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Film Clips
Reviews by Ian Caruth, James DiGiovanna, Caryl Flinn, Linsay Hernon and Curtis McCrary.
ALL OVER THE GUY. Your basic boy-meets-boy movie, with some alcoholism and heterosexual best friends thrown in for a few yucks. Richard Ruccolo (who plays one of the guys on TV's Two Guys and Another Guy) is pretty decent, in a TV-movie sort of way, as the adult child of alcoholics who falls in love with a nerdy sci-fi fan. Screenwriter Dan Bucatinsky plays his love interest, Eli, and Adam Goldberg is amusing but underutilized as Eli's best friend, Brett. Distracting enough for its 90 minutes, but largely forgettable, unless the image of two cute guys deep-kissing is the kind of thing you have trouble forgetting. --DiGiovanna
AMERICA'S SWEETHEARTS. John Cusack should fire his agent and maybe kick him in the balls for even suggesting he take the role of Eddie Thomas in this impressively stupid "romantic" "comedy." Cusack stars as the cuckolded husband of horribly spoiled screen queen Gwen Harrison (the no-talent Catherine Zeta-Jones-Douglas). He must reunite with her to salvage the upcoming release of their final movie together, Time Over Time. Co-writer and producer Billy Crystal does a glib walk-thru as Lee Phillips, the studio publicist who's trying to salvage his job by organizing a press junket for the film, despite the fact that no one has seen it yet. You see, the film's director is a bit touched (What's this? Christopher Walken playing a nutjob? Getouttahere!), and won't allow any studio scum to view it before it's shown at a remote Nevada resort to provincial entertainment reporters from the hinterlands. Tucson's own junket lickspittle, Fox 11's Jim Ferguson, has a brief cameo (don't blink). Cusack is at first completely overwrought in his lovesickness, but then miraculously regains his Everyman-style composure in time to see that he's really in love with Gwen's formerly zaftig sister Kiki. That listless performance by Julia Roberts is evidence that even she knows Sweethearts is a dog. And, as if to bite the hand that feeds her, Roberts gallingly insults her most loyal audience-- verweight white females--by donning this year's blackface, a fatsuit. Message? Lose the blubber and the leading man will be yours. That's healthy. Avoid this like the middlebrow plague that it is. --McCrary
AMERICAN OUTLAWS. Apparently we've been wrong all this time in thinking that the notorious Jesse James was not a womanizing, hell-raising bank robber. He was actually a kind-hearted Robin Hood of the Old West heroically breaking the law for the good of the little people. Therefore, I personally would like to thank director Les Mayfield for setting the record straight. But, on second thought, can a director with a history of cinematic flops such as Encino Man and Flubber be trusted with this insult to classic Westerns, with its amateur stunts, melodramatic mush of cheesy teenage-like romancing, ridiculous macho-man hostility and fake sets? I think not. American Outlaws should be outlawed in America. --Hernon
BABY BOY. Writer/director John Singleton fails to deliver his usual charisma and intensity in this companion piece to his 1991 breakthrough film Boyz N the Hood. Shifting gears from his trademark gangster themes, Singleton examines the emotional infancy that traps African Americans and limites their potential to achieve the American Dream. R&B star and MTV host Tyrese Gibson stars as Jody, a chauvinistic pot smoker who sells stolen dresses, has fathered two kids with different women, and still lives with his own mother (A.J. Johnson), who must have gotten pregnant in the third grade. Some tension arises when the mother's new boyfriend moves in, a beefed up and bare-butted menacing ex-thug (Ving Rhames), but the monotonous sequences, hot and cold inconsistencies, comic-relief cameo by Snoop Doggy Dog, and out-of-nowhere ending keep this film from ever growing up. --Hernon
BUBBLE BOY. Decked out in a bubble suit with retractable rubber arms, a naïve romantic with immune deficiency journeys cross-country to stop his true love from marrying Mr. Wrong in this unnecessary and insulting remake of John Travolta's touching 1976 drama The Boy in the Plastic Bubble. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as the innocent optimist who sports a never-ending smile despite being raised by an extremely overprotective June Cleaver (Swoosie Kurtz) with twisted morals, fiber-loving psychosis and unique patriotic practices. On his way to Niagara Falls, the sheltered youth encounters a cow-worshipping ice-cream truck driver, a knife-wielding biker and an overzealous cult on helium with Fabio playing their brainwashing leader. Despite this perfectly cast cameo, director Blair Hayes' dream-crushing film displaying a cruel world of evil mothers and exaggerated prejudices made me cringe. --Hernon
