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A collection of random shorts that focus mainly on idiotic male behaviour, this portmanteau comedy is only occasionally amusing, never making anything of its astonishing cast. Frankly, we spend most of the time wondering how the filmmakers lured these A-listers to appear in these pointless, nasty little films. And while the premises have potential, not a single one has a decent punchline.

As a prank, two teens make up a banned online film called Movie 43. While their brainly little brother searches for it, he runs across a series of clips that mainly focus on awkward vulgarity between the sexes. Bitter exes (Culkin and Stone) have a rude exchange that's broadcast on a supermarket sound system. Pratt is shocked when his girlfriend (Faris) asks him to "poop" on her, and agrees because he loves her. Parents (Watts and Schreiber) homeschool their teen son (White) with the goal of showing him how excruciating life will be. Two pals (Scott and Knoxville) kidnap a leprechaun (Butler) who's reluctant to give them his gold. And a 1950s basketball coach (Howard) tries to convince his players that they're winners because they're black.

Others are dating scenarios: Winslet goes on a blind date with a guy (Jackman) who has testicles on his neck; Berry and Merchant play an increasingly deranged game of Truth or Dare in a Mexican restaurant; a pre-teen (Bennett) can't cope when his young date (Moretz) has her first period; Batman (Sudeikis) messes up Robin's (Long) attempt at speed-dating; Banks struggles to cope with her new boyfriend's (Duhamel) obsessive cartoon cat. There are also a few random advert spoofs, including one for the naked-woman shaped iBabe, which leads to trouble for the company CEO (Gere).

Continue reading: Movie 43 Review

Colourful direction and sparky performances help make this friendship comedy watchable, although it never seems like a finished film. Instead, we feel like we're watching the first rehearsal for a much better movie. It manages to charm us along the way, but it's never as funny or sexy as it tries to be.

When his two best pals have housing problems, gay New York comic Jesse (Long) suggests they move in together. Lauren (Miller) is a business ace who has just lost her job and her boyfriend, while Katie (Graynor) is an aimless young woman working a series of jobs that don't pay enough for her to pay the bills on her late grandmother's gorgeous flat. The problem is that they hate each other due to a minor incident 10 years earlier and resent each other for being dull and oversexed, respectively. Then Lauren realises that Katie could actually make a lot more money if she opened her own phone-sex company. And when the two go into business together, an unlikely friendship is born.

Screenwriters Miller and Naylon based the story on their own life (Miller even plays herself), so there are constant details that add honesty and humour along the way. On the other hand, they have also forced the plot into the usual rom-com story structure, so we know exactly where it's going from the start. But what's even stranger is the way they pack scenes with riotously graphic sex talk without letting the characters actually have any riotous sex. The movie's only two bed scenes are bizarrely dull, and badly undermine both the randy atmosphere and any point the movie might be making about sexuality.

Continue reading: For A Good Time, Call... Review

Dave (Lee) takes all six mischievous Chipmunks on a cruise-ship holiday before their big performance at the International Music Awards. Of course, Alvin (Long) is immediately in trouble, taking his pals Simon and Theodore (Bugler and McCartney) and the Chipettes (Poehler, Applegate and Faris) with him. But Alvin's next stunt strands them all on a deserted island, including Dave and former manager Ian (Cross). On the island they meet treasure-hunting nutcase castaway Zoe (Slate), just as a volcano is about to blow.

Continue reading: Alvin And The Chipmunks: Chipwrecked Review

After the President is murdered in 1865, inexperienced lawyer Frederick (McAvoy) is assigned to defend Mary Surratt (Wright), who is charged with conspiracy alongside eight others. As a war hero from the North, Frederick is horrified to get this job, but is convinced by his boss (Wilkinson) that she at least deserves a fair trial. Of course, in the hysteria following the war and assassination, that's not likely. The judge (Meaney) clearly takes sides, the prosecutor (Huston) is relentlessly arrogant and the war secretary (Kline) has already decided on a verdict and sentence.

Continue reading: The Conspirator Review

Nick Twisp (Cera) is a 16-year-old who feels out of sync with the world. He has a summer job in a caravan park, where he instantly falls in love with Sheeni (Doubleday), the fiercely protected daughter of religious nutcases (Walsh and Place). Sheeni is like a female version of him, only sexy and smarter, and he creates an imaginary alter ego named Francois Dillinger to give him the confidence to seduce her. But of course things go wrong from the start.

