Comedy Rated PG-13
"A tone-deaf attempt to transplant The Scarlet Letter – or at least its consideration of puritanical judgment – to a contemporary high-school setting."
Comedy Rated R
Indie stalwart Jim Jarmusch (Down By Law, Broken Flowers) unveils an experiment long in the making with this series of black-and-white vignettes, filmed over the last 18 years, of different actors smoking and drinking joe. It’s curious and often funny, even if the performers – including Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett and rappers RZA and GZA
The Family Stone, which follows an extended clan over the Christmas holiday, is all over the place in terms of tone, though I guess you could say the same of most actual family gatherings, where laughs and tears often mix. Yet the movie – for all its farce, melodrama and tragedy – never manages any
Comedy Rated PG
Vulgar but inventive, Osmosis Jones alternates between live-action scenes detailing the poor health habits of a zoo employee (Bill Murray) and animated segments depicting the resulting trauma inside his body. Drawn with vivid imagination and fueled by a rapid-fire wit, Osmosis Jones becomes the funkiest, funniest instructional health video you have ever seen. Featuring the
A messy, confused remake of the 1975 feminist horror comedy, in which the housewife-as-automaton metaphor is stretched almost unbearably thin. Nicole Kidman is the headstrong heroine this time around, while director Frank Oz and screenwriter Paul Rudnick stumble updating the material. Kidman plays a ruthless career woman who gets sent to Stepford as her comeuppance,
Comedy Central’s “Reno 911!” has been one of my favorite channel-surfing stops, so it was a relief to discover that the joke holds up for nearly 80 minutes on the big screen. This “Cops” spoof moves the group to Florida for a police convention, but its emphasis on caught-on-tape idiocy remains. The sexual humiliation of
A touching ode to teen angst. As Enid, an 18-year-old who greets life with a withering sarcasm (she rolls her eyes the way other people breathe), Thora Birch paints a vivid portrait of a disaffected teen. But Ghost World offers more than witty putdowns, especially when Enid finally drops her armor of cynicism with the
Ray Romano plays another everyday schmo who’s nice enough but something of a wallflower – at least until a former U.S. president (Gene Hackman) runs against him for mayor. Comedy comfort food, this is never quite as funny as it should have been – its insistence on geniality holds it back – but the movie
The mugging comedic duo of Cuba Gooding Jr. and Horatio Sanz are just two of the many problems in this tone-deaf comedy, which follows two heterosexual buddies who mistakenly book themselves on a gay cruise. Of course the heroes eventually learn to overcome their homophobia – enabling the movie to safely revel in its own.
“If you have the bad taste for this sort of thing, it’s rarely done better, even by Peter Jackson.