CAPTAIN CORELLI'S MANDOLIN. Love crosses enemy lines as a simple Greek woman falls for an eccentric Italian captain during the climax of World War II in John Madden's bittersweet treatment of Louis de Bernieres' 1994 novel. Pelagia (Penelope Cruz) lives in a small provincial island town in Greece where her days are filled with such innocent pleasures as following her father's footsteps into the medical field and celebrating her engagement to a local fisherman (Christian Bale). However, once notorious world leaders wreak havoc, Pelagia's sheltered lifestyle is flipped upside-down as her fiancé leaves for the war with extreme patriotic gusto, war tanks and artillery flood the formerly peaceful town square, and a sworn nemesis (Nicholas Cage) with impressive charm and musical talents enters her home and heart. Despite this seventh-grade history lesson, the acclaimed director of Shakespeare in Love affectionately ponders the moralities of trust, friendship and love. --Hernon
THE CLOSET. Writer/director Francis Veber is probably best known for La Cage aux Folles, a film about a gay man who pretends to be straight for the sake of his son. In Le Placard Veber reverses the formula and gives us Daniel Auteil as a straight man who pretends to be gay so that his son will love him. Also, so he won't lose his job at the condom factory and so his ex-wife will find him interesting again and so people will stop thinking of him as little more than a human cogwheel. Of course, this being movie-land, it all works out swimmingly, and Auteil is able to say "pretending not to like women, I became a man." If all this sounds vaguely offensive, guess again. Le Placard manages to be both slaptstick-silly and intelligently sensitive about these issues. It's also one of the wittier films of recent memory, though it never rises to greatness. Still, it's probably the best straight-man-pretending-to-be-gay story since Barbara Bush moved out of the White House. --DiGiovanna
CURSE OF THE JADE SCORPION. A mascara-covered hypnotist wickedly controls two unknowing subjects with a swaying green insect for his own financial gain in Woody Allen's latest multi-leveled forum for comedic repartee and social commentary. Set in 1940 New York with comic-book props and a Vaudevillian soundtrack, the writer/director/actor remains in familiar territory by portraying a smarmy womanizing megalomaniac who shoots off endless sexist jibes with his nasal stutter while succeeding as the city's top insurance investigator. Bearing the brunt of the many chauvinistic guffaws by the top dick (no pun intended) is a multi-talented efficiency expert played by Helen Hunt. However, once the sparring co-workers fall victim to the curse of the jade scorpion, they each get a powerful sting that will help audience members survive the curse that is Woody Allen. --Hernon
THE DEEP END. Tilda Swinton is Tilda-tastic and Swintontacular as a middle-aged (but incredibly hot) mother trying to cover up a murder that she mistakenly thinks her son committed. Goran Visnjic is smoky and compelling as the man who's blackmailing her, and Greg Nuttgen's cinematography scores big points with rich, natural light and a sparse use of creepy noir effects. Directed by the team of Scott McGhee and David Siegel, who made the strikingly original and inventive (but ultimately flawed) Suture, The Deep End is a nearly perfect thriller, with just the right mix of plot, pacing and subtle music by first-time film composer Peter Nashel. Not to be missed by fans of the noir genre, fans of pigmentless red-haired beauties, or fans of the Lake Tahoe area, which stars as the Lake Tahoe area. --DiGiovanna
