An oddly lifeless affair, though Gretchen Mol's sunny performance almost hauls it out of its doldrums.

Funny moments can be found throughout, but it's mostly silly and scattered.

This remake of Jerry Lewis's 1963 Jekyll and Hyde comedy is slackly directed and overloaded with flatulence jokes.

Where the hero of Maupin's novel learns some valuable lessons about love and faith, the film strikes a darker, even angry tone that's far more understandable and, in the end, far more convincing.

Just when the film seems to be getting bogged down in "before I made it big" anecdotes -- around the time she and Andy Dick, who was once dismissed from a food-service gig, spend a day operating a mobile lunch stand -- Gurwitch wisely broadens her focus, interviewing ordinary victims of corporate "right-sizing," plant closings.

The result is a little bit nutty and pretty entertaining in a thoroughly unconvincing way. And watch out for that 11th-hour twist -- it's a head snapper.

While Travolta and Gandolfini have the beefy, closed-off look of post-WWII era cops, they never FEEL: They look like actors playing dress up. Leto overcomes his delicate good looks to embody Fernandez's feral, faintly exotic charm, but Hayek is a standard-issue femme fatale, damaged on the inside but flawless on the surface.

On its own low-bar terms, it delivers the goods: pole-dancing, gut-chomping and Jenna J.

We don't learn too many specifics of Smith's brilliant career, and only a die-hard fan will find all of it vitally interesting.

While incontrovertibly light compared to contemporary master of melodrama Andre Techine's best work, this 2005 romance is best enjoyed as the welcome reunion of two of French cinema's most beloved stars.

It's a complicated plot, but one that leaves plenty of room for everything a fan could want: gunplay, swordfights, brutal mano a mano fisticuffs, motorcycle races, car chases, Japanese gangsters eating sushi off of topless women, and that old standby, a decapitated head in a box.

This examination of unexamined lives is beautifully acted by all involved, notably former pop diva Deborah Harry, whose nuanced portrayal of a middle-aged tart is almost painful to watch.

Restrained and decorous to a fault.

The feisty supporting cast is forced to carry the show, and fortunately, they're more than up to it, notably Olin, Platt and Jeremy Irons.

Rarely has more high-powered movie technology been deployed to achieve such frivolous ends. Kids seem to love it, while sophisticated viewers may find it enchanting, appalling, or both.

The film is flat-out gorgeous and contains moments of sheer lunacy.

The film's performances are uniformly strong and remarkably coherent, given the conditions under which they were delivered. The actors shot for eight hours straight in a fully lit and set-decorated house, each individually miked and followed by his or her own personal camera operator.

Expanded by writer-director Randall Miller from a nostalgic half-hour short he made while a student at AFI, this well-intentioned film about loss, grief and new beginnings gets bogged down in syrupy cliches and blunt self-help dialogue.

The superego gets bested by the id in Spanish director Joaquin Oristrell's curious period sex comedy, which mixes intellectual musings on psychoanalysis with vulgar guffaws of the basest sort.

There's no getting around the fact that Ross's whole cynical premise is based on the lurid male assumption that nubile, college-bound teens have few qualms about selling themselves, a fantasy as deluded as the targets of Ross's barbed arrows.

Screenwriter David Auburn's awkward dialogue spells out the film's themes with painful literal-mindedness.

The result is the farthest thing from a bland, spineless sequel: It's a brutal, insanely excessive successor to grindhouse pictures of yore.

Mona Demarkov may not be a convincing woman, but she's an awe-inspiring embodiment of the female principle at its most devouring, Medusa, Kali, and praying mantis all rolled into one frilly, garter-wrapped package.

The film's strident tone also serves to undermine its generally above-average performances.

Stanford's script is painfully obvious, right down to the line of dialogue spelling out the title's significance.

The film, though admirably ambitious, is resolutely earthbound, mired in ick and slime and never more wooden than in the delirious climax.

If you're expecting anything resembling the beloved cartoon, you'll enjoy the title sequence and nothing else. If, however, you set your expectations just low enough, or are an easily satisfied 8-year-old, you might have a bit of fun.

Rather than concentrate on Ann's disappointed infatuation and providing a satisfactory reason for its failure, Minot and, one suspects, Cunningham in particular, chose to flesh out the character of Buddy.