Capsule reviews

Capsule reviews of continuing films follow. (Reviews of new movies appear first in expanded format, then as capsules until the movie closes locally.)

ARE WE DONE YET? -- In this home-repair comedy, Ice Cube occupies a shoddy, slapped-together structure that collapses around him in every scene. I am speaking of the film itself. Mediocre from foundation to roof, this sequel to 2005’s tepid road-trip farce “Are We There Yet?” is the movie equivalent of a tear-down. Cube and Nia Long reprise their roles as squabbling newlyweds Nick Persons and Suzanne Kingston. With his new bride and scrappy stepchildren Lindsey and Kevin (Aleisha Allen and Philip Bolden) overcrowding his apartment, Cube moves the clan to a quaint dream home in the country. The place proves to be a Pandora’s box of dry rot, substandard wiring and corroded plumbing. Cube’s do-it-yourself efforts result in much pratfalling and frayed relations with Long, now expecting two more babies and peevish at seeing her nest collapse around her. PG for innuendo and brief language.

BLADES OF GLORY — Will Ferrell and Jon Heder’s figure-skating comedy offers a few prime gags but a flimsy premise that loses its novelty quickly. The idea sounds like a great little “Saturday Night Live” sketch: Ferrell’s an arrogant rebel of a men’s champ, Heder’s his fastidious rival, and the two end up teaming as the first men’s pair after they’re barred for life from solo competition. And there’s about enough funny material for a great little “Saturday Night Live” sketch. The trouble is, there’s an extra 80 minutes or so of down time in which Ferrell, Heder and co-stars Craig T. Nelson, Jenna Fischer, Will Arnett and Amy Poehler are pretty much repeating their characters’ shallow schtick again and again. PG-13 for crude and sexual humor, language, a comic violent image and some drug references. 94 minutes.

THE CONDEMNED — You probably wouldn’t expect a movie about hardened killers battling each other to the death to be funny, but here’s what’s hilarious: This has the audacity to serve as a self-righteous indictment of graphic, gratuitous violence, even though that’s exactly what it’s peddling. A World Wrestling Entertainment film, under the watch of WWE Chairman/Executive Producer Vince McMahon, pretending to have a soul? Yeah, good stuff there. “The Condemned” also attempts to dress us down as a society for being such mindless sheep that we’ll watch anything shocking — and it scolds the media and the entertainment industry for constantly pushing the limits of what’s considered shocking. Stone Cold Steve Austin deserves better. The longtime wrestling superstar seems like a likable guy — potentially, a burly action hero in the tradition of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Here, he’s one of 10 prisoners plucked from death rows around the world and dropped by helicopter onto a remote island for a deadly reality competition being broadcast live on the Internet. A mad-genius producer has assembled them to have them kill each other. The one left standing gets to go free. R for pervasive strong, brutal violence, and for language. 113 minutes.

DISTURBIA — The filmmakers are quick to acknowledge “Rear Window” as a forerunner for the voyeurism of this thriller about a housebound teenager convinced his neighbor’s a serial killer. What they don’t have to say is that “Disturbia” is no “Rear Window,” because you already knew that. The latter is Hitchcock. The former is not. Yet it’s a decent-enough thriller that’s far smarter than most big studio flicks with teen protagonists. The movie’s completely predictable, but Shia LaBeouf delivers one of his most assured performances as a teen under house arrest who becomes a Peeping Tom, while director D.J. Caruso crafts some mildly clever moments of suspense. PG-13 for sequences of terror and violence, and some sensuality. 104 minutes.

FRACTURE — We know you’re thinking it. We were, too. So we may as well just acknowledge it, get it out of the way and move on as a group: Yes, Anthony Hopkins is indeed doing a version of patented Hannibal Lecter shtick. So yes, you have seen him do this before. But he does it so well and it’s still so much fun to watch, you may as well just give in. Hopkins stars as a Los Angeles executive accused of shooting his much younger wife (Embeth Davidtz) after he catches her having an affair. And he’s admitted he committed the crime. Then Ryan Gosling, as a hotshot prosecutor on his way to a high-paying corporate gig, gets assigned the case — and nothing turns out to be as easy as it initially seemed. Hopkins and Gosling needle each other, spar with each other and generally enjoy a fantastically smart, zippy banter. “Fracture” is stylish, suspenseful and unexpectedly funny — actually a lot funnier and a lot less stiff and self-serious than such a thriller might look. Some plot points here and there don’t quite click in to place. Whether or not you can catch them, Hopkins’ clever character should have. R for language and some violent content. 113 minutes.