GHOST WORLD. It's no surprise that one of the best films so far this year was written by Dan Clowes, whose Eightball contains some of the finest writing in America today. In fact, when he announced that he was teaming up with director Terry Zwigoff (Crumb) to make a movie of his story Ghost World, a collective "huzzah" went up from the legions of bearded, virginal, 38-year-old males who adore his work. Strangely, he's made a film that will appeal to a much broader audience: namely, all the cynical, hyper-intelligent hipster-haters of the world. Enid (Thora Birch) and Becca (Scarlett Johansson) are two girls who are too cool for the too-cool kids. They cavort around a mythical mid-sized city engaging in ennui, sarcasm and petty acts of evil designed to stave off the overwhelming sense of disappointment they have in the world. Of course, this can't work, since they're so jaded by their obvious superiority to the beer-commercial culture of their peers that the closest they can come to approving of anything is to deem it the opposite of everything they hate. Ghost World is probably the most accurate, witty and incisive portrait of disaffected teen life ever made. If you're the kind of cynical, hate-filled despiser of virtually everything that passes for culture in the U.S. of A., then you really shouldn't miss Ghost World. Also, call me; we should talk. --DiGiovanna
THE GIRL. Set in an anti-tourist Paris, The Girl is a spare but visually stunning film noir. The film's narrator is a beautiful painter called simply "Lover" (Agathe de la Boulaye) who, while in another relationship, becomes obsessed with a nightclub singer she calls "The Girl" (Claire Keim). The Girl?s characters are actually more figures than psychologically credible beings. The two principals embark on an affair that, as is required by the playfully borrowed noir conventions, will lead to someone getting hurt. The Girl offers both a meditation on creating new cinematic forms as well as a detached, often ironic look into, as writer Monique Wittig puts it, "a nonheterosexual story told in a heterosexual world." --Flinn
GREENFINGERS. Murderers and thieves get rehabilitated by Mother Nature in this true story from writer/director Joel Hershman. Clive Owen stars as an unsociable inmate who gets transferred to the Club Med of prisons with its tea and biscuits and non-existent security system. The hard-nosed loner prefers scrubbing toilets to joining in Christmas parties wearing a festive paper hat. However, thanks to the persistence of a willy-nilly roommate (David Kelly) and a crop of miracle violets, the governor sets the reluctant convict and his fellow prisoners on a horticultural endeavor, allowing them to a the prima donna flower guru, compete in the world-renowned Hampton Court Palace Flower Show and gain life-altering insight into desires, direction and daffodils. This inspirational comedy blossoms as the cream of the crop. --Hernon
HARDBALL. Two down, bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, and for a relief pitcher they send in writer John Gatins to retire the side. Bad move. Keanu Reeves stars as a compulsive gambler deep in debt who is reluctantly hired to coach Little League baseball to a bunch of trash-talking, delinquent inner-city kids. But after an eye-opening crash course in Crime 101 and an added incentive of romance with an innocent schoolteacher (Diane Lane), the makeshift coach cares less about the money and more about being a role model for the neglected youths raised around crack houses and gang bangers. This adaptation of Daniel Coyle's novel lacks the creativity and character development needed for this drama to win the game; however, the charismatic kids and the film's inspiring intentions enable it to squeeze by with a tie. --Hernon
HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH. I know, you're thinking this is just another "boy meets penis, boy loses penis, boy becomes second-rate glam-rock star" film. Well, that's where you're wrong, because this is the best "boy meets penis, boy loses penis, boy becomes second-rate glam-rock star" film ever made. John Cameron Mitchell is so good in the lead that you'll actually believe a wig can cry. And the script is funnier than George W. Bush's college transcripts. I really can't say enough good things about this movie: Imagine the kind of film that Bob Fosse would have made if he were gay and were married to David Bowie and then someone cut off his penis and gave him some really nice lipstick. It's that kind of movie. You know, the best kind. --DiGiovanna
