BIG TROUBLE Scheduled for release 10 days after the 9/11 tragedy but instantly pulled due to a climax involving a bomb aboard a hijacked plane, this new comedy from director Barry Sonnenfeld (Men In Black, Get Shorty) is finally being released with the hope that audiences will now be more forgiving toward its more unfortunate plot points. It's possible, but what moviegoers won't be as quick to forgive is the simple fact that this is a spectacularly unfunny film, a dismal attempt by Sonnenfeld to recreate the rat-tat-tat patter and inspired casting that made Get Shorty such a smashing success. Alas, Sonnenfeld's instincts seem to have deserted him for this insufferable adaptation of Dave Barry's novel about how a mysterious suitcase ends up impacting the lives of roughly a dozen characters, including a mild-mannered single dad (Tim Allen), a miserable housewife (Rene Russo), and a hippie (Jason Lee) who lives in a tree. With screwball antics that are annoying rather than amusing, Big Trouble wears on the nerves as thoroughly as a hyperactive 5-year-old with a new drum set. Dennis Farina as a sarcastic hit man and Janeane Garofalo as a cool-centered police officer arguably come off best; Stanley Tucci as a seedy businessman and Tom Sizemore as a bumbling crook inarguably come off worst. 
1/2
DEATH TO SMOOCHY Director Danny DeVito's delightful 1996 adaptation of Roald Dahl's Matilda was a sweet-and-sour affair that ladled on the black humor without ever diminishing the essential sweetness of the material. DeVito is less successful with Death to Smoochy, an acrimonious satire that eventually compromises its own welcome venality by insisting on inserting sentimental components where none are needed. Top-billed Robin Williams is actually a supporting player: He's cast as Rainbow Randolph, a corrupt TV star whose kid show is cancelled after his wicked ways are made public. He's quickly replaced by Sheldon Mopes (Edward Norton), a sincere do-gooder whose character, a purple rhino named Smoochy, becomes a hit with the nation's pre-schoolers. Sheldon tries to keep his integrity intact, but the machinations of a materialistic network executive (Catherine Keener), a duplicitous agent (DeVito), and an apparently insane Randolph threaten to undermine his best efforts. As long as DeVito and scripter Adam Resnick are content to wallow in the mire of human folly, this well-acted comedy serves its purpose as a scathing indictment of American avarice, but once the film turns soft in its final act (the instant redemption of one major character is simply absurd), it limps toward an ending that undermines the outrageousness of the material. 1/2
KISSING JESSICA STEIN With a storyline that's equal parts Woody Allen in his prime and Nora Ephron in a tailspin, Kissing Jessica Stein is an indie sleeper wanna-be that's content being merely OK even though greatness was seemingly within its grasp. Jennifer Westfeldt stars as Jessica, a New York journalist who's always had rotten luck with men, much to the dismay of her often overbearing mother (Tovah Feldshuh, doing her best to temper the broad Jewish gestures of her familiar character). Looking like Lisa Kudrow but sounding like Annie Hall, Jessica can never find a guy who meets her lofty expectations, so she ends up answering a personal ad posted by an art gallery manager (Heather Juergensen) in the Village Voice's "Women Seeking Women" section. The two ladies hit it off fabulously as friends, but it takes Jessica a while longer to determine whether she's ready to plunge into a lesbian relationship. Good performances by Westfeldt and especially Juergensen (both women also co-wrote the screenplay) and some refreshingly frank and insightful dialogue are often curtailed by trite plot developments as conventional as any found in such standard Hollywood fare as You've Got Mail. Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy grappled with similar material far more effectively -- and imaginatively. 1/2
