and edited action sequences that will not exactly please the fanboys.

The Swedish video and commercial director seeks artistic adventure but winds up with pointless self-indulgence.

In the absence of a sturdy, plausible foundation on which to hook all those grisly bits, the film, originally a Dimension release, tends to play out more like a protracted "Saw" outtake reel.

Tediously one-note comedy.

It's no wonder that the film's strongest sequence, visually and dramatically, involves none of these characters. It's a flashback to the construction of St. Peter's that explains the origins of Eden's centuries-long reign on his dark throne.

The direction is as flat as the script is thin, forcing actors to stumble through roles that make little sense. Costumes and sets border on the grotesque. Mehta is a fine enough filmmaker that this one can be written off as an aberration. Sometimes East and West really aren't meant to meet.

Unfortunately akin to going to a dance club stone cold sober and wearing ear plugs. You get the gist of the general experience, but euphoria is far, far away.

The lack of a meaningful story would be easier to take if the dialogue was wittier or the characterizations were deeper, but the proceedings are instead surprisingly bland considering the outrageousness of many of the situations.

A complete wipeout.

It's discouraging to witness a filmmaker who clearly yearns for the indie world yield to the temptations of mindless movie manufacturing. At least Figgis made it as soulless as possible.

Witless, excessive and ultimately boring gore-a-thon.

Alas, this is just film ugly.

The film lacks a controlling point of view to guide an audience through so improbable a tale. Nothing in the movie is funny -- aside from giggles provoked by misfired jokes -- or romantic or dramatic.

How can a director as savvy as Lee make so many errors of judgment regarding taste, tone, intention and dramatic structure?

Laughable performances.

A crass, sophomoric and, more to the point, offensively unfunny parody that sets out to remake Shaft and his blaxploitation ilk as a Jewish action hero.

Witless, sophomoric and relentlessly frenetic, 9 Dead Gay Guys... is about as funny and understated as its title.

Despite its copious nudity, it is less likely to incite lust among its viewers than a strong desire for a long hot shower.

The sketchy characterizations, laughable dialogue and less-than-stellar performances by the formidable cast, all of whom have done far better work in the past, provide further reasons why Darkness should never have seen the light of day.

An action comedy that nearly renders the term an oxymoron, Killers is devoid of suspense and laughs.

Ultimately unable to overcome both its amateurish qualities and its overly familiar elements.

The end result doesn't even satisfy on its own sleazy terms. Not only does it lack the satirical nihilism of the "Hostel" films or the admittedly clever torture machinations of the "Saw" series, it doesn't even provide its target young male audience with the requisite nudity.

As ineptly directed by Robby Henson, the violent (but not too graphically so) goings-on are largely incoherent, with matters not helped by subpar performances, laughably inane dialogue and cheap CGI effects.