DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS: 3 STARS

“Dinner for Schmucks” begins with “Fool on the Hill” the minor chord Beatles classic. It’s a melancholy song that perfectly sets up the minor chord laughs to follow.

The movie, a remake of a French farce called “The Dinner Game” is essentially the story of two men, Tim (Paul Rudd) an investment banker desperate to marry the girl of his dreams and get a new office on the coveted seventh floor of his firm’s building, and Barry (Steve Carell) the “schmuck” of the title who, unwittingly, both keeps Tim from realizing his dreams and pushes him further along the corporate ladder. Barry is a full time IRS employee and part time taxidermist with the strange hobby of making historical dioramas with stuffed mice. Their relationship culminates at the titular dinner, an annual event thrown by Tim boss Lance Fender (Bruce Greenwood) a ruthless businessman who “collects” unusual people. The deal is simple, his top employees bring the strangest people—but no mimes please, that’s a cliché—they can to an elaborate dinner. The winner gets the promotion Tim so dearly wants. Of course by the day of the dinner Tim begins to wonder who the real schmucks are— Lance Fender’s people or their unusual dinner guests.

“Dinner for Schmucks” has quite a few laughs, but few of them are deep belly laughs. It’s not exactly a laugh a minute—more like a giggle every now and again—which is OK, but it fundamentally fails despite the jokes because Carell’s character is so extreme that the movie forces us to do exactly the opposite of what it sets out to do. Because Barry is such an imbecile we laugh at him instead of with him. Carell has played characters like Barry before and pulled it off. The great trick of both “The Office” and “The 40 Year Old Virgin” was to take an awkward character and make him lovable. Carell is sweet enough to make Barry watchable—imagine Jim Carrey, too manic, or Mike Myers, too soft around the edges—but his usual magic is missing here. He wrings laughs out of the one joke idea and makes us giggle, but for the wrong reasons.

Rudd ably plays the Hardy to Carell’s Laurel, but he’s playing straight man to a movie jammed with schmucky people. For example Jemaine Clement plays another one of his now trademarked self important, non sequitur spewing–“Never try to mate a lioness and a penguin,” he says—comic characters. It’s only a slight variation on his work in “Gentlemen Broncos” and doesn’t hold a candle to the laughs he generated on “Flight of the Concords.” Ditto Zach Galifianakis as a philandering mild control expert. In a movie filled with kooks like this Rudd is the anchor.      

“Dinner for Schmucks” isn’t an awful movie. You’ll laugh, or at least giggle, but director Jay Roach never pushes the comedy to the next level. The movie never really takes flight, even in the wild dinner scene climax that despite all the usual farce tropes—like fire and unexpected injury—it never feels out of control enough. Tone wise schmucks is way too sensible.

CATS & DOGS: THE REVENGE OF KITTY GALORE: 3 STARS

There was a time when a spy movie starring Roger Moore was cause for excitement. It was a guarantee of cool gadgets, some intrigue and at least one character with a name like Kitty Galore. His new film has all those things, except instead of a Stun Gas Cigarette or a storyline about a villain trying to destabilize Western Europe or character with a vaguely sexual name we get a kid friendly romp with, as the tagline says, “real spies… only furrier.”

The story involves Kitty Galore (voice of Bette Midler), once a cat spy for M.E.O.W.S. now a villain with a plan to broadcast a sound via every cell phone, TV and radio on earth that will drive all the dogs in the world mad. Her “Call of the Wild” will “make the world her scratching post.” Between her and victory, however, is a group of dogs, cats and even birds working together to fight against their enemies—both foreign and domesticated. They vow to stop the spread of radical felineism.

Along with the appeal of the voice cast, which includes Nick Nolte, Neil Patrick Harris, Christina Applegate and the former Bond, Roger Moore, whose character’s name, Tab Lazenby, is a cheeky reminder of another former Bond portrayer, the big thing “Cats & Dogs” has going for it is cute appeal. Cute, that is if you find a cat wearing a bunny suit adorable. Or if sad puppy dog eyes are your thing. If not, maybe you should go see “Inception” again, but animal lovers, especially young ones, will find much to enjoy here.

The movie is a pleasant, if forgettable, mix of mild action for the kiddies, talking, performing animals—it really is amazing what a good trainer can do with a bottle of liquid meat, (yes, there is such a thing)—and some pop culture references for the adults. The “Silence of the Lambs” gags feel a bit tired, like something from a Jay Leno monologue, but there are some good puns and the odd quote worthy joke.

The downside, and it is an occasionally very steep downside, is the inclusion of several human characters.

My first nominee for a trip to the kennel is Jack McBrayer who plays an inept magician named Chuck. McBrayer is very funny on “30 Rock” as Kenneth the NBC page but with every film role he takes on is revealing his lack of range. Here he is only half a degree away from Kenneth, but without the charm he brings to his television work.

Next up for a visit from the dog catcher is Fred Armisen. He’s not terrible in the movie, but he’s not really good either. He just is. And that’s disappointing from a performer who has created so many memorable characters on “Saturday Night Live.”

“Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore” is a rare breed, an action movie for tots that tosses a bone or two to the grown ups as well.  

SALT: 3 STARS
 
Movies don't come more "ripped from the headlines" than "Salt." The story of a sleeper agent living in the United States unfolded in real life recently but wasn't nearly as exciting or as silly as its on-screen counterpart.
 
When we first meet Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) she is an American hero after surviving a brutal interment in North Korea. "Do you know what she's done for her country?" asks her boss (Liev Schrieber). Actually we don't, but she did have a nasty black eye when she was rescued. She's married to Michael Krause—the world's leading arachnologist—and is happily riding a desk at an undercover CIA office in Washington. Everything suddenly changes one day, however, when a Russian defector named Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski) shows up with a wild tale of a sleeper agent named Evelyn Salt who is going to assassinate the Russian president in order to trigger a war. Accused, she makes a run for it—searching for her husband and the truth.
 
"Salt" has a Cold War inspired plot that even James Bond creator Ian Fleming, no stranger to elaborate plot musings—he once created a villain who killed his victims with liquid gold—would have rejected as over-the-top.
 
Logic flies out the window early on, leaving room only for outlandish plot turns unlikely twists and an ending that can only be described as preposterous.
 
That said, "Salt" is a lot of fun but it's not a story that will hold up to a great deal of scrutiny. Hitchcock would have referred to it as a refrigerator movie. It seems to (mostly) make sense while you are watching it, but later, when you are home in front of the fridge making a snack and thinking about the film you realize it doesn't hold up. But that's OK when the action is as relentlessly paced and fun as Phillip Noyce delivers here. The escalation from accused spy to fugitive happens very quickly—it's exaggerated—but once the action starts it covers for the trite dialogue—"You're not safe with me!"—and silly plotting.
 
The part of Evelyn Salt was originally written for Tom Cruise, who eventually walked away because he felt the story too closely resembled his “Mission Impossible” movies. Good thing too. Cruise would have brought his usual hero persona along with him, taking away some of the down-and-dirty pleasure of the film. Besides it's way more fun to see Angelina Jolie jump from building to building and use dead guys as a silencer for her gun. Cruise would have insisted on less good-or-evil ambiguity. Jolie oozes bad girl vibes and it works very well here. As Evelyn she's two parts bombshell, one part “MacGyver” and all badass. She has more lives than Felix the Cat, but that's all part of the fun.
 
Less than fun is the end of the movie. There will be no spoilers here, but the preposterous finale makes me think that a.) it was written to set "Salt" up for a sequel—can “Salt and Pepper” be far behind? or b.) Noyce didn't know how to end it and went for the easiest and least logical way out.
 
"Salt" is silly fun. A summer spy romp that works as an action film but doesn't bear up to scrutiny.

INCEPTION: 4 ½ STARS

Conventional Hollywood wisdom these days has it that audiences only want to see remakes, retreads and rehashes of old ideas. This summer has seen a seemingly endless parade of movies with the number 2 in the title and films based on 80s TV shows. Some have made money some have not, but every once and a while a movie comes along that proves Hollywood wrong. Last December “Avatar” showed that audiences would flock to a movie that wasn’t based on a videogame, existing novel or television show. It broke every box office record going and yet since then there has been a stream of derivative films clogging up the multiplex. Until now. Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” is a startlingly original film.  

Set in a world where technology can invade people’s dreams, “Inception” stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Dom Cobb, the leader of a corporate espionage team who specialize in stealing valuable secrets from within people's subconscious for profit. Cobb is an international fugitive tormented by dreams of his late wife (Marion Cotillard) who sees a way out of his personal nightmare if he takes on one last job offered to him by Saito (Ken Watanabe), a powerful businessman who can arrange for Cobb to skip past immigration and get back into the United States. All Cobb has to do is perform an “inception;” plant a thought in the mind of Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy) CEO of a global corporation. (One writer has called it “the Great Brain Robbery.) Cobb and his team—Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Eames (Tom Hardy), Yusuf (Dileep Rao) and Ariadne (Ellen Page), an architect who becomes Cobb’s new dream weaver—set out to implant the idea of dissolving his multibillion-dollar business into Fischer’s dreams.

“Inception” is the most innovative sci fi film to come out of Hollywood since “The Matrix” way back in 1999. It’s a movie that takes ideas very seriously—ideas drive the plot—and, as a result, takes its audience seriously. It never talks down to the crowd and in return demands viewers to pay attention. For those who do there are many rewards, and for those who aren’t willing to get drawn into the surreal story there are still many pleasures. That’s how finely crafted this movie is.

“Dark Knight” director Christopher Nolan (who also wrote the script) proves he can blow the doors off with the action—Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s MC Eischeresque gravity defying fight scene is a mind blower—and also handle the cerebral stuff.

He creates and juggles several worlds—dreams within dreams, worlds within worlds—until it becomes difficult to tell what is real and what isn’t. Each of these worlds comes complete with their own rules—five minutes in real life equals one hour in dream time, for instance—and is populated with well rounded, complex characters. The visuals are very cool—check out the streets that defy physics and curl over on top of one another—but amazing effects don’t mean much if the people interacting with them aren’t interesting. Nolan has put a great deal of effort into the look of the movie and its ideas but he never forgets the characters, who are the film’s single biggest asset.

Like the very best sci fi “Inception” is thoughtful, intelligent, audacious and humanistic. It’s also one of the year’s best films of any genre. 

THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE: 3 ½ STARS

“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is a remake of the famous segment in Disney’s “Fantasia” in name only. Sure there are a few lively mops and other cleaning supplies that come to life, echoing Mickey Mouse’s symphonic cartoon, but in the new version there is also wild special effects, Nic Cage’s crazy hair and best of all, Jay Baruchel as the title character.

The story begins in 740 AD, when Merlin is betrayed by one of his three apprentices. A battle between loyal Merlinians Balthazar (Nicolas Cage) and Veronica (Monica Bellucci) and the turncoat Maxim Horvath (Alfred Molina) ends when Veronica is trapped in a magic nesting doll called a Grimhold with Horvath and evil sorceress Morgana (Alice Krige). Cut to the 21st century. Balthazar has searched for one thousand years to find “the Prime Merlinian,” the only person powerful enough to kill Morgana and free Veronica from the Grimhold. The centuries long search ends up at the door of Dave Stutler (Jay Baruchel) a nerdy New York City physics student who sounds a lot like the guy from “How to Train Your Dragon.” In the coming days Dave not only learns about sorcery, but also a thing or two about self confidence, his love interest (played by ScarJo look-a-like Teresa Palmer) and how to defeat the forces of evil.

“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is the second Jerry Bruckheimer movie of the summer season, following “The Prince of Persia.” Like “The Prince of Persia” this movie takes a thin premise and stretches it to feature length, but unlike the ill fated “Prince” “Apprentice” dishes up fun characters to go along with the trademark Bruckheimer action.

Baruchel, Cage and Molina ground the movie with, if not exactly believable characters—I believe Cage as a thousand year old sorcerer, but I don’t believe that hair is actually his!—then characters that can hold their own against the film’s frenetic pace and wild action. Director Jon “National Treasure” Turteltaub keeps the pedal to the metal, plunking in an action sequence about every ten minutes. The action is typical Bruckheimer CGI overdrive but is inventive and mostly family friendly. There are a couple of images that may disturb very young kids, but anyone over the age of ten shouldn’t find anything here they haven’t already seen in videogames.

Cage and Molina bring a larger-than-life feel to their characters. Cage isn’t exactly in his extreme “Bad Lieutenant” form here, but he is clearly having fun; ditto Molina who clearly relishes playing the bad guy.  

Those guys eat up the scenery but it is Baruchel who provides the heart of the film. He brings the same charm and way with physical comedy to this mega-budget film as he does to the smaller character based movies he makes like “The Trotsky.” He’s appealing and even when the romance aspect of the story starts to drag Baruchel keeps us on side.

“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is a great air conditioner movie for these thermometer-busting summer days.

DESPICABLE ME: 3 ½ STARS

Universal's first 3D-animated movie “Despicable Me” is a generous mix of German Expressionism, a Spy vs. Spy vibe and The Jetsons.  It is stylish, gently funny and should be a big hit with kids and adults alike. It’s not exactly “Toy Story 3” but it is as close as we’re likely to get until the next Pixarian offering comes barrelling into theatres.

Bad guys don’t come much worse than Gru (voice of Steve Carell). He’s a supervillain, complete with minions, an evil genius assistant (Russell Brand), a panda skin rug in his lair and a plan to shrink the moon. The only things standing in his way are Vector (Jason Segel), a Bill Gates look-a-like rival evil overlord who is determined to throw a wrench into Gru’s plan, and Margo, Edith and Agnes (Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Gaier and Elsie Fisher) three orphan girls who force him to rethink his diabolical dealings.

“Despicable Me” has lots to recommend it. State of the art 3D animation, good voice work (more on that later) and lots of grin worthy moments, but despite all that it is the jellybean shaped minions who steal the show. They speak gibberish, ineptly do Gru’s bidding and supply most of the film’s memorable laughs. Swag-Are-Us is sure to have shelves full of the little buggers and for once I get it. Dammit! I want a minion, either real or stuffed. Doesn’t matter.

The script stays on track and, with the exception of one jab at Lehman Brothers—they’re the namesake of the Bank of Evil—avoids the trap of peppering the story with current pop culture jokes. Too often kid’s animated movies rely on current references for humor, but looking back, how effective is the Arsenio Hall impression in “Aladdin” for today’s audiences. Funny at the time for sure, but eighteen years later it can hardly be called timeless. “Despicable Me,” like the Pixar films, avoids that trap and instead relies on humor that arises from the situations and characters and a good dollop of heart to sell the story.    

More traditionally, for today’s animated features, the casting tends towards big stars, but unlike so many other animated films that shape characters around their celebrity counterparts—“Madagscar” I’m looking at you— “Despicable Me” actually contains some very nice voice work. Carell, the name-above-the-title star could have easily brought his familiar Michael Scott intonation to the role and everyone would have been pleased, but instead he actually creates an unrecognizable voice—it’s sort of a cross between Ricardo Montalban and Bela Lugosi—that is more than just an extension of his well-known comic persona. It’s a great performance even though we never actually see him on screen.

If “Toy Story 3” and “How to Train Your Dragon” hadn’t come out last month “Despicable Me” would be the best animated movie of the year so far.  

PREDATORS: 1 STAR

“Predators” begins with a shot of an unconscious man plummeting to the ground from an airplane which is a suitable image to kick off a 106 minute movie which itself careens through every characteristic of the action / horror genre except one—excitement.

