If LaBute wants to plumb the depths of human unkindness, have at it -– only dig deeper next time.

It's a botched job through and through, made all the more distressing by Bullock's recent announcement that she's throwing in the romantic comedy towel for a while.

Bait equals bad.

Christina Applegate, of Eighties white-trash pinup fame, is a comic foil par excellence, delivering a snazzy, self-assured performance that lands the biggest laughs in a movie made mostly of hollow chuckles. She, in fact, is the sweetest thing in this sour, sucky film.

The jokes just aren't there, which makes it very hard for the stars -- who are trying very, very hard -- to really make a dent.

The fictionalization of their journey is simply not that engrossing, nor are their alter egos, with their tightly scripted character arcs.

Head Over Heels whitewashes the originality and, well, weirdness Waters showed in his first film, although it's impossibe to imagine anything starring young poster-pups Potter and Prinze Jr. could be particularly edgy.

"By practicing his art, he revealed himself to us." Fellini: I’m a Born Liar provides proof positive: The art indeed reveals far more than this pedestrian documentary ever does.

Very little here begs to be paid attention to.

Another casualty of the uncomfortable branding so common to the teen genre, the same branding one sees in a film starring Hilary Duff, or Amanda Bynes, or the next sweet but bland blond actress that comes down the assembly line.

If Affleck stumbles, Smith's script does nothing to catch his fall. Surprisingly, Smith's truest talent – that of writing – is Jersey Girl's weakest link.

There’s nothing especially offensive about the actress (Hudson); if anything, it’s that lack of offense, her overwhelmingly benign vibe, that has become increasingly repugnant with every picture she puts out.

Clearly the film is archly trying to connect the dots between Rove and the supreme mishandling of Iraq – and a compelling case might be made – but it isn't made here.

The actors do a fine, if unsoulful, job, but the real problem with A Love Divided is its unwillingness to unromanticize its heroes.

A stiff drink or maybe some pharmaceutical assistance might have made me overlook the film's sour tone, or the unremarkableness of its direction.

This one has the feel of being penned on rolling papers, with room to spare.

What this really comes down to is the film's central lie. Made of Honor pins its hopes on a character who acts utterly without honor, and on an actor who has only two settings – sensitive or smarmy. The smarm wins.

From "Hands on a Hard Body" to an 89-minute ogling of another hard body: It boggles the mind that 11 years after his engrossing documentary about an endurance competition to win a truck in Longview, Texas, filmmaker Bindler has channeled his talents into this regrettable comedy.

Ghosts indeed: This romantic comedy by name alone attempts to make funny – not to mention culturally relevant – the kind of swinging-dick misogyny that went out of fashion years ago.

This is the kind of movie in which every other line of dialogue feels like a metaphor – and from there on, the film seesaws between the uncomfortable extremes of glum and twee: an overwrought dirge keyed to a xylophonic ping.

I’m told Bella’s helplessness is true to the spirit of the novels, but so what? It’s almost 2010 – let’s get hip, people.

How many screenwriters does it take to screw in this dim bulb? Five – no joke – and another one credited with “story by.”

He is meant to be brooding, I think, but Tatum’s vague features read more “meathead” than anguished young lover. He has to carry the film, but he’s the least interesting thing going on here.

Even though She’s Out of My League ends exactly where you think it will, it does so without ever having actually gone anywhere at all.

The film goes by in a wash of uninspired action and unmemorable comedy.

It's an intermittently amusing parable about an outcast's ascension, as performed by a pack of digitally manipulated dogs. Next.

The 3-D angle is the only one I can identify to justify Alpha and Omega not going straight to DVD.

Maybe taking a cue from his namesake dish, that much-maligned Scottish pudding concoction made with sheep innards and root vegetables, Haggis presents a mishmash of genres in this redo of Fred Cavayé's 2008 French film "Pour Elle."

No one would mistake the Benzini Bros. Circus for the greatest show on earth – the Depression-era traveling troupe is a junker compared to the gold-standard Ringling Bros. – but still, a film has to try pretty hard to render lions and tigers and trapeze artists so uniformly underwhelming.

The film restages the greatest hits of the show's many musical numbers, to greatly diminished effect, with lackluster choreography and all the narrative appeal stripped away.

But most damningly, Shut Up Little Man! fails to convey what was so hypnotic about the original tapes, and Bate's decision to re-enact the transcripts with actors seems weirdly contrary to the spirit of the thing.

The Greek myths, of course, will endure. The same cannot be said for Singh's silly, self-serious, instantly forgettable, and inaptly named Immortals.

In Movie 43's better-suited afterlife in the home-entertainment market, those sort of quandaries can be hashed out between bong rips and bags of Cheetos.

The leads project a sunny patina of wholesomeness and share marvelous tans, but beyond that, it’s a shrugging love match.

