When the monsters finally show themselves, this potent theme is lost amid a lot of proficiently staged but insubstantial scare scenes - heavy on musical stingers and weightless CGI.

The film never entirely overcomes the sense that it's a calling-card vehicle.

Someone surely thought to call this knowingly ridiculous genre mash-up "Cowboys vs. Ninjas," though even that title wouldn't hint at all the you-gotta-be-kidding-me craziness on display.

The fancifulness wears out its welcome, though, and you often wish the film would treat its subject with a bit more seriousness.

That the duo will work their way back to each other is never in doubt, although Chazelle doesn't succumb to easy sentiment. If anything, he moves too far in the other direction, aiming for a wizened ambiguity that doesn't entirely come off.

For everything admirable, like the way female Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana (the wonderful Gakire) resigns herself to a violent death, there's a heavy-handed metaphor-a cute gaggle of orphaned goats-ready to smack away the intelligence.

Depardieu and Cornillac's sibling rivalry, which segues between mostly verbal smackdowns and liquored-up bursts of merriment, is beautifully observed, as is the relationship between the detective and his devoted wife (the wonderful Marie Bunel). The thriller stuff, by comparison, is just a lot of perfunctory deadweight.

The film's sure-to-be-brief theatrical release is a mere stopover on the way to basic-cable eternity.

Chu does his best to humanize his subject, showing him surrounded by devoted friends and family, and wringing much drama from an on-the-road vocal-cord strain.

Begins in the land of lunacy and ends up somewhere on the far side of deranged.

Despite the faux-realist aesthetic (gritty handheld camerawork; all-natural sound), we never feel like much is at stake, though Pistereanu and Condeescu have an easygoing rapport that makes the quieter moments between them affecting.

The major change is that the domestic, Eun-yi (the great Jeon, star of "Secret Sunshine"), is now more of a victim than an aggressor.

Fortunately, Teegarden and McDonell make up for the hand-me-down plotting with a sweet, unaffected chemistry.

What begins as a tense, inventive suspense film becomes, to paraphrase Doctor Who, a wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, mushy-wushy mess. That's decidedly NOT fantastic.

Don't go in expecting scares so much as laughs. Scream 4 is a better "Scary Movie" than any of the "Scary Movies" ever were, from its inventively gut-busting kills (watch out for that mail slot!) to the unintentionally humorous sight of the three leads acting as if they're in three separate films.

Subtlety is not this movie's strong suit; even the terrific Chemical Brothers score pounds your nerves a bit more than it should.

The belly laughs do come, many of them courtesy of the mechanical bird companion.

For an animation studio that too often specializes in the frivolous and glib (begone, Shrek series!), the move to the dark side is refreshing.

Fincher's film tips much more in the indulging direction of crowd Comic-Con - delighting the franchise junkie above all other considerations.

Well, Ghost Protocol ultimately ends up as an eye-rollingly towering totem to L. Ron's favorite son, complete with treacly music cues and longing glances - bromantic and otherwise - that will send you screaming into the thetan-stealing clutches of Lord Xenu.

It's especially disappointing when the story takes an inevitable turn to starry-eyed mush, dulling the sharp satire of the crazy, stupid ins and outs of romantic entanglement with an unconvincingly saccharine one-true-love-for-all moral.

It's hard to hate a movie that affectionately references the oeuvre of Kathryn Bigelow (both The Hurt Locker and Point Break!) and uses a whiny Third Eye Blind ballad as an acidic punch line.

The film's secret weapon proves to be Freddy Krueger–fingernailed witch Marique, whom Rose McGowan plays with the kind of fuck-it-all brio - imagine a cross between Madeline Kahn in "History of the World: Part I" and Lady Gaga - that should garner her a Razzie and an Oscar.

The jittery aesthetic is a bit grating - there's a three-cut minimum per roundhouse kick - but the spectacularly named Olivier Megaton (Transporter 3) still manages to deliver the action-film goods.

Yet it still works like gangbusters - tears will be stifled by the end of the sibling vs. sibling finale - and most of the credit should go to Hardy, Nolte and Edgerton.

Two monologues-one in which the Hobo compares himself to a bear, the other a Travis Bickle–like screed delivered to a roomful of increasingly distressed babies-are damn near Shakespearean. It's a shame the performance is contained in a Z-movie patchwork that's a bit too knowingly repugnant.

You still can't help admiring the project's ambition; an odd combo of "Babe: Pig in the City" and Godard's "Histoire(s) du cinéma," Hugo is the strangest bird to grace the multiplex in a while.

We certainly need all the ecological jeremiads we can get. But must they be so numbingly pedantic?