It should be noted that “Predators” is not a remake or reboot of the much loved Arnold Schwarzenegger film but an addition to the series which has now swelled to include six films about an extraterrestrial life form with a bad attitude an even worse teeth. In this new story Adrien Brody leads a team of misfits—is there any other kind in this type of movie—made up of a who’s who of bad guys and gals. There’s a merciless mercenary, a Yakuza assassin, a Sierra Leone death squad goon, a death row inmate, a tough Russian VDV commando, a black ops sniper and a “one of these things is not like the others” character, a doctor. None have any idea how they landed in this strange world but it soon becomes clear they are there to hunt. Or should I say to be hunted. Hunted by big ugly extraterrestrials. “This planet is a game reserve,” says Royce (Adrien Brody), “and we’re the game.”

“Predators” starts off promisingly. The opening shot of Brody plunging to the ground looks cool and is rather mysterious. How did this happen? Where did he come from? It’s a good set-up for a story that should take us to interesting and unexpected places, Unfortunately “Predators” never matches the exhilaration of that first sequence.

Brody, playing against type as an action star, sets the tone for the film. As the defacto leader of the group he has the most screen time and not just because he has the biggest role. No, he has the largest amount of on screen time because he pulls a John Wayne and leaves gaping lulls between every sentence. A monologue that would take any other actor thirty seconds takes him one minute. Doesn’t seem like much but when the pace of the movie is as slow as Brody’s dialogue, what should have been an exciting romp with some good action, the odd spinal cord rip and some ugly aliens becomes a drawn out campaign to combat insomnia.

If “Predators” had been made in the 1970s—the era of “Logan’s Run” and “Soylent Green”—it might have been about something other than just a group of killers—and a doctor character who is essentially The Professor from “Gilligan’s Island”—learning the difference between hunting and being hunted. Mind bending it ain’t, but what should we expect from a director whose name resembles a fifth grade insult? OK that was a cheap shot at Nimród Antal, but if he’s going to only dish up tepid action—and the worst samurai sword fight ever captured on film—he could at least have tried to insert some subtext or substance; anything rather than another s-l-o-w monologue from Brody.

“Predators” doesn’t feel like a summer movie. It seems more like a Farch film—something that would be released in that dead February – March stretch when the studios dump all their bad movies into theatres.    

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT: 4 STARS

The people at the center of “The Kids Are All Right” are Nic (Annette Benning) and Jules (Julianne Moore), a long time lesbian couple raising their two kids, Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson) in the suburbs of LA. The Moms are opposites—Nic is a perfectionist doctor, Jules a free spirit still searching for her way—but the family is happy. Happy, that is until Joni contacts her biological father via the sperm bank. Turns out donor dad is Paul (Mark Ruffalo), a SoCal restaurateur who had no idea his sperm bank contributions resulted in one child, let alone her brother Laser as well. Despite Jules and Nic’s trepidation the kids form a relationship with Paul, but his presence brings with it some unwanted consequences.

There is a scene near the end of “The Kids Are All Right” that sums up the feel of the whole film. At a dinner party Nic and Paul sing a Joni Mitchell song. The “performance” is joyful, ridiculous and poignant simultaneously and is a perfect microcosm of the script. Like real life, the ups and downs of this particular group of folks are unpredictable, sometimes funny, sometimes not. This well drawn cast of characters keeps the basic story afloat, adding richness and color to a story that could have been an average romantic comedy.

Bening and Moore are warm but complicated presences. The audience never doubts for a second that they’ve been a couple for twenty years, and their intimate moments, their testy moments, their funny moments and their heartbreaking moments are believable and dynamic because of the skill of these two actors.  
As Joni Mia Wasikowska, such a flatline as Alice in “Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland,” shines here as the brainiac who is just coming into her own.

Also impressive is Mark Ruffalo as Paul, the interloping sperm donor. He’s a lonely guy in search of a family, and despite the trouble he causes—both wittingly and unwittingly—Ruffalo makes him charming and believable.

There’s that word again. Believable. Believability is the main strength of this film. The characters have a lived-in, realistic feel so even when the story falters the people in it don’t.      

It’s a story that is both very specific and rather universal, all at the same time. Nic and Jules may have an untraditional marriage but their story of parenting issues, mid-life crisis and long term commitment is as traditional—and crowd pleasing—as we’ve seen in a movie this year.

THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE: 2 ½ STARS

“The Girl Who Played with Fire,” much-anticipated follow-up to “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” is much like one of Sweden’s other great exports—the IKEA Billy bookcase system. It has lots of pieces, but not all of them fit.

The story picks up a year after “Dragon Tattoo”” left off. Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) is back in Sweden after lamming it around the world. She’s been deep undercover; not even Mikael Blomkvist  (Michael Nyqvist) knew where she was or what she’s been up to. Of course as soon as she touches down on Swedish soil her life gets complicated and by extension so does Blomkvist’s. She becomes the main suspect in a triple murder and Blomkvist, trying to get to the bottom of the case encounters human traffickers, Russian gangsters, motorcycle thugs, drugs and even a brute with an unusual genetic disorder. These people lead very dramatic and dangerous lives.

Despite the large number of story shards and characters “The Girl Who Played with Fire” is much more straightforward than “Dragon Tattoo.” It’s cluttered yet simplistic, stretching every plot point past its breaking point. Long meaningful stares are traded, dialogue that sounds torn from the Hardboiled Crime Writers Almanac is exchanged and tepid action ensues, all leading up to a “Murder She Wrote” climax where everyone spills the beans. It’s a disappointment because even at well over two hours “Dragon Tattoo” was gripping and exciting but at just over two hours “Fire” feels much longer. It is not as taut as “Dragon Tattoo” or as interesting.    

One of the things that made “Dragon Tattoo” so compelling was the partnership (and budding relationship) of Blomkvist and Salander. We watched as they became the Swedish “Hart to Hart,” battling the bad guys and perhaps even developing feelings for one another, but save for the occasional e-mail “Fire” keeps them apart and the movie suffers in the absence of their chemistry.

Salander, the punk rock computer hacker with, surprise (!), an attitude, is one of the better female characters to come along in recent years, but “Fire” blunts her effectiveness. She spends endless hours hiding in her apartment smoking Camel cigarettes when she should be out kicking butt. Where’s the fierceness from the first film?  
 
The film looks good—director Daniel Alfredson keeps the austere look of the first film intact—but on a technical note some of the subtitles are hard to read—white letters on white backgrounds are not a good idea!

By eliminating the book’s emphasis on systemic sexism and homophobia in favor of a basic crime story “The Girl Who Played with Fire” has none of the dramatic oomph of the first film. Worse, it has managed to make the main characters, so appealing in the first film, less interesting.

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE: 3 ½ STARS

Werewolves, Newborns and Vampires. Oh my. The second to last of The Twilight Saga, “Eclipse,” is jam packed with supernatural creatures, a revenge plot, a love triangle and teen angst. At a solid two hours it’s filled to over flowing with the deep dark gothic romance that made these movies a must see for every teenager on the planet. It’s also the most cinematically satisfying installment of the franchise so far.

Love is complicated but particularly when you are a human in love with a vampire and a werewolf. Part three of the saga finds Bela (Kristen Stewart) forced to make a decision between her love for Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and her deep friendship—and possibly love—for Jacob. Meanwhile the flame haired vampire Victoria wants to avenge the death of her lover James at the hands of Edward, so she puts together a vicious army of newborn vampires to seek out and destroy not only the Cullen family, but Bela as well. War is waged, declarations of love are made and the climax is something the Twihards have been anticipating for some time.

Unlike Harry Potter, another teen oriented literary adaptation, the Twilight story is mostly self contained—there is a back story, but the movies pretty much stand on their own. There are some odd moments and a reference or two to the Volturi that might leave non-Twihards scratching their heads but then again, very few of the unfaithful will probably ever see this movie.

Like Harry Potter, Twilight begins and ends with its characters and luckily for us the characters are evolving as the story continues. Not to worry Twihards, brooding is still the main sentiment on display, but for the first time Edward and Jacob make self aware jokes! As Bela and Eddie approach a half naked Jacob the vampire says, “Doesn’t he own a shirt?” OK, it’s not a great joke, but given the amount of press Taylor Lautner’s abs gets, it raises a smile. Later when Jacob throws down the double entendre, “Let’s face it, I’m hotter than you,” Team Edward may not laugh, but it is a funny line.

The guys may have lightened up a tad, but Bela still embodies the spirit of the Twilight story. When she says, “I’ve always felt out of step,” she’s speaking for every teenager in the theatre suffering from a bad case of the terrible teens. That one line explains much of the popularity of these stories. Teens, and in some cases people who remember what it was like being a teen, know how raging hormones can make you feel misunderstood, like an outsider. It’s one of the keys to the success of the series; it understands its audience.

It is also one of the few teen oriented films with a prudish attitude toward sex and sexuality. It’s about romance, and something else you don’t hear about very often these days, chastity. Turns out Edward is old fashioned, which I guess comes with being over one hundred years old, and refuses to have sex with Bela before marriage. It’s too late for his soul, he says, but he can protect hers by NOT taking her virtue. It’s a quaint idea, one probably more at home in a Victorian novel than a popular 21st century entertainment, but it strengthens the romance aspect of the story.

“The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” is a bit talky—these characters talk about everything before they actually act—but nonetheless is the near perfect mix of teen angst, romance and crazy supernatural action.

THE LAST AIRBENDER: 0 STARS

M. Night Shyamalan has said “The Last Airbender,” in theatres this weekend, will be the first of a trilogy. A mix of action and spiritualism it will be, he says, his “Lord of the Rings.” I’m here to tell you, this ain’t no “LOTR.” It’s barely “Police Academy” standard let alone anything that could be compared to Peter Jackson’s richly layered epic.

The story begins with the discovery of Aang (Noah Ringer) a young boy with a distinctive tattoo marking his head and back. He’s been frozen in a block of ice for one hundred years and is unaware that the evil Fire Nation has waged a war on his home, the Earth Kingdom. Along with his new companions, Katara (Nicola Peltz), her brother Sokka (Jackson Rathbone), he flies around on a large creature that looks like a “Where the Wild Things Are” reject, fighting for the land and trying to stay one step ahead of Prince Zuko (Dev Patel) a disgraced royal who thinks capturing the boy will restore his honor. You see, Aang is the last of his kind. He’s the Avatar, the only person alive with the ability to “bend” all four elements. Unfrozen Avatar boy would be an asset to the Fire Nation army, but it is his destiny to supply order to his war torn world.

Based on an animated television series, “The Last Airbender” struggles to wedge three seasons worth of “bender” mythology into a ninety minute movie. To bring the audience up to speed Shyamalan provides endless exposition. In fact, there is very little dialogue in the first hour that isn’t setting up the history, motives and abilities of the characters. Conversational it isn’t. It’s a lot of “What is the spirit world grandma?” and “Aren’t there spirits here?” followed by long winded explanations delivered with a gravitas that wouldn’t be out of place in a community theatre production of “Sweeney Todd.” Add some narration and location intertitles to the questions and exposition and it’s obvious Shyamalan has broken the golden rule of filmmaking—show me don’t tell me. He shows us plenty, but unfortunately tells us even more.    
 
He isn’t aided in the storytelling by a wooden cast of young actors who seem to have been hired more for their athletic ability than their acting chops. Even Dev Patel, such a winning presence in “Slumdog Millionaire,” is reduced to spending most of the movie simply screeching and glowering. When the other acrobatic actors aren’t over emoting they spend their time engaged in an elaborate game of Rock, Paper, Scissors battling with earth, wind and fire, the elements, not the funk band, to win control of the Earth Kingdom.

Even the murky 3D doesn’t add much, once again proving that stereoscopic images cannot rescue a weak story or mask poor acting.

“The Last Airbender” is my first seat belt movie of the season—that’s a movie so misguided, so off the mark you need a seat belt to keep you in your chair for the entire movie. Shyamalan really should have released the movie at Thanksgiving because it’s a turkey—but you won’t want a second helping. 

KNIGHT AND DAY: 2 STARS
 
“Knight and Day,” the new couple-on-the-run movie starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, borrows elements from “North by Northwest,” “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” and even “There’s Something About Mary” to form one whole that is slightly less than the sum of it’s parts.

If this was “North by Northwest” Diaz would have the Cary Grant role. Here she plays June Havens, a single woman who gets sucked into a very dangerous situation. A routine flight from Wichita, Kansas to Boston becomes not so routine when she meets Roy Miller (Tom Cruise), a handsome but deadly spy whose world is divided into two kinds of people—“bad guys” and “worse guys.” Following a crash landing, a some globetrotting and briefings and de-briefings by good guys and bad, June must learn who to trust and more importantly, who not to trust. At stake is a tiny battery that could power an entire city, a nerdy inventor and possibly, just possibly, June’s romantic future.

“Knight and Day” attempts to combine the specialties of its two stars—romantic comedy and action—but it’s not exactly a seamless package.  Diaz has years of rom com experience under her stylish Gucci belt and Cruise adds a comedic edge to his standard issue action hero but the two never quite gel. The movie can’t decide whether it is screwball spy movie like “Get Smart” with bigger guns or a romantic comedy with explosions. It is weighted heavier toward the action, but I couldn’t help but think it would have worked better as a straight up spy drama without the punch lines or the romantic yuks.  

It’s a movie that wants us to care more about the characters than we actually do. Cruise and Diaz are working it here, dodging bullets, exchanging the odd kiss and trying to create some heat, but every time we start to get to know the characters the movie slams the pedal to the metal and kicks into action movie mode. Much of the action is fun, some of it inventive, but none of it is really exciting, perhaps because the stakes are so low. When you don’t really care about the characters who cares if they get blown to bits by Spanish terrorists?

It could be that the on-screen personas of Cruise and Diaz are so firmly etched in our minds—he’s the heroic man of action, she’s going to end up with the guy in the end—that it’s hard to build excitement when you know how it’s likely to end. That’s not a spoiler… just an observation.   

Not that the whole thing is a flat line. Far from it. It’s a slickly made movie that shies away from the new norm of action photography. Here you can actually see what is happening as things blow up and Cruise catches some air on his motorcycle, unlike the recent “A-Team” movie that confused frenetic camera work with exciting action.

“Knight and Day” tries to use the star wattage of Cruise and Diaz to sell a story that tries to be an action movie that will appeal to the rom com set, or a romantic comedy that action fans will like. Unfortunately it falls somewhere down the middle.

GROWN UPS: 2 STARS

The once edgy comics of “Saturday Night Live” have gotten older and a little rounder in the middle but judging by their work in the ironically named “Grown Ups” they haven’t actually grown up.

Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, David Spade, Kevin James and Rob Schneider star in this celebration of arrested adolescence as five friend s reunited at the funeral of the beloved high school basketball coach. All married, except for the childlike Spade, they are at different stages of their lives. Schneider is a new age guru with a much older wife, Rock is a henpecked house husband, Sandler the hottest agent in Hollywood, with the hot wife (Salma Hayek) and James is the fat guy who falls down a lot. Like, a lot a lot. To spread their coach’s ashes they head to a cottage by a lake to spend the weekend, reconnect and endlessly trade good natured jibes. Over the course of the Fourth of July weekend their spoiled kids learn to live without cell phones, the boys play a dangerous game with a bow and arrow and ogle Schneider’s babelicious daughters.

“Grown Ups” isn’t quite rude enough for the Apatow crowd, but yet, not quite family friendly enough for grandma and the kids. For every outrageous joke about breast milk there’s a faux emotive or cutesy kid moment. The one liners come fast and furious—these guys only seem to be able to communicate by busting one another’s chops—but for the first hour there is precious little in the way of real jokes. It’s titter worthy rather than laugh out loud funny.

