Cast:

Johnny Depp as Mad Hatter

Mia Wasikowska as Alice

Helena Bonham Carter as Red Queen

Anne Hathaway as White Queen

Crispin Glover as Stayne – Knave of Hearts

Matt Lucas as Tweedledee / Tweedledum

Stephen Fry as Cheshire Cat

Michael Sheen as White Rabbit

Alan Rickman as Blue Caterpillar

Barbara Windsor as Dormouse

Paul Whitehouse as March Hare

Timothy Spall as Bayard

Marton Csokas as Charles Kingsleigh

Tim Pigott-Smith as Lord Ascot

Lindsay Duncan as Helen Kingsleigh

Geraldine James as Lady Ascot

Leo Bill as Hamish

Frances de la Tour as Aunt Imogene

Jemma Powell as Margaret Kingsleigh

John Hopkins as Lowell

Eleanor Gecks as Faith Chattaway

Eleanor Tomlinson as Fiona Chattaway

Michael Gough as Dodo Bird

Imelda Staunton as Tall Flower Faces

Christopher Lee as Jabberwocky


Directed by Tim Burton


Summary:

While the script for “Alice in Wonderland” has some issues, it’s a great looking film that’s worth checking out for both adults and kids.


Story:

Thirteen years after Alice’s first adventure in Wonderland, she has forgotten almost all of her experiences there and chalked the whole thing up to a silly child’s dream. Now at the age of 19 she’s being pushed to marry a boring young man who she has nothing in common with. To make matters worse, she’s pressured into accepting his proposal in front dozens of London’s upper crust. But when she spots a white rabbit nearby, she flees the scene and quickly finds herself falling down the rabbit hole again.


When she arrives in Wonderland, it’s all more or less new to her. However, the inhabitants of the world have been eagerly awaiting her return. You see, they’re expecting her to save them from the evil Red Queen and her invincible dragon named Jabberwocky. Still believing it all to be a dream, Alice is reluctant to get involved. Yet she finds she has no choice in the matter when the Red Queen’s forces attack. Will Alice choose to save the day or continue to turn away from her destiny?


“Alice in Wonderland” is rated PG for fantasy action/violence involving scary images and situations, and for a smoking caterpillar.


What Worked:

Without question “Alice in Wonderland” delivers best on its visual effects. Every frame of the film is picture perfect from the backgrounds to the characters to the costumes. I loved the re-imagining of each of the familiar characters from the Blue Caterpillar to the red and white knights. But my particular favorite was the Cheshire Cat. You can’t help but love the thing as it purrs while lazily floating through the air as if it were in zero gravity, then disappearing in a puff of smoke. The costumes are quite impressive, too. It’s most notable with Alice who must go through 6 or 7 costume changes, all of which give her dramatically different looks. Many of them are necessitated by her changes in size, and that also creates an interesting challenge with the backgrounds. In one scene she may be a giant and everything must be quite small. In another scene she may be teeny tiny and every blade of grass must be enormous. I was impressed with how they were able to deliver on every front with the visuals.


There were two standouts for me among the cast. The first was Helena Bonham Carter as Red Queen. She’s so over the top that you can’t help but get a chuckle out of her each time she’s on the screen. How can you not love a character that constantly yells, “Off with their head!” or demands that pigs act as footstools or monkeys act as furniture? The other standout for me was Anne Hathaway as White Queen, and that really surprised me. I went into the movie thinking she was a bad casting choice. But she won me over. In one scene she’d be floating regally around like your standard Disney royalty, arms perfectly poised. In the next moment she’d be hocking a loogee in a magical potion or gagging a little as she collected blood from a monster. Those little touches added some fun humor to the movie.


I didn’t think the 3-D was as important to this movie as it was “Avatar,” but it didn’t hurt the film either. In fact, I actually flinched when the March Hare unexpectedly threw a teacup at the screen. I would definitely recommend seeing it in 3-D if possible.


I took my two young boys to this movie and they enjoyed it quite a bit. I expected them to be reluctant to see it since there was a girl as the lead. But by the end they enjoyed it quite a lot. They even said that their favorite scene was seeing Alice battle the Jabberwocky. So I think that’s a big win for Disney with this movie. They’ve created a strong heroine that both boys and girls can look up to. She’s no Ripley or Sarah Connor, but she’ll do!


What Didn’t Work:

I think “Alice in Wonderland” has several moments where it suffers from an identity crisis. First of all, I actually had trouble at the beginning figuring out whether this was a sequel or a remake. The first half of the film seems to follow the original Alice story almost beat for beat. It has all the same gags, introduction of characters, etc. It wasn’t until the characters started saying she had been there before that you definitively knew it was a sequel. Following those familiar beats made it somewhat predictable. In fact, the first half of the film simply seems like a showcase of the old familiar characters as they are rolled out one by one without advancing the plot very much. That being said, it’s when the movie starts to break new ground that it starts to have some new problems. The big battle at the end between the Red and White Queens’ armies starts to feel a lot like “The Chronicles of Narnia” right down to the heroines wearing armor and swinging swords. Then, in the end, it takes another bizarre turn and we see Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter doing a funky dance while jamming to modern music. Considering everything up till that point had been exclusively Danny Elfman’s orchestral score, it felt incredibly out of place. It needed to feel more like “Wonderland” at the end than it did.


Speaking of Depp, his performance is all over the map in this movie. I suppose it’s what you’d expect from the character considering he’s ‘mad,’ but even parts of this seemed a bit much. Besides the aforementioned dance to modern music, his accent is all over the place. One minute he’s using a proper formal British accent, the next he’s bellowing in Scottish brogue. One minute he’s a loon, the next he’s quite serious. Again, it’s a hard performance to critique since he’s supposed to be mad, but I can say I didn’t fall in love with the character like I expected to.


I went into this movie fully expecting some weird moments, but there were a couple that even I thought were extremely weird, especially for a Disney children’s movie. In once scene as Alice is being charged by a large beast, Dormouse flies out of nowhere, stabs it in the eye with a pin, and plucks its eye out. In another scene, in order for Alice to get into the castle while shrunk down to tiny size, she must hop across a bunch of severed heads floating in the moat. Just to add the icing on the cake, she missteps and her foot goes into goo in one head’s mouth. It seemed a bit gory for an otherwise lighthearted film. Parents of small kids may want to be forewarned.