PANIC ROOM Just as Meryl Streep made The River Wild to satisfy the part of her that required one uncomplicated popcorn picture on her resume, we now have Jodie Foster taking part in a commonplace thriller by accepting a role that's less complicated than usual. But Foster's participation isn't as puzzling as that of director David Fincher, who, after the jigsaw puzzle plots and moral messiness of Seven, The Game and Fight Club, seems only to be serving as a hack-for-hire. Still, his yen for technical trickery -- the opening credits alone are worth the price of admission -- suits the picture's primary setting, a spacious New York brownstone occupied by a divorcee (Foster) and her daughter (Kristen Stewart). When the two women find their home invaded by crooks (Forest Whitaker, Jared Leto and Dwight Yoakam) searching for hidden loot, they confine themselves to the building's panic room, an impenetrable space with a steel door and a wall of surveillance monitors. A couple of plot twists might have made all the difference in this watchable but routine thriller, though production designer Arthur Max (Gladiator) should be commended for his imaginative and accessible set. As a burglar with a heart of gold, Whitaker delivers the best performance but also provides the most problematic character, inadvertently turning the film's creed that "Crime Does Not Pay" into "Doing Good Deeds May Be Hazardous To Your Health." 1/2
CURRENT RELEASES
BLADE II With arteries being punctured left and right and vampires disintegrating after getting blasted by silver bullets, it's clear that Blade II may be as disreputable a genre film as recent entries Queen of the Damned and Resident Evil -- but it's also a helluva lot more fun. It also manages to top its 1998 predecessor, thanks in no small part to the decision to hire a real director (Guillermo Del Toro of Mimic and The Devil's Backbone) as opposed to the usual MTV-weaned hack. In this outing, the taciturn Blade (Wesley Snipes), a half-human, half-vampire renegade who's made it his mission to wipe out all bloodsuckers, finds himself reluctantly teaming up with his sworn enemies in an effort to take down an army of creatures (known as Reapers) who enjoy snacking on both humans and vampires. Snipes' Blade continues to rank as a rather dull superhero -- the character periodically takes serum injections to control his inner vampire, but he needs to consider switching to personality infusions -- but the action sequences have some bite, Kris Kristofferson adds some welcome sass as Blade's cantankerous mentor, and the Reapers (seemingly patterned after Reggie Nalder's grotesque vampire in the Salem's Lot mini-series) make formidable foes. 1/2
E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL The 20th Anniversary re-issue of this Steven Spielberg masterpiece features never before seen footage (appreciated) and enhanced visual effects (not so appreciated), but ultimately, these additional bells and whistles neither elevate nor denigrate what was already a near-perfect study of friendship and fantasy as filtered through the eyes of a young boy desperately in need of a companion. Spielberg has made at least three films I would rate higher than E.T., but in terms of emotional investment, this one is peerless in his canon, invoking laughter, tears and everything in between as we follow little E.T.'s odyssey to return home (a popular kid flick motif also found in, among others, The Wizard of Oz and Lassie Come Home). Years later, there's still much to savor: the remarkable performance by Henry Thomas as the alien's human soulmate Elliott (it's no coincidence his name begins and ends with "ET"); the equally impressive turns by Robert McNaughton and 6-year-old Drew Barrymore as Elliott's siblings; the majestic sweeps of one of John Williams' best scores; Dee Wallace's achingly real performance as the kids' vulnerable single mom (why Wallace never became a bigger star remains a mystery); and isolated sequences (the classroom frogs, the flying bikes, etc.) that will continue to delight moviegoers for generations to come.