The guys have good chemistry, which they should, having spent years doing live television together, but it looks like the kind of movie that might have been more fun to make than to watch. These are (mostly) likeable actors but they’re not doing their most likeable work here. Sandler, for instance ruins a funny moment when his daughter says, “I want to get chocolate wasted!” with a snorting reaction that steps on the joke.

In the second hour Sandler is in heart warming mode but even this comes off as false. He spends the whole movie shrugging off his “Mr. Hollywood” nickname, but then in the climax—and I’ll be careful not to give anything away here—acts like a rich city slicker doing the local yokels a favor.

Luckily Sandler regular Steve Buscemi and the mangling of the name of a Canadian city provide some silly laughs. 
 
“Grown Ups” is lowbrow with warm and fuzzy aspirations but misses the mark.

CYRUS: 3 ½ STARS

Freud would have had a ball with Molly (Marisa Tomei) and Cyrus (Jonah Hill). Molly is what the Viennese Sexologist would have called an engulfing mother, a single mom with an extra strong connection to her son. Cyrus is, well, he’s Cyrus—an overweight twenty-one-year-old with an Oedipus complex and an attitude. Enter John, played by John C. Reilly, a single sad sack who falls for Molly and feels the wrath of Cyrus. As Freud said, “How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved.”

When we first meet John he’s been single for seven years and still pines for his ex wife (Catherine Keener) even though she is about to be remarried. At her insistence he goes to a party and following some of the most awkward attempts at picking up women ever put on screen he meets Molly, a pretty partygoer who is attracted to his awkwardness and honesty she begins a relationship with him. After a one night stand and the words nobody wants to hear—“My life is really complicated right now”—John follows her home and meets Cyrus, her man-child son. Cyrus pretends to be happy that John is around. “You deserve someone to love you in the way that I can’t love you,” he tells his mother, but secretly he is plotting to drive a wedge between the two.

“Cyrus” is a dark character study disguised as a comedy. Directed by Jay and Mark Duplass, a Coen-lite brother team best known for making no budget indies like “The Puffy Chair” that make the Dogme 95 films look like slick Michael Bay movies, it has a few chuckles sprinkled throughout, but don’t expect a John C. Reilly laughfest like “Stepbrothers.” “Cyrus” is about broken people, unhealthy relationships and how people act when they feel threatened. Like real life sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s sad, other times it’s awkward, but the brothers and actors ensure that whatever the tone of any given scene, and no matter how outrageous the situation, that it rings true.   

Tomei is the glue that holds the film together. As Molly, mother of Cyrus, girlfriend to John, she’s caught between two men she loves and must provide balance as their emotional war escalates. She’s warm and believable, but also vulnerable and unpredictable. It’s another great performance from an actor who should be a bigger star than she is. 

Reilly finds a balance between the character work he does for Paul Thomas Anderson in movies like “Magnolia” and the slapstick he’s been doing lately with Will Ferrell in “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.” It’s his most layered performance in some time and it is refreshing to see an average-guy leading man on the big screen.

Like Reilly, Jonah Hill adds dimension to Cyrus, taking a character who could have been played for laughs and adding some intensity and depth. Freud might have been speaking about him when he said, “One is very crazy when in love.”

“Cyrus” is an odd film. Not quite a comedy, not quite a drama it falls somewhere in between. Just like real life.

TOY STORY 3: 4 ½ STARS

Ten years have passed since Woody, Buzz Lightyear and friends went to “infinity and beyond.” That’s the cute catchphrase that serves as Buzz’s rallying cry, but it could also describe the box office performance of “Toy Story” one and two. These movies are big business, so it was inevitable that “Toy Story 3” would get pulled out of the Pixar toy box eventually. The question is, can it possibly break the curse of the triquel—can you name a good movie with the number 3 in the title?—and live up to the high standard established by the first two films?

The film’s story is rather simple. Andy (voice of John Morris) is ten years older since we last saw him. Preparing for college and a new life without his toys, he’s making the hardest decision he’s ever had to make—what to do with the toys he has shared his life with for so long? Do they go to the garbage, the attic or to a daycare where other kids can play with them? When a misunderstanding threatens to separate the toys, Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz (Tim Allen), Jesse (Joan Cusack) and the gang take matters into their own tiny hands but when they meet the huggable but evil Lotso (Ned Beatty) the garbage dump or the attic begin to look good.    
 
As bright and shiny as the packaging may be, “Toy Story 3” isn’t a run-of-the-mill kid’s film. Pixar—and the Pixarians who work there—are too clever by half to make a family film like “Furry Vengeance” or “Marmaduke.” What they do is much more subversive. They create stories about real issues with real emotions and tart them up with kid friendly characters. The result is ageless family entertainment that doesn’t talk down to any member of the household.

It’s darker than the previous films—the lumbering Big Baby doll may be the scariest villain yet this year!—but, like Grimm’s Fairy Tales and classic Disney before it, “Toy Story 3” understands that kids can handle something a bit more challenging than a talking dog on a surfboard (see “Marmaduke… actually don’t see “Marmaduke, it’s terrible). There’s nothing here that will traumatize the little ones, but mixed in with the action, the jokes and the familiar characters are moments of sadness—when the toys realize that Andy is moving in without them—of threatening behavior—why is Lotso so mean?—and loss of innocence. It’s sophisticated storytelling in a genre that too often doesn’t treat its audience with enough respect.

The voice work is uniformly strong, with all the regulars returning—Hanks, Allen, Cusack along with John Ratzenburger and Don Rickles—and some welcome new additions. Timothy Dalton’s rich baritone gives the theatrically ambitious plush hedgehog Mr. Pricklepants some of the film’s best moments and Michael Keaton’s Ken is very funny. One of the great pleasures of Pixar’s films is their unconventional voice casting. Who would have expected “Deliverance’s” Ned Beatty to turn up in a kid’s flick? Not me, but here he does some beautiful work, seemingly channeling a Tennessee Williams character as the nasty Lotso, the teddy bear who smells like strawberries.  

Technically “Toy Story 3” is top notch. The 3D enhances the story, adding some depth to the action scenes, but doesn’t get in the way of the storytelling. Pixar has also been careful to update the look of the film to state of the art technology, while retaining the look of the first two films. But more impressive than the technology, however, is how Pixar is able to weave a story out of pixels and terabytes about toys and other inanimate objects and make us care about them for the ninety minutes we’re in the theatre. That’s the real magic of “Toy Story 3.”  

JONAH HEX: 0 STARS

My motto is “I watch bad movies so you don’t have to” and rarely has that ever been as true as it was when I watched, nay, endured “Jonah Hex.” Clocking in at a brief 80 minutes—73 without the end credits—“Jonah Hex” isn’t just painfully short, it’s also painful to watch for about 70 of those 73 minutes. The story of a supernatural bounty hunter set on revenge against the man who killed his family is as disfigured as its main character’s face.

Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) wasn’t always the pizza-faced avenger we meet in the movie. Once he was a war hero, a confederate soldier whose refusal to obey a direct order from his commander Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich, grabbing a paycheque) led to the death of Turnbull’s son. Drummed out of the military he settles down with his wife and son; settles down that is, until Turnbull tracks him down, makes him watch his family be killed and scars his face with a branding iron. Left for dead he survives, but just barely. He has one foot in the human world, one foot on “the other side.” He can “talk” to the dead, which is convenient because most everyone around him winds up six feet under. His only companions are his horse, his dog and a courtesan named Lilah (Megan Fox) who clearly does not judge Jonah’s book by its cover. Hex gets his chance at revenge when he is hired by the government to stop Turnball from using his “super weapon” to destabilize the government and achieve what the civil war couldn’t—succession.

“Jonah Hex” is silly, but so are a lot of movies based on comic books. Its sins are way worse than a dose of silliness. It’s not just poorly made, it’s inept, with little idea of how to tell the story and even less of an idea of how to stage a cool action scene. There are odd flashes here and there—a surreal resurrection sequence must be seen to be believed and Jonah does have some cool moves—but by and large it looks cheap and feels incomplete, as though the cutting room floor is littered with the connective tissue that would have fleshed out the story to something that made sense. The production company responsible for this mess is called Weed Road so perhaps it shouldn’t be a shock the story has a drug induced, hallucinatory  feel.

Josh Brolin brings his real-life swagger to the role and has fun with some of the tongue-in-what’s-left-of-his-cheek lines, but because of the heavy make-up he’s wearing it is often hard to understand what he is saying.

Former It-Girl Megan Fox brings a tight corset, wasp waist and little else to her brief role and others, like Will Arnett and Wes Bentley, are given even less to do. 

The best thing about “Jonah Hex” is that at 73 minutes, it isn’t longer.

YEAR OF THE CARNIVORE: 3 STARS

“Year of the Carnivore” is musician-turned-VJ-turned-radio host-turned actor-turned-director Sook-Yin Lee's first feature film behind the camera. As befitting someone who has spent her entire career restlessly exploring the various facets of creative life, Lee has made a movie about a search for identity.

Sammy (a beautifully cast Cristin Milioti) is a twenty-one year old grocery store detective. By day she tracks down shop lifters, by night she pines for the affections of Eugene (Mark Rendall) a musician with commitment issues. Following a failed bit of bump and grind with Eugene, Sammy goes on a mission to become sexually experienced—she’s been celibate so long a friend jokes she’s be “revirginated”— sleeping with guys—some willing, some not—to overcome a crippling tickle problem. On her journey to “unleash her inner femme” she meets a mother with post partum depression, a wise but randy older woman and an avocado thief with some helpful words of encouragement.   

Call it “Sex and the Canadian City” but instead of Carrie’s couture we have high indie style—carefully mussed hair and shapeless clothes—and bicycles instead of limos. It’s a look at young, naïve people, behaving like young, naïve people, which could have been trite, but Lee, who also wrote the script, infuses the characters with so much heart that despite the movie’s taste for quirky humor and situations—in this world there are shoplifters everywhere and many people have sex in public—Sammy’s search for meaning in her life is heartfelt and compelling.

Milioti leads the strong cast in a performance that radiates vulnerability and humor. She’s physically frail but Milioti allows the character’s inner strength to shine through as it becomes clear to her that she must embrace who she is as well as who she isn’t. Her journey to her comfort zone (and Eugene’s arms) is a trip worth taking.

THE A-TEAM: 3 ½ STARS

Near the end of “The A-Team,” the big screen adaptation of the inexplicably popular 1980s television show, Col. John ‘Hannibal’ Smith (Liam Neeson) intones through clenched teeth, “Overkill is underrated.” That could be the mantra for the whole movie and not just its bombastic (emphasis there on the “bomb”) climax. Overkill indeed. The explosion budget alone for “The A-Team” could probably fund ten other, less fiery movies.

In an echo of the original series, the movie follows the adventures of the Alpha Team—A-Team for short—four highly trained but unorthodox U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers framed for a crime involving the illegal importation of counterfeiting printer plates. Branded war criminals and sentenced to jail time, they hatch an elaborate escape, involving the CIA and branches of the military. Then, as federal fugitives-turned-mercenaries, seek their revenge on the men responsible for their imprisonment. Cue the explosions.

“The A-Team” is a testosterone fest that can’t even be neutralized by the presence of the comely Jessica Biel. It is about boys and their toys—which in this case happen to be rocket launchers, motorcycles and Mohawk haircuts. It’s the first real action movie of the summer. Notice I didn’t say first great action film of the summer. It’s not great, but it is a fun summer popcorn flick jam packed with the kind of pedal to the metal action that makes guys go “Whoa!” every time something blows up in an  extravagant mushroom cloud of flame and smoke.

The action sequences are rather spectacular. In one crazy scene the team “flies” a tank through the air. It’s obviously a bit of CGI trickery, and as such has less real impact than say the stunts in “The Dark Knight” which were (mostly) done without the aid of computer imagery, but the sheer “wowness” of it all will make you gobble your popcorn a bit faster.  

Of course all the action in the world doesn’t mean much if the characters aren’t interesting. Luckily the cast is, well, if not exactly Oscar caliber, enthusiastic in their renderings of the familiar television characters. As “Hannibal” Smith Liam Neeson is slumming it a bit, but is a solid presence and a believable hard man. Bradley Cooper as “Face,” a specialist in that most oxymoronic of military oxymorons—military intelligence—brings the same kind of charm to the movie as he displayed in “The Hangover,” and “District 9’s” Sharlto Copley as “Howling Mad” Murdock seems to be having some off the hook fun. Ironically only UFC superstar Quinton “Rampage” Jackson as Bosco B.A. Baracus (the role Mr. T made famous) struggles to be heard above the clatter of the action, but don’t tell him I said that. He’s the only real-life bruiser in the bunch.

“The A-Team” is not just a remake of the television show but also an entertaining love letter to the cartoon violence, the wild action, the one-liners and cardboard characters of guy oriented 80s action movies.

THE KARATE KID: 3 ½ STARS

As the aspiring martial artist in the new “Karate Kid” Jaden Smith is a big screen natural like his old man. Whether he'll have a career like Will's or one like Ralph Macchio remains to be seen, but for now, his charismatic presence is the best thing about this big summer reboot.

He plays Dre Parker, a reimagined version of the character Macchio turned into a 1980s icon. This time around he’s a cocky 12-year-old victim of the recession. “There’s nothing left for us in Detroit,” says his mother (Taraji P. Henson) as she packs him up and moves to Beijing to take a job at a car factory. There he is a fish out of water, experiencing both cultural and personality clashes. Falling for a pretty classmate () he runs afoul of class bully Cheng who opens up a forty ounce can of Bruce Lee on Dre. Alone and bruised Dre befriendsmaintenance man and kung fu master--"It's China," he says, "everybody knows kung fu."--Mr. Han (Jackie Chan).  The Yoda to Dre's Jedi, Han teaches his pupil the discipline of kung fu and prepares him for the final showdown with the bullies, while Dre educates his master a thing or two about courage.

To anyone alive in the 1980s the “Karate Kid” story—although really the movie should be called “Kung Fu Kid,” as there’s no actual karate anywhere to be found—is a familiar one. The story has been freshened by a move to Beijing, but the filmmakers have wisely kept the heart and soul of the original. The underdog coming-of-age tale remains as heart tugging now as it was in 1984 hit movie but it doesn't feel like a run-of-the-mill summer blockbuster and that's a good thing. Director Harald Zwart takes his time with the narrative—although at 2 plus hours the simple story begins to feel slightly bloated—allowing the characters and not the action to take center stage. Add to that the beautiful Beijing backdrop and some nice performances and you have the anti-“Prince of Persia,” a movie that relies on wits and personality rather than brawn for entertainment value.

Smith is the centerpiece of the film. He’s clearly still a novice, but has inherited the best bits of both his mother (Jada Pinklett Smith) and father’s collective gene pools (he got his mother’s ears! Yay!) and has charisma to burn. He’s not going to win an Academy Award for this one, but he capably carries a great deal of the movie on his 12-year-old back.

Another surprise is Jackie Chan. Last time we saw him he was mugging his way through the truly awful “The Spy Next Door,” but here he shows his lion in winter side. For the most part he leaves his trademarked high kicking martial arts behind to focus on character and arcane sayings—“When fighting angry blind man it’s best to stay out of the way.”—but when he does fly into action somehow his trick of tying someone up with their own jacket in mid battle never gets old.

“The Karate Kid” is long, and it feels like it, with its tiresome and unfortunate catch phrase “jacket on, jacket off” (say it fast), an update of “wax on, wax off” from the first movie, but the payoff is a crowd pleaser and Jaden Smith is a superstar in the making.

