I admire British comedian Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) for reviving the nearly silent, slapstick-heavy style of early greats such as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. I just wish he was good at it. Johnny English, a disposable spy spoof, has a few decent gags, but even those are hampered by laborious setups and a thudding

Another reliably hilarious mock documentary from writer-director Christopher Guest (Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show), this time about a folk-music reunion concert. As the male half of a once-popular Sonny and Cher-type duo, Eugene Levy is both the movie’s funniest character and its most touching.

Ben Stiller’s brand of exasperated embarrassment is on display once again as he plays Reuben Feffer, a risk assessor for a huge insurance firm. His methods prove pointless when he meets Polly Prince, one of those movie free spirits that you usually want to lock in a closet. This time, as played by Jennifer Aniston,

Yes, the raunchy sex gags return as the four high-school buddies from the original film reunite after their first year at college, but thankfully so does the self-deprecating honesty that made American Pie an oddly touching teen flick. There’s plenty of titillation here, but also a surprisingly mature recognition that casual sex may not be

How many times must Owen Wilson perform CPR on a comatose movie? Like I Spy, Shanghai Knights and other Wilson misfires, this Elmore Leonard adaptation about a con man in Hawaii occasionally flails about with signs of life, but mostly it’s dead on arrival. Wilson is as endearingly goofy as always, but for all his

Exhibit A in the curious career of Saturday Night Live veteran Rob Schneider. Schneider has no discernible comic talent, aside from giving the impression of being a 10-year-old stuck in a 40-year-old man’s body, yet here he’s given a plum part: that of a lowly aquarium cleaner who stumbles into a second career as a

An angry letter to a faceless utility company in the guise of science-fiction, Douglas Adams’ 1979 novel channeled all his frustrations at the inanities and bureaucracies that govern society into a tongue-in-cheek guide to extraterrestrial life – which is revealed to be just as bogged down in inanity and bureaucracy as our own. This adaptation

This often-amusing exercise in geek chic garnered a cult following, especially among teens, possibly because they found its portrait of a high-school nerd (Jon Heder) reassuring: they could never be as cluelessly dorky as the title character. Heder’s commitment to the role – he makes being a loser a form of rebellion – goes a

Landing right in the middle of his richest period is this Alfred Hitchcock lark, a curious comedy that neither looks back at Rear Window nor ahead to Vertigo, but rather exists in some goofy space all its own. It’s as if Hitchcock went on vacation, but kept working. Filmed in throbbing Technicolor and expansive VistaVision,