Category: Theatrical Review

After six years, former FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are brought out of hiding to aid the FBI in a case involving a missing agent. Because of their involvement with the paranormal, their expertise is needed especially seeing that the FBI is using the talents of a psychic in their search. The psychic though is a former catholic priest who’s also a convicted pedophile and his name is Father Joe. There’s something with this guy though, that catches Mulder and commits him to the case. And so while dealing with their own personal issues, Mulder and Scully get involved in something that’s far more than what it appears on it’s surface.

That’s the basic premise of The X Files: I Want To Believe from writer/director and X Files creator Chris Carter, bringing his television creation back to life with it’s second feature film. For a summer filled with some big, explosive stories, The X Files is a little different, offering up an introspective and understated thriller that feels like the old show to some extent.

I thought it was pretty good my own self, though not at all in the same league as other movies that I’ve seen this year, but still fun to see these characters back and with a pretty gruesome crime attached to it. This isn’t anything connected to the series core mythology, other than continuing the relationship that Mulder and Scully had (and I must admit, buy the end of the show’s run, I’d not been paying attention that closely as I just wasn’t as interested any more as I was during it’s prime period- this was one show that went on for maybe two seasons more than it should’ve).

The case itself is pretty interesting, as is the character of Father Joe, but where the film stumbles is in the ping-ponging of the Mulder-Scully relationship, sometimes putting them on the same page and other times acting like they hadn’t had all their familiarity. Now this didn’t really bother me that much as I sorta thought this was part and parcel of the relationship, but then, like I said above, I’d lost some interest by the time the show ended as well, so I might not be the best judge of that.

Of course, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are back (as is a surprise character late in the film) and joining them for this film are Amanda Peet (as the FBI agent who calls them back into service), Billy Connelly as Father Joe, and Battlestar Galactica’s Callum Keith Rennie as one of the suspects, and the cast does a pretty nice job here- there’s really nothing that felt out of place. I give really good marks to both Peet and Connelly, they really got themselves into this well.

Carter certainly seems on the mark as well for this considerably quiet movie. Like I said, it’s quite understated in this summer of gigantic comic book action, so understated that it might seem a disappointment to those expecting something a bigger, but I thought it was a cool change of pace and I certainly enjoyed it. Duchovny is already on the record for wanting to do more films, and I wouldn’t mind seeing them make a few more as well…

If you don’t mind having something smaller in your summer movie repertoire, and your an X Files fan, you might have a pretty good time with this. I wouldn’t exactly urge you to get right out there right now and see it, but if you want to kill some time at the theatre, this isn’t bad, but if the size of our audience was any indication (under 20 people for a 10 P.M. show), more are probably waiting for the DVD release, and I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing either…

It’s been about a year since The Batman made his debut in Gotham City and in that time, crime has gone down and imitators to Batman have sprung up, much to Batman’s own consternation. Organized crime has had it though, and realizes that they need to turn to a new method to combat against this mysterious vigilante and so they turn to a new type of a criminal, a madman who’s been making himself known called The Joker. In the Gotham City heirarchy, another new figure is making himself known, new District Attorney Harvey Dent, also inspired by The Batman to take a tough stance on crime, vowing to clean-up the city. And now, all of these forces converge…

A very simplified take on what The Dark Knight is about to be sure, but to go further would just be wrong, as this movie, is as multi-layered as it gets, and I’d hate to spoil that for anyone. It’s complex, but not hard to follow, and long, but expertly paced so it never feels long. Technically proficient in the extremes, incredibly well acted and edited, this is one comic book movie that transcends the term “comic book movie” and could stand well with films like The Departed, Zodiac, Training Day or Heat. And so far, it gets my pick as the best movie that I’ve seen this year…

Christopher Nolan is again at the helm as he was for Batman Begins and Nolan’s dictate for these movies has been to keep it as real as he can and that’s just not confined to effects work, but character motivations and story and story flow. And what he does here, oh man, what he does here is buck every trend that most other comic book movies have and creates something that stands above all the rest.

Nolan’s set pieces in this are worthy of guys like Scorcese or DePalma and he’s willing to intercut various actions at once within them, really giving this a lot of subtext. He has high opera type of scenes, but they just don’t feel the same as they might in another comic book movie, and by that, sets a new standard that these movies should follow, a maturity that raises them above just being “another comic book movie” and something that can stand with the very best of “legitimate” drama and action films.

