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BEWITCHED As far as ill-advised Nicole Kidman vehicles that plunder past artifacts of pop culture are concerned, the nicest thing one can say about Bewitched is that it's an improvement over The Stepford Wives. That's primarily because of Kidman herself, who manages to harness her maddeningly inconsistent role with such success that the result is an offbeat and original characterization. Otherwise, this initially clever comedy, in which a real witch (Kidman) is cast as a fictional one on an update of the Bewitched TV series, takes one wrong turn after another beginning around the halfway mark. As Kidman's unlikely love interest, a miscast Will Ferrell delivers a manic performance that quickly grows tiresome, while old pros Michael Caine and Shirley MacLaine are wasted in malnourished roles.
CINDERELLA MAN No filmmaker in his right mind would want his boxing picture to be released a scant few months after Million Dollar Baby, but Cinderella Man is so structurally and tonally different from Clint Eastwood's masterwork that it might as well be about jai alai. Almost every summer has one tony Oscar-bait production geared toward older audiences, and Cinderella Man, which relates the real-life story of pugilist James J. Braddock, adequately fills that designation. Russell Crowe's touching portrayal is instrumental in recruiting the audience's sympathies from the get-go, and director Ron Howard and his A Beautiful Mind writer Akiva Goldsman take care to spend as much time detailing the ravages of the Depression as they do Braddock's exploits in the ring. This film may not break new ground, but in its ability to provide old-fashioned entertainment, the gloves come flying off.
DARK WATER As far as American remakes of Japanese horror flicks go, this one's better than either The Ring or The Grudge, trading in cheap thrills for an understated intelligence. Jennifer Connelly plays Dahlia, an emotionally fragile divorcee who moves into a decrepit - and possibly haunted - apartment with her young daughter (Ariel Gade). The horror angle isn't nearly as compelling as the other topics explored by director Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) and scripter Rafael Yglesias (Fearless), among them parental anxiety, urban decay and the indifference of strangers. Connelly anchors this with a strong performance, though the film is stolen by supporting players Pete Postlethwaite (as the building's gruff janitor), Tim Roth (as Dahlia's adept lawyer) and especially John C. Reilly (as the sleazy landlord).
FANTASTIC FOUR Assign acclaimed directors to superhero flicks and you get the likes of the Spider-Man pair, the X-Men duo and Batman Begins. Assign any Tom, Hack or Harry and you get flaccid duds like Elektra, The Punisher and now Fantastic Four. It's shocking that 20th Century Fox didn't treat this with the same care as their classy (and successful) X-Men franchise; instead, they handed the directorial reins to Tim Story (Barbershop and the Jimmy Fallon bomb Taxi), resulting in a half-assed cheeseball confection. Among the heroes, Michael Chiklis fares best as the tortured Thing, but Julian McMahon makes a pitiable Dr. Doom, a towering comic book villain (think of him as the forerunner to Darth Vader) reduced to a wimpy matinee crook. The engaging special effects help.
HERBIE: FULLY LOADED The notion of a supercharged Volkswagen beetle seems quaint in this age of monolithic, gas-guzzling SUVs - indeed, the first Herbie picture, The Love Bug, hit theaters back in 1969 - yet given the sort of cacophonous kiddie dreck that routinely fills auditoriums today, this blast of old-fashioned sentiment isn't half-bad. Lindsey Lohan, whose tight outfits continually threaten to put the kibosh on the film's G rating, plays a speed racer who finds herself competing on the NASCAR circuit after she discovers that the rusty VW she rescues from a junkyard is magically endowed. The wavering quality of the special effects - more special in some scenes than others - will pass unnoticed by the little ones, while parents will enjoy revisiting their youth via the mix of rock oldies on the soundtrack.
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