Why Hugh Jackman was so excited by Mark Bomback's script to star and produce the film is as big a mystery as why such talents-on-a-roll as Ewan McGregor and Michelle Williams joined the cast.

Despite its intriguing premise, the movie is a disappointing misfire.

The ambitions and intentions of War, Inc., co-written by and starring John Cusack, are laudable, but the film is a nearly complete misfire.

The only thing that can explain middle-aged men acting like 6-year-olds is mental retardation, and there's nothing funny about that. The idea of middle-aged actors playing adolescents isn't much funnier. Put it this way: Such an idea does not make for an inexhaustible source of comedy.

Another among this year's crop of features that demonstrates that having a cast with indie cred can sometimes do little to buoy a film's miscalculated execution.

The best you can say about the movie is that it isn't boring. It's fast-paced, but it isn't really well made.

Every triumph registers low on the emotion meter, and most of the supporting characters are two-dimensional at best.

This remake of a South Korean movie ultimately provides fewer scares than the average aging baby boomer feels every time they look into a reflective surface.

Someone else's vacation photos are never much fun to watch, and this beach party is a drag for onlookers.

The film, absent a sense of place and populated by repellent or weak characters, soon devolves into an increasingly foul litany of events.

A shrill, far-fetched thriller.

For much of the way, the film just feels like it's pressing too hard to make an impression.

Less sex comedy and more Seth comedy would have made for a much livelier excursion.

The sole laughs are scored by Robert Davi, amusingly playing it straight as a Muslim terrorist who wants to hire Malone to make a suicide bomber recruitment film.

Simon Pegg is likably smart and obnoxious as the fish-out-of-water Brit in high-gloss Manhattan, but he's swimming upstream in a feature that substitutes slapstick for scathing wit.

The film is a misfire, which you feel more acutely given the talents of those involved, including director Rodrigo Garcia ("Nine Lives," "Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her") and rising star Anne Hathaway.

Great comics from Jerry Lewis to Peter Sellers have turned pathetic into comedic. But James never seems to able to get beyond pathetic.

Inkheart goes crazy with fairy tale characters popping in and out, all sorts of fantastical creatures materializing and so many rescues one loses count. Yet the movie fails to involve the key constituent: the audience.

Given how insultingly fanboys are portrayed, even the fan base could be put off.

This war-horror movie basically plays like "Blair Witch" in Afghanistan.

Every move is telegraphed well in advance thanks to desultory writing, routine direction and ample musical cues.

The movie is almost rescued by the wonderful 1930's style songs (written by Reinhardt Wanger and Frank Thomas) that populate its final act.

Wears its righteous indignation and good intentions on its sleeve but its simplistic, heavy handed treatment of a complex issue gives it the weight of a contrived movie of the week melodrama.

A Wink and a Smile tries to tame burlesque, make it something to laugh at -- or worse, something that requires no skill.

The movie clumps through one witless if not wince-evoking sequence after another without the relief of laughter.

The lack of charisma exhibited by leads Jesse Metcalfe and Amber Tamblyn doesn't help matters, and not even the stalwart presence of Michael Douglas fails to provide the proceedings with sufficient gravitas.

Has its moments, especially when lithe, beautiful bodies twirl themselves around the dance floor with appealing athleticism. But as a movie trying to deliver comedy, drama and romance, you might want to sit this one out. It's not terrible, mind you, but it just isn't very good.

There's a serious miscalculation when the lighthearted hijinks suddenly give way to a climactic scene of brutal violence.