And yet, it’s all so true to just what Batman is in the comics… it’s about as perfect a combination as it gets.

As he did with Batman Begins, Nolan has assembled the best possible acting talent for this film, Christian Bale reprises his role as Bruce Wayne/Batman, and Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Gary Oldman are all back as well. Joining the cast this time though are the late Heath Ledger as the Joker, Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent and taking over the part of Rachel Dawes is Maggie Gyllenhaal, who (and this is a moot point) is probably the weakest part of this group (I think Katie Holmes actually had just a little more intensity to this). You’ve even got guys like Eric Roberts, Michael Jai White and Tiny Lister in some pretty cool parts in the film. Highest marks go to Ledger though, and really all of the hype around his performance is entirely justified, he’s just an incredible joy to watch here. I’ve also got to give Aaron Eckhart extremely high marks. But really, this cast behaves more as an ensemble than anything else, everybody gets their moment and they all work really well together.

I just cannot heap enough praise on this film and so far, it seems like it just might be the biggest crowd-pleaser of the year as well, and that’s rare for a movie like this, intelligent to the extremes and yet delivering the type of big action that you expect from a summer “blockbuster.”

So do not miss this one, it delivers the goods and look magnificent on the big screen. Hell, I’m hoping to get a chance to see it again within the next few weeks. It’s just that good. As I said above, for me, so far, the best movie of the year and obviously, highly, highly recommended…

Thanks to the perception of an ancient truce being broken between the world of man and the creatures of myth, the prince of the Elves, Nuada, wants to wage war against humankind with an army of unstoppable warriors. Now it’s in the hands of Hellboy and B.P.R.D. to stop Nuada and save the world, while dealing with their own issues of the heart.

And that’s the simplified premise to Hellboy II: The Golden Army the sequel to Hellboy based around Mike Mignola’s popular comic book character. It’s been awhile since I’ve read any of Hellboy’s stories (I’m waiting for Mignola to come back and do it all again(, but I did watch the first movie again right before seeing this one. And in comparison to the first, I think this one is simply OK on a theatrical viewing, but bound to improve on future viewings at home (which is how the first one works for me as well, though I was way more enthusiastic about that one on the first theatrical viewing).

Guillermo Del Toro is back at the helm for this and while he’s still certainly up to speed with what he does visually and with the action of the piece, there’s a couple of key character pieces that have been changed and not at least on my first viewing for the better of the film. The first being the character of Tom Manning (played by Jeffrey Tambor), who at least in the first film was a pretty strong-willed character and here is made much more of a buffoon. The second is that Abe Sapien (played and this time also voiced by Doug Jones) is just a little more gawky this time around than the first, some of which can be explained by something that happens to Abe in the space of the film, but still even at the start, Abe doesn’t quite seem the same this time around.

There’s also a few moments that just seem there for pure audience pandering for the quick laugh (in particular Hellboy and Abe Sapien singing while being drunk and lamenting their love lives) that induce a little bit of a cringe here and there… I get why Del Toro would make the choice to do these things, but I don’t necessarily think the movie needs these moments in order to get their point across.

On the plus side though, I thought that the new character introduced here, the new head of the B.P.R.D., the ectoplasmic Johann Kraus was pretty cool and wonderfully voiced by Seth MacFarlane.

Ron Perlman as Hellboy is just solid as a rock though, and totally at home with this character. Selma Blair as Elizabeth Sherman is just sort of “OK” this time around, not really arousing much of anything here, but fulfilling the part. but I also give high marks to Luke Goss as Prince Nuada, who does a great job of this driven prince who feels wronged by the world of man.

Most of my problem though is just with a few choices made by Del Toro (as mentioned above) and as I said, these are things that will probably play better on later viewings at home more than on the big screen. So in the end, I enjoyed it, but it has it’s problems, so you’re own mileage might vary- It’s amazing though, no less than four comic book-based films in theatres right now, and next week it’ll be five of them and so far Hellboy II: The Golden Army is the weakest of those, but still worthy of viewing on other merits.