I’ll also add that I thought Mia Wasikowska was pretty good as Alice. She’s beautiful and looks great when put amid the amazing Wonderland scenery. The only problem is her performance lacks energy and life. I wished she had been a bit more animated in a few scenes where she should be yelling or laughing or reacting with more emotion than she does. But I have to say the blame for that lies more with Tim Burton than Wasikowska.


The Bottom Line:

Is “Alice in Wonderland” worth checking out? Yes, especially in 3-D. Is it a perfect film? Nope, but its flaws don’t drag it down enough to completely ruin it.

Cast:

Johnny Depp as Mad Hatter

Mia Wasikowska as Alice

Helena Bonham Carter as Red Queen

Anne Hathaway as White Queen

Crispin Glover as Stayne – Knave of Hearts

Matt Lucas as Tweedledee / Tweedledum

Stephen Fry as Cheshire Cat

Michael Sheen as White Rabbit

Alan Rickman as Blue Caterpillar

Barbara Windsor as Dormouse

Paul Whitehouse as March Hare

Timothy Spall as Bayard

Marton Csokas as Charles Kingsleigh

Tim Pigott-Smith as Lord Ascot

Lindsay Duncan as Helen Kingsleigh

Geraldine James as Lady Ascot

Leo Bill as Hamish

Frances de la Tour as Aunt Imogene

Jemma Powell as Margaret Kingsleigh

John Hopkins as Lowell

Eleanor Gecks as Faith Chattaway

Eleanor Tomlinson as Fiona Chattaway

Michael Gough as Dodo Bird

Imelda Staunton as Tall Flower Faces

Christopher Lee as Jabberwocky


Directed by Tim Burton


Story:

When teenager Alice Kingsleigh (Mia Wasikowska) falls down a rabbit hole, she discovers a magical world of talking animals and crazy inhabitants who all seem to know her… or someone very much like her.


Analysis:

The idea of Tim Burton taking on Lewis Carroll can be imagined on paper as a collaboration that promises to be as magical and inventive as each part of the equation, so it’s more than a little surprising when Burton’s take on Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” just doesn’t work as well on-screen. To Burton’s credit, he remains as faithful to Carroll’s text as he was to Roald Dahl for “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” but in this case, that might be a bad thing, because it probably needed to be updated to work for modern audiences.


This isn’t exactly the same story millions have read and loved told absolutely verbatim, but rather, it’s almost a sequel to Carroll’s work, opening with a prologue of Alice Kingsleigh as a young girl with a pallid complexion and circles around her eyes from nightmares she’s been having. 13 years later, she’s a lovely woman, played by Mia Wasikowska, with a vivid imagination trying to keep her wild ideas to herself in order to fit into proper upper-class British society where she’s about to be married off to a wealthy but awkward lord.


Once Alice falls down the rabbit hole and arrives in Underland–seriously, what is the point of making a pointless change like the name of the place?–she finds herself chatting with talking animals, wacky characters and some of the familiar elements from Carroll’s story like the shrinking potion and growth cake, but all of it is changed very slightly for the sake of Burton wanting to bring some originality to the mix. Burton’s dark gothic proclivities are often on display but it’s scaled back, while he’s clearly in “Beetlejuice” mode when developing the characterizations and the tone of the movie, but in this case, EVERY character acts like Keaton in that Burton classic.


Where that mindset goes wrong is in letting Johnny Depp go completely off the reservation with his take on the Mad Hatter, creating a character so insane on every level it’s almost impossible to endure for more than few seconds at a time. Of course, the Hatter’s role has been expanded to allow Depp more screen time to chew scenery as a character who ranges from moody sulking to crazy ranting Scottish brogue. What worked so well to make Willy Wonka a character one could empathize with fails miserably here, punctuated by a single moment late in the movie that’s so appalling it’s likely to kill any good will anyone has towards the character. In fact, the movie had already gone well off the rails long before that. By comparison, Helena Bonham Carter’s big-headed Red Queen is far more entertaining in her eccentricities, except for the moments where she resorts to shouting every line, which also get tiring.


The voices of the animated creatures range from the emotional Bayard the Bloodhound, voiced by Tim Spall, to the absolutely insane Paul Whitehouse as March Hare, who when paired with Depp’s Mad Hatter is almost unbearable. Others like Matt “Little Britain” Lucas as the Tweedles and Alan Rickman as the caterpillar seem to be delivering their lines so deadpan one wonders if the recording studio ran out of coffee that day.


Wasikowska is perfectly fine as Alice, but she lacks the energy and personality necessary to create a sense of wonder and excitement in the viewer. Unless this is your very first experience with “Alice in Wonderland” in any format, it’s difficult watching this movie with the sense of awe one has when first hearing the story. This is the main reason why Burton’s movie falters, because when it’s not throwing full-on insanity at the viewer, it’s actually quite dull; the characters aren’t necessarily better than any previous version but in many cases, they’re worse. Even with the few fun moments, it’s just not as entertaining an experience was Burton probably meant it to be. It’s almost as if he is trying to outdo his “visionary rival” Terry Gilliam in terms of what he can throw at his audience before they can’t endure anymore.


As creative as Burton is with the visuals, something just seems off with the mix of live action and CG animation. The creature designs are inventive and the animation is solid, but the way the live actors are transformed using CG, particularly Crispin Glover, makes one spend too much time focusing their gaze on the seams. This is made more apparent with the arrival of the Jabberwocky, who looks absolutely fearsome at first, but then starts to look like one of those rubber-suited Japanese monsters the longer it remains on screen. Part of the problem might be traced back to the decision to convert to 3D rather than filming using 3D cameras, and there just isn’t the depth of 3D one would expect from a movie that takes place in a fantasy world. By comparison, movies like “Coraline” and “Journey to the Center of the Earth” used the technology far more effectively, while “Alice” is one of the first 3D movies since “The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl” that not only hurt my eyes, but even made me feel somewhat nauseous while watching.


The final battle between the White and Red Queen is clearly the film’s high point, and it’s Burton at his most impressive as he delivers one of those massive grand-scale battles we’ve seen in so many other movies but with an inventive Carrollian twist. The real world bookend of the framing sequence also works to tie things together, but it’s somewhat disappointing that the moments outside of “Underland” tend to be more enjoyable than those in it.


The Bottom Line:

Like with Spike Jonze’s “Where the Wild Things Are” and Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” Burton is a filmmaker whose inventive ideas on how to modify (rather than update) a classic tale allows for a lot of inventive visual ideas, but whose disconnect from normal mainstream thinking requires far more patience to put up with ideas that don’t work as well.


