Reviews

Remember when you were a kid and you went to a Disney Park for the first time? And you got to experience space rides and other stuff that they're going to do in the future courtesy of Walt Disney and his Imagineers? Well, forget all that; this movie may have the name Tomorrowland, but has nothing to do with the entertainment, imagination, thrills, creativity, or wonder of its amusement park namesake.

There are a few impressive visuals, but no story of any substance to give those visuals a reason to exist. The plot is paper thin and lumbers along as it goes nowhere. Even the cast seems to be bored, and have little to do of consequence. Not much happens, and from what little does happen, nothing ever clicks as innovative or interesting. It's puzzling what this movie's makers were shooting for. There are some random and disturbing scenes that are bizarre and out of place, and these only add to the audience's confusion.

George Clooney mugs and annoys the audience with his arrogant approach to his lead role. His line reads usually consist of long winded soap box sermons, usually to the tune of global warming. He mocks the audience with his attitude that everybody except him is stupid.

The title is deceptive and this movie has no right using it. None of the fun, family friendly atmosphere, or creativity suggested by the title is here. Save your money.

It's a 2 instead of a 1 because there are elements that are so riotously silly you will laugh uncontrollably. On the basis of being a "so bad it's good" movie, this one provides unintentional humor that makes it worth sitting through the whole mess.

First, don't expect a coherent story, secular or biblical. Perhaps this could be called a psychotic story, if such a classification exists. There are bizarre interpretations of parts of the original Noah story, some that take make you wonder what the writers were smoking. One set of creatures reminded me of muppet characters from a Starwars prequel. This movie stinks worse than the animals on the Ark must have smelled.

Of course, the plot, what little of it that can be deciphered, goes off in hundreds of dead-end directions. The human characters are emo, brainless, and cartoonish. People who have been hand-picked to survive a global holocaust, and repopulate the Earth, probably would have shown more sense than these people do. Look for some lingo that is oozing with political correctness. This is the kind of movie that would have fit in perfectly as one of the MST3K "experiments."

Thumbs down for this movie if you want to see a story about Noah, or even a run-of-the-mill adventure flick. However, thumbs up go to this movie if you love to laugh at crummy movies.

Same old formulaic stuff about stupid fools with personality defects hitting on hot women, and somehow each finds a woman who likes a loser. There's a lot of women with poor taste in men, apparently.

These are the kind of guys who wanted to join a boozer fraternity and were turned down for acting too stupid. This tired premise has been done a thousand times before, and this rehash is poorer than most. The writing is devoid of creativity or original humor. There's plenty of middle-school potty humor which even the most inebriated frat house partier would be bored with.

The characters are cranked off an assembly line of dull and overworked clichés: womanizer, geek, and lunatic. They're the same old brand of self-absorbed nitwits that give the audience no reason to care about them. The acting is weak, especially the female love interests. The jokes are forced and rarely funny.

Not funny, not interesting, not original, not worth your time or money. The most "awkward moment" of this movie is deciding when to walk out on it. Better off not bothering to see this junk in the first place.

All of the points are for the special effects. The set visuals and other effects were vivid and impressive. The rest of the production showed little thought or originality, with most of the cast and crew not showing up, nor even "phoning it in."

It's a post-apocalyptic story, set in the year 2077, 60 years after an alien attack laid waste to the Earth, making it pretty much uninhabitable. The remnant population seeks refuge on Saturn's large moon Titan, and now sends some guy down to Earth to check on stuff as some kind of caretaker. Enter Tom Cruise as our hero. Remember how Wall-E endeavored to clean up an environmentally crippled Earth long after humans had taken to space? Well, the little robot Wall-E had a personality that was at once touching; not so with Cruise's character.

There is never anything to care about in this character, or anything he does. First of all, Cruise never fills the role. He looks out of place; dressed like he's going to a high school prom while he wanders around a destroyed landscape. Cruise's acting consists of some bland stares at what surrounds him, and a romance with a woman that has as much chemistry as inert lead. The scripting doesn't help the lousy acting; the story really never pulls you in. The characters don't do much of anything, and blunder their way into some plot-devices rehashed from scores of other movies. There are revelations about things, but by this time you may be asleep.