Scientist Trevor Anderson is continuing studies from his missing brother Maxwell about mysteries pertaining to geologic conditions within the Earth. When Anderson’s sister-in-law, drops off his nephew Sean to stay with him, she also leaves with him some of Maxwell’s things, among those things, a copy of Jules Verne’s Journey to The Center Of The Earth and within that book, notes that say that Verne was onto something here, something true. So Trevor and Sean take a trip to Iceland to pursue this further, and with their Icelandic guide begin their own trip into the Earth.

That’s the opening premise of the film, and there are some nice ideas in the film, but it still needs a little fire in the belly. There’s hints at immediate threat here, but because of a bigger desire to make this more family friendly in all ways (and there’s nothing wrong with that per se), the threats aren’t as all played up as they could be. The film could’ve used something that would’ve been a little more sinister, maybe a fourth player in the film, just a little something extra to add some needed conflict.

It’s not horrible by any means, and the 3D aspect is without a doubt the reason to see it, if that’s your desire, though the 3D here isn’t say as good as it is in something like Beowulf it’s still not bad either, but they just don’t stretch the potential as far as they could. Like I say, this isn’t bad, but I could’ve done with this being a little more theme-park amped up, and that could’ve really helped more with the lack of conflict.

Brendan Frasier plays Anderson and he’s really rock steady here, absolutely solid as hell, and it’s just a shame that there wasn’t another actor that could’ve countered him more. The other two actors who play Sean and their guide Hannah, do a fine enough job, but there’s nothing that’s really making them stand out either, though I do have to give credit that the kid playing Sean could’ve been really played as more obnoxious as anything else and thankfully, the kid ain’t that…

But as others have said in other reviews, the reason to see this is for the 3D, and while it’s good (and for a live action film, probably better than anything else has been out there), it’s not as good as it has been in other computer generated efforts. The way I see it, if you’re interested enough to see this in 3D, it’s not a horrible time-waster by any means, but at the same time, if you miss it, you’re not missing too much either…

On the other hand though, if I was a little kid, I could see this thing being the coolest thing I’d ever seen…

In the world shown in this movie, there’s one man who stands differently amongst other men, he has super-powers, his name is John Hancock and he’s an asshole (and I’m going to use the term here, as it’s used repeatedly in the movie). Oh, Hancock gets out there and helps everyone else, but he does it with little regard to the safety of others and the damage costs. And when he’s not doing that, he’s usually getting drunk. Enter in Ray Embrey, a Public Relations man with aspirations for changing the world into a better place (wha??). Embrey’s life is saved by Hancock early in the story, and in return, Embrey wants to help him out, put him back as popular in the public eye, and after a little soul-searching, Hancock agrees to this…

And that’s the opening premise to Hancock, the newest movie from one of my favorite directors out there these days, Peter Berg who’s made such great movies in the past like The Rundown, Friday Night Lights and last year’s The Kingdom. And it just goes to show you that even your favorites can stumble from time to time, and Hancock is one huge stumble, so much of a stumble that I’d put this slightly ahead of Get Smart as one of the worst that I’ve seen this year.

The thing is, there are some good ideas here, but the mix of these ideas doesn’t work because none of them are ever given much of a chance to really follow through to any sort of logical conclusion, and what you get is a schizophrenic piece. One moment, this goes from wa-wah sit-com comedy and then it becomes as dark as can be, and it never feels natural, it feels like a bunch of big name talents getting together to make a summer blockbuster, and to hell with anything even remotely resembling logic…

… and that doesn’t even begin to cover the “twist” that the film has about 2/3 of the way through, which totally feels like it’s been pulled out of a scriptwriter’s ass. This twist, which has ties to Hancock’s origin, feels utterly contrived, like there was no natural way to end it, and that combined with it’s schizo nature just had me wondering why the hell this was done in the first place.

Some might see this as a deconstruction piece for the current wave of comic book superhero movies, and there’s really nothing wrong with doing that, this just doesn’t do it right. Hancock is an incredibly powerful person who pretty much does what he wants and to hell with the damage that follows in it’s wake, to the public at large though, the guy’s an asshole not the type of menace that he should be treated as. Then, with having Will Smith as the lead, well, it has to carry some sort of likability factor as well, so Hancock is an asshole, but he’s just a funny and misunderstood asshole… in the real world of course (they go to great lengths to include CNN commentator Nancy Grace calling for an outcry against this guy- which is probably one of the more logical pieces in the film).