JAY & SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK. Known for such better movies as Clerks and Chasing Amy, writer/director/actor Kevin Smith inexplicably felt compelled to create this flagrantly offensive film starring Smith's two foul-mouthed signature characters, Jay and Silent Bob, who are notorious for their exceedingly sick and twisted X-rated pothead minds. As an excuse to capitalize on obscene humor and to win the blue ribbon for this summer's ultimate cinematic garbage, Smith developed an insipid plot deep beneath the barrage of vulgarities that has something to do with sabotaging Hollywood with the help of not-so angelic Charlie's Angels, the Scooby Doo gang, a runaway monkey and a no-longer celibate nun. Honestly, I did not hold out for the finale, since the countless oral sex references, tasteless bestiality philosophies and disrespectful treatment of women were enough to get me running to another movie in a galaxy far, far away. --Hernon
JEEPERS CREEPERS. Rest assured. The wait is over. The worst movie of 2001 is here. One far more asinine than Pootie Tang, more cliché-driven than Just Visiting and more pointless than Pokemon 3. It is none other than (drum roll, please) Jeepers Creepers, a pitiful excuse for a horror flick with its dimwitted bickering siblings who should have "curiosity killed the stupid" tattooed to their foreheads, a fully armed and deranged cat woman and a lame cannibalistic grim reaper rip-off that takes the old saying "you are what you eat" to a ridiculously new level. So, thank you, writer/director Victor Salva, since we moviegoers can proceed to theaters without caution now that the worst is behind us. --Hernon
A KNIGHT'S TALE. As it turns out, the best thing about medieval Europe was all the rock music and cute teenagers. Who knew? Of course, there was plenty of jousting and bawdiness and ribaldry, and all of it is rolled into A Knight's Tale, which tries to de-nerdify the middle ages by having hot young stars Heath Ledger and Shannyn Sossamon steam up the screen with their pre-Renaissance love. This works for about an hour, and then things get a bit maudlin as the requisite sappiness kicks in. Still, it's more fun than the black death. --DiGiovanna
LEGALLY BLOND. What's this, a summer comedy that's actually funny? But then it was written by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, the team that brought us Ten Things I Hate About You, one of the smartest teen films of the last few years. And while the main character is supposed to look like a blond bimbo, she's played by Reese Witherspoon, who's actually an actress. Imagine that, casting an actress as a pretty woman, when there are so many talentless models available for the part. Thanks to Witherspoon's performance and the witty (if not exactly high-brow) script, this winds up being the funniest mainstream comedy of the summer. Don't go expecting Taming of the Shrew, but there are enough laughs and good acting to make this a little more than just a diverting waste of time. --DiGiovanna
MOULIN ROUGE. Imagine a 10-hour acid trip condensed into two hours. Now turn the volume up to 11. Got it? Well, you're not even close to how excessive Moulin Rouge is. This tale of a young bohemian wannabe in fin-de-siècle Paris is all noise, flash and pop music medleys. The dialogue is glommed together from a variety of top-40 hits, the costumes are so dazzling that they'd hurt Stevie Wonder's eyes, and the sets look like they're going to explode from being over-gilded. If you've been in a coma for a while, this might be just the thing to wake you up. Of course, after a few minutes of it you'll just want to go back to peaceful oblivion. Luckily, Nicole Kidman's wooden acting provides a bit of relief from this otherwise over-lively production. Also starring Ewan McGregor and John Leguizamo, who somehow manages to be even more annoying than this film itself. --DiGiovanna
THE MUMMY RETURNS. And why does the mummy return? For the cash, apparently, as every vestige of art, originality or individual vision is sacrificed in the name of focus-grouped pabulum in this intensely insulting movie that will prove once again that the American public wants nothing more than to see the bar lowered well below floor level. Brendan Fraser is the hero, a grave robber who, when not desecrating the holy places of other cultures, likes to shoot non-white peoples with his enormous shotgun. Rachel Weisz is his similarly heroic, morally bankrupt wife. Thanks to their atrocious parenting skills they manage to get their young son mixed up in a 5,000-year-old plot for world domination. That's the story, but it's beside the point. The Mummy Returns is about nothing except non-stop action, and I mean that in the worst possible way. This is action porn: Someone enters the scene, says two lines of dialogue, and then there's a 20-minute sequence of sword fighting and explosions. Repeat 10 times and you have a movie. It's amazing how quickly that kind of thing gets boring. Still, if you think you'd like nothing more than to see entertainment dumbed down to the level of chewing, I cannot recommend strongly enough that you take yourself to The Mummy Returns. --DiGiovanna