As far as Disney adaptations go, “Alice in Wonderland” pales in comparison to something like the “Narnia” movies, which always kept at least one foot in reality and remained aware that people who enjoy high fantasy like Carroll’s classic work are more than happy to experience the insanity, but don’t necessarily want to be driven insane themselves.

Cast:

Richard Gere as Eddie

Don Cheadle as Tango

Ethan Hawke as Sal

Wesley Snipes as Caz

Vincent D’Onofrio as Carlo

Brian F. O’Byrne as Ronny Rosario

Will Patton as Lt. Bill Hobarts

Michael Kenneth Williams as Red

Lili Taylor as Angela

Shannon Kane as Chantel

Ellen Barkin as Agent Smith

Wass Stevens as Det. Patrick Leary

Armando Riesco as Det. George Montress

Wade Allain-Marcus as C-Rayz

Logan Marshall-Green as Melvin Panton


Directed by Antoine Fuqua


Story:

Three Brooklyn police officers at different points in their career come to terms with the rigors of the job: Eddie (Richard Gere) is the 22-year veteran, a beat cop with just seven more days on the force and trying to get through them without making waves; Tango (Don Cheadle) has been working undercover in the projects getting deep into a drug dealing ring, but he’s ready to get out, while Sal (Ethan Hawke) is a family man whose desperation to support his pregnant wife and two children leads him down the path of corruption.


Analysis:

The police drama certainly has had its ups and downs in recent years, but it makes perfect sense that director Antoine Fuqua, the director of “Training Day,” would be the one to try to create a one-man revival with a film that leaves South Central behind and gets deep into the projects of Brooklyn to explore what makes good police officers go bad. It does this via three fables-like tales involving officers fighting against the many temptations available to them.


It opens with Ethan Hawke’s Sal sitting in a car listening to a rant about “righter and wronger” from Vincent D’Onofrio, a scene that immediately tells you that you’re in for a gritty and unflinching look at the tough decisions police officers make on the job. Despite the speech, Sal is on the path of wrong, leading his men to bust drug operations then trying to steal any money found to use as a down payment on a new house, since his current one has gotten his pregnant wife ill.


Richard Gere’s Eddie has been on the force for 22 years and he’s a loner, considered a joke among his younger peers, because he’s never really made much of an effort, essentially just doing the least amount to do his job. He just has seven days left on the job and trying to get through it, but it’s already taken its toll, and Eddie turns to his hooker girlfriend Chantel (Shannon Kane) to try to help him through his demons.


Meanwhile, an undercover cop going by the name Tango (Don Cheadle) has infiltrated himself so far into the underbelly of the Brooklyn projects he’s gotten close to crossing the line that separates him from the bad guys. He wants out, but his handler (Will Patton) realizes what a commodity he has in Tango.


All three stories are strong enough that the movie can rely entirely on the characters and their journey without resorting to the sensationalism of car chases and shoot-outs we might normally get. Because it always focuses on the drama the characters face, you feel as if you’re watching real life, which is enhanced by Fuqua’s attention to detail in creating that environment on screen. Anyone who has ever encountered the criminal element in the city will be aware of how accurate this is.


A film like this would not have worked as well as it does if not for the casting of the three actors and the fantastic performances Fuqua gets out of them, especially Gere and Cheadle who do a fantastic job getting us into the mindset of what these career police officers must go through as they find themselves approaching that line no one wants to cross. Hawke also has some solid moments and more than pulls his weight in his segments, but his performance is slightly more erratic with a few moments of blatant overacting. The most pleasant surprise is the comeback of Wesley Snipes as Caz, Tango’s good friend and a former druglord trying to go straight since getting out of jail, who gets tangled in Tango’s attempt to get out of that life. It reminds you what a good actor Snipes was back in his early days, and their story could have easily made for a great movie in itself. The main characters are surrounded by a strong supporting cast that includes the likes of Brian F. O’Byrne and Michael Kenneth Williams from “The Wire,” both whom bring a lot to the film’s more dramatic scenes.


Sure, “Brooklyn’s Finest” may lose a few points for originality since some of it feels similar to other police dramas we’ve seen before, but mostly in some of the better examples of the genre like James Mangold’s “Cop Land” and Joe Carnahan’s “Narc.” Really, it’s the way Fuqua handles the material that shows he’s reached another level as a filmmaker in juggling three concurrent storylines and characters arcs while ignoring the ever-present urge to bring the stories together, instead offering a couple brief encounters but otherwise, keeping them separated.


Eventually, the three stories converge in a fantastic finale where all three characters convene on the projects in order to resolve issues that have arisen based on earlier decisions. For Eddie, he has been given one last chance to do something good and possibly be a hero, while Sal is trying to make one big score. The last twenty minutes offer some of the most tense moments in the movie as Fuqua edits between the three stories so fluidly that it’s hard not to be impressed.


The Bottom Line:

“Brooklyn’s Finest” is a movie that could easily have gone horribly wrong if handled differently, but Antoine Fuqua is clearly a filmmaker at the top of his game, and because of that, “Brooklyn’s Finest” is a far stronger movie than “Training Day” and possibly even more effective than “The Departed” because it sets up its gritty realism early on and successfully maintains that to the very end.

Cast:

Bruce Willis as Jimmy Monroe

Tracy Morgan as Paul Hodges

Kevin Pollack as Hunsaker

Adam Brody as Barry Mangold

Sean William Scott as Dave

Ana de la Reguera as Gabriela

Guillermo Diaz as Poh Boy

Rashida Jones as Debbie

Michelle Trachtenberg as Ava

Jason Lee as Roy

Sean Cullen as Captain Romans


Review:

“Cop Out” is Kevin Smith’s (”Clerks”) attempt to make his version of “Beverly Hills Cop” just with less intelligence and charm. And it pretty much works.


That’s it. No essays, no searching for themes or comparisons to other abstract ideas. “Cop Out” is far too gloriously stupid to support anything like that.


Jimmy Monroe’s (Bruce Willis) daughter is about to get married and he’s dedicated to paying for it, if for no other reason than to show up her jerk stepfather (Jason Lee). Which makes it the worst possible time for him and his partner (Tracy Morgan) to get suspended from the NYPD for letting a neighborhood get shot up in a drug buy gone wrong. His only choice is to sell his beloved Pathco baseball card, or it would be if he hadn’t gotten robbed by a clueless parkour enthusiast (Sean William Scott) during the sale. Cue the Harold Faltermeyer music.