Before closing, it's fair to note that Morgan Friedman makes his usually fine effort in the movie. But even he can't save it from the other actors.

In short, it's an effort at sci-fi that burns up in the atmosphere of its own laziness. If you like watching Cruise wander around with a confused look on his face, you might like this. But don't expect a story that's worth telling.

Other than to steal money from you, this film is useless. It's the same old stale money-grab formula: a pale remake where some devoid-of-talent hack decides to "re-imagine" someone's else's creative work, and the predictable result is one of soon-forgotten cinematic dumpster garbage.

Carrie may put a hex on these remake oafs, and Steven King should sue them as well for trashing his work so badly. The memorable and complex character that was tragically thrust into an evil circumstance that she couldn't understand and certainly could not control with bloody results, has now been tossed at us as some cell-phone texting half-wit who probably can't even spell her own name. About the scariest she gets is when she makes "OMG" goggle faces at a guy she likes. All of the Gothic references and artistic devices so brilliantly utilized in the original are absent in this mockery of the original.

The acting is a joke; a cast that includes proved actors is wasted on a hackneyed script that tries to generate scares. It only garners ridicule and laughter from the audience. I blame the director for condemning this cast to failure with his lack of vision; he doesn't give them anything to do beyond arguing, screaming, and running around. You learn nothing about the characters, other than bad-teen and village idiot clichés tossed in at random.

There are some cheap "jump out" scares and plenty of bloodbath exaggerations designed to keep you from falling asleep, but that's about as close as this mangled mess will get to horror movie entertainment.

The classic Oz gets butchered again with this lame attempt to expound upon the original story. The only thing to entice anyone to watch this is the poor tie-in with characters of the original. Nothing here would ever stand on its own, and this movie should descend rapidly into forgotten obscurity.

It's a prequel. That alone should raise red flags after the regrettable Starwars prequels, and the red flags are justified. Like other prequels, it exploits the names and goes running off in odd directions that don't fit with the original story it's supposed to connect to. It rips off Wicked with the young witches and their widening rift routine, and does it poorly. Mila Kunis, in particular, looks completely confused as to what her character is supposed to be doing or feeling.

No character will evoke your sympathy or interest, because the story and approach never give you any reason to care. Apparently, the director thought if you use names like Glenda from the original, that will be enough. It's not. Be warned: any resemblance to characters and story lines from the 1939 is purely non-existent.

A cheap attempt by the movie makers to absorb money without earning it.

This show has completely lost its way.

It wasn't that long ago that we witnessed a zombie Apocalypse through the eyes of a wounded policeman who wakes up in a hospital to discover the world has been ravaged by a wholesale catastrophe. Through his eyes we see that some global holocaust (of apparently a biological origin?) has mutated most humans into pathetic, soul-less creatures that exist solely to find animals and humans to slaughter and feed upon. They're the classic zombie infestation, roving bands of slow-moving but deadly, savage ghouls. The show measured monster violence with interesting character-study. Before long, the character-driven approach began to dominate the construction of the story line, and slowed its once tense, gritty nature to snail-pace drudgery that's getting nowhere. The most recent season could be scaled down to 15 minutes of an episode; the rest was all time-wasting fluff and nonsense.

Now it's degenerated into little more than an old-style soap opera with a few zombies wandering in and out when the scriptwriters can't think of much (which is quite often now). It even stoops to the level of killing people out of nowhere for lame shock value, or perhaps in true soap style, just to get rid of an actor who's asking too much money.

At first, the few people left were fighting for their survival, and advanced different philosophies of what was the most beneficial way to survive: ruthlessly exterminate the mindless enemies and even sacrifice your comrades when necessary, or endeavor to maintain the tenets of a civilized society, where the community members are willing to sacrifice themselves for the group.

Clearly, the show's producers have no immediate vision of where they want to go with this series, evidenced by the fact that it really has slowed rapidly into a talkathon, that resembles a zombie with two broken legs. The only intent is to keep the thing on the air, dangling carrots to its fans, but never showing the audience anything new and certainly not progressing anywhere. At least, not until the audience gets fed up, and starts demanding something worth waiting for and watching.

