Capsule reviews of films playing the week of Nov. 10 

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THE SWITCH Deciding that Jeffrey Eugenides' short story would be perfect for expanding into a wacky comedy, this film's creators ran with the premise of Jennifer Aniston as a single woman who badly wants a baby. Aniston's Kassie opts to go the route of a sperm donor, despite the objections of her whiny best friend Wally (Jason Bateman). The donor is a hunky athlete (Patrick Wilson), but through circumstances too mind-numbingly stupid to detail here, a drunken Wally spills the filled baby-batter cup and replaces the lost content with his own seed. Will the dumb-as-a-brick Kassie ever learn that Wally made a switch? And did none of the filmmakers — or the audience members at my screening — realize that Wally's action of implanting his unwanted sperm into an unwilling woman qualifies as a form of rape? If the film ever addressed this issue beyond some ever-so-modest poo-pooing by Wally's confidant (Jeff Goldblum, the lone bright spot), it might warrant some respect, but everything is played at an inane sitcom level, and we're supposed to cheer Wally on as he tries to bag his woman (shouldn't he be going to jail instead?). Strip away the ramifications of the plot and The Switch is merely one more failed Aniston rom-com bomb. But add it back in and we're talking about a fairly revolting piece of work. *

THE TOWN While The Town doesn't quite match the giddy pleasures of Gone Baby Gone (which, after all, was second only to No Country for Old Men on my 10 Best list for '07), it aptly illustrates that writer-director Ben Affleck won't have to contend with either the label of "beginner's luck" or "sophomore jinx." A crackling drama with a fine sense of both spacial relationships (thank Affleck the director) and character relationships (thank Affleck the writer), this adaptation of Chuck Hogan's novel Prince of Thieves (co-scripted by Peter Craig and Aaron Stockard) is set in a section of Boston known for producing more bank robbers than anywhere else in the country. One of these heist-happy fellows is Doug MacRay (Affleck), who leads his accomplices on a caper that results in the masked bandits briefly taking a hostage, bank employee Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall). Electing to keep tabs on Claire to insure she doesn't get too chummy with the FBI, Doug strikes up a friendship with the unsuspecting woman, a camaraderie that quickly turns into love. A genre flick like this can't avoid all the clichés, but it manages to sidestep some of the biggest ones — at any rate, it's the little moments that make this stand out. The film can quickly shift from funny to frightening, and it plays out in ways not entirely expected. ***1/2

WAITING FOR "SUPERMAN" Davis Guggenheim, who won an Academy Award for An Inconvenient Truth, here presents another inconvenient truth: The United States public school system just isn't working. This comes as a shock to absolutely no one, but because it's a universal issue that affects legions of folks across the country — particularly the children — it's the sort of film that begs to be seen. This documentary, heavy on the outrage and frustration and light on the inspiration and hope, often focuses on a hero (education reformer Geoffrey Canada), an anti-hero (controversial former chancellor Michelle Rhee) and a villain (the self-serving American Federation of Teachers), but the heart of the film of course rests with its youngest subjects. Central are five students (in LA, NYC and DC) whose best chance at having a bright future lies in whether they'll be randomly selected in their respective locales' education lotteries to be transferred from their low-performing neighborhood schools to successful charter schools. While this climactic section of the picture proves to be the most schematic (whose name or number will pop up next?), it's impossible not to be left either elated or heartbroken, depending on which way the (lottery) ball bounces. ***

WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS Michael Douglas won the Best Actor Oscar for his sly turn as uber-capitalist Gordon Gekko in 1987's Wall Street, but the majority of the film's running time was commandeered by Charlie Sheen as his gullible protégé Bud Fox. That timeshare worked for that picture, but with the 23-years-after-the-fact Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, it's no secret that we're all here for Douglas. But aside from a quick glimpse of him in the prologue, he doesn't return for a full half-hour, meaning that it's Shia LaBeouf calling the shots. He's passable as a financial whiz kid who's in love with Gordon's daughter (Carey Mulligan) but finds himself turning to her estranged dad to help take down a corporate nemesis (Josh Brolin). But it's Douglas' continuing commitment to his iconic role that sporadically gooses the proceedings, at least until a mawkish conclusion that resembles nothing so much as a Wall Street — and Wall Street — crash. **1/2