If someone explained the plot of “Cop Out” to me, I would say it sounds remarkably dumb. It’s something of an enigma; how can something this stupid be this good?


But it is. Well, as long as your definition of good includes LOTS of d*ck jokes. “Cop Out” is marvelously juvenile. Not just in its somewhat typical situation comedy and sight gags, but from its ability (even desire) to frequently bring its plot to a shuddering halt so that its characters can engage in a few minutes of quiet ridiculousness.


Which really shouldn’t be funny. Almost nothing is worse than listening to actors riff on each other unless they really know what they’re doing. But for the most part they do.


Despite breaking into the biz as a comedian, his long career has left Willis playing the straight man most of the movie and he does it well enough, but that leaves the majority of the comedy in Morgan’s hands.


Except for those rare few moments when Sean William Scott’s drughead thief Dave shows up to annoy everyone and steal their scenes. Intentionally annoying characters are very difficult, they have a tendency to succeed too well, making it hard to care about the comedy. But somehow Scott pulls it off through a constant up-beatness. “Cop Out” is the beneficiary of a strange alchemy that way. Everything in it should be awful, but isn’t, probably because of some actually witty–stupid but witty–dialogue from Robb and Mark Cullen, not to mention a few hilarious turns that you don’t see coming.


Because it’s funny, and that trumps all. It’s a pretty good fit for Smith’s first piece of work-for-hire directing. It doesn’t sound like one of his movies, but the underlying structure is much the same and it gives him the freedom to expand on his visual story-telling - usually the weakest part of his particular style of films.


It’s a little uneven though, with a jarring mixture of delivery styles as each actor tries to make it theirs. For Kevin Pollack and Adam Brody’s natural smart-assness that’s not such a stretch. But you’re going to have really like Morgan’s particularly brand of screaming misunderstanding because you’re going to have to sit through a lot of it as a lot of the plot (and attendant gags) concerns his constant concern that his wife (Rashida Jones) is cheating on him. In fact, despite the fact the entire plot revolves around Willis, you’d think the movie was more about Morgan’s troubles. It’s not constant, as occasionally he must impersonate a functioning police officer instead of a yelling man-child, but if Morgan doesn’t work for you “Cop Out” will be intolerable.


It’s got a few other bumps here and there. “Cop Out” is nominally an action-comedy, which means every so often the guns have to come out. Smith has spoken self-deprecatingly about his visual inability as a director and his discomfort with action sequences, and he’s not been lying. Anything outside of a sight gag tends to move very slowly, granting us one of the more boring car chases committed to film. It’s definitely miles better than his first few tries in films like “Dogma” and “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” but it’s got some distance to go.


But by God, the man knows how to tell a d*ck joke. “Cop Out” is very much a movie for 10-year-olds who never grew up but that’s okay, they need love, too. No one else will like it much but they’re not supposed to. It is what it is, a fun, stupid comedy that works far better than it should. There probably is no real explaining why. It’s funny, and that’s all that matters.

Cast:

Leonardo DiCaprio as Teddy Daniels

Mark Ruffalo as Chuck Aule

Ben Kingsley as Dr. Cawley

Max von Sydow as Dr. Naehring

Michelle Williams as Dolores

Emily Mortimer as Rachel 1

Patricia Clarkson as Rachel 2

Jackie Earle Haley as George Noyce

Ted Levine as Warden

John Carroll Lynch as Deputy Warden McPherson

Elias Koteas as Laeddis

Robin Bartlett as Bridget Kearns

Christopher Denham as Petere Breene


Review:

Psychological thrillers should, by definition, be dealing with the mind. What it sees, how it understands things, how that affects the characters involved. The draw for a writer, and what it can achieve for his or her characters, is obvious. On the other hand, it risks relegating the plot to an extended magic trick–all smoke and mirrors with nothing behind it–that blows away when the illusion is over and takes what was good about a story with it.


“Shutter Island” has one foot in and foot out of that particular pitfall.


A prisoner (Emily Mortimer) is missing from Shutter Island, Massachussets’ experimental facility for the most violent psychological patients. Since the escapee in question can’t have gotten off the island and the guards can’t find her, a pair of US Marshalls (Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo) have been called out to the island to find her.


“Cape Fear” fans know that Martin Scorcese is perfectly capable of a stylish, entertaining thriller that never gives up its director’s personal idiosyncrasies, and “Shutter Island” is more proof of that. It’s probably the most style-laden movie he’s made over the last two decades, particularly the dream sequences, but Scorsese is canny enough to know how to keep that sort of thing from getting away from him.


This being a psychological thriller, Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio), the lead investigator, must have quite a few demons of his own rattling around in his head. And boy does he, from his experiences as a World War II soldier freeing concentration camp prisoners to the murder of his wife, he’s got problems, horrible dreams that keep him up at night whispering secrets to him. And because it’s a psychological thriller its proximity to insanity a danger in its own right, threatening to upend our protagonist’s grasp on reality.


Fortunately, the filmmakers realize all this (and they have the benefit of working from a Dennis LeHane novel, who is also quite familiar with the trappings of the thriller) and work very hard to make those trappings work in their favor instead of simply reveling in them in favor of light entertainment.


It does however follow that primrose path for quite a while, right down to a convenient hurricane preventing contact with the main land, before yanking Teddy off of it and revealing its true intentions to the audience. “Shutter Island” is probably 20 minutes longer than it needs to be because of that slowness inherent in every moment of the film. It’s got the problem Scorcese-films frequently have; they never end because he enjoys making them so much.


Shutter Island isn’t the only place harboring secrets, it turns out, and Teddy isn’t there by accident. He’s been tracking his wife’s murderer (Elias Koteas) through the US penal system and discovered that the island may not be exactly what it claims. That inmates come there, and then just disappear.


The reality of “Shutter Island” is that a lot of it is tremendous fun to watch. DiCaprio is playing the same sharp, tough, hard-ass he’s been playing in quite a few movies recently, but Scorcese knows how to use him as a prop for his visual sequences and he works well within them. Teddy’s various dreams and hallucinations are full of the kind of visual tricks that other less, talented filmmakers repeat uselessly, mistaking them for depth, but in the hands of a real master they’re actually quite evocative.


DiCaprio is ably supported though, which helps smooth over the rough patches, particularly from Ben Kingsley’s kindly psychologist, and a very short appearance from Ted Levine that is the highlight of the film.


