Gabrielle Union Page 2

For the tiny extraterrestrials from the planet Nil, Earth seems like the perfect solution to their problems. With their homeland long depleted of its main energy source -- salt -- the aliens plan on using an ocean-draining orb to replenish their supplies. In their humanoid-shaped and -sized starship piloted by a courageous captain (Murphy), they will infiltrate Manhattan, locate the missing device (it crash landed there three months earlier) and complete their mission. Along the way, the newly-named vessel Dave Ming Chang (Murphy, again) will befriend a young widow (Elizabeth Banks) and her son Josh (Austin Lynd Myers). As the police try to track down the man-shaped craft, a mutiny among the crew puts all in danger.

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The question driving Abandon is who abandoned who? Did charismatic but manipulative Embry (Charlie Hunnam) leave his clingy college sweetheart, Katie (Katie Holmes, who probably would get confused if she and her character didn't share a first name), or is it the other way around? And is Embry alive and kicking on a European jaunt, or dead, as a sleazy, washed-up detective (Benjamin Bratt) believes but can't prove?

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Going in to this movie, I knew full well it was, well, a movie about cheerleading, so I wasn't expecting another American Beauty (which, now that I think of it, was partly about cheerleading, but anyway...). Suffice it to say that my expectations were low. And sure enough, Bring It On is an utterly vapid film with horrendous character development, hackneyed dialogue, and a questionable theme. No surprise there. Essentially it is Fame in short skirts.

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Jackie Gleason and Audrey Meadows pulled it off because1) they gave a certain tenacious chemistry to their characters' head-buttingmarriage, 2) Gleason had a gift for finding humor and humanity in unsympatheticroles, and 3) it was a simpler time, when idiotic get-rich-quick schemesweren't quite such a tiresome excuse for cheap laughs.

But none of this is true of the big-screen remake starringCedric the Entertainer as conniving New York City bus driver Ralph Kramden,who spends the whole movie lying to his waitress wife Alice (GabrielleUnion) while emptying their bank account to buy an antique train car (hethinks fitting it with tires is enough to create a money-making tour bus)or to race a stray greyhound at the local track.

Cedric may split sides with his stand-up routines and politicallyincorrect topical rants in the "Barbershop"movies,but here he's sleepwalking through a routine script full of uninspiredexposition ("All we need is $20,000 for the down payment..."),stereotypical characters (loud-mouthed mother-in-law), shopworn physicalgags (cayenne pepper ends up in someone's food), contrived conflicts (Ralphhas a falling out with Ed, his dim-witted plumber best pal played by half-stonedMike Epps), pop culture references ("You're just a regular UPN sitcom,ain't 'cha, Alice?"), lucky coincidences, and insultingly easy resolutionsto all life's problems.

Continue reading: The Honeymooners Review

A "Taming of the Shrew"-inspired romantic comedy about three buddies who are so in love with three sisters that they bribe a local Lothario to romance the girls' foxy but man-less, meddling hellcat of an older sibling, "Deliver Us From Eva" is thick with unfulfilled promise.

Where there could be well-developed characters, there are empty caricatures of bossy black women and whipped black men instead. Where there should be smart comedy, there's a silly, sit-comy kidnapping scenario.

In under-thumb husband/boyfriend roles that good actors like Morris Chestnut or Terrence Howard could have added real substance to, "Eva" has cue-card-quality non-name players -- Mel Jackson (whose eyebrows move as much as his lips with every line delivery) and Dartanyan Edmonds (playing the kind of corn-row-coifed brother whose vocabulary doesn't extend much beyond the word "daaaaamn!").

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A movie that preaches dishonesty, trickery and manipulation as the keys to romantic happiness, "Two Can Play That Game" is populated by pathetically shallow "players" of both sexes and very talented actors trapped by their skin color in a tired genre of self-perpetuating stereotypes.

"Two Can Play" is about a successful black ad executive (Vivica A. Fox) who thinks her man, a successful black lawyer (Morris Chestnut), may be running around on her. Her solution for shaping him up (rather than confronting him and having an adult conversation or just leaving to find someone better) is to launch into a 10-day plan that includes breaking up, not returning his calls, making sure he sees her with other men, going to his house, getting him hot, then leaving, and a whole litany of other vindictive head games.

Of course, all of this is meant to be risqué and amusing, but in fact it just makes the movie's heroine look like the kind of shrill, immature, self-centered strumpet whom no man in his right mind would want to be saddled with.

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"Bring It On" is better than any movie about cheerleading really ought to be.

Taking cues from "Clueless" -- the best teen bubble gum flick of Generation Y -- it's a self-mocking popularity satire that takes frequent pot shots at "sweater monkeys" and their endlessly percolating pep, while also allowing its bright cast of pretty young things to color outside the lines of their stock characters.

The talented Kirsten Dunst embraces her inner ditz as Torrence Shipman, the new cheer captain of the Rancho Carne High School Toros, a boys-and-girls pep squad with a repertoire of flashy choreographed routines and a major reputation to maintain. For five years running they've won the ruthlessly competitive national cheerleading championships. (You know you've watched them on ESPN2, admit it.)

Continue reading: Bring It On Review