THE MUSKETEER. On some distant cloud in French Heaven, Alexandre Dumas is crying. Easily one of the most excruciating movies of this awful, awful year, The Musketeer is soul-deadeningly bad, exactly as terrible as its high-concept premise?Hong Kong-style fight scenes intermixed with the standard musketeer story?could possibly be. Not only saddled with hammy overacting, hollow characters and some of the worst cringe-inducing puns this side of a Schwarzenegger flick, the fight scenes?the acrobatic, impressively-choreographed fight scenes, the film's whole raison d'être?are shot so ineptly as to be unwatchable. Which makes The Musketeer not just a bad movie, but a deeply, achingly sad bad movie. Stay away! --Caruth
O. Director Tim Blake Nelson is probably best known as a character actor (he played Delmar in O Brother, Where Art Thou?), but he brings a strong eye and good sense of pacing to this teen-film adaptation of Othello. The story of jealousy and complicated revenge is racy and violent, just like all the great classics, and star Josh Hartnett does a great job as Hugo, the film's stand-in for Shakespeare's Iago. Definitely worth seeing if, like all lovers of great literature, there's nothing you enjoy more than murder, infidelity and horny teenagers playing basketball. --DiGiovanna
ORIGINAL SIN. Successful coffee merchant Luis Vargas sends away for a kind-hearted, childbearing mail-order bride, but receives a lustful, money-grubbing con artist instead in this adaptation of Cornell Woolrich's erotic-thriller novel. Antonio Banderas plays the Cuban entrepreneur who quickly falls prey to the sex trap set by his conniving new wife. Angelina Jolie plays the imposter who repeatedly dupes her gullible husband with the help of her overbearing maniacal secret lover. Despite the compelling performances and the stunning costumes and set designs, Vargas' overwhelming naïveté, the nearly pornographic love scenes and the eccentric plot that borders convolution with its excessive twists and turns leave this film noir a definite cinematic sin, though one to enjoy. --Hernon
OSMOSIS JONES. Ah, those geniuses at the movie studios never cease to amaze. Just when you think they're totally out of ideas to steal or copy, they juke left, and blend tired genres together! "Hey! You got buddy picture in my microscopic body animation movie!" For Osmosis Jones, the pitch musta gone something like this: "OK, we put Chris Rock and David Hyde Pierce inside Bill Murray. What? No, not like that. It'll be animated." For those expecting a good gross-out from the usually reliable Farrelly brothers, you'll be disappointed to learn that Jones strives to be a kids' movie so much that scenes were trimmed to avoid the deadly PG-13 rating. To keep non-kids amused, the script is peppered with "adult humor," which is to say bad puns. Sadly, not even the funny-when-he's-not-even-trying Bill Murray can save this overblown "concept" that parades around in movie clothing. And if you thought Chris Rock could be annoying on those 1-800-Collect commercials, wait 'til you see him doing his yell-schtick as an animated white blood cell (who is for some reason blue). Unless you've spent years purposely building up your tolerance to Rock in case you ever get into a death match with a Sicilian, you'll leave the theater with a rash of some kind. --McCrary
THE OTHERS. Tension rises on the screen, as I am sure it did off, as Tom Cruise's production company leads his ex-wife through this intense supernatural thriller. Nicole Kidman stars as a lonely housewife with Nurse Ratched-like rigidity caring for her two photosensitive children in a fog-covered secluded mansion while her husband is away fighting for Britain in World War II. After the servants mysteriously disappear, three reticent replacements arrive and relieve the increasingly maddening mother before revealing their own life-altering secret. Imposing an eerily slow pace with scene-stealing performances by the entire cast, writer-director Alejandro Amenabar instills heart-pounding anticipation in this haunting combination of The Shining and Flowers in the Attic with a powerful Sixth Sense-type of ending. --Hernon