Now I find myself rooting for the zombies to kill all but two (Rick and Herschel) of the human characters, an annoying assimilation of annoying twerps who offer nothing to the survival of mankind. If these losers represent actual humanity, then it's time for humanity to be extinct. Let's examine these blockheads individually. There is some loudmouth girl who wants to learn how to shoot; and shoots one the people in the group. The guy that got shot is a latter-day Robin Hood that fires arrows and never misses a zombie (rolls eyes). There's the cop's wife who whines and moans about everything. There's the kid with the baseball hat who reminds me of Charlie Brown--just because you wear a cap doesn't make you a baseball player; furthermore, just because he's always buzzing around other people like a mosquito doesn't make the character interesting. His girl-friend--the veterinarian's kid--is boring, lacks substance. I'm guessing she's just being posed there for an upcoming gruesome death: she serves no purpose other than to die. There's the guy that owns the RV that pops his eyes out whenever anybody talks to him, and he's always concealing some lame secret to manipulate somebody. The lady with the short hair just screeches and cries about everything.

Then there's Shane, who belongs on a TLC Channel reality show about weird people. Are they kidding with this wacko freak? He stampedes around throwing hissy-fits, shoots guns anywhere and everywhere, argues about anything he can think of and never shuts his mouth, and sweats profusely every time you see him doing his endless Dog Day Afternoon impressions. Put a uniform on this jerk and ship him off to Siberia; he'd probably like it there, and even in the freezing Russian winter he'd probably be still be sweating like a mule.

Rick and Herschel are the only characters that conduct meaningful conversations that advance or have anything to do with the plot. Their dialog is the only example of exchanges by people in this show that reflects brain power above an IQ of 60.

Rent or buy DVD's of the first season, and let this show get blasted by Shane or one of his trigger-happy disciples.

Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Didn't anybody learn from the previously failed pairing of the worst actress on the modern so-called "A-List," with the all time clown prince of acting ineptitude (in Vanilla Sky)? Insanity is the only explanation for repeating a blunder of that magnitude, and expecting a different result. Diaz and Cruise spark neither comic nor romantic chemistry, only questions as to why this movie was even made.

Fittingly, the scripting is as abominable as the leads are. It's a screwball romance/over-the-top spy adventure. Doesn't that sound incredibly original and promising? How about that astonishingly brilliant and inspired title? Let's pause a moment to enjoy an uncontrollable fit of laughter.

It's even worse than you'd expect, though. Tom's playing his own uninteresting self as usual, precisely what nobody wants to see. Meanwhile, Diaz just seems to be posed like a broken Barby doll: her character is literally unconscious half the time, a source for more improbable and unfunny plot contrivances. When she is awake, she giggles nervously and stupidly. She rides shotgun with Tom on various vehicles while he shoots bad guys that for some reason don't hit anything they shoot at. The lowest point of this trash heap is when Ton and Diaz are on a motorcycle, making poorly written quips and one-liners while he kills everybody in sight. Hilarious. Oh, did I mention he's a falsely accused fall guy, and trying to clear his name? Leaving hundreds of dead bodies in your wake as you make jokes about it is an excellent way to prove your innocence.

Don't waste any of your day or night watching this bomb.

Even an intentionally brainless film like this needs more than Angelina Jolie just running around shooting up stuff to be entertaining.

Jolie phones it in. From a cell phone that dropped the signal. She is really awful in this, and it's obvious she couldn't care less. As usual, she wears clichéd black outfits. Her vampy Xena wannabe expression while she blasts people gets old way too fast; even she appears bored with the dull routine. The rest of the cast are not much better; calling them paper cut-outs is an insult to paper cut-outs.

The plot is absolutely preposterous, and it only gets more absurd as it goes along. Jolie is a spy who gets framed for cold-war double agent shenanigans. Lots of bumbling clowns chase her and shoot. Committing the offense of making this film is far worse than espionage, and that's what they should have shot her for; but it's all academic anyway since they couldn't hit the broad side of a barn from three feet away.

Don't expect your money's worth of entertainment value from this, except maybe from laughing at it.

This dreadful mess is the latest in an ever increasing parade of movies that spit on the audience. It's time for movie makers to stop thoughtlessly churning out this kind of useless stuff, and provide a better product for our entertainment dollars.