ICE AGE This year's Oscar ceremony marked the first time an award was given for Best Animated Feature; if next year's contest adds a category for Best Performance By An Animated Character, then Ice Age's Scrat will get my vote. Incidental to the main story, this prehistoric squirrel spends his limited screen time in a futile attempt to bury the acorn he's been lugging around -- this dude's such a character, you're sorry every time he leaves the screen. Fortunately, the central plot is enjoyable enough to occupy our minds -- it's like Disney's Dinosaur done slightly better, since it doesn't get weighed down with the mountains of sentimentality that the Mouse House usually slathers on its family flicks. That's not to say it doesn't lean on the Disney template a bit heavily at times -- for starters, there's a cute kid that the protagonists must protect from all manner of peril -- but between Ray Romano's sensible woolly mammoth, Denis Leary's duplicitous saber-toothed tiger and John Leguizamo's imbecilic (but eager to please) sloth, the main characters are unique enough to help us begrudgingly pardon a pedestrian plotline. 1/2
LANTANA An adult drama that could have been called Husbands and Wives or Scenes from a Marriage had Woody Allen and Ingmar Bergman not already co-opted those titles, Lantana only looks like it's a murder-mystery; in truth, it's a galvanizing study of the complexities and crises that threaten to derail any given marriage. Anthony LaPaglia, a reliable character actor who emerges as a full-blown leading man here, is superb as an Aussie detective whose strained relationship with his sexy, sensible wife (Kerry Armstrong) leads him into a reluctant affair with an emotionally unstable woman (Rachael Blake). On top of this, the cop also has to contend with a baffling case that involves yet another troubled couple: a psychiatrist (Barbara Hershey) and academic (Geoffrey Rush) coping with the death of their daughter. The events that bind all these characters might seem like a gimmick in a lesser film, but here they're merely necessary stepping stones in a powerful drama about remorse, reparation and redemption. 1/2
MONSOON WEDDING Seeing the moldy expression "feel-good" in relation to a motion picture generally gives me heartburn, but how else to describe this joyous work from Mira Nair, the director of Salaam Bombay! and Mississippi Masala? A picture as full of emotion as the traditional ceremony it celebrates, Monsoon Wedding uses the title event as the backdrop for a work that, among other things, delineates the struggle between "old" and "new" India, examines the compromises that individuals must perform for the sake of family sanctity, and, in the tradition of Father of the Bride, takes a gently comic look at the headaches brought on by pulling the whole thing together. Naseeruddin Shah is cast in the equivalent of the Spencer Tracy role, as the family patriarch who must contend with all sorts of old-fashioned strife in new-fangled Delhi as he coordinates the union of his thoroughly modern daughter (Vasundhara Das) to a handsome man (Parvin Dabas) flying in from Houston to take part in this arranged marriage. Characters come and go, tense situations alternately explode or dissipate, and secrets are uncovered -- yet through it all, most of these ingratiating folks invariably manage to do what's best for themselves and for the family unit. Vijay Raaz steals the film as a wedding planner whose obnoxiousness gets vaporized by true love, and there's an infectious soundtrack that may warrant an immediate trip to your local music store. 1/2
RESIDENT EVIL Here we go again: yet another screen adaptation of a popular video game, and one that makes last summer's doltish Lara Croft: Tomb Raider seem almost Kubrickian by comparison. Writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson, doubtless hoping that financiers will confuse him with writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson (of Boogie Nights fame), has made a career out of helming noisy sci-fi spectacles like Soldier and Mortal Kombat, and here he returns to the same dry well, concocting a shoddy product that tries to beef up its pinball-simple narrative by borrowing liberally from The Andromeda Strain, Aliens and George Romero's Dead trilogy. After an opening half-hour that ranks as the most excruciatingly dull 30 minutes I've sat through in at least two years (basically, expository scenes of a military task force trying to find out what went wrong at an underground genetic research facility), things get moving once our heroes get attacked by hordes of shuffling zombies, a pack of fleshless Dobermans, and a laughable, computer-generated mutant billed as "The Licker" (boy, there's a terrifying moniker). Except for one imaginative (albeit gruesome) sequence involving slice-and-dice laser beams, this isn't even fun on a trash level.
THE ROOKIE This G-rated Disney film comes with the tagline "Based On A True Story," but I'd much rather start seeing a tagline that reads, "Based On A True Story That Translates Wonderfully To Film." As it stands, the tale at the center of The Rookie was a great one when it first appeared on the pages of the dailies, but as a motion picture, it's an overly familiar formula film that won't move anyone who's already seen their share of motivational, follow-your-dream flicks. What little juice this gets comes courtesy of its actors, particularly Dennis Quaid in the leading role of Jim Morris, a high school chemistry teacher and baseball coach who, a decade after what was ostensibly his prime, takes one last shot at achieving his goal of pitching in the major leagues. With John Lee Hancock providing the sleepy direction and Mike Rich supplying a script that's almost as generic as the one he penned for Finding Forrester, there isn't much sense of joy surrounding The Rookie, as a leisurely running time of 129 minutes and too many golden shots of Texas skies and fields (John Schwartzman's camerawork is pretty but predictable) also result in the movie taking an unusually long time to tell its straightforward story. Indeed, for a motion picture meant to inspire us, the perspiration comes through more often than the inspiration.