HOT FUZZ — Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg do for buddy-cop action tales what they did for zombie flicks with “Shaun of the Dead”: Present a nice homage while tweaking the conventions and making jolly good fun of the genre’s cliches. Though longer than it needs to be and a bit draggy early on, the film packs a lot of hearty laughs and a few real guffaws as a hotshot London cop adjusts to life in a seemingly tranquil country town. Director Wright and his co-writer and star Pegg again make great use of the latter’s on-screen chemistry with “Shaun of the Dead” co-star Nick Frost. Pegg’s the able London cop, exiled to a sleepy town where he partners with an action-movie fanatic (Frost) to uncover the truth behind a series of bizarre, gruesome deaths. The supporting cast includes Jim Broadbent, Timothy Dalton, Edward Woodward and Billie Whitelaw. The action in the big shoot-’em-up finale is not terribly well done, but you’re here more for the laughs, which the filmmakers definitely deliver. R for violent content including some graphic images, and language. 121 minutes.

IN THE LAND OF WOMEN — Adam Brody graduates from “The O.C” and proves he can carry a film, or at least struggle to carry a film with his dignity intact, even when it descends into sudsy melodrama. Brody stars as Carter Webb, a lovelorn L.A. writer (is there any other kind?) who flees for the safety and comfort of suburban Michigan after his Penelope Cruz-style, model-actress girlfriend dumps him (at a hipster coffee shop where fans ask her for autographs, naturally). He moves in with his aging, ailing grandmother (Olympia Dukakis, cantankerous again) but ends up spending more time with the women across the street: intriguing housewife Sarah (Meg Ryan) and her teenage daughter, Lucy (Kristen Stewart). With his feature debut, writer-director Jonathan Kasdan (whose father, Lawrence, is an executive producer and whose brother, Jake, has “The TV Set” in theaters now) spells everything out about how the characters feel and how we should feel about them. He bangs us over the head with sentimental platitudes about love and loyalty and leaves nothing open for the audience’s interpretation. He’s lucky that his actors, namely Brody and Stewart, remain likable nonetheless. PG-13 for sexual content, thematic elements and language. 98 minutes.

THE INVISIBLE – Meet “Ghost” for teenagers. It has those “rules” that movies featuring those in the afterlife always have — you can’t move anything physically, nobody can hear you. Of course those rules are bent by the third act. It’s about a kid, a wealthy, smart, literary “golden boy” at a Seattle high school who is beaten to death by a girl thug and her gang of loan sharks just days before graduation. Disney’s Hollywood Pictures released the movie without previews or much fanfare, almost understandable, given several risible moments in the third act that involve the ghost of Nick (Justin Chatwin) screaming at his mother (Marcia Gay Harden), Annie, his killer (Margarita Levieva), cops and others who might be able to solve this crime by finding his body. The moments are semi-intentionally funny because they can’t see or hear him. Nick’s spirit follows Annie around, hoping for revenge, trying to help the police or his mom or friends put the pieces together. Then he gets to know her. He lost his dad years ago. She lost her mom. She hates her father, he hates his mom. She’s his mirror image. His life worked out; hers didn’t. It’s not that he excuses her actions. Even the fact that she and her gang assaulted him by mistake doesn’t let her off the hook. But the movie, by the writer of “Batman Begins” and writer-director of the last and least of the “Blade” films, finds ways to give Annie wriggle room for both Nick’s sympathy, and ours. PG-13 for violence, criminality, sensuality and language, all involving teens. 96 minutes.

