A snooty admissions officer puts her career on the line when trying to get the son she secretly gave up for adoption accepted into Princeton. This is 117 minutes of prefabricated shit for people who are constipated. The performances are uniformly lazy; not for one second do Tina Fey and …
Spongy satire divides its feeble forces between the Bush Administration (à clef) and the TV talent contest, American Idol, aligning the two targets when the mush-brained President agrees to appear as a guest judge on the season finale, a showdown pitting a "white-trash girl from Ohio" against an undercover Iraqi …
Horny-teenager update at the end of the millennium. Four buddies form a pact to lose their virginity by prom night: "No longer will our penises be flaccid and unused!" Moments of tastelessness intrude on stretches of mere insipidness. Chris Klein and Natasha Lyonne can do better for themselves, and already …
Robert De Niro unloads his gnarly, scowling, old-crank routine again as a self-deluded “genius,” sort of Travis Bickle of Taxi Driver as a nutty dirtball. His son (moon-eyed Paul Dano) dislikes him but helps him at a homeless shelter. Marginal in Paul Weitz’s moody, drifting film are Julianne Moore and …
Boyhood best friends, one of whom has moved away and grown up to become a hot-shot music executive in L.A., while the other has stayed a child in every respect but inches. The problem: he still wants to be best friends. A glimmer of an idea, there. But the heart …
Competition for Twilight, assimilated vampires who protect the status quo by reducing their blood intake to moderate sips, precisely the cultural subgroup to embrace the misfit teen. (There are also bad, gluttonous vampires known as Vampaneze: “Vampires suck. Vampaneze rule.”) Competition, sure, but weak competition, self-consciously jokey, storybooky, winky. With …
Lifeless reincarnation of Here Comes Mr. Jordan (or, for a newer generation, 1978's Heaven Can Wait). The gimmick is that the man we see as Chris Rock -- the man temporarily installed in another man's body -- is seen by everyone on screen as a portly, gray-haired, middle-aged white guy. …
A modern dress mutation of High Noon with a pro-life message substituting for the “real time” western’s obvious allegory against blacklisting. Instead of a cowardly Marshal soliciting the aid of local townsfolk (including his girlfriend!), storming granny Lily Tomlin races against the clock, going hat-in-hand to various guest stars (including …
A new spin on the old boss's-daughter romance. And not just new, but contemporary, up-to-date, timely, topical. The romancer is now the boss himself -- a fast-track junior executive fresh out of business school and still wet behind the ears -- and the daughter's father is now the romancer's underling, …