GET HIM TO THE GREEK: 3 ½ STARS

There was a time when rock stars behaved like rock stars. They didn’t guest edit the “Globe and Mail” or appear on “American Idol.” In the good old days they trashed hotels rooms, drove Roll Royces into swimming pools and bit the heads off of bats. In other words they behaved like Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) the decadent singer who first rock ‘n’ rolled all night in “Saving Sarah Marshall” and now parties every day in “Get Him to the Greek.”  

Jonah Hill plays Aaron Green, a record company intern sent to London to accompany his idol, the washed up rock star Aldous Snow, to New York for an appearance on the “Today” show and then on to Los Angeles for his comeback concert at the Greek Theatre. Between “sips of naughty water,” condoms of heroin hidden in awkward places and all the sex, barf and rock ‘n’ roll two people can possibly cram into 72 hours the trip goes horribly wrong. Imagine if “The Hangover” starred Keith Moon and Jim Morrison and you get the idea.

Brand and Hill are the name brand comics in the credits, but another actor, not known for yukking it up, actually almost walks away with the movie. As the grizzled record label president Sergio Roma—a jaded executive who has been there, done that—Sean 'P. Diddy' Combs swoops in from time to time to deliver many of the film’s best lines. He’s at his best in the manic Las Vegas drugapalooza sequence—they smoke a giant spliff called a “Jeffrey,” so named because the name sounds safe but packs a punch; much like Jeffrey Dalhmer I guess—when he’s out of control and really letting go of his finely honed P-Diddy image.

Not that Brand and Hill don’t get laughs—they get plenty—but they are also required to bring some heart to what is essentially an R-rated raunchy comedy. The romantic scenes, the pining for their exes and the heart-to-heart talks, could work, but they don’t in this movie. Rock ‘n’ roll is a vicious game and “Get Him to the Greek” is best when it is loud and proud and sticks with the three chord comedy. Nobody wants to hear the Ramones backed by a symphony orchestra and likewise we don’t need to hear Snow complaining about the lonely life of a rock star. Screenwriter and director Nicholas Stoller would have done well to wonder “What would Keith Richards do?” from time to time and cut the mushy stuff.

Otherwise “Get Him to the Greek” is a rock ‘n’ roll romp, and while it doesn’t exactly have enough rock ‘n’ roll attitude—it’s more The Monkees than Led Zeppelin—it does provide one great lyric line, “When the world slips you a Jeffrey / Stroke the furry wall,” a great old school soundtrack—“Personality Crisis” by the New York Dolls, T. Rex’s “20th Century Boy”—lots of good inappropriate jokes and some fun cameos.

MARMADUKE: 1 STAR

Wilson and Anderson! Together again after “Bottle Rocket,” “The Royal Tenenbaums” and “The Darjeeling Limited.” Whoops. Right Wilson, wrong Anderson. This weekend Owen Wilson collaborates with Brad Anderson, not Wes, in a live action adaptation of Anderson’s long running comic “Marmaduke.” The arty flourishes and subtle humor of Wilson’s work with Wes has been replaced with big-dog-in-a-little-car comedy.  

Marmaduke (voice of Owen Wilson) is an unruly Great Dane with a habit of speaking directly into the camera. As the film’s narrator he introduces us to his family and leads us through the story of how Phil (Lee Pace), a dog food executive in Kansas, winds up moving the family to California and working for that state’s biggest manufacturer of organic kibble (a slumming William H. Macy). Before you can say “Kowabarka” Marmaduke is “getting his bark on” in The Golden State, winning a surfing contest, falling for a girl dog with Farah Fawcett fur, faking a cat attack to impress Alfa dog Bosco (Kiefer Sutherland) and tearing up the house. Oh that Marmaduke!

Not since Bill Murray loaned his voice to “Garfield” has a hip actor gone to the dogs like this. We can forgive Wilson the odd misstep like “You, Me and Dupree” as long as he keeps appearing in movies like “Fantastic Mr. Fox” but “Marmaduke” earns him a week wearing a shock collar. Bad dog!

He’s not alone. Kiefer Sutherland, Steve Coogan, George Lopez, Sam Elliott and the Black Eyed Peas singer Fergie all take advantage of the easy money of voice acting, but it is Wilson, in the title role, who must take the lion’s share (canine’s share?) of the blame for this. Where is the Humane Society when you really need them? Somewhere Benji and Rin Tin Tin are rolling over (in their graves) at the state of doggie style movies for kids.

Tots may find some fun in the talking animals and gentle action, but there is nothing here for anyone over the age of five except bad puns—Dog Vader, anyone? Boneillionaire, perhaps?—and an allegedly heartwarming story that actually gave me heartburn.

“Marmaduke” is an instantaneously forgettable kid’s flick that’s all bark, no laughs. There are no treats in “Marmaduke,” doggie or otherwise.

SPLICE: 3 ½  STARS

They grow up so quickly, don’t they? One day they are slimy bipedal creatures who look like a cross between Yul Brenner and a slug, the next they are flesh eating, underwater breathing alien looking supermodel types. At least that’s the way it is in “Splice,” a new sci fi thriller starring Sarah Polley and Oscar winner Adrien Brody, about a creature who goes from newborn to troubled teen in a matter of weeks.

Clive (Brody) and Elsa (Polley) are bio chemists (and boyfriend and girlfriend) who develop a splicing technology which binds the DNA from multiple animals to create new life and, possibly, cures for everything from Parkinson’s to cancer. It’s the medical breakthrough of the century. The next logical step is to fuse human and animal DNA but despite their success in the lab, their employers, the evil conglomerate Newstead Pharma, is wary of the publicity such a radical step would incur. Secretly the pair go rogue, continue their experiments, and give “birth” to a new life form they dub Dren (that’s “nerd” backwards), a tailed creature resembling a bald dinosaur. Clive, conflicted by the ethical and moral issues of cloning, wants to kill the creature but Elsa won’t have it. “Human cloning is illegal,” she says, “but this won’t be entirely human.” Dren develops at a rapid pace, changing from unrecognizable organism to something akin to a humanoid kangaroo. Soon though problems arise. The creature becomes Daddy’s little… whatever, leaving Elsa to deal with Dren’s difficult puberty.

Like the hybrid creature at the center of the action “Splice” is a cross of genres—part b-movie sci fi and part body horror à la David Cronenberg. Liberally mixing “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” “Frankenstein” and “The Brood,” “Splice” examines ideas of life and death, of playing God, of what is human (and what is not) and even touches on Woody Allen style relationships. There are plenty of moral concepts to chew on, many ruminations to be had on what it is to be human, but only if you look past the b-movie thrills director Vincenzo Natali slathers on with a trowel.

Splice goes places that bigger budget science fiction wouldn’t dare to tread. This isn’t the enviro-friendly sci fi of James Cameron or the space opera of George Lucas. No, this has more in common with the exploitation films of Roger Corman. There’s an icky creature, some scientist sexy time and loads of crazy science. Corman might not have been as successful at layering in the love, jealousy and real human emotions Natali heaps on his characters but I think the b-movie king would approve of “Splice’s” overall tone. It’s doesn’t skimp on the blood and guts but it’s funnier than you think it is going to be, wilder than expected—Sarah Polley’s maternal instincts towards Dren are right out of “Mommie Dearest”—and takes several unexpected twists and turns.

“Splice” is giddy good fun, the rare sci fi flick that revels in its b-movie roots while also offering up something to think about over a beaker of coffee afterwards.         

SEX AND THE CITY 2:
FOR PEOPLE WHO DON’T KNOW WHAT LOUBOUTONS ARE: 1 STAR
FOR PEOPLE WHO KNOW THAT BIG’S LAST NAME IS PRESTON: 4 STARS

Two years ago I learned a very important lesson. After giving the original “Sex and the City” movie a so-so review I was deluged with hate mail. My favorite letter suggested I “shut my damn manhole,” and never speak of the show or the movie again. What did I learn? I learned that you must never mess with Miranda, Charlotte, Carrie and Samantha. Too bad series creator and “Sex and the City 2” director Michael Patrick King hasn’t learned the same thing.

Since the last movie Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Big (Chris Noth) have settled into the comfortable life of ordering in food from fancy restaurants instead of getting dolled up and eating out in fancy restaurants five nights a week. She misses their old glamorous life, he likes putting his feet up on the coach and watching television in bed. Meanwhile gal pals Samantha (Kim Cattrall), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) are respectively, gulping down pre menopausal hormones, struggling to find a balance between work and child rearing and fretting that a busty nanny (Alice Eve) is attracting too much attention around the house. Their carefully manicured lives are fraying ever so slightly at the edges so what do they do? They head off for Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirate of course!

As I watched “SatC 2” the phrase “leave well enough alone” came to mind. On television Miranda, Charlotte, Carrie and Samantha became icons; cutting edge characters with verve, style and chutzpah. In the movies, however, it seems like they have been blunted. They still have style—the first obligatory Louboutin shot happens about sixty seconds in—but the verve and chutzpah seems forced. Michael Patrick King has allowed these once-upon-a-time titans of female empowerment to be trivialized. In other words he has messed with what made the show great. Whatever “SatC” is now, it is a much different thing than the television show.

There are flashes of the old magic every now and again. The iconic shot from Carrie’s old Upper East Side brownstone window to Big’s limo parked down below is a reminder of the good times and the quartet has undeniable chemistry. So when King allows the characters to be true to themselves the movie works, but a 146 minute movie needs more than flashes.
It’s hard to know exactly when “SatC 2” nukes the fridge (apparently the term “jump the shark” has jumped the shark). Perhaps it’s when Miley Cyrus shows up wearing the same dress as Samantha. Perhaps it’s during the intolerably bad “I Am Woman” karaoke scene, which is meant to be a grrl power anthem, but frankly, is just embarrassing. Or perhaps it is when the movie leaves its NYC home base and becomes the culturally insensitive “Carrie of Arabia.”

Whenever it is that it goes wrong, and believe me, it does go wrong, it probably won’t matter much to “SatC” fans. The audience I saw it with treated the movie as an interactive experience, commenting on the clothes, the relationships and the plot revelations as if they were enjoying a Cosmo with the girls at Buddakan. 

Fans have a real life loyalty to these characters that isn’t dissimilar to the bond the fictional Miranda, Charlotte, Carrie and Samantha share. I guess that’s what it means to be friends, you stick with them during good times and bad, but in “Sex and the City 2” there are more bad times than good. 

PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME: 2 ½ STARS

Über producer Jerry Bruckheimer draws his inspiration from many places. He makes movies based on video games, amusement park rides, and toys. One day perhaps he’ll make one based on a bed spring, and you know what? It’ll be successful. The guy is genetically programmed to make movies that make money. His latest blockbuster-in-the-waiting is “The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,” the action-adventure that hopes to make Jake Gyllenhaal (and his finely sculpted abs) the next Steve Reeves.

Based on the video game, the action packed story starts when Dastan is still a parkour practicing preteen peasant who out smarts the king’s guards and earns himself a spot in the royal household. Cut to many years later. Dastan is now a full grown man who looks a lot like “Brokeback Mountain” star Jake Gyllenhaal. He’s a bit on the wild side, but when he uses ancient firebombing techniques and slo mo to defeat enemy forces his reward is to be treated like a traitor and sent into exile. With the help of Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton) and a crafty ostrich jockey (Alfred Molina) he might be able to prove his innocence and prevent the mystical Dagger of Time—releasing sand from the hilt of the knife turns back time and turns Dastan into a cool looking special effect—from falling into the wrong hands. Along the way there are double crosses, much videogame action and, of course, a love match. That Princess Tamina. Jake just can’t quit her.

This is the movie I’m sure Gyllenhaal’s management hopes does for him what “Pirates of the Caribbean” did for Johnny Depp, that is, get Bruckheimerized. Like he did for Will Smith, Nic Cage and Depp, all actors best known for doing risky character parts, Bruckheimer’s magic may turn him into household (although still difficult to spell) name. Will it work? Probably. Maybe. Who knows? Gyllenhaal is already a respected actor, and does what he can to emerge from this sword and sandal showdown with as much dignity intact as possible, but the movie and his character don’t have the same kind of verve that, say, Johnny Depp showed in the first “PotC.” Dastan is a big action role but aside from the odd emotional moment Gyllenhaal never really makes the role his own, in the way that Depp made Captain Jack Sparrow into a character that sold Halloween costumes and inspired the guy at the desk next to yours to do bad pirate impressions for weeks after seeing the movie. Savvy? 

What it does have is lots of action. The camera NEVER stops moving and when “Prince of Persia”—the character and the movie—is flip, flop and flying it is campy good fun. Gyllenhaal is literally crawling the walls in a display of physical prowess (and some pretty cool parkour) that’ll make your eyeballs dance, but when the story goes into the Sands of Time Mythology ™, or should that be mumbi jumbo, it’ll make your previously watusi-ing eyeballs glaze over. The crazy time shifting folklore and hopelessly silly solution to the sands situation slows the movie down to a shuffle and is only saved by Sir Ben Kingsley’s eye-rolling pantomime.

“The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” is typical Bruckheimer bombast. It’s a huge movie with big battle scenes, a love story, a few laughs (some intentional, some not) and even a flock of ostriches. It has everything you want from a summer blockbuster except really memorable characters or a noteworthy story.

YEAR OF THE CARNIVORE: 3 STARS

“Year of the Carnivore” is musician-turned-VJ-turned-radio host-turned actor-turned-director Sook-Yin Lee's first feature film behind the camera. As befitting someone who has spent her entire career restlessly exploring the various facets of creative life, Lee has made a movie about a search for identity.

Sammy (a beautifully cast Cristin Milioti) is a twenty-one year old grocery store detective. By day she tracks down shop lifters, by night she pines for the affections of Eugene (Mark Rendall) a musician with commitment issues. Following a failed bit of bump and grind with Eugene, Sammy goes on a mission to become sexually experienced—she’s been celibate so long a friend jokes she’s be “revirginated”— sleeping with guys—some willing, some not—to overcome a crippling tickle problem. On her journey to “unleash her inner femme” she meets a mother with post partum depression, a wise but randy older woman and an avocado thief with some helpful words of encouragement.  

Call it “Sex and the Canadian City” but instead of Carrie’s couture we have high indie style—carefully mussed hair and shapeless clothes—and bicycles instead of limos. It’s a look at young, naïve people, behaving like young, naïve people, which could have been trite, but Lee, who also wrote the script, infuses the characters with so much heart that despite the movie’s taste for quirky humor and situations—in this world there are shoplifters everywhere and many people have sex in public—Sammy’s search for meaning in her life is heartfelt and compelling.

Milioti leads the strong cast in a performance that radiates vulnerability and humor. She’s physically frail but Milioti allows the character’s inner strength to shine through as it becomes clear to her that she must embrace who she is as well as who she isn’t. Her journey to her comfort zone (and Eugene’s arms) is a trip worth taking.

SHREK FOREVER AFTER: 3 ½ STARS

Once upon a time, in 2001, a green ogre named Shrek lumbered on to screens, bringing with him a different kind of animated story. The original “Shrek” was a fairy tale that mixed family friendly characters with a edgy sense of humor—like a Gingerbread Man tortured with a milk dunking. It was a monumental hit, so it wasn’t long before “Shrek 2” and “Shrek the Third” came along, each time with diminishing results. Luckily, the new “Shrek Forever After,” the fourth and final installment takes us off into that fairy tale happily-ever-after on a high note.

The 3D “Shrek Ever After” sees the giant green ogre (voiced by Mike Myers) in the midst of a mid-life crisis. He’s feeling bogged down by the responsibilities of marriage to Fiona (Cameron Diaz), raising his three kids and trapped by his newfound celebrity as the friendliest ogre on the block. “I used to be an ogre,” he says, “but now I’m a jolly green joke.” Longing for the days when life was simple he strikes a deal with an evil magician (voiced in an apparent tribute to Pee Wee Herman by story editor Walt Dohrn. In exchange for one day of freedom he will give the magician one day from his life. In a prime example of “be careful what you wish for because you just might get it” the unsuspecting Shrek signs the deal and begins a nightmarish “It’s a Wonderful Life” journey into a world completely different than any he could have imagined. Only the kiss of his true love—Fiona—can break the spell, but does she love him anymore?