How could they goof this up so badly? Just a kid's show adapted to a movie: simple to appeal to the established audience, with the added plus of the similarly themed Avatar's recent success, right? Try infusing the source material with ineptitude and lack of vision, and this film is the result. The direction from the once promising director M. Night shows us nothing. Characters are neither developed nor interesting, the aimless story is not threaded in any cohesive manner, the acting is abysmal, and the cinematography is ugly and fake. I've seen better looking gang tags in the inner city, than this movie's so-called 3-D. The make-up used is cheaper than a kindergarten Halloween play.

No sequels, please. Let this really be the "last" of its kind.

The date-night genre of choice, rom-com's, get another black eye. People have rightfully criticized stuff like Valentine's Day for giving the genre a bad name, but Back Up Plan makes even V-Day seem almost good by comparison.

Jennifer Lopez shows up, after appearing in nothing but check-out stand gossip news rags for a while. Along with Jen are a supporting cast whose acting, simply put, reeks. Jen is an uppity "bio-clock's running" 30-something who wants a relationship, plus a child. Guys flee in terror (they must have seen abominations like Gigli, Anaconda, Jersey Girl and Monster-in-Law), so she resigns herself to a single-mom future, and goes through an artificial insemination procedure. Just minutes after learning she's pregnant, she meets Mr. Right (a poor sap who hasn't seen her movies). A possibly amusing premise, but the writer clearly had no idea where to go with it. The story is jumbled, rambling, and has no clear goal. It's more like a series of skits with corny punch lines, usually mean-spirited in that the joy of parenting is grossly mocked.

The poor sap boyfriend and JLo have romantic chemistry about as hot as the polar ice cap. The weak scripting and abysmal direction may be to blame for their poor acting performances; it's not certain. The guy just mugs and stares blankly. As for Jen, she's kind to the eyes but grating to the ears: her line delivery is a patchwork quilt of sing-song, cutesy-cute, whiny, and condescending career-woman tones. At times, she appears catatonic.

Even stuff like Iron Man and Nightmare on Elm St. would be more romantic and funny than this is.

This snoozer's only "nightmare" is how it rips you off.

A puppet stooge "director" (who only does low-rent music videos) was hired as a front, but the "dumbing down" formula of this film's bank roller (Michael Bay) is still obvious. Bay and his director, Mario Nette, give us an artificial Freddy that is about as scary as a kewpie doll.

This pretender film tweaks Freddy's character slightly in a shallow and vain pretense of "artistic re-imagining" (lol) of the original. Apparently, the fact he's a serial killer with the mystical power to enter victims' dreams to murder them is not vicious enough for these talentless copy-cats. So unnecessary plot elements that add nothing, such as pedophilia, are randomly tossed in. This may be either an attempt to give the movie relevancy, or noise to keep the audience from nodding off; in either case, it fails. The story is convoluted with meandering nonsense, and the ending brazenly leaves unresolved plot lines (that nobody cares about), as woefully futile teasers to promote sequels. The incompetently stylized camera angles and editing look more like a Brittney Spears demo than a horror flick. Loud "jump" noises, ineffective CGI usage.

The guy who plays Freddy looks like somebody dropped a piano on his head, but his mediocre acting skill is the least-awful you'll see in this thing. Where they found the rest of this cast of drama 101 flunk-outs is uncertain; I suspect they were hired sight-unseen from an internet spam ad. These "terrified victims" look ridiculous. They moan and groan with plastic emotion, and blandly recite lines without interest. It would all give you a headache, except for the fact that you'll either be laughing hysterically or sleeping by this point.

A poor production all around. Skip this one.

Pointless, self-aggrandizing voyage to nowhere. This misfire submerges itself in the water of a hackneyed fairy tale to depths of film making so low they had been previously unchartered.

Most everybody here is a racial stereotype of some sort with a water logged brain. An apartment handy-man finds a fairy in a pool, and gets his weird tenants to help her out. Don't ask why; it's some platitude about folks having destiny. Ideas are literally made up to progress things as this ridiculous mess meanders along. Writer/director MN pacifies his own crybaby attitude about meanie critics with a childish fantasy revenge sub-plot. He even puts himself in the cast, as a wannabe author destined for glory. This is truly pathetic storytelling.

