Writer-director David Mamet’s satire – in which a film crew converges on a small New England town – thinks it’s taking a big bite out of Hollywood, but even a talented cast (Philip Seymour Hoffman, William H. Macy, Alec Baldwin, Sarah Jessica Parker) can’t disguise the fact that most of the jokes are obvious nibbles.

It takes awhile for Monster-in-Law to bare its teeth, but once the movie does, everything on screen begins to click. As the harridan future in-law, Jane Fonda embraces the over-the-top, blackly comic tone from the start, and once Jennifer Lopez, as the tormented bride-to-be, joins in, she proves surprisingly light on her feet. With invaluable

Why should the guys in The Full Monty have all the fun? Calendar Girls, based on a true story, features middle-aged members of one of Britain’s staid Women’s Institute groups who decide to pose without clothes for their annual calendar, shocking their rural town and unexpectedly become the sensation of the nation. Sure, it’s charming,

This is a big-screen version of the “Saturday Night Live” sketch starring Tim Meadows. Really, what else do you need to know?

Watching Eric Christian Olsen and Derek Richardson mimic original stars Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels in this extraneous prequel is akin to movie karaoke. It’s entertaining, inasmuch as it’s entertaining to listen to some hack in a bar butcher Frank Sinatra. Actually, considering the first film was one of the slighter comedies from Peter and

This disappointing disaster spins endless jokes out of the assumptions that Wasps are stiff and uptight and blacks are loud and loose. Steve Martin plays Peter Sanderson, a Beverly Hills lawyer who gets mixed up with an ex-con named Charlene (Queen Latifah). The movie intends to unite black and white audiences, and it probably does

If Saturday Night Live ever did a theme show, it might look something like this Jim Carrey comedy, which is less a movie than a thinly connected series of sketches all riffing on corporate scandals and the resulting unemployment. There is some clever social satire here, but only in fits and starts, and never toward

This airheaded cheerleader movie tries to be Clueless, director Amy Heckerling’s wise and witty high school spoof, but it ultimately comes off as lower-case clueless, especially whenever the dialogue tries to mimic “hip” teen talk (“Missy’s the pooh,” captain Kirsten Dunst admiringly says about one of her teammates. “Take a big whiff.”) Eventually, the movie