SHOWTIME While the dreadful trailer and the opportunity to catch overexposed Robert De Niro in his 238th film appearance of the new decade combined to make Showtime as appealing as a case of the clap, this is actually one entry in Hollywood's ceaseless string of "buddy-cop comedies" that has enough fun with its own premise to make it a passable timekiller. De Niro plays the team's straight man, a humorless detective who's forced to co-star in a reality-TV series with a preening cop (Eddie Murphy) who's always been more interested in pursuing an acting career. Much to the delight of the show's producer (Rene Russo), the friction between the partners helps turn the program into a ratings bonanza, but these mismatched cops eventually find common ground once they both set their sights on bringing down a suave arms dealer (Pedro Damian, doing a poor job of aping Alan Rickman's classic Die Hard villain). Aside from hearing William Shatner (playing himself) refer to De Niro's character as "the worst actor I've ever seen," there's nothing new under the sun in this one, but De Niro's frequent slow burns are consistently amusing, while Murphy's attempt to tackle the sort of role that made him a star in the first place is appreciated. 1/2
THE TIME MACHINE Although George Pal's exciting 1960 screen version of H.G. Wells' immortal tale still holds up nicely, it seemed only logical that someone would have been interested in crafting another Machine for a new generation. Alas, this latest adaptation is a mild disappointment, starting off well but getting bogged down in a third act that steadily seeps energy even as it's playing out. Memento's Guy Pearce plays the turn-of-the-last-century inventor who creates a contraption that allows him to whiz through time; after making brief stops in the 21st century, he catapults 800,000 years into the future, whereupon he sides with the peaceful Eloi tribe against the vicious Morlocks. Under the guidance of scripter John Logan and director Simon Wells (H.G.'s great-grandson), this version takes some early liberties that surprisingly work, but rather than ever fully capturing our imaginations, the picture then begins curtailing its own creativity, culminating in a yawner of a showdown between Pearce's scientist-cum-adventurer and the brainy Morlock leader (played by a campy Jeremy Irons, defeated by powder-white makeup and an outfit better suited for a Judas Priest concert). 1/2
CURRENT RELEASES
BLADE II With arteries being punctured left and right and vampires disintegrating after getting blasted by silver bullets, it's clear that Blade II may be as disreputable a genre film as recent entries Queen of the Damned and Resident Evil -- but it's also a helluva lot more fun. It also manages to top its 1998 predecessor, thanks in no small part to the decision to hire a real director (Guillermo Del Toro of Mimic and The Devil's Backbone) as opposed to the usual MTV-weaned hack. In this outing, the taciturn Blade (Wesley Snipes), a half-human, half-vampire renegade who's made it his mission to wipe out all bloodsuckers, finds himself reluctantly teaming up with his sworn enemies in an effort to take down an army of creatures (known as Reapers) who enjoy snacking on both humans and vampires. Snipes' Blade continues to rank as a rather dull superhero -- the character periodically takes serum injections to control his inner vampire, but he needs to consider switching to personality infusions -- but the action sequences have some bite, Kris Kristofferson adds some welcome sass as Blade's cantankerous mentor, and the Reapers (seemingly patterned after Reggie Nalder's grotesque vampire in the Salem's Lot mini-series) make formidable foes. 1/2
E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL The 20th Anniversary re-issue of this Steven Spielberg masterpiece features never before seen footage (appreciated) and enhanced visual effects (not so appreciated), but ultimately, these additional bells and whistles neither elevate nor denigrate what was already a near-perfect study of friendship and fantasy as filtered through the eyes of a young boy desperately in need of a companion. Spielberg has made at least three films I would rate higher than E.T., but in terms of emotional investment, this one is peerless in his canon, invoking laughter, tears and everything in between as we follow little E.T.'s odyssey to return home (a popular kid flick motif also found in, among others, The Wizard of Oz and Lassie Come Home). Years later, there's still much to savor: the remarkable performance by Henry Thomas as the alien's human soulmate Elliott (it's no coincidence his name begins and ends with "ET"); the equally impressive turns by Robert McNaughton and 6-year-old Drew Barrymore as Elliott's siblings; the majestic sweeps of one of John Williams' best scores; Dee Wallace's achingly real performance as the kids' vulnerable single mom (why Wallace never became a bigger star remains a mystery); and isolated sequences (the classroom frogs, the flying bikes, etc.) that will continue to delight moviegoers for generations to come.