Call this “Shrek the Metaphysical” if you like, one thing is for sure, it is darker than the preceding “Shreks”—although dark is still a relative term in the world of kid’s entertainment. The “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” message isn’t much different from anything you’d see in a regular children’s flick, but the journey to get there is.

In its opening moments this grim fairy features a tour-de-force sequence illustrating how snowed under Shrek feels by his new responsibilities. It’s a scene that will likely seem familiar to some of the parents in the audience, what follows—the well worn puns both vocal and visual, classic rock music cues and pop culture references—will seem familiar to anyone else who’s seen “Shrek” one through three. Even the bodily function jokes make an appearance—Shrek is described as “a lovable lug who showed that you don’t have to change your undies to change the world”—but instead of the been there, done that feel of “Shrek the Third” the new film weaves the familiar elements together into something resembling a large helping of comfort food. It doesn’t have the sparkling freshness of the first installment, but it has heart, some good jokes for both kids and adults and is a fitting send off to the series.

MacGRUBER: 2 ½ STARS

There are one joke movies and then there are the SNL skit movies like “It’s Pat” that stretch a thin premise out to ninety minutes and then there is “MacGruber,” a spy spoof starring Will Forte as a secret agent ready to save the world with only a couple of celery stalks, some dental floss and a tennis ball. Similarities to “MacGyver” are intentional, but only the tip of this all-80s parody.    

As the movie begins MacGruber has been in retirement for ten years since the murder of his bride (Maya Rudolph) on their wedding day. He is pulled back into the fray when it appears that his arch enemy—Val Kilmer playing a bad guy whose name cannot be repeated here for fear of having to wash my mouth out with soap afterward—may have gotten his hands on a nuclear warhead. Using their wits (and the above mentioned celery stalks) MacGruber, along with his Blaupunkt car radio, cherry red Miata and cohorts Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig) and Lt. Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe) must stop him before the State of the Union address.

Like the television character it is loosely based on “MacGruber,” (the movie, not the man) aims to use odds and ends to cobble together a weapon capable of slaying the SNL skit movie curse. It’s not entirely successful, but as a parody of 1980s action films—and the fashions of the 1980s, the cheesy soundtracks of the 1980s and that decade’s cavalier attitude toward movie violence—it has its moments just not enough of them.

First the good stuff. The casting of Powers “Red Dawn” Boothe as a tough talking army colonel is inspired, as is the prerequisite “getting-the-team-together montage. Also great is the dialogue, the kind that used to roll off the tongue of sweaty action stars like Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren. “He can be quite a fly in the ointment,” says MacGruber, “so let’s get a couple of fly swatters.” Those lines, played straight as an arrow, and coupled with some crazy non sequiturs provide many of the film’s laughs and there are many laughs, until the movie starts to rely a bit too heavily on bathroom jokes. This movie is more consumed by bums (and their contents) than a diaper designer. Imagine if JCVD told poo poo jokes in “Double Impact” and you get the idea.

Up until the introduction of celery stalks to a place where the sun doesn’t usually shine, the movie is a silly homage to the excess of 1980s b action movies, afterwards it’s an only occasionally funny homage to the excesses of modern sketch comedy—awkward pauses, pushing the joke past its breaking point and juvenile characters.

Forte is 100% committed to the role of the inept MacGruber, but his cocky, but insane take on the character gets tired after the first half hour. Wiig fares better. It seems she is incapable of not being funny even when the material isn’t up to snuff. Val Kilmer, who is looking more like mid career John Travolta all the time, hams it up, but doesn’t have the same comic verve he did in “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” but then, he had a much better script to work with that time out.

“MacGruber” has some laugh-out-loud moments, just not enough of them. It seems it would take more skill than Mcgyver to rescue this movie.

HARRY BROWN: 3 ½ STARS

Harry Brown is a common name, like John Smith or Greg Jones. It’s the kind of name that doesn’t draw attention to itself, but in the hands of Michael Caine, who plays the lead character in the revenge thriller “Harry Brown,” the name, the character and the movie become memorable.

“Harry Brown” is a gritty “Gran Torino” with British accents and a dash of “Death Wish.” Caine plays Brown as High Noon’s Gary Cooper, but instead of being set on the wide open plain, the action in this Teabag Western takes place in the urban terrain of the Elephant and Castle section of London.  

Caine plays a widowed man who strikes back after a gang of feral yobs kill his best mate and confidant Len (David Bradley). D.I. Alice Frampton, (Emily Mortimer), a persistent but ineffectual detective with the thankless job of policing the council estate, suspects Harry is a part time vigilante but can’t prove it, and even if she could her partner is ambivalent to the pensioner’s gun slinging ways. “As far as I'm concerned, Harry Brown is doing us a favor,” says D.S. Terry Hicock (Charlie Creed-Miles).

“Harry Brown” is a lurid picture of a crime ridden society. Its bleak worldview effectively illustrates the flip side of the Swingin’ London Caine came to personify in the 1960s. It’s a dark and menacing world where Len admits, “I’m scared all the time, Harry.” But all the atmosphere in the world wouldn’t be worth a hill of bangers and mash if you didn’t believe that an 80 year old man with an inhaler could effectively turn vigilante, take the law into his own hands and go all Dirty Harry on kids a fraction his age.

In a film ripe with nice performances—Mortimer is marvelous and Jack O’Connell is frightening as a young thug—Michael Caine shines, giving us a well rounded portrait of a man who is a trained killer—he was a marine—with a “certain set of skills” and as a defeated old man who has seen too much death and strife in his life.

He’s at his best when he plays the extremes—the heartbroken pensioner on one hand; the lethal killer who tosses off Tarantino-esque one liners like, “You failed to maintain your weapon, Son,” to a drug dealer whose gun jammed at the wrong moment, on the other—and it is his performance that humanizes the film’s often passionate pontificating on “Broken Britain.”

ROBIN HOOD: 4 STARS

In a twelfth century twist on a modern saying, the only two things you can count on in “Robin Hood,” the handsome new retelling of the age old tale from director Ridley Scott, are taxes and treachery.

Set in the waning days of Richard the Lion Heart’s (Danny Huston) ten year long Crusade, the origin story of how Robin Longstride (Russell Crowe) became Robin Hood, really picks up when Robin promises one of the king’s knights, Sir Robert Loxley (Douglas Hodge), that he will deliver a sword to Robert’s father, Sir Walter Loxley (Max Von Sydow), in Nottingham. Meanwhile, Richard's ridiculous brother Prince John (Oscar Isaac) ignores his trusted advisors, his chancellor William Marshall (William Hurt) and his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine (Eileen Atkins) and imposes crippling taxes on his subjects. Egging him on is the duplicitous Godfrey (Mark Strong), a traitor who is secretly trying to start a civil war and help France invade the country. Back in Nottingham, Robin delivers the sword, meets Lady Marion (Cate Blanchett), helps save England from the French and for his trouble is declared an outlaw by King John.
 
The new “Robin Hood” isn’t the bright Technicolor tale of the famous Errol Flynn version. Scott’s vision of the story is dark, thematically and visually. It’s a raw boned and bloody story of greed, unfettered ambition and treachery with a complex plot that touches on some very modern issues like taxes, too much government and one that might make the people of Arizona happy—unwanted immigration. It’s a mostly historically correct representation of the time and the Robin Hood legend, but Scott has added in an unbelievable plot twist involving Robin’s father and a coincidence that stretches credulity to the breaking point. It seems so out-of-place and glaringly silly I’m sure the writers of the campy cartoon series “Rocket Robin Hood” would have rejected the idea as being too outlandish.

Despite that lapse in judgment, the movie works. Fans of “Gladiator” will feel a sense of déjà vu—the only thing separating the two movies is the time period and Richard Harris and Oliver Reed, and they’re both dead. Scott and Crowe have returned to the winning formula of historical drama mixed with strong characters and lots of crazy action.

At the center of it all is Crowe, possibly the only Hollywood a-lister he-man enough to pull off “Robin Hood’s” combo of raging machismo, honor and emotional intensity. Physically he doesn’t look like he spends much time at the gym, instead it seems like he earned those muscles the old fashioned way—by swinging a sword. Equally strong is Blanchett in a role that could be redubbed, Maid Marion, Warrior Princess. She defines twelfth century girl power and, as one of only three female characters, cuts through the thick cloud of testosterone that hangs over the movie like a cloud. The supporting cast, including Mark Strong—in what is now becoming his trademark bad guy routine—Max Von Sydow, William Hurt, Danny Huston and Canadian Kevin Durand as the ironically named Little John, add much to the overall effect. 
 
“Robin Hood” is a new take on an old story; it’s entertaining, occasionally funny and as epic a film as we’re likely to see this summer.

THE TROTSKY: 3 ½ STARS

Most seventeen year olds are concerned with school, sports and finding a date for the prom. Not Leon Bronstein (Jay Baruchel). In “The Trotsky,” a new comedy starring “How to Train Your Dragon’s” lead voice, he is convinced he’s the reincarnation of revolutionary Leon Trotsky and tries to unionize the students of Montreal West High School. “The teachers have a union,” he says. “I think we deserve the same.”

Leon Bronstein’s (which was Trotsky's given name) journey from privileged rich kid to budding Bolshevik begins when he organizes a hunger strike at his father’s (Saul Rubinek) clothing factory. In retaliation Dad pulls Leon out of boarding school, slashes his allowance and exiles him to a public school. There he finds his calling (and falls for an older woman played by Emily Hampshire). Taking the term “student union” a bit too seriously Leon rails against his new school’s tyrannical hierarchy—notably Principal Berkhoff (an ominous Colm Feore)—and goes to absurd lengths to fulfill his pre-ordained destiny by changing the world or at least his small corner of it.

This Canadian commie comedy is chock full of funny lines, nice performances and echoes of “Ferris Bueller's Day Off” (with a hint of Warren Beatty’s “Reds”). Actor turned director-and-writer Jacob Tierney shows a firm hand behind the camera and has crafted a movie that is a cut above the standard teen caper. It’s more inventive, funnier, grittier (the movie’s best line, spoken by Jessica Paré can’t be reprinted here) than most teen fare, and while Tierney can take credit for much of the film’s success it is    Baruchel who really impresses as the burgeoning revolutionary.  

In what looks to be Baruchel’s breakout year—he has four films on the slate for 2010 including “How to Train Your Dragon” and “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” opposite Nic Cage—The Trotsky is a delightfully idiosyncratic performance. Leon may be a little left of center, both personally and politically, but Baruchel humanizes him. It’s a riff on the gawky geek role he patented in “Tropic Thunder” and “Knocked Up,” but this time he adds so much charm (and a good dollop of slapstick) to the performance it’s hard not to root for his and Leon’s mad mission.

“The Trotsky” works because of its clever script and optimistic outlook, but it sparkles because of Baruchel’s performance.

LETTERS TO JULIET: 3 STARS

If Nicholas Sparks ever wrote a romantic comedy it might be something like “Letters to Juliet.” Mixing an “it’s never too late to find true love” motif and other Spark’s standards like unopened letters and long lost love with some light comedy combines the best of what passes for romance on screen these days. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not exactly “Doctor Zhivago,” or even “When Harry Met Sally,” but it ain’t “Leap Year” either, and that’s a good thing.

“Mama Mia’s” Amanda Seyfried is Sophie, a pretty young fact checker at The New Yorker with secret ambitions to become a writer. She’s engaged to a workaholic chef (Gael García Bernal) who says he wants to “reinvent the noodle.” Taking a pre-honeymoon in Verona, Italy—he’ll be too busy to go after they tie the knot—they drift apart. He becomes engrossed in the food culture of Italy, she with The Secretaries of Juliet, a group of women who answer letters from the lovelorn left at the Juliet Balcony. When Sophie discovers a letter from 1957 her reply to Claire (Vanessa Redgrave) prompts the now grandmother to return to Italy after fifty years to search for her long lost love Lorenzo. Sensing a story Sophie tags along with Claire and her obnoxious grandson (Christopher Egan) as they search for Claire’s soul mate in the Tuscan countryside.

“Letters to Juliet” is essentially a romantic road trip through Tuscany which is lovely and takes your mind off the predictable story that is playing out in front of the luscious scenery. The love stories, (That’s right! SPOILER! There’s two of them!), move along pretty much as you expect they are going to, but while the progression of the narrative may be a tad stale the movie has more to offer than, to paraphrase Paul McCartney, silly love stories.

Beautiful scenery aside the movie is anchored by two very different performances. As Claire—described by her cheeky grandson as “Churchill in a dress”—Vanessa Redgrave does a nice job at showing steely determination, vulnerability and a lovely frailness. She is playing someone with a lifetime of experience and isn’t afraid to allow disappointment and sorrow as well as wisdom and joy shine through in her luminous performance.

On the other end of the scale is Amanda Seyfried, as the fresh-faced Sophie, a young person with hardly any experience. Seyfried is refreshingly natural and believable as a person experiencing their first life altering event.
As for the supporting cast, Egan doesn’t add much more than an iffy English accent and a strong jawline, Bernal is a caricature and Nero isn’t on screen long enough to make that much of an impression, but no matter, the movie works best when Seyfried and Redgrave are on screen together.

You’ll know how “Letters to Juliet” is going to end before the opening credits have rolled but in its quiet moments—as in a scene where Claire brushes Sophie’s hair—it transcend the clichés of the script and unearths some genuine heart.

IRON MAN 2: 3 STARS

When we last saw Iron Man he had a perfectly functioning palladium mechanical heart and a best friend who looked a lot like Terrence Howard. How times have changed. In “Iron Man 2” a mysterious malady is threatening to sideline his success and Jim Rhodes, his BFF, now looks like Don Cheadle.

In the time since the previous “Iron Man” movie, (two years in real time, six months in the story) oddball weapons inventor Tony Stark (Downey Jr.) has become a national hero. He’s one part Bono, two parts George Patton. His technologies, including the famous heavy metal suit, are keeping America safe, but not everyone are fans. The US Senate—in particular Senator Stern (Garry Shandling)—sees the egomaniacal inventor as a threat and wants him to hand over his secrets. Then there is his rival, Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell, the best actor out there who isn’t a major movie star), an unctuous arms dealer working for the government. He can best be described as a Stark wannabe whose technology is nowhere near as advanced as Stark’s. Even worse is Ivan Vanko aka Whiplash (Mickey Rourke), a Russia engineer whose father used to work with Stark’s old man. The weathered looking Vanko Jr. has built his own suit, this one equipped with whip-like attachments that harness electrical energy. As if that weren’t enough bad guys, even Bill O’Reilly makes a cameo.

Worst of all, though, Stark’s own technology may be working against him. It appears he is slowly being poisoned by the palladium that powers the miniature arc reactor in his chest.

On the plus side there’s loyal old Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) Stark’s Louboutin-sporting confidant who is now CEO of Stark Industries and Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson) Stark’s new assistant. She’s also a S.H.I.E.L.D. (if you sat through the credits of the first film you’ll remember S.H.I.E.L.D. as the fictional espionage and law-enforcement agency run by Nick Fury, played by Samuel L. Jackson) undercover agent named Black Widow who wears tight leather outfits and shows an until now unseen capacity for gymnastics.