Smith’s backed up with Jason Bateman as Ray Embrey and Charlize Theron as Ray’s wife, and someone who’s even more important to the “twist” later, and really, along with Smith, this just felt like you were seeing three big name actors on the screen without too much consideration to actually inhabiting a part. The biggest fault in casting though, is probably with Will Smith himself. Now I really like Smith (I thought he was absolutely terrific in I Am Legend), but the way things are done here, there’s just some fundamental realities that are just totally ignored, primarily with Hancock’s origins and the fact that Smith is a black man, but playing with that in the midst of this would’ve added too much meat to the idea, and obvious that Peter Berg didn’t even want to deal with something like that.

There’s just so much squandered potential here, and it’s squandered at the expense of creating some dumb-ass sight gags and wise-ass lines rather than giving you something that you could truly sink your teeth into. Peter Berg’s style is ill-suited to the kind of big comedy that they think they’re presenting here (sorry, again like with Get Smart I didn’t laugh once, but we had one guy in our very small audience who thought it was funnier than hell, so there you go). There’s some good ideas, that if fleshed out properly would be perfectly suited to Berg’s style, but no one takes the time or has the inclination to flesh that stuff out so what you have in the end is an all over the map piece with a final act that’s meant to resolve everything that ultimately feels like no one had a real clue how to logically end this.

But again, checking over at the IMDB, it looks like I’m a minority in this, but not to the same extent as say with Get Smart, so who knows, you may very well like it, but personally I didn’t, and further, it’s right up there with Jumper, 10,000 B.C., The Happening, The Love Guru and Get Smart as one of the worst movies that I’ve seen all year…

For over a thousand years, an extraordinary order of assassins called The Fraternity have existed to “balance the scales” and keep the world adjusted by the decree of Fate. With superhuman abilities, these assassins can do things that normal men can’t, and in their way, they’re protecting the world. In the present day, a young man by the name of Wesley Gibson believes himself to just barely register amongst others, think low of himself, he’s in a state of just not caring about his station in life… but all of that is about to change…

I’m keeping this one real vague, because to say any more would just lead me to say even more and really you should just discover this one for yourself. The movie I’m talking about is Wanted and adaptation of the comic mini-series from Mark Millar and J.G. Jones directed by Russian director Timur Timur Bekmambetov, who’s best known for directing the genre films Night Watch and Day Watch. And it’s just a hell of a lot of fun… and in my mind, the movie that Jumper should’ve been.

I sort of see this movie as like a comic book equivalent of Fight Club in some way, and I think if you see it, it’ll make sense. I’ve not read the comic, though I know there’s a point of major deviation from the book, but I don’t really know if it matters here, or at least it didn’t to me. But what I got was an imaginative and very fun ride, and something just a little different from the rest of the comic book movies out there.

Timur Bekmambetov certainly demonstrated with his other movies that’s he’s a strong visualist, and he continues to do so here, but this, at least to me, goes a step further and even evokes the artwork of J.G. Jones through each frame, with some shots in particular just looking like they could’ve been covers drawn by Jones.

There’s already been lots of comparisons to The Matrix in terms of both it’s structure and action scenes, and I suppose they’re going to happen, but this manages to go just a little further over-the-top, especially with it’s characters, and Bekmambetov certainly has a fine assortment of actors at work here.

James McAvoy plays Wesley Gibson, and he looked to me like he’s just been waiting to do a movie like this, he really looked like he was totally into this in a big way. He’s backed up by Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Terence Stamp, Thomas Kretschmann, Common and Hustle’s Marc Warren and they all do a great jobs, and of course Jolie just looks magnificent. I don’t really want to say too much though about the parts each of them play though, as again, I just think this needs to be seen for all to be discovered.

I’ve got to say though, I had one hell of a good time with this movie, it delivered quite the thrill-ride and had it’s own nihilistic slant that I think is a lot more relatable (at least to me) than what something like Jumper had. And it’s even inspired me to seek out the trade paperback of the original comic series, which I don’t think is a bad thing at all… obviously, highly recommended….

