RAISING HELEN Director Garry Marshall makes shiny, happy movies for shiny, happy people -- even Exit to Eden, a film about S&M, turned out to be as threatening as a butterfly with a broken wing. Therefore, the plot of Raising Helen alone is enough to break even the most hardened of criminals and leave him blubbering in the corner: It's about a perky modeling agency executive who's forced to change her fast-lane lifestyle after her sister dies and leaves her in charge of her three children. The film is the sort of sitcom-by-way-of-Hallmark material we can expect from Marshall, yet it's marginally easier to take than one would expect from this reliably clumsy moviemaker -- and certainly easier to endure than Kevin Smith's thematically similar Jersey Girl. For starters, Kate Hudson is ideally cast in the lead role, graciously sharing her scenes with her co-stars and aptly conveying her character's uncertainty and insecurity (it's probably her least diva-like performance to date). More importantly, the other surviving sister is played by Joan Cusack, in a strongly delineated turn that provides most of the movie's surprises. The film can't resist ending on a bogus note, and Helen's relationship with the neighborhood's hunky pastor (John Corbett) never rings true. Still, it's hard to totally dismiss any movie that takes time out to give the New Wave band Devo its due. 
1/2
CURRENT RELEASES
BON VOYAGE Set during World War II, this French flick evinces the elan of those vintage all-star opuses like Grand Hotel, though its spirit clearly rests with Casablanca, another movie in which the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of -- well, you know the routine. Gregori Derangere plays a writer who finds himself implicated in a murder committed by a spoiled actress (Isabelle Adjani), aiding a scientist (Jean-Marc Stehle) and his shapely assistant (Virginie Ledoyen) smuggle contraband to England, mixing it up with a waffling government official (Gerard Depardieu) and a secretive journalist (Peter Coyote), and somehow still finding time to write his novel. It's all as believable as those comic shorts in which The Three Stooges smacked around Adolph Hitler -- and no less entertaining.
BUFFALO SOLDIERS The Reagans wasn't the only recent film to largely vanish because of fears it would anger Republicans: Buffalo Soldiers was barely released before being booted to Videoland. (It reaches town via the Charlotte Film Society.) Its crime? It dares to show the military in a less-than-flattering light, as an institution in which some of its officers are incompetent or psychotic and many of its foot soldiers corrupt and drug-addled. While no M*A*S*H, it's still a sharply scripted seriocomedy in which an opportunistic GI (Joaquin Phoenix), running illegal operations under the nose of his inept commander (Ed Harris) right before the end of the Cold War, runs afoul of a hardnosed officer (Scott Glenn) and escalates the antagonism by dating his daughter (Anna Paquin).
KILL BILL VOL. 2 An inability to notice that the emperor had no clothes - not even a bandanna - helped turn Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol. 1 into a critical darling and a favorite of fan-boys everywhere. But although originally conceived as one movie until the length dictated the creation of two separate flicks, the Kill Bill volumes couldn't possibly be further apart - in style, tone or content. Volume 1 diehards will inevitably feel let down by the emphasis on talk rather than action, but Volume 2 is nevertheless the superior movie. It's better written, better acted (especially by Uma Thurman and David Carradine), and more emotionally involving, although it's still obvious that Tarantino should have taken the scissors to his project and carved out a single kick-ass movie instead of two bloated ones. 1/2
LAWS OF ATTRACTION The 1950 comedy Adam's Rib cast Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn as husband-and-wife lawyers who end up on opposite sides of a major case; this clearly hopes to be its modern-day equivalent, but it's so inconsequential that it wouldn't even cut it as Adam's Hangnail. That's a shame, because the star pairing of Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore promises much more than this movie actually delivers. Brosnan is as casually charismatic as always, while Moore, taking a break from award-friendly projects, gleefully throws herself into her change-of-pace role. They're an engaging team, which makes it all the more frustrating that they're let down by a trite screenplay.
MAN ON FIRE This is a remake of a forgotten 1987 flick starring Scott Glenn; that version barely ran 90 minutes, and it's a sign of director Tony Scott's arrogance that this ugly revamping clocks in at 140 minutes. The movie starts off OK, with Denzel Washington effectively cast as a former government assassin whose constant boozing is interrupted once he agrees to serve as the bodyguard for an American girl (Dakota Fanning) living with her parents in Mexico City. Scott's meaningless stylistics immediately grate on the nerves, but the strong work by Washington and Fanning -- and the bond they create together -- cuts through all the hipster b.s. and draws us into the picture. But once the child gets kidnapped and is then believed to be dead, this turns into a tedious revenge yarn. 1/2
MEAN GIRLS Like Heathers and Clueless, here's that rare teen comedy that refuses to be pigeonholed as a teen comedy. Even more remarkably, it's also that rare Saturday Night Live-sanctioned film that's actually funny. Scripter Tina Fey elected to adapt Rosalind Wiseman's Queen Bees and Wannabes, along the way turning a nonfiction book into a fictional story spiced up with her own pithy, piercing observations. Lindsay Lohan stars as a naive teen who, upon making her public school debut after a lifetime of home-schooling, finds herself being courted by the "bitch-goddess" crowd. Director Mark Waters and Lohan previously worked together on the Freaky Friday remake; I'm not prepared to elevate them to the level of Kurosawa-Mifune or Scorsese-De Niro, but they've clearly got a good thing going.