There’s more plot and characters, but I’m almost out of space and haven’t gotten to the review yet and that is part of the problem with the movie. The first “Iron Man” was as clean and concise as a huge summer comic book blockbuster can be—solid characters, not too many of them, and a clear cut story. This time around the director Jon Favreau has thrown simplicity out the window, opting instead for Michael Bay style bombast. Where the first “Iron Man” was an idiosyncratic character study with cool action sprinkled throughout, the new one reverses that formula, relying on action to carry the day.

The characters are still fairly strong, but Downey’s charm seems to have faded a bit since he last wore the iron suit. Maybe we got to know him too well two years ago, but here the character doesn’t have the same kind of fresh appeal he had the first time around.  

Perhaps it’s because the overall tone of the film is darker, but “Iron Man 2” isn’t as much fun as the original. It should please comic fans familiar with the storyline and characters, and it certainly has its moments—things go boom and Rourke is a convincing, if underused villain—but like the “Spider Man” movies, which got bigger, but not necessarily better as time went on, “Iron Man 2” feels a bit leaden. Leaden or not, though, this will be the biggest hit this summer NOT in 3D.

BABIES: 2 ½ STARS

“Babies” the new documentary film by Thomas Balmes, may be the purest documentary to come down the pike this year. Released to theatres just in time for Mother’s Day it is an unadorned look, with no bells and whistles—or should that be rattles and diapers?—at a year in the life of  four infants growing up in Mongolia, Namibia, San Francisco and Tokyo, respectively.

Like the title suggests this is all about babies. There is no dialogue, no narration, no point of view. It is ninety minutes of babies crying, peeing, sleeping, playing… you know, the things that infants do. Some will find the footage adorable, others, like me, will find “Babies” to be the big screen equivalent of watching home movies (only without the proud parents cooing in the background).

Not that it isn’t well shot, it is. Balmes frames every shot beautifully and there is a real intimacy in his photography. This is as up close and personal as we should ever get with stranger’s kids, but as cozy as the movie may feel I couldn’t help but imagine that this would have worked better as a short film. The endless montage of babies going about their business—sometimes literally—wears thin after the first twenty minutes.

It is interesting to see the differing parenting methods and the natural curiosity of the kids among other things, but the film misses prime opportunities to really explore the cultural and sociological differences in its subjects.

Is “Babies” cute? Yes for a short while. But without a sense of drama, conflict or insight it is little more than a Baby’s First Year photo album come to life.  

EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP: 4 ½ STARS

“Exit Through the Gift Shop” is either a fascinating portrait of the growth of street art or an elaborate hoax. Documentary or visual art art project? Either way it is an engrossing movie about the creation of art, the exploitation of art and the meaning of art.

Directed by the acclaimed but unidentified street artist Banksy, a British pioneer of street art, blending graffiti, pop art with a satirical edge, it is allegedly the story of Thierry Guetta, a French videographer turned world famous artist. The film apparently blossomed from Guetta’s twin obsessions with videotaping everything in his day-to-day life and street art. He captured thousands of hours of graffiti artists in their natural habitat—painting on buildings and running from the police—as they created their own DIY art shows. Using consumer grade equipment he filmed some of the superstars of the field,      Shepard Fairey (whose Barack Obama portrait later became the iconic image of the president's campaign), France’s Space Invader and Banksy, the daring artist who once brazenly decorated the Israeli West Bank barrier. At Banksy’s suggestion Guetta put down his camera and reinvented himself as Mr. Brainwash, a street artist who hired a staff to create his art and threw one of the largest art shows Los Angeles had ever seen, grossing over one million dollars in two weeks. Not bad for an artist no one had ever heard of.  

Banksy is by far and away the best known artist to emerge from the street art movement, but despite earning a world wide reputation (and the resulting pay cheques) he is an enigma. Never photographed (in the movie his voice is distorted and he is only shot form behind) he is a mystery and that’s why I use words like allegedly and apparently when I talk about this movie.

There is a rumor that given the movie’s strange provenance—it ostensibly began as Guetta’s home videos, turned into a doc on Banksy and then a movie about Guetta, because, as Banksy said, “Thierry is more interesting than me”—that Guetta is actually Banksy and the entire film is the artist’s provocative and beguiling comment on the art world.

Billed as “the world's first street art disaster movie” it effectively documents how hype and a bit of nerve can be as important in the creation of an artistic movement as the art itself. Banksy, through carefully placed talking head segments (although his face is obscured by a black mask and hoodie) inserts some tantalizing insights into his world. “The reaction to the art is the most important thing,” he says of his street art, which, by its temporary nature is meant to provoke a response above all else. “I used to encourage everyone to make art,” he says later. “I don’t really do that so much anymore.” Is that a comment on the sudden rush of artists claiming street art as their own, or on Guetta or is it a joke, the punch line to Banksy’s 90 minute gag?

I don’t know, but I do know that “Exit Through the Gift Shop” is one of the most thought provoking and entertaining docs to come down the pike in some time.

PLEASE GIVE: 3 STARS

“Please Give” is a small indie movie in which the cumulative effect of the acting and dialogue outweighs the film’s shortcomings. Set in New York City it is the story of real estate, of neighbors, of young and old, of lovers and adulterers. In other words, it’s everyday life in the big city.

Catherine Keener and Oliver Platt are a married couple who run an upscale vintage furniture store. It’s the kind of place where sofas aren’t called sofas, or chesterfields, but referred to by their designer’s name—Corbeau or Eames. In a ghoulish (but common NYC practice) they purchased the apartment next door to theirs and are waiting for the elderly tenant (Ann Marie Guilbert) to pass away so they can renovate and take over her space. Until then the old lady is looked after by her two granddaughters, the troubled Mary (Amanda Peet) and Rebecca (Rebecca Hall), a kind hearted but quiet mammography technician (mamogrammist, maybe?). Mix in some liberal guilt, acne and two hundred dollar jeans and you have a story short on drama but bubbling with real feelings.

“Please Give” doesn’t have much of a story, and often feels more like a series of situations strung together than an actual film, but it does have interesting characters.

Keener and Platt have the easy way about them of a couple who have been together for many years. They are like well worn in shoes, comfortable and maybe just a bit stale.

She’s slowly becoming consumed by guilt. Guilt because they are well off, guilt because they make money reselling dead people’s furniture for a profit, guilt, because she doesn’t feel worse about waiting for the woman next door to die.

He’s on the edge of a mid-life crisis, and finds himself flirting with Rebecca’s pretty sister Mary at a dinner party. Keener and Platt make much of the material, adding layers of complexity to their characters through their performances. Both are thinly written, particularly Platt’s mid life meltdown, and although they could have simply been vessels for the film’s comments on New York life, the actors keep it real.

The knockout performances belong to Rebecca Hall and Amanda Peet as sisters with very different outlooks on life. As with Keener and Platt, the characters feel underwritten, but both blossom on the screen. Hall, so striking in “Vicky Christina Barcelona,” is mousey and withdrawn for much of the film but comes out of her shell and Peet is a fireball of neurosis; unlikable and emotionally damaged.

“Please Give” is a small movie that will likely only find a small audience but is worth a look to see some very good actors do some very good work.

Please file under obituaries:

FURRY VENGEANCE: 0 STARS

We are gathered here today to mourn the death of the career of Brendan Fraser. In the early 1990s Mr. Fraser’s career appeared vibrant and healthy in films like “Gods and Monsters” and “Mrs. Winterbourne,” but following a career high with box office champs like “The Mummy” his career began a long, painful battle with bad material and began to look as green as the green screens it often performed in front of. With the release of “Furry Vengeance,” the battle is lost. A career, who once shared the screen with Oscar winners like Shirley MacLaine and legends like Ian McKellan, is now content work opposite angry raccoons. R.I.P. the career of Brendan Fraser.

In “Furry Vengeance” Fraser plays Dan Saunders a well meaning real estate developer who has moved his family from Chicago to the middle of nowhere to oversee the building of a subdivision. His contract is for one year, but his supposedly eco friendly, “green” boss has a different idea. He wants to clear cut the surrounding forest and build a new suburb. To prevent the destruction of their homeland the forest’s animals, led by a raccoon who fancies himself a fuzzy William Wallace, leads a campaign of psychological warfare on Saunders.   

“Furry Vengeance” is as direct-to-DVD worthy a movie as will be released theatrically this year. Ten minutes in I was wishing the movie would take a sudden turn from flaccid family friendly fare into more “When Animals Attack” mode. Nothing would have pleased me more than to see the animals rise up against the filmmakers, hijack this movie and make it a true revenge film. Twenty minutes in I was wishing I had claws, like the little furry creatures in the film, so I could claw my own eyes out.

I know “Furry Vengeance” is meant for little kids, but kids deserve better than this. In a twelve month period that has given us “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and “Where the Wild Things Are,” movies that raised the bar for children’s entertainment, a return to this mush-headed-slapstick is taking a giant step backward. With the Laugh-O-Meter™ set somewhere between the hit-in-the-crotch gags of “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and a “Knock Knock” joke, it aims to amuse developing brains but it telegraphs every joke and by the time Fraser shows up in a pink track suit with the words Yum Yum on the bum, all hope is lost.

The cast is uniformly bad, but it is Fraser who makes the biggest impression. He’s acting at a level that, I’m sure, The Three Stooges would consider over-the-top. Watching this it’s hard to imagine that this is the same actor who once dazzled in “Gods and Monsters.” Perhaps my reports of his career death are, as Mark Twain once said, “greatly exaggerated,” but he has to try harder if he wants to keep his career off the critical list.    

Go see (if you must) “Furry Vengeance” with low expectations, but be warned, it’s worse even than you think it is.

GUNLESS: 2 ½ STARS

In its opening minutes “Gunless,” the new Paul Gross film, simultaneously pays homage to and has fun with the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone. The dusty landscape and stark camera work look lifted from “A Fistful of Dollars” and the opening credit pays direct homage to the Italian master. A red hot branding iron embosses the words “Once Upon a Time in the West” across the screen. However, with a quick flip of the compass dial—and by superimposing the word “North” over “West”—the movies takes a sharp turn away from Leone territory and into the Great White North. Call it a Poutine Western if you like, but with that one simple change “Gunless” becomes a uniquely Canadian western.    

Paul Gross plays The Montana Kid, an American gunslinger who comes North and finds nobility and becomes, well, gunless. Wanted by bounty hunters he drifts north, taking refuge in a small one horse town. He’s a tough, ornery killer who lives by the code of the gun, but after spending time with the locals and a goofy Mountie (Dustin Milligan)—particularly with the fetching Jane (Sienna Guillory)—he realizes he doesn’t need his firearm to live. His resolve his challenged when his arch enemy Ben Cutler (Callum Keith Rennie) shows up to take the Kid back to the US, dead or alive.

“Gunless” is silly. Not “Blazing Saddles” silly, but a man says to his horse, “You’ve got carrot breath” silly. The first half of the film is played strictly for laughs, and while much of it isn’t that successful, Gross does do the finest face plant in the history of Canadian cinema. The humor seems to be aimed at kids but I’m not sure children will be that interested in the story of a gunslinger, his code of honor and a widow who builds a windmill.

The “Benny Hill” humor is largely put on hold for the middle part of the movie when it becomes like an eager-to-please Bollywood movie, mixing romance, action, humor and even a dance sequence. It’s all over the place and while some of the transitions from farce to sincerity to gun slinging are kind of jarring, the movie retains a kind of goofy charm throughout.

Gross, despite his background in light comedy on “Due South,” is most effective here not when he is playing around, but when he is deadly serious. A number of scenes leading up to the pivotal show down show him in full-on Clint Eastwood “Unforgiven” mode, twirling his peace maker while trying to come to grips with all the blood he has spilled in his life. They don’t exactly fit the tone of the scenes that came before, or the scenes to follow, but it is a good indicator that Gross can play a slightly darker character than the nice guy roles he usually takes on.       

“Gunless” is probably the most Canadian western ever made. It’s a story about a gunslinger that is anti gun—boy, is the NRA going to hate this movie—and anti violence. More to the point, however, the story is used to display the subtleties of Canadian and American relations.

NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET: 1 STAR

No, you're not dreaming. Freddy Krueger is back. Twenty six years after he first started knocking off the sleep deprived kids of Springwood, Ohio the baddie who gets you when you are most vulnerable—when you’re asleep—is using his iconic claw hand to terrorize a new batch of kids.

Like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, Freddy had a run in with the local townsfolk and is now taking revenge on Springwood’s children. Unlike the Pied Piper, Freddy was a suspected pedophile who was hunted down and burned alive by a mob of angry parents. Now, years later he’s getting even, passing like a virus through the dreams of his murderer’s high school age children, all of whom have the same puffy, darkly circled eyes of people who drink way too much Red Bull. When Mr. Sandman comes bad things happen. The kids soon become daydream believers as one by one the dreamy Freddy becomes a reality and kills them while the doze.

Like the originals—there were eight “Nightmares” in total—the “Nightmare on Elm Street” reboot alternates between reality, scenes of spurting blood and is-it-a-dream-or-not-sequence? sequences. Drowsy teens wander aimlessly doing all the stupid things kids do in these kinds of movies, like go into creepy old attics late at night and, in a technological update, allow their computers to enter Sleep Mode—Oh no! The scariest thing about the movie, however, is the acting.
 
The actors aren’t aided by a script that has a teacher nonchalantly say, “Are you OK Miss Fowles?” after a student lets loose with a blood curdling scream in class but even though the script is loaded with clunkers it deserves better than it receives here. The acting is classic b-movie horror technique. Each of the teens seems to have talen lessons in how to exchange horrified meaningful looks with wide (although very puffy) eyes while spewing lines like “Just don't fall asleep! If you die in your dreams you die for real!”

The acting is uniformly cringe worthy, although Jackie Earle Haley, who is making a career playing these kind of unpleasant characters in movies like “Shutter Island” and “Little Children,” is suitably menacing as Freddy. Unfortunately in reinventing Freddy’s back story the film focuses on his nasty er… pastimes with the kids. A scene with Nancy (Rooney Mara) dressed in a little girl’s dress isn’t scary, it’s just creepy. And not creepy in a good b-movie way, I mean creepy in a perverse NSFW way.

By and large the surreal CGI effects—like Freddy emerging from a wall—aren't as effective as original director Wes Craven's decidedly lower tech effects. This is a remake, and not a very good one, that rehashes many of the images from the other “Nightmare” films, leaving the new film with a “been there, done that” feel for anyone familiar with the other movies. Of the new set pieces some are ridiculous—like the clawed hand in the bathtub tentatively attacking Nancy—and some are cool—like the indoor snow storm, but none have the oomph of the original.

Ironically without the thrills and chills of the original “The Nightmare on Elm Street” redux is a sleep inducing exercise in how NOT to revitalize a movie franchise.

THE BACK UP PLAN: 2 STARS

I’m trying my best to understand the romantic comedy. Since January I (and by extension, anyone else who went to the theatre and bought tickets) have been punished by a series of clichéd, hackneyed, tired, worn-out, stale, pedestrian, corny, banal, unoriginal… well, you get the idea… rom coms with titles like “Leap Year,” “When in Rome” and “The Bounty Hunter.” The latest one to come down the pike is “The Back Up Plan,” a movie that begs the question: When do romantic comedy traditions stop being funny, or romantic and become clichés?