Humanity has exhausted the Earth’s resources and left the planet nearly uninhabitable literally turning the planet into a huge dumping ground. Thanks to the BnL Corporation (Big n Large), humanity has left the planet and is living in space aboard huge luxury space liners, courtesy of BnL. On Earth, they’ve left behind robots, to clean-up the mess, and now 700 years after humanity has left the planet, one lone robot remains to clean up the mess, Wall•E. And now, Wall•E has found one little bit of vegetation and he’s taken it to his refuge to preserve it amongst other pop culture treasures that he’s found. Wall•E’s lone friend, a lowly cockroach, travels with him as he’s cleaning up the mess, building it into piles skyscrapers high, when all of a sudden, something comes back to the planet, a robot probe called Eva, with it’s mission being to find some sort of life on Earth, and when it comes, Wall• E becomes infatuated, and then travels back with the probe to the remnants of humanity who’ve become massively overweight and totally lost within their machine world, having everything done for them by the machines.

That’s a simplified version of the newest movie from the geniuses at Pixar, Wall•E, and yet again, Pixar shows us just why they are geniuses, yet again raising the bar with this newest movie.

It’s not enough that their own particular brand of computer animation is the highest quality there is, Pixar’s always striving to do something a little different with each new movie, and they do it again here. Yeah, sure, Wall•E is a comedic film, but it’s also a pretty decent sci-fi story and it takes a lot of huge chances by having minimal dialogue in the film, and creating characters that on their surface are far less anthropomorphized than previous films.

The opening bits of the film, on a dirty and dusty Earth, are amazingly realistic, not just in the look, but in how it’s actually photographed, in some places using a nice little handheld touch similar to how Battlestar Galactica’s space scenes are shot. And just the design alone seems to owe much more to actual science fiction illustrators more than what you might expect out of this sort of movie (or if this movie was done by anyone else other than Pixar).

And yet, they’ve still crafted a heartwarming, sentimental and funny center to the whole thing, and while the behavior of the robots won’t exactly fit the hardest standard of a sci-fi aficionado, for this movie, it shouldn’t really matter (and it certainly didn’t for me).

Pixar also bucks the trend here by not casting big names for the vocal work, in fact Wall•E’s voice is provided by master sound man, Ben Burtt, but true to form though, they still find a part for John Ratzenberger to perform.

Pixar also takes their first step with combining live action with computer generation especially in telling the story of humanity’s first step into the stars (and using veteran comedy actor Fred Williard in the part of the president of the BnL Corporation) and it’s not overdone, and still seems pretty natural and a good fit with what’s already set-up.

Wall•E is just a whole lot of big fun, not only state-of-the-art, but also with careful consideration for it’s story, it’s characters and all of the details in between. As usual, you also get a short film in front of this called Presto about a magician and the rabbit that he pulls out of his hat, and this thing in itself is amazingly well done, again technically proficient and gut-bustingly funny, evoking more the classic style of classic Warner Brothers cartoons more than anything else.

I got to see this in digital projection and honestly, if you have the chance, that’s the way to see it, but regardless, this one’s still just a hell of a lot of fun and well worth seeing whether you get to see it in digital or not. Highly recommended and right up there with the best of the year…

Maxwell Smart is an analyst with the covert secret agency CONTROL. Max is very good at his job, but now yearns to be an agent in the field. After passing the tests that he needs to in order to advance, the arch forces of the enemy agency KAOS threaten to strike in a devastating way. Now it’s up to Max to find out for sure what is being done and to stop them.

And that’s a very loose description of the premise to Get Smart, a movie updating and re-imagining of the classic comedy TV series from the 1960s…

… and the new winner to the title of “Worst Movie Of The Year,” and here it is, I thought it was going to take some time before something could take that title away from M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening and yet this movie does so with ease.

This is supposed to be a comedy and yet, I didn’t laugh at a thing in the film and so right there it fails and fails miserably. Even when this is relying on some of the old chestnuts from the original series (with one notable exception), this just fails.

And the reason for that failure is on two counts- it’s ill-conceived as a movie, and the character of Maxwell Smart has been seriously compromised.

Now, y’see, back when the show was on, it was genuinely funny and being the brainchild of comedy legends Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, you’d expect it to be. The TV series was a spoof of spy movies, it was a low budget and very small show, and yet it was loaded with big, but two-dimensional characters, and the biggest of them all was Maxwell Smart. And it was also ridiculously rapid-fire with it’s jokes and gags. And also, I loved the original series, I think it was one of the all-time greats in television comedy.