ICE AGE This year's Oscar ceremony marked the first time an award was given for Best Animated Feature; if next year's contest adds a category for Best Performance By An Animated Character, then Ice Age's Scrat will get my vote. Incidental to the main story, this prehistoric squirrel spends his limited screen time in a futile attempt to bury the acorn he's been lugging around -- this dude's such a character, you're sorry every time he leaves the screen. Fortunately, the central plot is enjoyable enough to occupy our minds -- it's like Disney's Dinosaur done slightly better, since it doesn't get weighed down with the mountains of sentimentality that the Mouse House usually slathers on its family flicks. That's not to say it doesn't lean on the Disney template a bit heavily at times -- for starters, there's a cute kid that the protagonists must protect from all manner of peril -- but between Ray Romano's sensible woolly mammoth, Denis Leary's duplicitous saber-toothed tiger and John Leguizamo's imbecilic (but eager to please) sloth, the main characters are unique enough to help us begrudgingly pardon a pedestrian plotline. 1/2
LANTANA An adult drama that could have been called Husbands and Wives or Scenes from a Marriage had Woody Allen and Ingmar Bergman not already co-opted those titles, Lantana only looks like it's a murder-mystery; in truth, it's a galvanizing study of the complexities and crises that threaten to derail any given marriage. Anthony LaPaglia, a reliable character actor who emerges as a full-blown leading man here, is superb as an Aussie detective whose strained relationship with his sexy, sensible wife (Kerry Armstrong) leads him into a reluctant affair with an emotionally unstable woman (Rachael Blake). On top of this, the cop also has to contend with a baffling case that involves yet another troubled couple: a psychiatrist (Barbara Hershey) and academic (Geoffrey Rush) coping with the death of their daughter. The events that bind all these characters might seem like a gimmick in a lesser film, but here they're merely necessary stepping stones in a powerful drama about remorse, reparation and redemption. 1/2
MONSOON WEDDING Seeing the moldy expression "feel-good" in relation to a motion picture generally gives me heartburn, but how else to describe this joyous work from Mira Nair, the director of Salaam Bombay! and Mississippi Masala? A picture as full of emotion as the traditional ceremony it celebrates, Monsoon Wedding uses the title event as the backdrop for a work that, among other things, delineates the struggle between "old" and "new" India, examines the compromises that individuals must perform for the sake of family sanctity, and, in the tradition of Father of the Bride, takes a gently comic look at the headaches brought on by pulling the whole thing together. Naseeruddin Shah is cast in the equivalent of the Spencer Tracy role, as the family patriarch who must contend with all sorts of old-fashioned strife in new-fangled Delhi as he coordinates the union of his thoroughly modern daughter (Vasundhara Das) to a handsome man (Parvin Dabas) flying in from Houston to take part in this arranged marriage. Characters come and go, tense situations alternately explode or dissipate, and secrets are uncovered -- yet through it all, most of these ingratiating folks invariably manage to do what's best for themselves and for the family unit. Vijay Raaz steals the film as a wedding planner whose obnoxiousness gets vaporized by true love, and there's an infectious soundtrack that may warrant an immediate trip to your local music store. 1/2
RESIDENT EVIL Here we go again: yet another screen adaptation of a popular video game, and one that makes last summer's doltish Lara Croft: Tomb Raider seem almost Kubrickian by comparison. Writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson, doubtless hoping that financiers will confuse him with writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson (of Boogie Nights fame), has made a career out of helming noisy sci-fi spectacles like Soldier and Mortal Kombat, and here he returns to the same dry well, concocting a shoddy product that tries to beef up its pinball-simple narrative by borrowing liberally from The Andromeda Strain, Aliens and George Romero's Dead trilogy. After an opening half-hour that ranks as the most excruciatingly dull 30 minutes I've sat through in at least two years (basically, expository scenes of a military task force trying to find out what went wrong at an underground genetic research facility), things get moving once our heroes get attacked by hordes of shuffling zombies, a pack of fleshless Dobermans, and a laughable, computer-generated mutant billed as "The Licker" (boy, there's a terrifying moniker). Except for one imaginative (albeit gruesome) sequence involving slice-and-dice laser beams, this isn't even fun on a trash level.
