Perhaps it is simply impossible, even with affection in your heart, to craft an evocative homage to the expansive musical melodramas of Bollywood on a small-scale indie budget.

It simply takes faith for granted as a motivating factor, and thus pulls off the neat trick of never making us feel we’re being preached at -- Yet, as directed by first-timer Adam Anderegg, from Jack Weyland's 1980 novel, the movie is too amateurishly square to make the most of its own ironic implications.

The various disruptions Miike visits upon his stories, and upon his audience, serve mainly to focus attention on the manipulating intelligence behind the scenes. They're a fancy way of yelling, "Look at me!"

The buildup is so compelling in this "Chinese Western" by He Ping (Swordsman in Double Flag Town) that its thunderous anticlimax of an ending can almost be forgiven. Almost.

Exceedingly dry and precise and slow-paced comedy.

This often gripping but also unremittingly grim and drab account of these events is a "Taxi Driver" without the cathartic finale.

Schizo is an earnest also-ran, sadly muffled by the opaque performance of non-actor Oldzhas Nusupbayev.

The movie’s entire first half turns out to be an elaborate fake-out, a setup for a plot reversal so extreme it could induce whiplash even in seasoned Bollywood hands. As clumsily engineered by writer-director Kunal Kohli (Hum Tum), the sudden changeover from romance to political techno-thriller is likely to be especially startling for non-Indians.

The movie is executed by director Kwak Kyung-Taek with flair, technical polish and tumescent firepower that the shriveled cinemas of Hong Kong and Japan can no longer match. But every gesture feels synthetic, from the back story about North-South separation to massage the emotions of the home audience, to the 24-style globe-hopping nuclear-terrorism premise.

Apart from an extended scene-setting flashback that takes the form of a lavish Farah Khan song-and-dance montage, most of the running time is devoted to wearying flop-sweat farce.

The film is so single-mindedly determined to be light and comfortable, to not raise a sweat, that it forgoes even the mildest surprises. The only things that get heavy here are the viewer's eyelids.

Both in subject matter and form, this 25-minute music drama within the film tips its hat to the roots of Bollywood cinema’s most distinctive conventions -- with the inestimable assistance of its most seductive modern axiom.

Ultimately, what’s most noteworthy about this middling effort is how aggressively un-contemporary it is.

The cast of the Disney Channel's Lizzie McGuire romped strenuously through a plot that would be old hat as a two-parter on a sitcom.

Surprisingly, not bad.

The most exhilarating fight by far is an acrobatic wall climber between Ja Rule and Nia Peeples, choreographed by Hong Kong's Xin Xin Xong (The Musketeer) who, in terms of thrills per minute, is the movie's real star.

This sophomoric stuff is pure self-indulgence, a drone to accompany the admittedly eye-popping sound-and-light show. Oshii looks like yet another director who has gone off the deep end, believing too absolutely his own good reviews.

Skip the movie, stay home, read the book and say three Hail Marys.

Instantly forgettable caper comedy.

Feels like a big-budget "Dharma & Greg" episode with toilet jokes.

The film's snazzy new automated animation style falls short: The supposedly human face of our metal-plated robocop's partner -- the inevitable curvy female in a leather jump suit -- is an inexpressive, glossy doll mask, untouched by human hands.

The only thing remotely resembling a character arc is handed to Regina King, the ferocious Margie Hendricks in "Ray."

It would be charitable to forgive this first attempt its technical shortcomings; while the virtual set design is first-rate, the character animation is often clunky and inexpressive. What's harder to excuse is the drabness of the storytelling, the repetitive sitcom dilemmas that are closer to "Top Cat" than "Ratatouille."

This brittle little confection from director Peyton Reed (Bring It On) may drive you up the wall -- unless you're willing to settle for great frocks, stylish production design and wicked opening credits.

Silly, derivative stuff.

The result is a soulless piece of product, an ungainly hybrid of sketchy hand-drawn characters in blocky CGI environments, derivative at just about every level.

Nepotism can't account for the movie's stylistic horrors. Writer-director Arjun Sablok, a TV veteran with visual ADD, has pitched the candy-colored cuteness at a frenzy that verges on hysteria.

The slathered-on visual textures aren’t quite enough, however, to distract us from the glib, leftie posturing, the lazy writing and the drug-deep existential platitudes.