The problem is that it’s all trick, and I’m not convinced it’s one that can survive its revelation. Psychological thrillers, good ones, are ultimately about their characters not their plot, and while those two things turn out to be intricately intertwined in “Shutter Island,” that may be lessening both rather than strengthening them.


As hard as “Shutter Island” works to convince you that is a dumb but flashy thriller when it is actually a fairly smart one, it may well be as hollow as any magic trick. It’s a decent experience but it’s hard to tell what it all adds up to for anyone, least of all for Teddy. “Shutter Island” is stuck a little too much in its own head, and lacks perspective.


A disappointing ending aside, a lot of “Shutter Island” is terrifically well done. It may be less than the sum of its parts, but it’s a great deal more than we get from a lot of thrillers. At the very least, Scorcese proves that it’s possible to do one of these things without just repeating the moves other directors have made. But ultimately it doesn’t really go anywhere, and that’s probably the real deciding factor.


It would be easy to write “Shutter Island” off as just an paean to old thrillers the way “Cape Fear” was, but that’s just because it’s hard for some people to accept Scorcese could make something so… insubstantial. There’s nothing wrong with light entertainment, and the reality is if anyone other than Scorcese had made “Shutter Island” its inventiveness would get more of the applause it deserves. There’s quite a bit that’s good about it, but a lot of “Shutter Island” is exactly what it appears to be as well.

Cast:

Timothy Olyphant as David Dutton

Radha Mitchell as Judy Dutton

Joe Anderson as Russell Clank

Danielle Panabaker as Becca Darling

Christie Lynn Smith as Deardra Farnum

Brett Rickaby as Bill Farnum

Preston Bailey as Nicholas

John Aylward as Mayor Hobbs

Joe Reegan as Pvt. Billy Babcock

Glenn Morshower as Intelligence Officer

Larry Sander as Ben Sandborn

Gregory Sporleder as Travis Quinn


Review:

Ogden Marsh is your typical sleepy little farming community. Corn, threshers, baseball diamonds and rabid hunters. A group of brainwashed citizens randomly massacring the townsfolk. You know, typical.


As ideas for derivative horror films go, “The Crazies” isn’t a bad one, assuming the director approaches it with some craft and avoids cheap jump scares or heavy handed style. Luckily “The Crazies” has that in Breck Eisner (”Sahara”) who has enough of an understanding of the weakenesses inherent in this sort of thing to get around it.


After a local man wanders around town with a shotgun, Sheriff Dutton (Timothy Olyphant) starts looking for a reason why and it looks like he’s found it when he discovers the wreckage of a plane in the local swamp. The local swamp that feeds into the town’s water supply.


It’s pretty efficient as set ups go; it creates a believably motiveless villain so that the film can jump right to the mayhem. But it also allows a constant undercurrent of tension as survivors must worry if they have been infected or are just responding to the stress of their situation.


There’s nothing spectacular at work in “The Crazies” but that probably comes as no surprise. It’s got a decently slow build and just enough of a focus on the Sheriff and his wife, the town doctor (Radha Mitchell), to make you care about them and the trouble they find themselves in. Eisner understands how to build tension with skill and grace, mostly avoiding clumsy jump scares. Real horror, giving you time to understand it and squirm waiting for it to go through. Like a man locking his family in a house and methodically setting it on fire.


And in Sheriff Dutton, Olyphant has finally found a role that responds to his limited talents. Mostly he just needs earnest fear, and that’s well within his range.


There are a few decent twists and turns as well, as the U.S. Military arrives to quietly lock down the town and the unaffected townsfolk suddenly find themselves with more than just the Crazies to worry about.


It doesn’t stray that far from its conventional horror roots, though. A lot of the dramatic tension comes more from wondering if the story will jet off in a new direction or do what you expect of it. It doesn’t jet off very often.


But what it does, it does… adequately. Which, if we’re honest, is a lot more than you expect out of something called “The Crazies.”

Cast:

Logan Lerman as Percy Jackson

Brandon T. Jackson as Grover

Alexandra Daddario as Annabeth

Jake Abel as Luke

Sean Bean as Zeus

Pierce Brosnan as Mr. Brunner / Chiron

Steve Coogan as Hades

Rosario Dawson as Persephone

Melina Kanakaredes as Athena

Catherine Keener as Sally Jackson

Kevin McKidd as Poseidon

Joe Pantoliano as Gabe Ugliano

Uma Thurman as Medusa

Julian Richings as Ferryman

Bonita Friedericy as Hysterical Woman


Summary:

“Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief” actually exceeded expectations and was an enjoyable film. The inclusion of Greek mythology into modern settings made it fun and exciting. Cool visual effects for Medusa, the Hydra, and Hades will enthrall moviegoers both young and not-so-young.


Story:

This film is based on the book by Rick Riordan.


The gods of Greek mythology are alive and well and roaming the earth today. Under the guise of normal mortals, they walk the streets of New York City. And like they did in ancient Greece, they fall in love with humans and have children who are demigods – half human, half god. But when the lightning of Zeus is stolen from Mount Olympus, he immediately suspects one of these demi-gods is responsible. Specifically, he blames the son of Poseidon, god of the sea.


Unfortunately for Percy Jackson, he has no idea he’s the son of Poseidon and that he’s suspected of the theft. This normal, awkward teen quickly finds himself thrust in the middle of a battle between the gods for the lightning. He must find out how to use his developing power and rely on his newfound demi-god friends in order recover the lightning and stop the world from being devastated by an immortal war.


“Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief” is rated PG for action violence and peril, some scary images and suggestive material, and mild language.


What Worked:

I have to say that I wasn’t expecting much from “Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief.” I had never read the books, so I didn’t know what I was in store for. And the fact that the trailers were unremarkable and this was a February release seemed to indicate this could be a stinker. The final bad sign was that Fox decided to screen this for critics the night before it was due to hit theaters. This is usually a sign that even the studio thinks they have turkey and they don’t want critics to have time to write reviews before the movie opens. So imagine my surprise when 15 minutes of the film went by and I was still entertained. Then 30 minutes went by and I was still waiting for it to suck. An hour went by and I thought surely the grand finale would fail miserably. Next thing I knew 2 hours went by and the film concluded by not only not sucking, but being pretty good. In fact I was ready to see a sequel and/or go pick up the books. Maybe my expectations were so lowered that it could only be better than I expected, but I actually enjoyed it a lot.