Continue reading: Youth In Revolt Review

Dreamland may be stuffed full of cliched characters in its trailer trash setting (and why a trailer park would be constructed under power lines in the middle of the New Mexico desert I have no idea), but let's put that aside for a moment. At its heart it is not the awful direct-to-DVD movie that you're probably expecting. The only legitimate reason for that is star Agnes Bruckner, who continues to take role after role in movies that simply don't measure up to her capabilities as one of our best young actresses. (If you haven't seen her in her other headlining role this year, The Woods, don't.)

Continue reading: Dreamland Review

Lohan plays Maggie Peyton, the only daughter born into a family known for producing stock car drivers. Dad (Michael Keaton) calls the shots from the pits, brother Ray (Breckin Meyer) crashes cars on a weekly basis, and Maggie goes unnoticed until the day she comes into contact with a possessed VW Beetle that feels the need for speed. Together with her best friend and fellow mechanic, Kevin (Justin Long), Maggie starts entering local races, where she accidentally humiliates NASCAR Nextel Cup champ Trip Murphy (Matt Dillon) and sets the stage for a showdown race at the California Speedway.

Continue reading: Herbie: Fully Loaded Review

1998's remake of "The Parent Trap" showed a savvy sense of humorwhere the original was merely cutesy-poo. 2003's hilarious "FreakyFriday" expanded on its predecessor's body-swapconcept to hit the nail on the head of mother-daughter relationships. Nowcomes "Herbie: Fully Loaded," a witty and creative follow-upto the dumb but endearing "Love Bug" movies about a race-crazyVolkswagen Beetle that comes to life.

Lohan plays fresh college grad Maggie, a speed demon groundedfrom racing by her struggling NASCAR-driver father (Michael Keaton) aftera bad crash in an illegal street race. For her graduation present, Daddytakes her to a junkyard to pick out a fixer-upper car, and she reluctantlychooses a rusty 1963 Volkswagen Beetle with a forgotten history and waymore personality than Maggie bargained for. The moment Maggie turns thekey in Herbie's ignition, the little Bug takes off like an excited puppy-- with his passenger screaming her head off -- and the pair end up ata backwoods body shop where Herbie gets a make-over and Maggie gets a loveinterest (Justin Long).

While looking for parts at a car show, Herbie and Maggiefall into an impromptu street race, which leads to a nitrous-fueled desertshowdown for pink slips, then a demolition derby ("10 cars enter,one car leaves!" chants the crowd in a "Mad Max" tribute)and -- after some serious souping-up with a roll cage, fat tires, a spoiler,and passing mention of a rules loophole -- a shot at NASCAR glory.

Continue reading: Herbie: Fully Loaded Review

Freshly graduated from jail bait status, Britney Spears wastes no time getting down to her skivvies for her acting debut in the coming-of-age road movie "Crossroads."

After a prologue in which three little girls bury a box of mementos and pledge to dig it up the night of their high school graduation, the film cuts to eight years later when one of those girls has grown up into Lucy (Spears), who is introduced bouncing around her room, lip-syncing to Madonna songs in her two-sizes-too-small underwear.

Later she appears in an even teeny-weenier pink bra and panties -- then in a towel, then in a wet dress, a bikini and several other low-cut and high-cut outfits. Perhaps this is a concession to the all the reluctant teenage boyfriends that will get dragged to this picture by their Britney-loving girlfriends.

Continue reading: Crossroads Review

Can somebody please stop Ben Stiller?

Since becoming a box-office draw with "There's Something About Mary," the guy has been a horrendous ham, devouring scenery with an eye-bugging, eyebrow-stitching schtick so stale and predictable that his last dozen movies have all included the same gag: slow-motion scenes of Stiller madly mugging while dancing, or running, or playing the titular game of schoolyard pain and humiliation in "Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story."

The only variation in his on-screen persona is that sometimes he's an irritatingly neurotic, hapless chump ("Along Came Polly," "Envy," "Meet the Parents") and other times he's an irritatingly arrogant, mock-sexy-pouting, self-obsessed moron ("Starsky & Hutch," "Zoolander").

Continue reading: Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story Review