THE PUNISHER One of the most popular of the latter-day (read: 1970s onward) Marvel Comics heroes, this one-man killing machine first saw his exploits translated to film in a 1989 Dolph Lundgren vehicle that went straight to video. Now here comes the more polished and more expensive version (with Dreamcatcher's Thomas Jane in the lead), and perhaps the best that can be said about it is that it's more watchable than the equally sadistic Man On Fire. It's tolerable junk if viewed in the right frame of mind, if one is willing to overlook the poor dialogue, John Travolta's colorless villain, and the ludicrously overplayed death scenes.
SHREK 2 While most sequels slide down that slippery slope of diminishing quality, the eagerly awaited Shrek 2 is on a par with its predecessor. In this outing, newlywed ogres Shrek (voiced by Mike Myers) and Fiona (Cameron Diaz), with the self-professed "annoying talking animal sidekick" Donkey (Eddie Murphy) in tow, travel to the Kingdom of Far, Far Away to receive the blessing of Fiona's human parents, King Harold (John Cleese) and Queen Lillian (Julie Andrews). Little kids will enjoy the colorful characters, while older audiences will dig the inspired sight gags and sly references to other films. But the movie's real ace is Puss In Boots (Antonio Banderas), a debonair swashbuckler -- or at least when he's not busy coughing up hairballs. In a movie filled with imaginative bits, he emerges as the cat's meow.
13 GOING ON 30 Starting off in 1987, this engaging comedy centers around 13-year-old Jenna Rink, an awkward girl whose only desire is to be "thirty, flirty and thriving." She magically gets her wish granted, waking up in 2004 at the age of 30 and not remembering anything that has transpired over the course of the last 17 years. As she begins to piece together the missing years, she realizes that she doesn't like the person she's become. Jennifer Garner, the versatile star of Alias, is irresistible here -- she possesses the flair and instincts of a screwball comedienne -- and if her performance ultimately isn't quite as moving as Tom Hanks' in the thematically similar Big, that might be because the script by Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa doesn't delve as deeply into the dark side of being a child trapped in a grownup's body.
TROY This liberal retelling of Homer's The Iliad is a big, brawny movie that scores on a handful of levels: as a rousing epic that puts its budget where its mouth is; as a thoughtful tale in which men struggle with issues involving honor, loyalty and bravery; and as a topical treatise on what happens when soldiers blindly follow their leaders into war. Director Wolfgang Petersen never allows the epic to overwhelm the intimate: The battle sequences are staggering to behold, but the talky sequences are equally memorable. As Trojan hero Hector, Eric Bana delivers the best performance, followed by Peter O'Toole as his wise father, King Priam. By comparison, Brad Pitt is never wholly convincing in this ancient setting, but he exhibits enough charisma and resolve to make a passable Achilles. 1/2
VAN HELSING Never mind comparisons to the classic horror flicks: Watching this movie, you begin to wonder if anybody involved has ever actually held a book in their hands, let alone read one. The text of Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley is treated as nothing more than toilet paper in the outhouse of writer-director Stephen Sommers' imagination, soiled and shredded beyond all recognition. Van Helsing, a movie whose contempt for its predecessors is matched by its condescension toward its audience, exclusively draws from modern touchstones of pop culture: It's Indiana Jones and James Bond and Star Wars and Alien and so on, all presented as an endless video game with no human dimension but plenty of cheesy CGI effects. As monster killer Van Helsing, Hugh Jackman has been stripped of all charisma, while Richard Roxburgh may very well deliver the worst performance as Dracula in film history.
THE WHOLE TEN YARDS Never mind the yards: There are at least 100 whole reasons why The Whole Ten Yards is easily the worst movie to (dis)grace movie screens so far in 2004. A sequel to a so-so film that barely anyone remembers (The Whole Nine Yards), this again finds gruff hit man Bruce Willis and nerdy dentist Matthew Perry mixing it up with gangsters. This attempt at comedy is so unspeakably awful that I actually felt precious brain cells melting away as my eyes took in this horror. The experience left me shell-shocked to the point that I was wandering the parking lot afterward in a daze, dependant on the kindness of a fellow scribe to remind me who I was, what I was doing there, and where I was parked. I'm no expert on the subject, but shouldn't Workers' Comp be covering my recuperation?
YOUNG ADAM Under the auspices of writer-director David Mackenzie, this adaptation of Alexander Trocchi's novel feels like Roman Polanski's Knife In the Water as told by Ken Loach or Lynne Ramsay, a grubby tale of working-class disillusionment enacted by the three empty souls aboard a cramped sea vessel. Joe (Ewan McGregor) is the young drifter who takes a job aboard the barge owned by Les (Peter Mullan) and Ella (Tilda Swinton); when he isn't busy bonking the haggardly Ella behind her impotent husband's back (the sight of McGregor's fleshy lightsaber earned this an NC-17), he's reflecting on the death (murder? suicide? accident?) of his former flame (Emily Mortimer). The movie's bleak outlook is gripping to a point, but it never amounts to much more than surface grot. 1/2
OPENS FRIDAY:
THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW: Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal.
RAISING HELEN: Kate Hudson, Joan Cusack.
SOUL PLANE: Snoop Dogg, Method Man.
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