Set in NYC (as all great rom coms are) but mostly shot in LA (I guess New York was busy that day) the Rom Com Script Generator ™ gives us Zoe, (Jennifer Lopez), a well-to-do, thirty-something pet store owner with a good apartment, a cute dog and a clothing budget that would bankrupt Ivanka Trump. What she doesn’t have is a child. With no husband or suitable boyfriend in the picture she turns to a fertility clinic but wouldn’t you know it, on the very day that sperm sample CRO104 becomes the baby daddy she meets the man of her dreams in the most NYC of ways—when he tries to scoop her cab. He’s Stan (Alex O'Loughlin) an eco friendly goat cheese vendor with a sculpted torso and a winning smile. She becomes his girlfriend and cheese muse, he becomes the de facto father to the child growing in her belly. They fall in love, fight, get back together again and rinse and repeat.

Structurally “The Back Up Plan” is so by-the-book it seems to transcend formula and almost work its way into heartfelt homage. By adhering so closely to the tried-and-true rom com playbook—unlikely couple meets, falls in love, breaks up and (SPOILER! but only if you’ve never seen a romantic comedy!) gets back to together—it becomes the latest entry in Hollywood’s ongoing exercise in seeing how many ways the same story can be slightly reshaped, recycled and recast before audiences revolt.

Not that “The Back Up Plan” is the worst of the crop. It may share a story skeleton with several other recent films, but nothing plumbs the depths of “Leap Year,” a film so bad even its star Matthew Goode has released a statement urging audiences not to see it. It’s even better than “The Bounty Hunter” but despite a few genuinely funny moments—a group for single mothers, or women without “penis partners” is a highpoint—it relies on the usual mix of slapstick and romance (often in the same scene) and does neither of them very convincingly.    

It’s the kind of movie set in pregnant lady land where women are unable control their cravings and the Rom Com Script Generator ™ spits out dreaded exchanges like: “You’re not making any sense.” “No, all of a sudden everything makes sense.” It’s not that it’s bad exactly, it’s just that we’ve seen it all before.  

THE LOSERS: 3 STARS

Everything about “The Losers” is exaggerated. Things don’t explode, they burst into fiery mushroom clouds. The body count is in the triple digits and why use a machine gun when you can use a bazooka? It has all the elements of a regular action flick, just more and, as an added bonus, one of the bad guys is from Quebec.

At the beginning of the film The Losers are five highly trained special ops soldiers (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Chris Evans, Idris Elba, Columbus Short, and Oscar Jaenada)—calling them losers is like calling a tall guy Shorty—on a mission in Bolivia. Their job is to locate and mark a terrorist’s den so the air force can swoop in and lay down a heap of shock and awe. Minutes before bombs are scheduled to drop a busload of underage children arrive at the compound. The Losers try and call off the raid, but the high command—a man named Max (Jason Patrick)—refuses. Several very loud noises later The Losers are forced to fake their own deaths and go rogue. When a mysterious stranger (Zoe Saldana) shows up with a proposition they see a way to reenter the United States and get their revenge on Max.

Of course there’s more to the story than that. There’s next generation weapons, more international locations than a James Bond movie and an internationally wanted bazooka toting bad girl who dresses like a Guess model. This is a comic book movie—it’s based on a Vertigo DC series—with comic book characters and a silly premise. The bad guy is engineering a global conflict to bring peace to the US. Huh? Duct tape saves the day (Red Green would be so proud). Double huh?

It’s all a bit silly but since the movie doesn’t take itself seriously neither should we. It’s a fun ride that while bigger isn’t necessarily better. There’s a bit too much slo mo—I think it’s time we finally put an end to the “Reservoir Dogs” slo motion shot of the team walking toward the camera—the ending is clearly set up for a sequel and the supposed good guys seem to take a bit too much pleasure in killing.   

On the upside, however, the cast seems to be having a good time alternately delivering tough guy lines—“You’re going to die very badly”—and typical action movie one liners—“Everybody except for PETA wants her dead” with loads of enthusiasm.  

Actor wise as Clay Jeffrey Dean Morgan picks up where his character in “Watchmen” left off, and Zoe Saldana adds to her action movie reputation in a highly physical role that proves that Hit Girl isn’t the most lethal female in the theatres this week. Idris Elba provides the closest thing to a fully rounded character, mostly because he isn’t saddled with the one-liners the other guys have to spout.

“The Losers” is an action packed comic book romp that would make a better Saturday afternoon matinee than date night movie.

OCEANS: 4 STARS

To really know the ocean, says narrator Pierce Brosnan, you have to see it, taste it and live it to feel its power. “Oceans,” the spectacular new Disney nature film doesn’t literally let you feel or taste the sea, but its beautiful and intimate photography will get you as close as possible to experiencing the ocean without actually getting wet.  

Released just in time for Earth Day, “Oceans” is the evolution of “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau.” Technological advances allow “Winged Migration” co-directors Jacques Cluzaud and French star Jacques Perrin to go deeper and stay longer to capture a vivid portrait of life in the sea. Not strictly a documentary—some scenes are staged—it is more a travelogue of the earth’s oceans and their citizens.

It may not fit the traditional definition of documentary but it certainly is cinematic. With a minimum of narration—the weakest part of the film—they present a dazzling array of images from a spectacular ballet of dolphins, diving birds and a school of sardines to a spider crab showdown that looks like an underwater version of Michael Jackson's “Bad” video. And there’s drama too. A scene with sea turtle hatchlings and a flock of hungry frigate birds wouldn't be out of place in a Hitchcock film, but it’s bloodless. There’s nothing here that will upset the little ones.

It is a representation of life at its most basic. Sometimes it’s as brutal as a Tarantino revenge drama—a mantis shrimp pulls an arm off a crab and eats it in front of him. But often it’s eye-poppingly beautiful with close-ups of creatures that look like they sprung from the depths of H. R. Giger 's imagination—there are as many strange beasts here as in almost any sci fi movie—and impressive wide shots of cascading schools of fish and dolphins leaping in and out of the water.   

It’ll entertain the eye, but it probably won’t engage the brain in the same way. There isn’t much in the sense of educational information—for instance, we're told that the humpback whale is majestic and that penguins aren’t very good “figure skaters” and not much more—but it should spark kid's interest in the ocean and will certainly fire their imaginations. If nothing else it’ll make adults crave sashimi.

The inevitable eco message about humans polluting the sea is effectively illustrated by a shot of a sea lion frolicking with a rusted shopping cart, but like the educational component of the film it’s more a starting point for conversation with the kids over fish sticks after the movie than a complete lesson in conservation.  

Much of the pleasure of “Oceans” is derived from seeing it on the big screen. The scale of the screen pales compared to the size of the ocean, but it is as up-close-and-personal as most of us will ever get to these strange and often wonderful creatures.

KICK-ASS: 4 STARS

If Quentin Tarantino made a kid’s coming-of-age movie it might look something like “Kick-Ass”. It has most of his trademarks—clever dialogue, good soundtrack and some high octane violence—but there’s a twist. The bloodiest, most cut throat purveyor of ultra violence in the film is an eleven year old girl.  

Based on a wild indie comic of the same name by Mark Millar “Kick-Ass” tells a couple of intertwining stories. First up is Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), a fanboy who creates a superhero alter ego called Kick-Ass as a way to boost his self esteem. In life he says his only superpower is being invisible to girls, but when he dons the suit he becomes… only marginally more super. His exploits, however, grab the attention of Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and Hit Girl (Chloë Moretz), a slightly psychotic father and daughter team of masked (and in Hit Girl’s case, wigged) avengers who admire Ass’s style and moxy. For the caped crusaders in “Kiss-Ass”  all roads lead to drug lord Frank D'Amico (a suitably evil Mark Strong) a ruthless tough guy who is unafraid to go all medieval—his men even use a giant microwave as a torture device—on his enemies.

The action scenes are plentiful and frenetic and once you get past the question, “Why would Chloë Moretz’s parents allow her to do this?” they’re really fun. It’s a little unsettling to see a young girl wielding a switchblade, gunning down dozens of bad guys and going hand-to-hand with a full grown man, but for superhero starved audiences—“Iron Man” won’t be out until next month!—Hit Girl could become a guilty pleasure. It’s not right, and the character will likely be controversial, but it is cool. Not since Natalie Portman in “Léon” has the screen seen such a sweet faced assassin.

But Chloë Moretz’s performance isn’t all high flying action. She makes the best of the darkly comic script, playing both sides of the Mindy / Hit Girl character. Out of costume she has a sweet playful side that pretty much evaporates when she puts on the wig and the weapons.

She plays well off Cage, who once again scores with a very loopy performance, but it is her ability to bring some exuberant fun to her scenes that is “Kick-Ass’s” strongest suit.

“Kick-Ass” is an unusual coming of age story in all respects except one, and that is the film’s weakness. The love story between Dave and Katie (Lyndsy Fonseca) is typical teen fare and is soon forgotten when the action kicks in.

Apart from the mushy teen stuff, however, “Kick-Ass” is one movie that lives up to its title.

DEATH AT A FUNERAL: 3 STARS

Family functions can be intense at the best of times. A Christmas dinner can turn into a theatre of war over burnt gravy; a family reunion, a battleground of hurt feelings and resentment. Probably no other family event is as highly charged as a funeral. Emotions are heightened and everybody is on edge. Add to that charged atmosphere a boyfriend who has been accidentally dosed with LSD, a gay blackmailer, and a grumpy uncle and you have “Death at a Funeral,” a new all star farce starring Chris Rock and Tracy Morgan.

Based on a 2007 British film of the same name “Death of a Funeral” begins on the day of Aaron (Rock) and Ryan (Martin Lawrence) father’s funeral. Opting for a home funeral, every family member has been invited. They include the crusty uncles Russell and Duncan (Danny Glover and Ron Glass    ), a soon to be married couple Elaine and Oscar (Zoe Saldana and James Marsden) and family friends Norman (Tracy Morgan) and Derek (Luke Wilson). Also attending is Frank (Peter Dinklage, reprising his role from the original) an uninvited guest with a secret about Aaron and Ryan’s father.

“Death at a Funeral” is a farce. There are lots of slamming doors, outrageous situations, a mysterious rash, a hallucinating guest and a coffin that seems unable to contain the dead body within. If you don’t like one joke, stay with it, there’ll be fifteen more in the next minute-and-a-half. They come fast and furious and while only about half of them land it’s enough to make “Death at a Funeral” worth a look.

Chris Rock as the centerpiece of all the action. He’s the comedic anchor around which all the action spins but he’s not just the film’s straight man. He sets up and knocks down joke after joke—including one hilarious Screamin’ Jay Hawkins reference—all the while adding some warmth to the rare non-comedic scenes.       

Also strong is James Marsden who shows off his comic chops in the unforgiving role as the high guy. It’s a “Reefer Madness” portrayal of someone in the depths of an acid trip—if you want realism rent “Requiem for a Dream”—but it is funny watching him try and interact with the other guests at the funeral while out of his mind.

The rest of the ensemble cast flits in and out of the action with varying degrees of success. If the idea of Tracy Morgan saying, “I’m gonna forget about the poop in my mouth,” amuses you, then his role is successful (if a little less sophisticated than the material he spouts every week on “30 Rock”) and the great Danny Glover (who once played Nelson Mandela) has little to do other than reprise his stuck on a toilet gag from “Lethal Weapon 2.”

Much of “Death at a Funeral” is in very bad taste but despite a hint of homophobia delivers some solid laughs.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO: 4 STARS

If you think Swedish cinema is all isolation and despair, a tortured Bergmanesque look at the human condition, think again. In recent years directors like Lukas Moodysson and films such as “Let the Right One In” have redefined Scandinavian movies; quietly leaving behind the icy introspection typical of the best known filmmakers from that part of the world. The latest Swedish film to gain international notice is “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” a truly thrilling thriller based on a best selling novel.

In the opening minutes of the film Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), a muck raking journalist for the controversial Millennium magazine, loses a libel case brought against him by a Swedish industrialist. Before he begins his three month prison sentence he is offered an intriguing job. Hired by Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube), the scion of an industrial dynasty, he is charged with solving a forty-year-old murder. In the late sixties Vanger’s favorite niece disappeared, leaving no trace except for framed, pressed flowers which arrive every year on Henrik’s birthday. It is a cold case, one that the police haven’t been able to solve, but Vanger feels that Blomkvist’s dogged style might be able to uncover some new clues. Aiding the journalist in his search is Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), a trouble computer hacker with a massive tattoo of a dragon on her back.

“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is a pulp thriller, complete with Nazis, bible references and bondage. There’s nothing terribly highbrow about it, but there is a certain elegance to how director Niels Arden Oplev slowly unfurls the clues, stretching the story tautly over the two-a-half-hour running time. The plot shouldn’t work; it has story shards all over the place—the verdict in the libel case, the hacker and her evil parole officer, the disappearance—but Oplev keeps the storytelling as crisp as the sound of a boot crunching on the snow that envelopes the landscape.

Top it off with some terrific performances—particularly from Rapace and Taube—some melodrama and as twisted a bad guy as we’ve seen since “Silence of the Lamb’s” Buffalo Bill and you have a slow burning mystery that builds to an explosive climax.   

If this was an American film (and it will be soon) the disgraced, but dogged reporter might be played by Jeremy Renner, the computer hacker by Kristen Strewart and the obsessed industrialist by Christopher Plummer, and you know what, it wouldn’t be any better than the Swedish version. See it in its original language before Hollywood snaps it up and ruins it.

DATE NIGHT: 3 ½ STARS

Stranded-in-big-bad-New-York-City movies are nothing new. Jack Lemon and Sandy Dennis endured everything from exploding manhole covers to muggings in 1970’s “The Out of Towners” and in “After Hours” Griffin Dunne got sucked into the vortex known as Soho for one very long, weird night. Nope, the idea of average people getting in over their heads in the Big Apple has been done before, and done better than it is in “Date Night,” but this movie isn’t about the plot, it’s about the likeability of its two stars Tina Fey and Steve Carell.

Fey and Carell are Claire and Phil, a bored married couple from Teaneck, New Jersey looking to spice up their dull date nights with a fancy outing in Manhattan. It starts off promisingly. They can’t get a table at the hottest place in town, but when another couple doesn’t show up for their reservation Phil assumes their name, The Tripplehorns, and grabs the table. Dinner is great—wine is flowing, the truffle topped risotto is delicious, Will.i.am is at the next table—until two thugs (Jimmi Simpson, Common) come calling for the real Tripplehorns. Seems the other couple are blackmailers in possession of a flash drive that local mafia bigwig (Ray Liotta) desperately wants back. The case of mistaken identity sets them on a collision course with a notably shirtless security expert (Mark Wahlberg), crooked cops and wild car chases.

“Date Night” wouldn’t be as enjoyable as it is—and it really is fun—without the two leads. Fey and Carell breathe life into a hackneyed situation, bringing not only the previously mentioned likeability, but also great chemistry and a way with a line—and an adlib—that really works. Without them “Date Night” would be a silly exercise in action – comedy, like the lackluster “The Bounty Hunter” from a few weeks ago. With them it is a romp, which while predictable, has real, deep genuine laughs.

They are aided by a good supporting cast, most of which aren’t going for laughs. Liotta brings his usual tough guy swagger, “Benjamin Button” Oscar nominee Taraji P. Henson is solid, if not a little dull as a detective who takes just a bit too long to realize that something sinister is afoot and Jimmi Simpson and Common are suitably sleazy as dirty cops, but it is the comedy supporting roles that shine.

Wahlberg mixes humor and sculpted abs in a memorable turn as a helpful—and terminally topless—security expert and the pairing of James Franco and Mila Kunis throws off some comedy sparks in their brief scene as the elusive Tripplehorns.       

“Date Night” isn’t the most original comedy we’ve seen this year, but it is the best cast one.
 
THE WILD HUNT: 4 STARS
 
“The Wild Hunt” takes place in the world of LARP. No, that’s not a place like Middle Earth or Oz, it’s an acronym for Live Action Role Playing. Imagine Dungeons and Dragons outdoors and with elaborate costumes and you get the idea. Players create a mythology, don costumes and physically act out their characters' actions. “The Wild Hunt” examines what happens when the real world collides with fantasy land.
 