Bryce Howard looks like she needs both a blood transfusion and drug rehab. For that matter, most of the actors look like they wandered out of a 12-step meeting. Nothing is involving or innovative. Most of the filming is done at somebody's back yard pool, and probably took about six hours, tops.

A complete dud.

Toxic waste. As funny as hearing bad news from your doctor.

It's a retro visit to those old buddy cop films, but who is this for? Frat guys passed out on the floor from booze? Stoned nematodes? Middle schooler kids sneaking in through the exit? This is dumbed down so far, that even middle schoolers would roll their eyes.

Bruce Willis just sits around looking bored. He's got some peculiar grin on his face, like some jerk who's pulling a practical joke on a blind person. Tracy Morgan does an annoyingly cheap rip off of Murphy/Pryor/Lawrence, (take your pick). Whining, moaning, stereotyped gibberish, manic babbling delivery. He points at himself and says "look how funny." They're carting around some idiot prisoner who mumbles stupidly with childish taunts, even doing the "repeat what you said" bit. Remember that from kindergarten? It wasn't funny then, either; but at least nobody charged you ten bucks to listen to it for two hours.

Painful. Almost as bad as being seated next to Kevin Smith on a crowded airplane for a 14-hour flight. This one's a wash-out.

Some crazy lady dramatically escapes weddings on horseback or something. A lazy journalist irresponsibly writes about her without researching the facts, and gets axed. Then he goes to meet her. Twisted premise, puzzling plot holes. Why do guys keep proposing to this creep? Why would someone with obvious mental illness be the heroine of a rom-com? Never explained.

Another question: why Richard Gere? He looks like a grenade exploded in his mouth and blew his face away. His vapid acting is about as effective as you would expect from somebody without a face, too. As for Julia Roberts, even playing Little Bo Peep would be almost too complex for her. The script is just the usual "unlikely couple becomes a couple while other goofy stuff happens" story line. But it does't work with such vile lead characters. Not to mention the horrible acting of grenade face and bo-peep. The endless subliminal messages to subscribe to USA Today don't help, either.

To be fair; a few jokes work, such as the wedding rehearsal scene. But that's about it. Otherwise, this is one long winded product placement infomercial. I hope director Gary Marshall enjoyed his complementary copy of USA Today after making this.

Incompetent to the point of making your stomach turn.

Based on real events and people. Really? Who, exactly? Any reference to a conspiracy of Hitler's inside circle to assassinate him is purely accidental. This was an event that could have had immense repercussions on the course of human history in the decades that followed. This movie treats the whole thing like some high school teen angst dramedy.

Cruise looks like a little kid trying on his Daddy's old war uniform, and whining when he finds it's too big. Forget any German accent, or anything else to occupy the role of a Nazi officer. Let alone someone plotting a murder, or fearing for his own life. He talks like he just hung ten on some like totally rad gnarly curls at Malibu, dude. And he sports that eye patch like a he's going trick-or-treating for the first time. Other actors look like they're going to laugh at him at any moment. And they play Nazis--with British accents? There's just no serious tone, when you see Der Cruiser rushing around in jack-boots like he needs to go to the Herr's room. The guy playing Hitler looks more like Moe Howard of the Three Stooges. Not badly scripted; there was potential. The director obviously needed to do more research about these individuals; his lack of knowledge and professionalism trivializes this very serious subject matter. As for Tom, he just makes a fool of himself, once again.

Forget the Morgans and this flop movie. A couple with marital problems witness a murder and are dispatched to Wyoming some place to hide out in the witness protection program. What a cute premise for a rom-com: somebody got croaked and the killer wants to croak more people. Every comedy should predicate its humor on murder and stalking. Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant are the couple who reconstruct their love on the foundation of a violent death, and their acting is even more abysmal than expected. Parker emotes as well as a tumble weed, and Grant's same old tiresome "Ain't I just soooo debonair?" bit makes you want to destroy something. The chemistry between them is as inert as decomposing lead. Sam Elliot, as the easy-going bumpkin sheriff that shelters the couple, is about the only plus of this movie. He deserves special praise when you consider he had to work with Parker, Grant, and the snot-nosed Mary Steenburgen. Listening to her droning, nasally, whiny noise can lead to insanity. Try to imagine an off-key air raid siren that won't shut off: you have Steenburgen. As for the plot of this thing, it goes nowhere, has few funny lines, and means nothing. May the Morgans disappear and never be heard from again.

