KICKING & SCREAMING The "underdog sports comedy," which hasn't been run into the ground as much as it's been pureed in a top-model blender, travels as far as it probably can go these days in Kicking & Screaming, an immensely likable if somewhat toothless family film in which even the notorious Mike Ditka comes across as a stuffed panda bear. Will Ferrell ably tackles his most complete role to date: He plays Phil Weston, a wimpy husband and father whose entire life has been spent in the shadow of his ultra-competitive dad Buck (Robert Duvall), a bullying jock who also happens to be the coach of the vicinity's best boys' soccer team. After his own son gets traded by Buck to the worst team in the league, Phil takes it upon himself to become the ragtag outfit's new coach; he enlists ex-Chicago Bears coach Ditka (playing himself) as his assistant, learns that coffee can provide a person with unlimited amounts of energy (as well as turn him a little nutty), and eventually becomes just as dictatorial on the field as his old man. Duvall, channeling huge chunks of his Bull Meechum characterization from The Great Santini, seems to have wandered in from a much more serious movie, and the usual sports flick cliches (right down the Climactic Big Game) are pretty much repeated verbatim. What elevates the movie is Ferrell himself: While his patented shtick can quickly grow tiresome when it's attached to nothing of substance, here it's in the service of an actual character, and that seems to make all the difference. Rather than random acts of lunacy, the insecure Phil's outbursts are hardwired into his psyche, which allows us the luxury of feeling sorry for the guy even as we're laughing at him.
1/2
LADIES IN LAVENDER The setting is 1930s Cornwall, as two elderly sisters (Dames Judi Dench and Maggie Smith) discover that a young man has washed up on the beach next to their quaint little cottage. As they nurse him back to health, one of the sisters (Dench's Ursula) slowly begins to fall for this lad who's approximately a half-century her junior; meanwhile, it emerges that this guest (who speaks no English) is a Polish violinist, and that a beautiful artist vacationing in the area (Natascha McElhone) might have both a personal and a professional interest in him. Although it looks like a product straight off the Masterpiece Theatre assembly line, Ladies In Lavender is a movie marked by major surprises: It's surprising that the first half is so perceptive, and equally surprising that the second part is so preposterous. Ursula's infatuation with this younger man isn't played for cheap laughs, and Dench makes the character's confusion, despair and desire all equally tangible. Yet as the film progresses, it backs away from examining this rarely discussed issue to focus squarely on the musical prodigy (an erratic character at best), whose exploits are conveyed through misunderstandings and missed connections as nonsensical as any found in such Hollywood claptrap as A Lot Like Love or any random Kate Hudson vehicle.
1/2
Current Releases
THE AMITYVILLE HORROR Jay Anson's 1977 novel The Amityville Horror was such a worthless piece of literature that the only way it could have moved any copies was for its author and its limelight-soaking subjects to declare it was all based on a true story. That did the trick: The book, about a couple who insisted their house was haunted, became a best-selling phenomenon, though it was soon discredited as pure hokum. A clunky 1979 movie version followed, and now we get the remake, which manages to be even worse than its screen antecedent. Leads Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George try their best, but as a creep show, this slicked-up version is painfully inadequate, preferring to traffic in quick shots of blood-dripping ghouls than establishing any real sense of dread. I've seen episodes of Sesame Street that were more frightening than this generic junk.
THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY It was only a matter of time before Douglas Adams' cult phenomenon - which had already moved from radio to print to television - would eventually complete the journey by edging into cinema. Yet as a movie, H2G2 is only a mixed bag, crammed with many inspired bits but never coalescing as a whole. Reminiscent of both Monty Python and The Fifth Element, the movie embodies a cheeky spirit that becomes harder to appreciate once the picture begins to buckle under the weight of an overly busy plot. Martin Freeman, Zooey Deschanel (as the only two humans to escape earth's destruction) and Mos Def (as a friendly alien) are appealing, but Sam Rockwell's grating turn as an intergalactic maniac is a detriment.
1/2
HOUSE OF WAX My contempt for this remake of the 1953 Vincent Price classic is so great, I'm reluctant to even call it a film, as that designation automatically places it in the pantheon of works by Welles, Hitchcock, Bergman and even Ed Wood. Suitable only for unemployable teens and speech-slurring rednecks, this follows a group of dim-witted college-age kids as they find themselves lost in the Louisiana wilds and become slasher fodder for murderous twin brothers. It takes an eternity of running time for the kids to reach the town, and even after the slaughter begins, director Jaume Collet-Serra and scripters Chad and Carey Hayes still take time out for an obligatory interlude that allows co-star Paris Hilton a chance to striptease down to her undies. Sadistic beyond compare, this House has been constructed by mercenaries, not moviemakers.
