1. Never allow a character in the film to watch a scene or speak a line from another, much better film. It reminds the audience that they’re watching something less superior.

2. There’s a big difference between spoofing something and just being stupid. The best spoofs take their source material very seriously. Read the rest of this entry »

Getting hit in the face with a ball isn’t funny, but watching someone else get hit in the face is. Welcome to “Dodgeball,” a self-aware summer comedy that aims low and hits hard. Surprisingly, “Dodgeball” manages to nail most of its targets, leaving them red-faced and bruised. Read the rest of this entry »

“The Scorpion King” is the cinematic equivalent of a large piece of Limburger cheese. You know it’s going to stink, but for some reason you still want to take a bite. This also applies to the films star, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, whose ham-on-wry performance will please his legion of fans but leave the rest of us starving for something more substantial. Read the rest of this entry »

If audiences can get beyond the smokescreen that is the coming attraction trailer, they’re going to find a very different and much more satisfying movie called “Holy Man.” The trailers make “Holy Man” look like another outrageous Eddie Murphy comedy. Sure, there are plenty of laughs, yet “Holy Man” is a comedy of substance. Read the rest of this entry »

Bathed in the pastel and sherbet artifice of an early 1960s, big studio Technicolor virginal sex comedy, “Down With Love” lovingly recreates a more innocent time when audiences effortlessly bought into the notion that Doris Day was pure as falling snow and Rock Hudson was a real ladies man. Read the rest of this entry »

Even though “Rushmore” is set in the present, the film has the feel of old school. Set in an elite boys academy in Texas, “Rushmore” is filled with remembrances of things gone by. The soundtrack is lined with songs from the 1960’s British Invasion, while the look and feel of the Academy, it’s students and the small town it’s located in all recall a quieter, simpler time. Read the rest of this entry »

I highly doubt that this is what Hugh Lofting had in mind when he wrote the original “Doctor Dolittle” stories. Yet that is what we get in the new Eddie Murphy comedy “Dr. Dolittle 2.” Murphy plays the title role, a people doctor who learns he has the ability to talk with the animals. Read the rest of this entry »

This evening I had the choice of shoving a fork in my eye or sitting through “Death Wish V: The Face of Death.” I think shoving a fork in my eye would have been less painful. The only thing older than this tired series is its star, Charles Bronson, who looks utterly helpless in this muddled mess that proves you can have too much of a mediocre thing. Read the rest of this entry »

The first question is why. Why do people pay $45 to see four guys imitate The Beatles? Why is one of the longest running shows in Las Vegas a revue of celebrity impersonators? Is it because people feel the need to connect with their nostalgic roots? Read the rest of this entry »

In The Village, going into the woods leads to much worse. It’s there, beyond the marked boundaries and towering sentries that they live, creatures who haunt the woods and the dreams of the neighboring villagers. An unspoken treaty separates the creatures from the villagers, an agreement that has kept the people of Covington, Pennsylvania safe from harm. Read the rest of this entry »