Here… here, director Peter Segal gets it entirely wrong. First, this is trying to be an action movie with lots of comedic overtones, and it’s also very big, especially in consideration of it’s source, and the biggest thing that they do wrong in the midst of all of that is that they try to make you think it’s real, and that was never the spirit of the original show by any means.

The second thing that they get wrong is in the character of Maxwell Smart. Now Don Adams was a genius and he knew just how Smart was to be played. Smart was the GREATEST secret agent in the world, especially in his own mind, even if he screwed up more often than not, but above all he was extremely confident. Here, they’ve turned Maxwell Smart into the most politically correct pussy on the planet, and there’s some small part of me that can’t help but wonder if this is in some way partly due to Steve Carell and what he’s been doing in some of his other movies lately. This Maxwell Smart’s main drive is to understand that his enemies in the world are people first and if you get to know the person, you then find the weakness, but his way of getting to the weakness is with compassion more than anything else…

… oh for cryin’ out loud…

This movie is nearly two hours long, and that’s because it’s trying to be an action movie and it’s pacing itself that way, and when it throws in it’s gags, it just falls flat and even worse than that… boring. I certainly had plenty of criticism with The Love Guru but one thing that they certainly get is that it is supposed to be a comedy, and in comparison to Get Smart, it’s comedy genius.

Now there is plenty here for the Get Smart TV series fan, lots of bits and sight gags, and every now and then, Carell well spout out one of the lines that Max used in the day and because of the change that they made with Smart himself, that line just feel like Steve Carell saying the line by rote and little else.

On paper, Steve Carell should be perfect for the part… that is if he would be willing to play something just as two-dimensional as what Maxwell Smart was (and even moreso if the movie would’ve been willing to go that route- this movie is looking at Mission: Impossible when it should be looking at Airplane! or Blazing Saddles), but here, he just seems like amateur night or what you’d get if Michael Scott (his character from The Office) was trying to act. Anne Hathaway plays Smart’s partner, Agent 99, and first off, she just looks fantastic and also looks like she would have a real affinity with being in a legitimate action film, it’s just too bad that she’s in this one. And her character has been changed as well, in particularly to be a little more shrewish than anything else. Alan Arkin is The Chief, the head of CONTROL, Dwayne Johnson is Agent 23, the coolest agent on the planet and a good pal of Max’s (of course here every one calls him Maxie) and Terence Stamp is Siegfried, Smart’s opponent at KAOS. All three of these guys do the best they can with what they’ve got, it’s just that what they got is incredibly weak. There’s a brief cameo by a surprise guest star, and that’s the notable exception that I mentioned near the start of this review- this bit is funny (though not a gut-buster, but still amusing), it’s in keeping with the show, and it really should’ve been followed up on about to more times in the film, but it was pretty much left alone after that, but still this moment is the best part of the film.

So you don’t believe me, it can’t possibly be this bad? Fine… go see it for yourself and then come back here and try and tell me just how much you laughed during this. Go ahead, I dare you… do it…

Get Smart is as ill-conceived as a TV-to-movie adaptation/remake/re-imagining can get and even though it tries to have some echoes of the original series, those echoes fall flat due to a poor conception of the film and a dramatically ill-conceived new interpretation of it’s lead character. As such, you have a comedy here that’s just not funny on virtually any level (with the one exception) and if a comedy isn’t funny then it’s a bad movie, and this one is just about as bad as it gets. About a half hour before this ended, I was just about ready to ask if anyone wanted to leave, but we stood through it all the way until it’s incredibly sappy end… oh I wish we had, but then I couldn’t pass on this cautionary review on to you…

Right now… Get Smart is the worst movie of the year, period.

The renowned spiritual guru, Guru Pitka, has found himself always being the second best to the famous Deepak Chopra and now he’s got the opportunity to turn things around and get himself his appearance on Oprah, thus elevating himself above the aforementioned Mr. Chopra. All the Guru Pitka has to do is help the hockey team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, with their star player, Darren Roanoke. Roanoke’s girl, Prudence has left him and left him as a shaken player. Pitka’s task is right in front of him and along the way he’s hoping to catch the fancy of the team’s owner, the uber-sexy Jane Bullard.