THE INTERPRETER An interpreter (Nicole Kidman) working at the United Nations overhears a plot to assassinate the tyrannical president of her African homeland, but the Secret Service agent (Sean Penn) assigned to the case thinks she's hiding more than she's revealing. As a thriller, The Interpreter never matches the sweaty-palms intensity of director Sydney Pollack's excellent Three Days of the Condor, though it largely gets the job done. But between the soft-hearted assessment of the UN, the creation of a fictional African nation to propel the narrative (why not employ an actual African country that's had to deal in modern times with ethnic cleansing?), and an ending that takes the easy way out, it's clear that the Sydney Pollack behind The Interpreter isn't the same Sydney Pollack behind Three Days of the Condor. Just because a man mellows with age doesn't mean his movies should.
1/2
KINGDOM OF HEAVEN Aside from a smattering of one-note villains, everyone is so damn noble and respectful in director Ridley Scott's p.c. drama about a period in world history that was anything but noble and respectful. Set during the Crusades, this dutiful slog through revisionist history stars Orlando Bloom as a blacksmith who finds himself in the middle of a growing feud between Christians and Muslims both laying claim to Jerusalem. Comparisons to recent sword flicks like Troy and Scott's Gladiator are natural, but despite the lofty ambitions of William Monahan's arid script, such contrasts do this lumbering movie no favors. If nothing else, at least those other films moved; beyond that, they also featured morally ambiguous characters, handed juicy roles to veteran actors, and, in the case of Troy, made a stronger case for contemporary relevance. As the courageous Balian, Bloom has the heroic glower down pat but brings little else to the role.
KUNG FU HUSTLE Operating with the same degree of logic as a Marx Brothers feature or a Looney Tunes short - which is to say, operating with no logic at all - Kung Fu Hustle stands alone as the year's most whacked out bit of entertainment. Writer-director Stephen Chow also plays the nominal lead, an ineffectual con man of the streets who inadvertently sets off a feud between the ruthless members of the ruling Axe Gang and the resilient residents of a slum area known as Pig Sty Alley. A nonstop orgy of madcap martial arts mayhem, this violent live-action cartoon contains a handful of brilliant moments, but it also spreads its concept thin: With nothing of real substance propelling the shenanigans, the movie grows redundant during the second half before regaining its footing for the climax.
A LOT LIKE LOVE A Lot Like Love is a lot like When Harry Met Sally crossed with Serendipity, as two people wonder whether they're better off remaining friends or whether the stars have something more intimate in mind for them. Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet play the part-time lovers, two strangers (they "meet cute" by wordlessly boffing in an airplane lavatory) who continually run into each other over the ensuing years. But rather than commit to each other and in effect get us out of the theater after a blessedly short half-hour, the pair keep bumping up against labored plot developments that drive them apart and insure at least one more trip to the concession stand. The stars are likable, but Colin Patrick Lynch's script never wholly convinces us that these two necessarily need to be together.
MINDHUNTERS For a movie that's been sitting in Miramax's storage bin for well over a year, Mindhunters isn't the train wreck one would have assumed. A high-tech update of Agatha Christie's classic Ten Little Indians (a.k.a. And Then There Were None), the story finds a band of FBI agents sent to a remote island off the coast of North Carolina, where they discover that there's a serial killer within their ranks. A couple of clues make it relatively easy to deduce the identity of the killer - a plus for those who'd like a shot at solving the mystery, a minus for those who prefer to be kept in the dark until the end. Regardless, the screenplay doesn't stand up to close scrutiny (each victim has to be in an exact location at an exact time for the villain's scheme to work), but director Renny Harlin has churned out a fairly engrossing film that doesn't denigrate the memory of its (uncredited) source material.
1/2
MONSTER-IN-LAW After a 15-year hiatus, Jane Fonda returns to the big screen, and young uns who've only heard about her standing as one of the finest actresses of the 1970s will automatically assume that their parents have been pulling their legs all these years. Fonda is an embarrassment in this torturous comedy, betrayed both by director Robert Luketic's mishandling and by her own rusty instincts. Blank-faced Jennifer Lopez stars as Charlie, a jill-of-all-trades (caterer, dog walker, receptionist) who finds the perfect man in Dr. Kevin Fields (Alias' Michael Vartan). All goes well until she meets his mother, a former TV personality who also turns out to be psychotic. This only escapes a one-star rating because of the acerbic wit of Wanda Sykes (cast as Fonda's wisecracking assistant); otherwise, the laughs are as scarce as Coke machines in the Kalahari.
1/2
OPENS THURSDAY:
STAR WARS: EPISODE III - REVENGE OF THE SITH: Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman.
OPENS FRIDAY:
LADIES IN LAVENDER: Judi Dench, Maggie Smith.
PALINDROMES: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Ellen Barkin.
Mobile