PLANET OF THE APES. Back in the '70s, ape movies were all the rage. Sadly, after the truly awful Battle for the Planet of the Apes, the apes series ended, and we, the American public, were faced with over 20 ape-free years. Well, that dry spell has ended with the release of Tim Burton's daringly titled Planet of the Apes. Is it as good as the original ape movies? I'd say it's better than at least three-fifths of them, and it certainly looks better than any of them. In fact, it looks so good that you probably won't mind the plot holes and continuity errors and horribly obvious "message" ending. Plus, it features a cameo by Charlton Heston, the original human astronaut from the original Planet of the Apes, only now he's playing an ape. Deep, yes? Err, no, but still, it's a primatacular thrill ride with enough (unintentional) laughs and beautiful images to make it more than worthwhile, if you're just looking for some mindless fun. Plus there's this really funny bit where Heston delivers an anti-gun speech, I kid you not. I'm guessing he had so much chimp makeup on that he had no idea what he was saying. Probably worth the price of admission just to watch the head of the NRA talk about the evils of handguns. --DiGiovanna
THE PRINCESS DIARIES. Once upon a time among the steep hills of San Francisco, an accident-prone four-eyed 10th-grader with frizzy hair was rescued from her lonely existence in a firehouse by an elegant queen who turned the nerdy klutz into a perfect princess with the gracious wave of her royal hand. The divine Julie Andrews lowers her impeccable standards to appear in this sugar-coated, trite scenario as the Queen of Genovia, who informs her San Francisco granddaughter that she is the only remaining legal heir to the throne. Thus, newcomer Anne Hathaway gets a CoverGirl makeover, attends demure school for dummies, and achieves instant popularity among the A-crowd teenagers all before the revolutionary Independence Day ball. Regardless of the recycled fairytale premise and the nonsensical casting, director Garry Marshall still provides basic entertainment for the young target audience with a bit more inspirational merit than the moronic galumphing apes and dinosaurs of late. --Hernon
RAT RACE. What do an airhead dressed like a streetwalking Liberace, a goofy narcoleptic, two bumbling brothers, Lucille Ball's chauffeur, Hitler's doppelgänger and the future Attorney General have in common? Well, only Jerry Zucker, the zany director responsible for such comedic classics as Airplane, could provide the answer. They are all lucky contestants in a no-holds-barred race to reach the $2 million prize that a wealthy casino owner and his gambling-obsessed cohorts created. Laugh through the many unexpected roadblocks?a wacky squirrel saleswoman, a sadistic chopper pilot, some World War II veterans?in order to grab the checkered flag with this refreshing comedy. It actually relies not on overused toilet humor, but on off-the-wall situations that will keep you wondering what else Zucker will pull out of his hat. --Hernon
ROCK STAR. In 1996, British heavy-metal dorks Judas Priest replaced lead singer Rob Halford with Tim "Ripper" Owens, the singer from an American Priest tribute band. Owens, an office-supply sales drone by day and rock-and-roll dreamer by night, actually got to live my?I mean, his?yearned-for fantasy lifestyle of music, powerful narcotics and an endless supply of skanky backstage rock chicks as the frontman of his favorite band. Sounds like it would make a pretty raunchy kick-ass movie, right? To director Steven Herek (Mr. Holland's Opus, for god?s sake) it must have sounded like a perfect springboard for a clumsy, familiar story that unconvincingly reaffirms mainstream values as it rips the vitality out of the source material. Foregoing the verité of a metal-hostile mid-'90s setting, Rock Star takes place in the mid-1980s, with Mark Wahlberg as Owens' stand-in. The film follows a basic, predictable arc to an all-too-pat conclusion, declining the opportunity to examine the more interesting aspects of the story?at one point, Wahlberg's manager tells him that it's his working responsibility to live the decadence about which others only dream?in favor of fairly standard monogamous-love-is-the-answer crap. For hardcore bathos fans only. --Caruth