The Love Guru is the latest film from writer and star Mike Myers, who’s obviously best known for being on Saturday Night Live, the Wayne’s World films and the Austin Powers movies and the Guru Pitka is his latest character.

I’ve got to give Mike Myers credit for creating something pretty original here as far as the character goes, I certainly don’t recall anything like this out there recently anyway.

The movie has it’s moments, some that are actually really funny, but for the most part, it falls pretty flat. Part of this is with the main character, Pitka, himself, who’s constantly winking at the audience, and thus kind of staying detached from the whole thing. The other part is just that the actions them self are just displayed in an order like they’re something to be hit as opposed to happening naturally. There’s also an over-reliance on bathroom humor, again some of which is quite funny, but a lot of it just falling flat.

Some of the segments that consistently fall flat for me are bits with the announcers for the Maple Leafs played by Stephen Colbert and Jim Gaffigan. They’re trying too hard and there’s just too many of these segments in the film and none of them really work.

Funnier stuff is there courtesy of Verne Troyer, who has the best line in the film seen right over the end credits.

Jessica Alba is Jane Bullard, and she’s little more than eye candy in the film, which really I don’t have that much of a problem with her in that capacity.

Ben Kingsley and Justin Timberlake are also in the film and they both do a decent enough job with their parts, but it’s still nothing to bust a gut over.

But most of the fault is with the story construction itself and Myers’ portrayal as Pitka without any real sense of urgency to his character, he’s more there just doing a series of set pieces (some of which are good) but there’s really nothing there with a good through-line.

You might have a good time with this, but I’d more advice this as a rental or watching on cable down the road. Overall though, I thought this was pretty uneven with a few good laughs here and there, but nothing that really says run out and see it (but I must admit, they got me with the trailer to this, I thought that the trailer was great and it really made me want to see it), so catch it at your own risk…

Scientist Bruce Banner found his cellular structure changed from exposure to Gamma radiation to a point that when he finds himself pushed to a certain anger or excitement becomes the rampaging monster known as the Hulk. Now on the run in South America, his trail is discovered again by the U.S. military, led by General “Thunderbolt” Ross and in his employ is a soldier by the name of Emil Blonsky who thinks that in order to catch the Hulk, it must be on equal ground. Caught in the middle of this is Ross’ daughter Betty who’s in love with Bruce Banner, and when they’re able to meet again, Betty tries to help Bruce get his cure, all while on the run and with Banner trying to keep himself under control.

The Incredible Hulk is the second major movie from Marvel Studios right on the heels of Iron Man, and it’s also a major re-do from the film that Ang Lee made a few years ago. Now I really like Ang Lee’s movie, but even with that, this is the Hulk film that I think more wanted to see.

Director Louis Letterier has delivered an extremely intense film here, in my opinion, maybe the most intense Marvel super-hero movie yet- loaded with some really cool big-ass action and some really great performances, this one’s right up there with Iron Man and in some ways, in my opinion, even surpasses it.

For a Hulk or Marvel fan, this is loaded with references from the comics, the Marvel Universe and the TV show. It delivers one of the major Hulk villains with Emil Blonsky’s transformation into The Abomination, and it even sets up another one of the Hulk’s major enemies in the process. and it does it all while keeping you involved with some really good performances.

Edward Norton plays Bruce Banner, and again, as much as I liked Eric Bana in the first film, this part was tailor-made for Norton. He’s got great subtleties here, and good intensity when it’s called for. William Hurt plays General Ross, and again as much as I like Sam Elliot in the first film, Hurt does just as good a job. Tim Roth is Emil Blonsky and is certainly up for this, really delivering some real vigor to it. And Liv Tyler plays Betty Ross, and she looks fantastic, is loaded with sincerity and has a quality to her that really brings out good chemistry with Norton (and just about any leading man she works with, I thought she did the same thing with Scott Speedman in The Strangers and I wouldn’t be surprised if just about every leading man who plays opposite of her falls in love with her even just a little bit).

To me anyway, this is how you do it, the origin of the Hulk is set-up in the opening credits and right after that we’re flung into it, with naturalistic character motivations and situations and some extremely exciting action sequences. This is just a helluva lot of fun and in my opinion, one of the best movies of the year… highly, highly recommended, do not miss this…