The film starts simply enough. Dumped by his girlfriend Evelyn (Tiio Horn), lovesick Erik (Ricky Mabe) follows her to a LARP event where she now wears the pelts and crown of a Viking princess. Also attending is Eric’s wacked-out brother Bjorn (Mark A. Krupa) who takes his role as a Viking warrior a bit too seriously. As the Viking showdown with the Celts approaches Eric realizes he must carry a foam sword and play along if he hopes to leave with Evelyn on his arm. Here the story deepens. Eric’s outside interference is unwanted, not just by Evelyn but also by the evil Shaman Murtagh (Trevor Hayes). Eric’s presence throws off Murtagh’s plan to “sacrifice” Evelyn in The Wild Hunt ceremony. Before you can say “Pass me the mead,” bona fide violence erupts and the line between fantasy and real life blurs.        
 
“The Wild Hunt” is a strange beast. Set against a backdrop of Viking mythology, complete with battles, elves and some real violence, it is by turns amusing, engrossing and horrifying. The tone of the film darkens as the running time ticks by. The violence—both mental and physical—becomes more realistic as the LARP spins out of control, but none of this would matter much if the characters weren’t as well developed as they are.
 
Both Eric and Bjorn have story arcs that exist in real life and fantasy land. Eventually as the two meld the brothers discover what really makes each of them tick. It’s interesting stuff, and even if the tone is a little uneven, “The Wild Hunt” remains one of the most intriguing films of the year so far.

CLASH OF THE TITANS: 3 ½ STARS

“Clash of the Titans,” a remake of the much loved 1981 Ray Harryhausen stop motion epic, is part history lesson, part Saturday afternoon matinee popcorn flick. Avatar’s Sam Worthington stars as Perseus, the half human, half god made famous by Harry Hamlin in the original film.

In the film’s opening minutes Perseus is rescued from a watery grave by a weathered looking fisherman (Pete Postlethwaite) and his wife (who appears to be at least one hundred years younger than old Pete). Years later, a grown up Perseus (Worthington) witnesses the death of his adopted parents at the hands of Hades (Ralph Fiennes). They are the unfortunate collateral damage of a war between the gods and the aggressive Argos, a warring culture determined to starve the gods of human prayers and thereby diminish their power. Temples are burned, statues toppled in the beginning of their heretical era of “man.” Hades makes a deal with the Argos—if they sacrifice their princess he’ll call off the attack of the dreaded Kraken, the most fearsome creature known to man or god, and save their civilization. Enter Perseus, who, as it turns out is a demigod and the only person alive capable of killing the Kraken and ending the tyranny of the gods. His odyssey is played out amid double crosses and much slow motion.      

Like the original the cheese factor is high. Bring Lipitor. There’s so much cheese on screen I could feel my cholesterol levels rising by the minute. From Zeus’s (Liam Neeson in the role originally played by Laurence Olivier) shiny Olympus disco suit to the bad jokes that litter the script it’s an unparalleled cheese fest. It’s also a lot of fun.

After a slow start the action picks up with a battle between some giant not-so-soft-shelled crabs and an exciting show-down between Medusa (complete with a hairdo of snapping snakes) and Worthington and company. The battles with the mythical creatures are a holdover from the original, but where Harryhausen used plaster and steel armatures to bring the creatures to herky jerky life this time around they’re made of binary code. It makes for a bigger spectacle, but are they better? Well, yes, in a way, but they are not as cool as Harryhausen’s handcrafted creations.

Either way the action sequences are a blast but aren’t aided by the murky 3D technology added in post production. In this post “Avatar” world convention Hollywood wisdom says that all action movies must be in 3D, but if this is what retrofitted 3D looks like, no thanks. Other than a bit of depth it doesn’t add anything to the film, except a few extra dollars to the price of the ticket.  

“Clash of the Titans” is good cheesy fun that pays homage to the original film.

THE LAST SONG: 2 STARS

"The Last Song" has all the trademarks of a Nicholas Sparks romance. There's a love story between rich and poor, disease, divorce, unopened letters and a character who’s just "trying to feel something again." And it has Miley Cyrus sans her blonde Hannah Montana wig. This time out she's an angry musical prodigy spending a summer vacation with her father, a man she barely knows.  

Cyrus is Ronnie Miller, a troubled teen—“Her grades are in the toilet and she doesn't have a friend without a pierced something,” says her mother—sent to stay with her estranged father for the summer in a small Southern beach town. She's angry at her dad, and despite being a gifted pianist and a earning a scholarship to Julliard, she hasn't played the piano for ages. She mopes around the small town until she meets Will, a chiseled volleyball player who helps her rescue a nest of sea turtle eggs. (I'm not kidding.) Through wildlife and mud fights they form an on-again-off-again relationship despite their differences. Enter into the mix a terminal illness, a burned church and a jealous ex and you have a story worthy of the Nicholas Sparks Story Generator™.

"The Last Song" features Miley Cyrus in the kind of role Kristen Stewart excels in. The brooding, moody teenager act that Stewart has down pat doesn't come as easily to Cyrus who pitches her performance somewhere between an episode of “Hannah Montana” and a TV disease-of-the-week movie. Given the pre-hype for the film I assumed this would be her adult debut, but given the tone of her performance the transition from child star to grown-up actress continues at a glacial pace. She has several emotional scenes here, and sheds a tear or two, but mostly her performance relies on tricks learned on the Disney stage—eye rolling, running her hands through her hair and flashing her toothy smile. She has a movie star’s charisma and warmth, but not the acting chops.

Greg Kinnear is there for support, but even he looks mildly bewildered at the Sparkisms in the script. It’s a mixed bag of every romance cliché known to man, except, the Fabulous Gay Confidant™. In his / her place is the wise little brother played by Bobby Coleman.  

But, having said all that, a movie like “The Last Song” isn’t about the plot or the acting or the clichés. It’s like an Elvis movie. It’s about the phenomenon that is Miley. Disney is very carefully easing her from TV star to movie star, and if the projects don’t exactly radiate an adult sensibility, who cares? They are counting on the long term success. There is plenty of time for her to mature along with her fans, who, I’m sure, Disney hopes are in the Miley game for the long term.

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON: 3 ½ STARS

“How to Train Your Dragon,” the story of a kind hearted Viking boy who becomes a Dragon Whisperer, is one of the best animated films yet from Dreamworks, home of “Shrek” and “Madagascar”. It will likely engage audiences of young kids (But no tots please! It’s too intense) and their willing parents, but as good as it is it still doesn’t come close to the lyrical beauty of a Pixar film.

Based on the kid’s books by Cressida Cowell, Jay Baruchel stars as Hiccup, a skinny outcast in his remote Viking village, located, as he says, “in the meridian of misery.” Killing a dragon is “everything” around there but he is too young, too inexperienced and too clumsy to be of much use as a dragon hunter. To make up for his lack of prowess he develops a sling shot that should be able to fell the dreaded Night Fury, a winged beast described as the "unholy off spring of lightening and death itself." Low and behold, it works, but when he captures one of the creatures he discovers two things. One, he can’t bring himself to kill the dragon, and two, the dragons aren’t the fearful creatures everyone thinks they are.  

“How to Train Your Dragon” differs from “Shrek” and other Dreamworks offerings in that it is an action adventure first and a comedy second. Gone are the pop culture references that populate (and instantly date) the scripts of “Shrek” and “A Shark’s Tale.” They’ve been replaced by well executed action scenes and an underdog story that uses humor to accentuate the story, not dominate it.

Scenes of Hiccup riding Toothless, his domesticated dragon, are a step toward Pixar territory for Dreamworks. They are marvelously rendered in thrilling 3D and wouldn’t look too out of place in “Avatar.” The three dimensional work in those scenes is lovely, but doesn’t add much to the earth bound sequences. The village scenes have depth but no eye popping effects.

As usual for this kind of animated feature celebrity voices dominate the voice work. Gerard Butler and Craig Ferguson play the elder Vikings with vigorous Scottish accents, and Jonah Hill brings some fun to Snotlout even though his character is a dead ringer for a young Jack Black, but Baruchel brings the heart and soul to the film. His nasally twang is easy on the ear and perfectly suits the nebbishy character who thinks that if he kills a dragon he’ll get a girlfriend.

“How to Train Your Dragon” has some good messages for kids about not judging a book by its cover and several rousing action sequences. It’s not Pixar good but it is a leap in the right direction for Dreamworks.

CHLOE: 2 ½ STARS

Despite being a remake of a French film the new movie from Atom Egoyan bears all the earmarks of the director’s work. Continuing his career long examination of sexual taboos and miscommunication he’s made a movie that is part sexual Scheherazade, part Single White Female but is also his most straightforward movie in years.

Starring Amanda Seyfried as an escort hired by Catherine (Julianne Moore) to test her husband’s (Liam Neeson) fidelity, it’s a steamy thriller the director calls “an extreme examination of how to re-eroticize a marriage.” Add to that a layer of sexual obsession and you get a film that feels like a throwback to the erotic thrillers of a couple of decades ago.

Egoyan has crafted a feature that breathes the same air as Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct; films made when the director was busy making his own subtly sexual films like Exotica. At the time Roger Ebert wrote, “There is a quality in all of his work that resists the superficial and facile. Even at the very start, he wasn't interested in simple storytelling.” Until now, Roger, until now.

There is no question that Egoyan is as gifted a filmmaker as we have working in this country, but Chloe, I’m afraid doesn’t denote a high-water mark in his filmography.

He does, however, bring much to the table.
      
The film is gorgeous to look at—from the beauty shots of Toronto, to the collective “wowness” of the cast. To match the rich visuals he’s brought his own sensibility to the story, and instead of simply remaking Nathalie, the French film Chloe is based on, he has populated the plot with strong female characters. And, as befits any erotic thriller there are twists and turns galore. Unfortunately most of them will be obvious to anyone who has ever read a Joe Eszterhas script and that is the film’s Achilles’ Heel.  

The movie’s closing moments play like a predictable b-movie, albeit a highbrow one, but a b-movie nonetheless.

Chloe marks the first time Egoyan has worked from a script that he didn’t write and despite its angels—nice performances and beautiful photography—it made me yearn for the auteur of the Exotica years who would have made an uncompromising movie with a more dramatic ending.

HOT TUB TIME MACHINE: 3 STARS

“Hot Tub Time Machine” has a Frank Capra life is wonderful feel. The story of three old friends who try and relive the wildest weekend of their lives, and literally jump back in time all the way to the Regan years, is Capra-esque... if Capra swore like a sailor and infused his movies with sexual humor and vomit gags.

Following the attempted suicide of Lou (Rob Corddry) his only two friends Adam (John Cusack) and Nick (Craig Robinson), try and cheer him with a trip to the scene of their greatest party weekend ever—the Kodiack Valley Lodge. The place has seen better days, but through a magical combination of a hot tub and some illegal Russian Red Bull they are transported back in time to a sea of fluorescent coloured ski suits, Walk men and oversized Ray Bans—a.k.a. the Regan years. To a soundtrack of 80s hits like “Kick Start My Heart” and “Safety Dance” the guys and Adam’s nephew (Clark Duke) grapple with the mysteries of the space and time continuum. By exactly recreating the Winter Fest 86 weekend they hope to find a crack in time and get back to present day. Of course, the only thing more complicated than a fissure in time is three middle aged guys with a case stuffed with cocaine and booze.

I’m sure director Steve Pink (and producer Cusack) are likely hoping to emulate the success of that other recent buddy comedy of bad manners “The Hangover.” They have a good chance—it’s the only comedy opening this weekend—but its sense of absurdity and disjointed feel may dampen audience enthusiasm a tad.

Having said that, the movie aims to please audiences who would pay to see a movie called “Hot Tub Time Machine;” the nudity—both male and female—you’d expect from a whirlpool movie is in place, although just enough to keep it on this side of a PG rating. There’s also loads of Apatow style toilet jokes, barfing and off colour jokes, but what good time audiences may not be as prepared for the sentimentality that follows the Cusack character. Luckily that and the “will it be their chance to start over” dilemma is dispensed with fairly quickly and only briefly throws the movie off balance.

Comedy wise “Hot Tub Time Machine” belongs to the lesser known members of the cast. Corddry, best remembered as the manic second banana in movies like “Blades of Glory” and “Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay,” is off the hook as the volatile Lou. Rather than worry about the consequences of tampering with time, he looks at the upside of a slightly altered world—a future where Miley Cyrus doesn’t exist and “Manimal” is still on the air. Finally someone has figured out how to put Corddry`s unhinged energy to good use.

Craig Robison, seen every week on “The Office” and, recently, as the best thing in lame movies like “The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard,” and “Miss March,” brings a great deadpan to the mix and owns several of the film’s funniest moments.
  
“Hot Tub Time Machine” could have been the comedy equivalent of “Snakes on a Plane,`` a great title and not much else, but despite a couple of dead spots and jokes that may not mean much to anyone born after 1976—will they get the Cold War jokes?—it aims to please and is loud, overbearing and fun—kind of like the decade it pokes fun at.

GREENBERG: 2 ½ STARS

“Greenberg,” the new film from “Squid and the Whale” director Noah Baumbach, is the kind of navel gazer where upper middle class people spend a great deal of time wondering what they’re going to do with their lives. The movie sees Ben Stiller in “master thespian” mode playing the title role; a character so disagreeable he makes Larry David seem like Tinkerbelle.

In this story of Yuppie angst Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) is fresh out of treatment for depression. Determined to “try and do nothing for a while,” he takes on the easiest job he can find—house sitting for his brother while his sibling is on business in Vietnam. It should be six easy, breezy weeks, but nothing in this guy’s life is easy breezy. Between a sick dog, an alienated best friend and his brother’s assistant Florence (played by mumblecore queen Greta Gerwig), he is reduced to a pile of misanthropic neurosis. Fighting off happiness wherever it may appear in his miserable life he alternately seduces and rejects Florence, playing her like a yoyo.  

“Greenberg” benefits from Baumbach’s ear for dialogue and his insight into the human condition, it’s just too bad he wasted his talents on these two characters. Placing lines like “youth is wasted on the young… life is wasted on people,” in Roger’s mouth is clever and almost makes you like Roger, but Stiller plays him as such a self pitying sad sack; so socially awkward to the extreme with an anger management problem to boot, it is impossible to get onside with him. Stiller’s best work has been characterized by tetchy characters, but in his comedies the angry edges are smoothed out by an underlying sweetness he brings to his roles. “Greenberg,” the film and the character, are much more grown up than Stiller usually plays, but that maturity has brought with it an unpleasant edge.

In Florence Greta Gerwig has found an aimless character that seems to have stepped out of one of the low budget mumblecore films she is best known for. She’s a doormat with enough self awareness to realize that she “has to stop doing things because they feel good” but seems to be unable to find the inner strength to improve her life or her choice of men. Gerwig, in an extremely natural and unselfconscious performance, however, plays her with no small amount of charm. The way she strokes the dog with her foot as they wait for the vet to see them is touching, subtle and very real. It’s as un-Hollywood a performance as we’re ever likely to see in a Ben Stiller movie.

The most convincing relationship in the film occurs between Greenberg and Ivan ((Rhys Ifans) an old friend and former band mate. Their scenes overflow with the well worn familiarity of two old friends who have grown apart.  

The trailer makes “Greenberg” look much more like a Ben Stiller comedy than it actually is. While well made and intermittently amusing it is more a rambling character study of the kind of people you would normally spend your time trying to avoid.