Twenty-five, thirty years earlier, a cast of Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, and Barbra Streisand would have tilted the earth's axis. Nowadays they -- or at any rate Hoffman and Streisand, pickups for the sequel to Meet the Parents, as the hippie-dippy, touchie-feelie, loosey-goosey parents of the groom-to-be -- are …
A bad-to-worse weekend for a male nurse named Focker (you'll need several sets of fingers and toes to count up the utterances of that name), who accompanies his prospective fiancée to his prospective sister-in-law's wedding. The women, including the prospective mother-in-law, virtually fade into the woodwork, as all attention centers …
Fractured superhero fantasy about a team of gotta-have-a-gimmick wannabes (a shovel, forks, flatulence, fury, a bowling ball as weapons), some of whom are demonstrably more super than others. The mood of wise-ass whimsy does not really create a fertile climate, and the visual clutter doesn't help. But the amiable cast, …
Jumanji-esque jumble of special effects, in which all the exhibits at the Natural History Museum in New York City come to life after dark. This allows for a lot of, frankly an excess of, variety: Lilliputian cowboys and Roman soldiers who tie down the new night watchman like Gulliver; a …
For the requisite sequel, the locale shifts from N.Y. to D.C., which opens the door to some new characters and creatures (e.g., Albert Einstein bobblehead dolls, which, when brought to life, inconceivably contain Einstein’s actual brain), along with some old ones packed up at the Natural History Museum for storage …
Director Shawn Levy and star Ben Stiller both faltered in their recent attempts at grown-up, elevating wisdom pictures (This is Where I Leave You and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, respectively). So it's almost a relief to find them striding confidently here through the smooth, familiar terrain of entertaining …
The feature debut of ad director Billy Kent is an "indie" sex comedy as crassly commercial as possible with Parker Posey and Paul Rudd in the lead roles instead of, say, Jennifer Aniston and Ben Stiller. The couple in their public lives are, respectively, a Cleveland P.R. flack ("What was …
The confessional memoir of TV comedy writer Jerry Stahl, transferred to the screen by fledgling director David Veloz, is one of those cathartic substance-abuse stories that Hollywood likes to tell itself now and again, telling itself at the same time that this is a well-marked path to Dostoevskian depths. These …
Young love in and for the Nineties -- which apparently entails a preoccupation with the Seventies: TV reruns, goldie oldies, wall posters (Saturday Night Fever, Love Story), memorabilia (Charlie's Angels lunchbox). The script, about a one-for-all-and-all-for-one foursome of college grads, is riddled with observations on the level of "Evian is …
Not just a dysfunctional family; a determinedly, unrelentingly oddball, eccentric, wacky, weird, kooky, cracked family; but only a rarely and very mildly funny family. (None of this deters Gene Hackman, as the long-absent head of the clan, from his normal excellence.) Wes Anderson, the director, favors frontal and centered compositions, …
James Thurber's nigh-unto-perfect short story about a little man with big daydreams gets the therapy-culture treatment from director and star Ben Stiller. No more flights of magnificent fancy as a means of coping with mundanity. No, now it's time to break the shackles and make all your dreams come true. …
The bare outline would look like a hundred other buddy comedies: two old friends from college, an ex-soap opera actor and a would-be novelist, take off for an ostensible round of golfing and wine-tasting a week before the former's wedding. They present a classic study in contrasts: the slob and …
Zero points for originality of concept or strategy of execution: another vintage TV show transferred to the big screen, and, after the fashion of The Brady Bunch of similar vintage, held up to ridicule for its datedness (its tight pants, its wide collars, its perms), among other things. The results …
The fraternal filmmaking team of Peter and Bobby Farrelly (Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin) step up their efforts to push bad taste past the threshold of bravery. The sticking point in this undertaking is that there is nothing pushing back. The dam broke a long time ago, and the Farrellys are …
Rage about elite-hustler Bernie Madoff gets hashed into Brett Ratner’s heist comedy. Alan Alda plays the smug, Madoff-ian figure, who even scams the pensions of the decent, obsequious people who run his luxury high-rise. The building manager (Ben Stiller) looks for payback, with a milquetoast (Matthew Broderick), a nerd (Casey …