THE ROOKIE This G-rated Disney film comes with the tagline "Based On A True Story," but I'd much rather start seeing a tagline that reads, "Based On A True Story That Translates Wonderfully To Film." As it stands, the tale at the center of The Rookie was a great one when it first appeared on the pages of the dailies, but as a motion picture, it's an overly familiar formula film that won't move anyone who's already seen their share of motivational, follow-your-dream flicks. What little juice this gets comes courtesy of its actors, particularly Dennis Quaid in the leading role of Jim Morris, a high school chemistry teacher and baseball coach who, a decade after what was ostensibly his prime, takes one last shot at achieving his goal of pitching in the major leagues. With John Lee Hancock providing the sleepy direction and Mike Rich supplying a script that's almost as generic as the one he penned for Finding Forrester, there isn't much sense of joy surrounding The Rookie, as a leisurely running time of 129 minutes and too many golden shots of Texas skies and fields (John Schwartzman's camerawork is pretty but predictable) also result in the movie taking an unusually long time to tell its straightforward story. Indeed, for a motion picture meant to inspire us, the perspiration comes through more often than the inspiration.
SHOWTIME While the dreadful trailer and the opportunity to catch overexposed Robert De Niro in his 238th film appearance of the new decade combined to make Showtime as appealing as a case of the clap, this is actually one entry in Hollywood's ceaseless string of "buddy-cop comedies" that has enough fun with its own premise to make it a passable timekiller. De Niro plays the team's straight man, a humorless detective who's forced to co-star in a reality-TV series with a preening cop (Eddie Murphy) who's always been more interested in pursuing an acting career. Much to the delight of the show's producer (Rene Russo), the friction between the partners helps turn the program into a ratings bonanza, but these mismatched cops eventually find common ground once they both set their sights on bringing down a suave arms dealer (Pedro Damian, doing a poor job of aping Alan Rickman's classic Die Hard villain). Aside from hearing William Shatner (playing himself) refer to De Niro's character as "the worst actor I've ever seen," there's nothing new under the sun in this one, but De Niro's frequent slow burns are consistently amusing, while Murphy's attempt to tackle the sort of role that made him a star in the first place is appreciated. 1/2
THE TIME MACHINE Although George Pal's exciting 1960 screen version of H.G. Wells' immortal tale still holds up nicely, it seemed only logical that someone would have been interested in crafting another Machine for a new generation. Alas, this latest adaptation is a mild disappointment, starting off well but getting bogged down in a third act that steadily seeps energy even as it's playing out. Memento's Guy Pearce plays the turn-of-the-last-century inventor who creates a contraption that allows him to whiz through time; after making brief stops in the 21st century, he catapults 800,000 years into the future, whereupon he sides with the peaceful Eloi tribe against the vicious Morlocks. Under the guidance of scripter John Logan and director Simon Wells (H.G.'s great-grandson), this version takes some early liberties that surprisingly work, but rather than ever fully capturing our imaginations, the picture then begins curtailing its own creativity, culminating in a yawner of a showdown between Pearce's scientist-cum-adventurer and the brainy Morlock leader (played by a campy Jeremy Irons, defeated by powder-white makeup and an outfit better suited for a Judas Priest concert). 1/2
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