A large part of why I enjoyed it is because I’m a fan of Greek mythology. I fell in love with it as a kid when I saw “Clash of the Titans” and I read all the books I could on the subject after that. This movie takes all those characters from mythology and catches up with them today. It’s fun seeing them all in a modern setting. You see Zeus and Poseidon chatting on the Empire Statue Building. You see demi-god children training with swords and shields one moment and playing video games the next. You see Medusa in sunglasses, a head wrap, and a leather trench coat. You see the Lotus Eaters in Las Vegas. You get the idea. This story also follows Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” perfectly. Campbell should be considered a co-writer since it follows the steps he laid out exactly. Like Hercules or Perseus or Luke Skywalker, we see him rise from humble beginnings, battle the supernatural, and save the day. Anyone that loves Greek mythology is going to get a kick out of this movie. (Though I do have to wonder if this will take some of the wind out of the sails for the new “Clash of the Titans” remake coming soon.)


The effects in the film are quite good. This is summer blockbuster quality in February. The Minotaur, Hydra, Hades, Fury, and Medusa all look fantastic. My kids were with me and jumped more than once as Percy had to do battle with them all. I particularly loved the snakes for Uma Thurman’s Medusa hair. They’ll set audiences on edge. And when hell is revealed, it is quite impressive as well.


The cast is pretty good. Logan Lerman does a fine job as Percy Jackson. He walks a fine line between being cocky and confused, incompetent and competent, and arrogant and geeky. He somehow manages to dance back and forth across all those lines with the character and emerge on the other end as likable. Alexandra Daddario is a good find as Annabeth. She’s convincingly tough and manages to convey the strife between the gods pretty well in this new generation. Sean Bean is also cool as Zeus while Rosario Dawson is hot as Persephone. It’s also fun seeing Catherine Keener and Joe Pantoliano, but there’s a guilty pleasure in seeing Uma Thurman as Medusa. Yeah, it’s over the top but it is fun.


A lot of people are going to compare this movie to “Harry Potter” because of the three teens, the school/camp, the supernatural aspects, and the fact that Chris Columbus directed it. And I’d have to agree it’s a good comparison. But you could also compare this to “X-Men” since you have these young characters with extraordinary powers doing battle in modern settings. I suppose Greek mythology created the original comic book heroes, so it’s only natural.


I took my two older kids to this movie. They enjoyed it and I enjoyed it. This also sparked their interest in reading more about mythology, so that was a cool thing for me to see, too. If you have kids that want to see a movie, this would make a good family outing.


What Didn’t Work:

I think casting recognizable faces was good in some respects but bad in other respects. For example, Uma Thurman as Medusa was fun. Same with Joe Pantoliano as the evil step-father. But as much as I like Pierce Brosnan, seeing him as a centaur was a bit odd. Don’t get me wrong, the effects for those scenes looked great. But every once in a while you’d see him in full half-horse mode and it would strike you as a little silly. Same with the scenes of Steve Coogan as Hades, but I do have to give them points for making him look like a rocker.


Brandon T. Jackson as Grover was also a mixed bag. He brought a lot of much needed comic relief to the film, but sometimes he took it over the top. The jokes about Obama being a demi-god and the street slang were a little much. He turned into the stereotypical funny, black sidekick. He just happened to have goat legs.


This film is rated PG, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to take children under 7. There’s some pretty scary stuff in here from Medusa to the Hydra to the Fury.


The Bottom Line:

“Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief” was an unexpected pleasant surprise. If you are into Greek mythology it is required viewing. If you like “Harry Potter,” I think you’ll enjoy this, too. I can’t say how it compared to the book, but I think fans of the series will be pleased.

Cast:

Logan Lerman as Percy Jackson

Brandon T. Jackson as Grover

Alexandra Daddario as Annabeth

Jake Abel as Luke

Sean Bean as Zeus

Pierce Brosnan as Mr. Brunner/Chiron

Steve Coogan as Hades

Rosario Dawson as Persephone

Melina Kanakaredes as Athena

Catherine Keener as Sally Jackson

Kevin McKidd as Poseidon

Joe Pantoliano as Gabe Ugliano

Uma Thurman as Medusa

Julian Richings as Ferryman


Review:

Hollywood gets reamed continually as a bastion of liberalism, which just goes to show how little some people pay attention. Hollywood is about as conservative a place as you will ever find, all the conspicuous consumption aside. The reality is there is nothing, nothing, that Hollywood likes better than a nice, safe formula–preferably one that someone else has tried and proved is risk free–that it can follow step-by-step and insure that it is going to get exactly what it expects. For example, the shameless, heartless “Harry Potter” rip-off that is “Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief.”


Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman) hasn’t had a particularly easy life. His father left before he was a year old and he grew up in the home of a unfeeling stepfather (Joe Pantoliano) and his put upon mother (Catherine Keener). School hasn’t been much better as a combination of dyslexia and ADHD has made any sort of progress a stroke of luck as much as anything else. But when one of his teachers grows wings and tries to kill him, Percy realizes that all of those extremely typical fictional teenager complaints can really only mean one thing: he is the son of the Greek God, Poseidon (Kevin McKidd).


Just about every kids adventure film based on a book for the past 10 years has been compared to the “Harry Potter” franchise in one way or another. It’s very easy (and, generally, very lazy on the part of the reviewers) to do it that way, trying to find any connection that shows how one so obviously follows from the other. But you can be forgiven when something is so transparently derivative as Rick Riordan’s “Percy Jackson” series.


Percy and his friends, like Luke (Jake Abel) and Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario), are the children of gods, leaving them imbued with powers above and beyond mortal men. Powers that they go to their own private camp to learn how to use at the, er, hooves of a grizzled centaur (Pierce Brosnan) in a secret, magical world that lives on next door to ours but which we normal people never notice.


The plot of the first installment of the series (which follows one year each of Percy’s schooling as a demi-god, though the film version has sped his age up to 16 or so) is a fairly typical hero’s journey combined with the gifts of easy, unearned power that make typical superhero fantasies so potent. It’s no wonder they’ve been the adolescent power fantasy of choice for so long, the idea that you could just wake up one day and find out you can do fantastic things. That you are secretly special.


“Percy Jackson” positively reeks of this sort of thing, as Percy discovers that his ADHD is actually battle reflexes, marking him as a natural warrior, able to defeat even camp overachiever Annabeth despite having roughly a decade less experience.