KICKIN’ IT OLD SKOOL -- When Jamie Kennedy wakes up from 20 years in a coma and still thinks he’s in the 1980s, the results are kind of funny — for about five minutes. His room is decorated the same, but the local mall is nearly empty. When he sits down to watch MTV, he figures he must be on the wrong channel. Things go downhill from there. Kennedy’s Justin soon discovers he’s not the only one who failed to grow up. Shortly after pulling his Rip Van Winkle, he reconnects with his old crew, the Funky Fresh Boyz. These were the guys with him when he had his accident all those years ago, and they’re still just as loyal. The rest of the movie hinges on two dopey plot threads: one in which man-child Justin must woo his old girlfriend, Jennifer (Maria Menounos), and another in which the Boyz take on all challengers in a climactic break dancing throw-down. If you can’t guess how the movie turns out, then you’ve likely been in a coma, too. PG-13 for gross humor, sexual situations, language. 108 minutes.

MEET THE ROBINSONS — There’s been such an onslaught of animated movies over the past year or so, it only seems like they’re coming at you in 3-D. This one actually does, and it’s one of the more tolerable of the genre in recent memory. Thankfully, it doesn’t consist of smart-alecky talking animals spewing one-liners and pop-culture references. And the three-dimensional effects are pretty spectacular. A lot of times with this technology, it’s too easy to zing and fling things at the audience, simply because you can. It’s gratuitous; the most recent “Spy Kids” movie is a prime example. Here, the effects spring organically from the story. You feel like you’re immersed, the way the ground slopes toward you or objects seem to come from behind you and enter the screen. The story itself, however, is strictly two-dimensional. Young Lewis (voiced by Daniel Hansen) is left at an orphanage as an infant. Being the science geek that he is, he invents a memory scanner to go back and find his mom. Instead, he winds up in the future, where a family of weirdoes takes him in. G. 93 minutes.

NEXT — Nicolas Cage, Julianne Moore, Jessica Biel and director Lee Tamahori muck up a fine Philip K. Dick story with this dumb thriller that offers a few unintentional laughs for its lousy dialogue and silly plot twists. Cage stars as a man able to see a couple of minutes into his future, a talent an FBI agent (Moore) needs to help stop a gang of terrorists from setting off a stolen nuclear warhead in Los Angeles. Biel co-stars as the woman of Cage’s dreams; she becomes bait for the feds and villains trying to get at the guy with the second sight. In transplanting the story “The Golden Man” from the future to the present day, the three screenwriters take only the basic clairvoyance notion and leave behind all the nuance, cunning and weirdness that make Dick’s tales so attractive in the first place. PG-13 for intense sequences of violent action and some language. 98 minutes.

VACANCY — This is the kind of movie that leaves you feeling icky all over afterward — grimy and sickened and desperately in need of a shower. Yes, it is a horror flick and so of course it’s supposed to be violent. But the way in which it gets off on the violence — and, ostensibly, hopes the audience does the same — is especially distasteful and, frankly, misogynistic. The premise of the movie is just downright ridiculous — a paranoid amalgamation of small-town stereotypes and urban legends. Bickering husband and wife David and Amy Fox (Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale) take a short cut during an all-night road trip and wind up at a middle-of-nowhere motel, where the only other person around is the creepy night manager (Frank Whaley). In no time they realize the videos left on top of the TV are graphic snuff films that were shot right in their run-down room — and that if they don’t figure out a way to work together and escape, they’ll be the next victims. R for brutal violence and terror, brief nudity and language. 97 minutes.

WILD HOGS — Biker buddies Tim Allen, John Travolta, Martin Lawrence and William H. Macy are not all that wild, and more important, not all that funny. The road romp from director Walt Becker is like his “National Lampoon’s Van Wilder” on Maalox, the humor and hijinks tame and tranquil as though it were a middle-age epilogue to that raunchy campus comedy. The filmmakers simply fashion an excuse to send their weekend motorcyclists onto a cross-country road trip, then string together uninspired encounters with some fellow travelers and a hardcore biker gang headed by Ray Liotta, whose enthusiastic bad-boy performance is wasted in a woefully underwritten role. Marisa Tomei, Jill Hennessy and Tichina Arnold barely register as wives or lovers of our heroes. Most of the jokes and gags are boring or outright annoying, but the movie does have a surprise guest appearance that will amuse biker-film fans. PG-13 for crude and sexual content and some violence. 99 minutes.

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