My Oxford Year is shiny and affable, and if that was the assignment it’d get an 'A' for effort . . . actually that’s going too far, let’s make it a respectable 'B.' But that’s not the assignment.

The lack of stakes in this film come from its quirky style and shoddy writing. It’s perfectly possible for well-written film to be silly, but the levity in Four Samosas fizzles into nothing.

Neeson has certainly starred in worse action vehicles than The Marksman, but rarely have they been more forgettable.

As lackluster as this scattered-brained saga is, the animation team of “The Rise of Gru” does excel at constantly reminding us that we are in the 70s via its production design.

While an energetic kids’ fantasy with cool creatures fighting each other is probably a reasonable win for Disney’s new premium service in these days before most theaters reopen, it’s hard to watch it as an adult and not wish for something that produced a little more magic of its own.

Crumbling nuclear families are a well-worn movie genre; you could even add “in Manhattan” to that description and the examples would be many. “Landline” is simply another one, not appreciably worse than the average, but not much better, either.

While Hardwicke’s direction is slick across picturesque Italian locations and various high-octane set pieces that are shockingly bloody, there isn’t a lot she can do to rescue Collette’s fish-out-of-water protagonist from a lackluster mafia comedy with romantic undertones.

Even if the big numbers in Step Up All In don't always hit the heights of its immediate predecessors, there are enough exultant moments – during the crew battles or Sean and Andie's pas de deux on a carnival ride — to tide you over until the inevitable Part Six.

Aardvark is the sort of movie that gets by with its unpredictable where-is-this-going vibe for about a half-hour or so.... But it becomes apparent at a certain point that the set-up is pretty much all there is to this movie.

For all its wide-eyed embrace of murder and mayhem, the film feels rote as it goes about its bloody business.

No one has ever accused a Gerard Butler action movie of being too smart, but “Angel Has Fallen” operates on such a level of half-considered logic and improbable motivations that even moderately well-mounted action can’t distract audiences from how dumb it is.

None of these plot points are run through with any thoughtfulness or panache. Despite a great, unaffected performance by Wiggins — the only one among the cast — and the primal joy of seeing the dog actors sprinting, leaping and maybe even emoting, the film is sunk because the characters never transcend their seeming origins in a Disney Channel movie project.

Unfinished Business isn’t a laugh-free experience — Nick Frost steals every scene as a business underling with a kinky side — and some of the comic set pieces actually work.

It never feels complete or thought through enough, either as a story or more crucially, an emotional experience — which is exactly what audiences would need in order to want to see more.

Impressive in its single-mindedness, this is nonetheless a movie that dares you to try and like it – and most likely, few will take Sauvaire up on that dare.

Neither poignant nor eccentric, this just feels like a lesser 1970s Disney live-action comedy smothered in digital effects.

If writer-director-star Tyler Perry makes good on his threat to make A Madea Family Funeral the final film featuring his larger-than-life comedic heroine, then Madea will going out with a whimper and not with a bang, even by Perry standards.

The film never fully commits itself to neo-noir beyond the plot.

When Ramírez and Cruz, or Moura and de Armas, are on screen together, addressing the human cost involved in spycraft, Wasp Network becomes much more interesting. When it veers away from them, the film seems mostly comprised of conversations in restaurants, where new characters and organizations are constantly being introduced.

There’s a mild chuckle every so often in Early Man...but overall the movie collapses in a heap of familiarity and lackadaisicalness. Park is an animation legend, but even the greats occasionally whiff it.

The film has a killer case of the cutes that only Smith’s acidity can cut, and only so much.

Slow, emotionless and boasting fairly mediocre production values, this misguided kid movie turns Jack London’s classic tale about the natural world into something barely recognizable as part of that world.

The movie seems to be trying to be quirky, but it’s never quirky enough, and it’s hard to feel much for the characters or feel that there’s much in the way of healing going on. But it’s breezy enough to be mildly diverting and gently nostalgic.

While the film far outshines most of Cage’s recent efforts (he was direct-to-VOD when direct-to-VOD wasn’t cool) in terms of art direction and fearlessly madcap storytelling, the results are nonetheless muddled and messy.

Bernard and Huey isn’t particularly funny, although the script does tend to pump out a zinger once in a while. It isn’t particularly tragic, because the plight of these characters is well-earned.

While Clifford is definitely cute, the script (screenplay and story are credited to five writers) lacks any depth, relying upon Whitehall to carry and deliver the comedy — so much so that Casey feels simultaneously exaggerated and two-dimensional.

Unlike its levitating heroine, it never really gets off the ground.

Isn’t so much a movie as it is a corporate merger with stabbings and wiener jokes. A shameless piece of self-congratulation, fueled by self-cannibalism.