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MINORITY REPORT Isn't there something a tad obscene about the fact that, while most moviemakers are lucky to helm even one motion picture that will be remembered through the ages, here we have a director who creates enduring gems about as frequently as the LA Lakers win championships? Steven Spielberg's Minority Report, a dazzling adaptation of the 1956 short story by Philip K. Dick, may not quite belong on the same exalted level as past Spielberg classics, but it's so markedly superior to most everything else that's been in theaters over the past several months, it instantly reduces the competition to also-ran status. Set in Washington, DC in the year 2054, the complex script by Scott Frank and Jon Cohen centers on the Pre-Crime Unit, whose law enforcement officers, guided by the visions of three "Pre-Cogs" who have the ability to see murders before they even occur, are able to arrest the killers before they've actually killed anybody. The unit head (Tom Cruise) believes it's a perfect system -- or at least until he's pegged as a murderer, destined to assassinate a man he hasn't even met. Minority Report succeeds as a sci-fi yarn, a film noir drama and an adventure romp, and in a post-9/11 environment in which polls show many Americans are willing to sacrifice some of their personal freedoms for the sake of feeling safer, it gains additional relevance by presenting a future world that shows the frightening price of this way of thinking. Working as both a popcorn picture and a message movie, Minority Report shows once again that perhaps no other director since Alfred Hitchcock has been able to so masterfully (and so consistently) blend art and entertainment into one irresistible package as Steven Spielberg. 
SCOOBY-DOO To simply blast the film version of Scooby-Doo because it's cheesy and redundant would be like criticizing a red pepper because it's hot and spicy. For better or worse, a movie that purports to recapture the spirit of the original cartoon would by necessity have to include all manner of elements sure to draw groans and cringes, and on that count, Scooby-Doo works. Yet while that may hardly sound like a ringing endorsement, it's the film's very awareness of its own kitsch quotient that allows it to qualify as a likable lark. Indeed, there's a certain intelligence at work in the way the movie subtly connects to the cartoon show in which four meddling kids -- Fred, Daphne, Velma and Shaggy -- and their dog spend each episode solving a spooky mystery. Director Raja Gosnell (Big Momma's House) possesses the right sensibility to bring to life the slapdash drive of the cartoon, while the script includes funny toss-offs regarding everything from Velma's sweater to Shaggy's rumored pothead status to that infernal pup Scrappy-Doo. Three spectacularly bad actors -- Freddie Prinze Jr., Sarah Michelle Gellar and Matthew Lillard -- are respectively cast as Fred, Daphne and Shaggy (Velma, long presented as one of the homeliest characters in comicdom, is played by the cute-as-a-button Linda Cardellini), yet while Prinze and Gellar never come to life, Lillard steals the show with his dead-on Shaggy impersonation. Still, a tone that was tolerable in 30-minute chunks on TV grows oppressive within the framework of an 80-minute movie, and the filmmakers' efforts to update the action for modern sensibilities (for starters, there's an interminable sequence in which Shaggy and Scooby engage in a flatulence face-off) will invariably make the movie seem even more dated than the animated series. 1/2
UNDERCOVER BROTHER Can you dig it? In the words of Forrest Gump, stupid is as stupid does in this highly amusing dum-dum comedy that not only takes a swipe at that Tom Hanks blockbuster but also manages to include jabs at everything from "Ebony and Ivory" to Dennis Rodman to the continual Oscar shafting of Spike Lee (director Malcolm D. Lee is Spike's cousin, so the dig is expected -- and earned). Beating the Austin Powers films at their own game, this blaxploitation spoof downplays the raunch in favor of gags that rely on the strength of their own cleverness as opposed to the extent of their outrageousness. Granted, this hit-and-miss mode results in a lot of groaners, but when you have something as doltish as Bad Company in theaters pretending to be a comedy, this film's cheeky attitude is even more appreciated. Eddie Griffin plays the title character, described as "a Soul Train reject with a Robin Hood complex." He joins up with the B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D. to take on The Man, the secretive white male who's always conspiring to keep African-Americans down. At first, UB is successful in his efforts to thwart the villains, but eventually he finds himself succumbing to "the black man's Kryptonite": a Caucasian beauty known as White She Devil (Denise Richards). Even at a mere 88 minutes, this slight film tempts fate, but the big laughs are tumultuous enough to barrel right over the slow patches (usually, the scenes involving Chris Kattan as a Man servant).
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