All the hype 4 this? r u kidding me? 2 guys with ugly red eyes and the girl likes them. Thats lame. 1 is a vampire and a werewolf. Their bad actors and so is the girl. Their so stupid looking nerds and they wear lipstick i wanted 2 laugh. i c y everybody hates this it totally wrecked the book. The acting is so nause8ing it will creep u out. They just walk around saying dumb things its so boring. and then the dumb girl likes them i don't know y. And i thought she was kinda dumb and emo anyways shes like "Im gonna follow these guys" all the time y doesn't she get a life. Its boring and it makes no sense. i got sick watching this movie cuz its stupid and its not like the book. They always take off shirts its not cute its just a barf. My bff liked the actor who was the vampire and she likes the twilight books but even she said it made her sick and she hated the movie. Its suppose 2 b romantic but its not its just like nobody cared what they were doing. And y was Dakota Faning evil thats just wrong. Anyways i should of ask 4 my money back cuz this movies a waist. don't waist ur money 2 c this movie.

You worked hard for your paycheck; which is a lot more than can be said for anybody involved with this movie. Like an old dog that needs a bath, this thing stinks something awful.

Robin Williams and John Travolta have done better. Unfortunately, in this outing, neither delivers. It's not enough to prance into camera view, and call that acting. To label their performances as "phoned in" is being too generous. All they do is mug and mechanically recite lines. "Warm and fuzzy" scenes look contrived and phony, "comical" scenes are about as funny as having your teeth pulled out with a wrench and no anesthesia. And no, even anesthesia won't help you endure this movie.

The "touchy-feely" premise is this: two obnoxious swinging single mid-life-crisis guys, are old friends and business partners. Through some dumb circumstances (one has kids he didn't know about-so original yecch), they wind up with two kids to care for. Idiotic? Yes. Original, no. Interesting; definitely not. Writing is flat, the rest of the cast is flat, the plot is flat, and the director should be banned from making movies ever again. The story goes nowhere, and is never involving. The characters are not likable, and the intended laughs are as sparse as igloos in the Sahara desert. It even stoops to the old groin injury bit: sad.

At least the title makes sense. It's all old stuff. And it's a dog.

This movie is great. If you're looking for a comedy, that is. As a...well, whatever it's trying to be, it's trash.

Almost as bad as Paranormal Activity, if anything can be that awful. And for the same reasons. It tries to look "real," and you just laugh at how silly everybody makes themselves look. There are all these bozos up in Alaska somewhere who see a white owl. Then they freak out, under pop-psycho hypnosis. The owl scared them, you see. So it must be an alien.

Want evidence of alien abductions? This movie gives the honest low-down with real video tapes that so sadly go "Fizzle! Snap! Crackle! Pop!" just as the alien would have shown up. I really got a kick out of the levitation bit. One of the oldest parlor tricks of illusionists, using concealed sticks, and this was the film's evidence. Too funny. Then there's this "witness" Abbey Tyler or Abbey-Normal or something, who is made up to look like a walk-on from Night of the Living Dead. The actress--oops, shame on me: I mean, witness, mumbles slowly and incoherently. Makes you want to grab a can of alien-repellent right away.

Riotously funny. Imbecillic movie making by hacks who have no shame. Gets a 2 just for the laughs.

If you want a scary experience, see a dentist instead. It's scary (which this film isn't), and you might get better teeth. As for this film, all you'll get is asphyxiation. This thing stinks so bad you'll need a gas mask just to enter the theater.

Some moron couple in San Fran get bugged by ghosts in their house. So they try to film the ghosts. Who knows why, maybe for America's Funniest Videos. The "action" mostly takes place in the dumb couple's house, where the malevolent spirits get progressively irritated by their stupid behavior and plastic acting.

Paranormal Activity should be renamed Parasitical Activity, since it shamelessly rips off an old idea. This is Blair Witch Lite, a regurgitation of what was a low-rent gimmick to begin with. They have the nerve to use that tiresome jiggly camera routine, invoking nausea. And that stupid "night vision" effect. When you can actually see someone, they're tearfully whining or f-bombing. Meanwhile, the idiot boyfriend character films on and on, and nobody thinks of leaving to escape the danger. Idiotic clichés like this one will have you rolling your eyes so much you'll get a headache. It's easy to see why the ghosts got sick of these two clowns.