THE SCORE. A good heist movie this is. The man behind Yoda himself, Frank Oz, uses his Jedi ways behind the camera to direct two of the Godfathers, a priest in love and a rock 'n' roll diva in this crime caper with heavyweight actors and a traditional plot that works. A disheveled Marlon Brando plays Max, a bigwig of the black market who unites two safecracking masterminds to steal a 17th century royal scepter now heavily guarded in Montreal's Customs House. Although Nick (Robert DeNiro) has a legitimate jazz club to maintain and a neglected fiancée (Angela Bassett) to please, the longtime thief signs on for this one final payoff before retirement with the help of a loose cannon (Edward Norton) who poses as a mentally retarded janitor in order to case the target from the inside. Together the two use their 007 gizmos with the moves to match for an enticing thrill that scores, even though it plays by the book. --Hernon
SHREK. The team that created the 1998 film Antz brings us a witty computer-animated tall tale full of fanciful characters, poignant morals and sophisticated humor. When the ugly green ogre Shrek (Mike Myers) finds his swamp infiltrated by the likes of Tinkerbell, the Piped Piper and the Big Bad Wolf due to the banishment of all fairytale characters from the local kingdom (a remarkable model and pardoy of the Magic Kingdom) he becomes desperate for privacy. Shrek strikes a deal with the Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow) to rescue a forlorn princess trapped in a dragon-guarded castle in exchange for the reinstatement of his quiet life in the swamp. Accompanied by a pesky talking donkey (Eddie Murphy), the diverse duo sets out to bring the headstrong Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) back for the selfish short-stack lord to attempt to quell his severe short-man's complex. An unforgettable journey of computer animation that is certainly most entertaining for an adult viewer. --Hernon
SUMMER CATCH. Although this cheesy romantic comedy is by no means a home run, it is at least clean, inoffensive and a nice break from the massive onslaught of vulgar flatulence jokes and shallow sex obscenities that are filling up theaters these days. Freddie Prinze Jr. stars among an eclectic cast as a wayward lawn boy struggling to make it into the big leagues as a pitcher. He battles the Dennis Rodman of baseball, a girlfriend's yuppie parents in sweater vests, and a family history of failure. Despite the cliché-riddled plot that plays by the book and mirrors other films from The Graduate to Bull Durham, director Mike Tollin still pulls off a base hit with this perfect date movie. --Hernon
TORTILLA SOUP. Big Night cooked up tasty Italian treats, Soul Food fired up good Southern home cooking, and now director Maria Ripoll's remake of Ang Lee's Eat Drink Man Woman stirs up savory Mexican meals with a mouth-watering medley of mayhem, marriage and marjoram. Hector Elizondo stars as a widowed restaurateur who is losing his senses, literally, since he can no longer taste or smell. Nonetheless, the gourmet chef pulls out all the stops when preparing delectable Sunday-night feasts for his three grown daughters: an entrepreneur with dad's cooking talents, a shy science teacher with her own little schoolgirl crush, and a free-spirited misguided rebel, all of whom deliver life-altering news as their own contribution to their traditional family dinner. Though the final serving tastes like a stale after-dinner mint coated in a contrived Hollywood happy ending, the appetizers and the main course combine a wholesome blend of laughter, warmth and even a revival of Chiquita Banana. --Hernon
TWO CAN PLAY THAT GAME. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Battle of the Sexes with your host, writer/director Mark Brown; each opponent will duke it out in the ultimate match of love. In this corner is the heavyweight champion, Shante (Vivica A. Fox), a senior advertising executive well trained by the almighty Book of Love itself. And in the other corner is the underdog, Keith (Morris Chestnut), an ignorant but chiseled-chested lawyer with a learned coach (Anthony Anderson) to guide his every punch. There will be 10 rounds to determine who is the undeniable ruler of relationships. Players, shake hands, and keep it clean. At the sound of the bell Shante comes out strong with a skilled maneuver that uses the lethal silent-treatment weapon, giving her the psychological advantage. But Keith appears to be counteracting with the old Einsteinian transference-of-energy strategy, allowing him to gain some ground. It looks like a close match, folks. Who will be the winner? Check your local listings for game times to find out. --Hernon
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