The journey part comes when Percy’s mother is captured by Hades (Steve Coogan) in order to force Percy to give up Zeus’ (Sean Bean) stolen Lightning Bolt so that he can cast his brother down, despite the fact that Percy doesn’t have it and doesn’t know who does. Percy has decided to go to Hades and explain that he doesn’t have it, and despite how transparently stupid and ill-thought out his plan is, he quickly gets lots of help from his friends to accomplish his quest.


What follows is about an hour of Percy, Annabeth and his Satyr protector Grover (Brandon T. Jackson) traveling around the country in a journey that has nothing to do with the story’s main conflict or its main antagonists and has only marginally to do with his goal of rescuing his mother. The main point is to re-purpose classical Greek adventures to the modern day and eat up time. It is unbelievably ill-thought out.


The hope seems to be that if they can throw enough adventure and monsters at the audience’s way, we won’t notice that a lot of what the heroes do is frankly stupid. Unfortunately, Chris Columbus (first two “Harry Potter” movies) is the director of choice for this new would-be franchise and all of the faults he brought to his “Harry Potter” films are evident here starting with his complete inability to build any sort of visual tension in his films whatsoever. His look remains as reassuringly uninspired as it has since his “Home Alone” days and much of the effects look about 10 years out of date.


He doesn’t get much help from his young stars either. Lerman is plucky enough for an action hero but any attempt at emoting is wasted while Daddario is just a walking plank of wood, a poster child for the dangers of casting for looks. Only Jackson offers any sort of charisma, though he is mainly around for fast-talking comic relief, meaning he is often (intentionally or not) channeling Martin Lawrence or young Eddie Murphy.


The supporting cast is actually quite well-employed, particularly Uma Thurman’s deadly Medusa and Rosario Dawson’s Persephone, the universe’s most pissed off house wife. And the conceptualizing of Steve Coogan’s Hades as a sort of demonic Robert Plant is actually a stroke of near-genius. But a lot of the cast members, like Keener and Brosnan, are much more hit and miss, which sums up the film as well.


Except for an extended montage sequence at a Vegas casino no one ever checks out from, most of the quest is fairly flat. That sequence, however, is about the only moment where the fun and invention the film is going for manages to come out. No sooner does it arrive then it’s gone, trailing after the heroes in their stolen Maserati, back to a world of obvious references and extremely dull action sequences.


It’s hard to tell how much of that is Riordan and how much is Columbus, but neither of them come out looking particularly good. “Percy Jackson” is simply uninspired in every single meaning of the word. It’s probably the crassest, most obviously derivative work of this sort since “Eragon.”


Kids and fans of the books won’t care; the film is the typically faithful adaptation you expect from Columbus. If they have their way, the rest of the series will no doubt be along. To paraphrase Mel Brooks, I’m sure we’ll all meet again for “Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Search for More Money.”

Cast:

Jessica Alba as Morley Clarkson

Kathy Bates as Susan

Jessica Biel as Kara Monahan

Bradley Cooper as Holden

Eric Dane as Sean Jackson

Patrick Dempsey as Dr. Harrison Copeland

Hector Elizondo as Edgar

Jamie Foxx as Kelvin Moore

Jennifer Garner as Julia Fitzpatrick

Topher Grace as Jason

Anne Hathaway as Liz

Carter Jenkins as Alex

Ashton Kutcher as Reed Bennett

Queen Latifah as Paula Thomas

Taylor Lautner as Willy

George Lopez as Alphonso

Shirley MacLaine as Estelle

Emma Roberts as Grace

Julia Roberts as Captain Kate Hazeltine

Bryce Robinson as Edison

Taylor Swift as Felicia

Matthew Walker as Greg Gilkins

Larry Miller as Oversized Baggage Agent


Directed by Garry Marshall


Summary:

In trying to make his version of “Love Actually,” Gary Marshall instead ends up with something on par with the worst bits in “Love American Style.”


Story:

It’s Valentine’s Day in Los Angeles and a diverse array of individuals are experiencing the pleasures and pitfalls of love. Florist Reed Bennett (Ashton Kutcher) has proposed to his girlfriend Morley (Jessica Alba) while his friend Julia (Jennifer Garner) is trying to figure out a way to spend time with her new doctor boyfriend (Patrick Dempsey). A mailroom clerk (Topher Grace) wants to spend Valentine’s Day with his new girlfriend (Anne Hathway), who has a big secret, while a young boy named Edison (Bryce Robinson) wants to get flowers to express his love for his secret crush.


Analysis:

While I feel the need to express a caveat that I’ve never been a fan of Valentine’s Day, nor am I particularly a fan of Los Angeles, even going into Gary Marshall’s romantic anthology with the lowest of expectations will not prepare anyone for the corny amount of fluff that’s thrown at the viewer over the course of two hours.


Much of the story revolves around Ashton Kutcher’s flower store owner who is characteristically busy on the holiday. Much to the surprise of his friends, he’s proposed to his girlfriend, played by Jessica Alba, though she doesn’t seem too thrilled with the idea. We join other couples in their post-coital bliss and are quickly drawn into nearly a half dozen high concept storylines maybe a few too many, and we won’t try to explain all of the connections between the disparate characters because it’s likely to make anyone’s head hurt trying to figure out how many coincidences would be involved for all of the characters to run into each other.


The storyline that probably comes closest to being able to sustain its own movie is the one that brings together the likeable pairing of Anne Hathaway and Topher Grace, but Hathaway’s talents seem to be wasted on such a small role, which essentially gives her a chance to play with lots of funny accents as a phone sex worker. (She’s come a long way since Marshall discovered her for “The Princess Diaries”!) Even so, the strongest scenes are those between Bradley Cooper and Julia Roberts, two people who meet on a plane, but it’s also the segment that seemingly has the least purpose or connection to the other stories. Similarly, there’s a running subplot with Eric Dane as a football player with a secret that doesn’t seem to have any place in the movie except to tie together some of the other disparate characters like Queen Latifah and Kathy Bates, both of whom are wasted on smaller satellite roles. Jamie Foxx isn’t bad as a sports reporter forced to do a fluff piece on the holiday, but he’s one of the characters who just doesn’t have a very strong arc which is generally par for the course as many actors who have done at least passably better romantic comedies seem to be slumming it, not for a pay check, but just for the chance to work with Marshall. It makes you wonder why a great actress in her twilight years like Shirley MacLaine would waste any time on a part that essentially has one great scene.