The advertising for this offered no actual footage, and it's obvious why. Instead they showed Beevis and Butthead types pretending to react in mortal fear. If they were actually scared, then they were watching something else. The tension level of this thing plays out more like Scooby Doo meets Casper meets the TAPS Ghost Hunters (on a bad investigation) meets the Great Pumpkin.

All hype, no substance. The only thing spooky about this is that somebody is brazen enough to charge people to see it.

It's obvious when a comic knows they're bombing: they resort to the crutch of using dirty jokes or ethnic jokes for cheap, easy laughs. Love Guru is evidence that Mike Myers is dreadfully insecure about the future of his career.

Austin Powers (oh wait, that's the character being rehashed but not what they call him in this flop), learns Eastern Religion and a bad accent. His journey of enlightenment is apparently to insult people (usually with that familiar word that starts with "f"). He chases women, gives advice on how to offend women and therefore get one, etc. There are no laughs, no memorable moments, no reasons to watch this whatsoever. In addition to Myers self-destructing, Jessica Alba continues her challenge to set a record for consecutive lousy performances in worthless movies. Her current run of these career-ending disasters is a number roughly equal to the number of miles that light travels in a year.

This rubbish isn't even good enough for "straight to video" release. The producers, had they had a moment of self-preservation and/or sanity, should have decided not to release it at all.

Public intoxication is rarely advisable, except in the case of viewing this movie, that is. Being sauced to the gills is probably the only way to be able to sit through it. (The jokers responsible for this debacle obviously were.) Approaching this 190-proof concoction of ineptitude as a comedy will make it less painful, possibly even entertaining. What's most hilarious is how drunk with self-importance this movie is. Somebody was so ZUI (Z-movie-making-while-under-the-influence) that they actually believed it was exuding some artistic merit or conveying some deep message. Casting Tom Cruise was the first wrong ingredient. That should throw up an 86-cutoff warning right there. Expect the same old tired Cruise-movie story lines of women-swooning-over-him, he's a spoiled brat trying to "find himself" while throwing temper tantrums, etc etc ad nauseum. Also tossed in are a few additional shot-glasses-full of his co-stars' emo problems, a romance that's drier than the driest martini, an absurd bartender competition, and similar nonsense.

There's some nice background sets in the Caribbean, and a superior soundtrack score. But even the sweetest mixer tastes like acid when laced with something that's as bitterly foul-tasting as this script is. Too bad they didn't toss out Tom, the other lemons, and the stale dialog. Just film some scenes of the Beach Boys performing their music on a Jamaican beach. Throwing in random shots of guys drinking beer at the concert would have achieved the brilliant booze metaphor the film makers endeavored to inspire us with.

Ingest Cocktail responsibly: it's perfect for several rounds of unintentional laughs. But attempting to take this fiasco's backwashed bilge seriously can be mentally incapacitating, even when chugged down kamikaze style.

Martin Lawrence, who hasn't been involved in a worth while movie since Abraham Lincoln was president, is back again. My friends talked me into seeing this (instead of a good movie), promising to each pay me the cost of admission if it turned out to be as awful as we had been warned. "Oh, the critics are never right," they said. Yes, the critics are right about this film, and at least I won the bet, but it was a painful way to earn 50 bucks.

Lawrence just makes a fool out of himself. The premise is worthless to begin with: frantic dad sticks his nose in his daughter's business as she begins her college career. There is no humor in that. Somehow, it gets worse. The writing is abysmal; of note are the endless babbling speeches by Lawrence, pre-school intelligence level gags, stereotypical characterizations that went out with the dinosaurs, and horribly executed slapstick scenes. The direction is zero: it just poses Lawrence in your face like he's doing a stand-up routine, while other nameless characters do a lousy job of trying to pretend they think he's funny. The amateurish cast's irritating over-acting makes this cinematic flop even more torturous.

The audience, like the daughter character in the film, will want to escape from Lawrence's manic ramblings as quickly as possible. Expect this one to have a very short general-release lifetime before it gets shelved in the 99 cent video grocery store bin, and mercifully forgotten.