Oddly, the only actor who comes out the other end of this movie fairly unscathed is Emma Roberts as a teenager planning to give up her virginity to her boyfriend on Valentine’s Day; there’s something that feels honest in the innocence of her performance. Young Bryce Robertson isn’t bad either although his subplot of a young boy with a crush is overtly stolen from “Love Actually.”


Otherwise, any attempts at laughs are botched badly by actors who have yet to realize that comedy isn’t their strong suit, yet they’re each given at least one truly dreadful and embarrassing moment where they go out of their way to get laughs out of preposterous behavior, whether it’s Jessica Biel running on a treadmill or Jennifer Garner attacking a heart-shaped piñata. Because these scenes aren’t funny and thereby fail to add humor, they are unnecessary. The worst example of this comes in the form of the Terribly Talentless Taylor Twins, Lautner and Swift, and thank heavens they broke up before we might ever be subjected to another movie with both of them. Lautner’s attempt at self-parody is weak–the guy has only been in two “Twilight” movies!–and Swift is actually a worse actress than she is a singer. Who knows what Marshall was thinking casting them and giving them possibly one of the dumbest scenes to ever make it into a final cut of a movie? As hard as it must have been to find such a diverse group of actors who could play shallow L.A. types, those scenes mentioned almost guarantees this film’s title to be proceeded by the words “And the Razzie Award for Worst Ensemble Cast goes to…” at this time next year.


It’s especially surprising that “Valentine’s Day” is from the same director who debuted with “Young Doctors in Love,” which is still funnier than anything in “Valentine’s Day.” Here, Marshall always goes for the most obvious laughs just as he always goes with the most mundane L.A. locations possible as background.


There are just too many storylines and characters who pop in and out, never around long enough to leave much of an impression or make much of an impact, some of them, like Foxx, being forgotten in the sloppy way the whole thing is thrown together. There are some good moments but they’re few and far between compared to the inanely unfunny comedy bits, and by the time all the stories start being pulled together at the end, it’s just too damn late. Few of the characters are strong enough to justify even spending a little bit of time with them and less than half the stories are resolved in a satisfying way by the film’s overbearing need for everyone to have a happy ending.


The Bottom Line:

Vapid and embarrassing to everyone involved (as well as insulting to any viewer with half a brain), it’s as if any potential for depth or intelligence in this romantic comedy has been sucked out by the very holiday the film attempts to glorify. The two hours watching this movie was no fairy tale.

Cast:

Jessica Alba as Morley Clarkson

Kathy Bates as Susan

Jessica Biel as Kara Monahan

Bradley Cooper as Holden

Eric Dane as Sean Jackson

Patrick Dempsey as Dr. Harrison Copeland

Hector Elizondo as Edgar

Jamie Foxx as Kelvin Moore

Jennifer Garner as Julia Fitzpatrick

Topher Grace as Jason

Anne Hathaway as Liz

Carter Jenkins as Alex

Ashton Kutcher as Reed Bennett

Queen Latifah as Paula Thomas

Taylor Lautner as Willy

George Lopez as Alphonso

Shirley MacLaine as Estelle

Emma Roberts as Grace

Julia Roberts as Captain Kate Hazeltine

Bryce Robinson as Edison

Taylor Swift as Felicia


Review:

Valentine’s Day gets a lot of criticism (which certainly doesn’t stop us from observing it every year). That it’s a made up holiday, that it serves no purpose than to give purveyors of schmaltz and easy sentiment another easy conduit for their product. And just to prove the people who think that right, we’ve been given Garry Marshall’s “Valentine’s Day.”


It would take just about the entire length of this review to explain how the vast cast of characters who make up “Valentine’s Day” connect together, (there’s a florist who’s best friend is dating a doctor and teaches a young boy who lives with his grandparents but is babysat by a teenager preparing to sleep with her boyfriend and… I’ve already lost interest) but suffice it to say they do come together (even if they don’t always know it) on Valentine’s Day as various relationships begin and end and the nature of love itself is examined.


That’s a pretty big reach for any film, and an even bigger canvas Marshall (”Pretty Woman”) is going to approach it with. Luckily for everyone, he’s decided to be as banal and shallow about it as possible. Marshall came up from sitcoms and it’s always shown in his feature work which tend to be based on characters being maneuvered from situation to situation like set dressing in the endless pull of set up and punchline.


The punchline’s haven’t changed much for sitcoms or for Marshall, so most of them can be seen coming from a long way off. The real tension to be had is how long exactly he’s going to hold his punch for. You can see the pay off, and it can be a little interesting how long you have to wait for it, but that’s about it.


What you’re left with are the actors. Not the characters, because these characters aren’t characters. What you get then are non-characters. They’re stereotypes inhabited by actors who have been cast to type, and who have only a few minutes per scene to jump into character. It’s no surprise then that most of the dialogue comes out more like a line reading during a table read than something someone real is actually saying.


This kind of stunt casting makes the odds of ending up with any sort of genuine chemistry among the characters minimal at best. Which is a problem because with the sheer weight of characters floating around “Valentine’s Day” chemistry and charm are about the filmmaker’s only hope. Many story-lines–like Taylor Lautner and Taylor Swift’s young, air-headed, first romance teenagers–are more like brief tableau’s of scenes jammed together rather than an actual story. Sometimes this kind of thing can work, if the actors are good enough and the dialogue is sharp enough.


Some of it is actually winsome. Jamie Foxx descends back to some of his “In Living Color” silliness that he won’t let himself do anymore as a sportscaster forced by his producer (Kathy Bates) to go out and find some romantic stories for the day.


And Anne Hathaway gets a lot of mileage out of a secretary trying to balance her temp job working for a high stress sports agent (Queen Latifah) and new relationship with a guy from the mail room (Topher Grace) with her nighttime job as a phone sex operator. As one note as most of the set ups and pay offs are, she actually makes them work more often than not.


On the other end you get Julia Roberts’ pointless plane trip, Jessica Biel’s obligatory neurotic and Ashton Kutcher playing the straight man, which is definitely not to his strengths (On the other hand at least he’s not shouting to be funny). It’s a hodge podge at best, with many sequences seemingly created in order to get an actor into the film rather than offering anything to the story itself. The end result is something of a wash.


If you mainly watch movies in order to see actors you like, “Valentine’s Day” is a bargain at twice the price. The minute per movie star average is off the chart here. And if you like sit-coms, it’s even better. But considering the trend for movies has been away from movie stars and more and more towards visuals, it seems more and more likely that this movie wasn’t made for anyone.