Back to that question of medium: Scrubbed of the few, ill-fitting four-letter words that earned it an R, Language of a Broken Heart might have made a passable Hallmark or Lifetime TV movie, cushioned by the TV-movie context. But as a theatrical prospect, it’s a fail.

I’m not saying there isn’t comic gold to be mined in the topic of cunnilingus and the senior set, but The Big Wedding couldn’t hit pay dirt even if it face-palmed the film first.

Everybody figured producer Joel Silver and Willis couldn't lose and guess what? They all rolled craps.

The blandness of The Wedding Planner burlap-sacks their appeal in an altogether dowdy outing for two stars who deserve much snazzier threads.

A succession of shrill overacting jobs.

Isn't much more than a self-indulgent picture about the feeble delirium of a lovesick girl -- lightweight stuff that labors to seem terribly important.

The collective charisma of Robert De Niro, Eddie Murphy, and Rene Russo is the only reason to slap down eight bucks for this limp action/comedy, but then, it's difficult not to want to avert your eyes out of embarrassment for the trio.

A paint-by-numbers romantic comedy, but without the heart or laughs to make it work.

Irritating throughout, Love Me if You Dare turns positively appalling in its last half hour, with the inevitable final showdown producing an image that continues to curdle my stomach days later.

It isn't all the actors' faults, of course. You can't, ahem, turn straw into gold, and straw – dull, brittle, lousy to taste – is entirely what director Mark Rosman and first-time screenwriter Leigh Dunlap deliver.

And then there's the overacting. And then there's the hamminess of the script. And then there's

These days, Allen's pictures are more like snuff films, in which the viewer must suffer both gifted actors committing screen hara-kiri and a once-brilliant filmmaker soldiering on with his long, bullheaded decline.

Screenwriter Dean Georgaris gets a hell of a pass here – the story is canon, and, in terms of emotional wallop, does all the heavy lifting for him – but he still manages to gunk up the works with dialogue that is dull-witted at best and outright howling at its worst.

The Celestine Prophecy's biggest stumbling block (and there are many to choose from) is that the film's dramatic arc hinges on John's awakening to the prophecy. But spiritual epiphany is tough to convey onscreen.

If you're gonna hire one of the funniest American comedians working today – Zach Galifianakis – and shove him to the side of the frame, then frankly, you can take what happens in Vegas, keep it in Vegas, and keep the rest of the us out of it.

Overlong, overplotted, and pocked with improbabilities.

New in Town might have better played on the less demanding stage of, say, a Lifetime made-for-TV movie.

Love Happens? It depends on your definition of “love.” And “happens.” There isn’t much of either in this predictable, putzy drama.

Indisputably awful comedy.

Aggressively unfunny and unromantic, Valentine’s Day’s chief concern appears to have been the corralling of its cast of a thousand stars; it seems far less attention was paid to what to do with that cast once assembled.

In practice, and played as farce, the characters are one-dimensional cutouts kept at a dogged remove. Their miseries are a bore – maybe to Allen, too, who abruptly ends the film, after so much inaction, when it finally catches some dramatic traction.

Check the credits: That move is ripped straight from producer Michael Bay's playbook.

These are boys and girls on their very best behavior, which doesn't sound like any prom you or I remember.

There are kernels here of a thoughtful and provocative picture, but they never pop – or POP!, for that matter.

As the film's central focal point, Simpson (who also co-wrote the script) is an awful zero – you could hardly imagine a more uncharismatic lead – and his embarrassing swings at big emotion in the climax prove the final blow to a film already hobbled by mawkishness.

What goes most wrong is the casting. Every facet of Faris' performance feels off.

They have some fun playacting at class warriors on the lam – and Seyfriend, it must be said, rocks a killer bob – but it's all just big-budget dress-up in a futurescape that reeks of phoniness.

Bill Condon (Dreamgirls, Chicago, Gods and Monsters) takes over the directing reins for these final two parts; his most noteworthy contribution to the series so far is a terrifyingly staged birth scene that should turn the teen fan base off of sex altogether … which is precisely what this whole dumb, punishing series has been gunning for from the start.

Mostly, New Year's Eve is appalling stuff, a poorly constructed, sentimental sham. Auld lang suck.

There is running, hiding, fighting, shooting, bleeding, biting, slicing, dicing, and damnably little entertainment value in any of it.

I have never doodled during a movie before in my life, but holy hell, Parker's two-hour running time takes a lifetime. Plenty of time for mental doodling, too.

I was consistently aghast at how unabashedly alpha-male, heartless, and chauvinistic this film is.

Instantly forgettable.

The script's tone veers chaotically -- and ambitiously -- at once aiming for a Noel Coward kind of elegant sparring, then for the lightly raunchy, rompy absurdism of "What's New, Pussycat?"

It's all infuriatingly simplistic, and the performances help matters little. Quinn and McTeer are wholly uncompelling.

The only actors who walk away unscathed are Kattan -- the best thing in a very bad movie -- and former cover girl Shaw.

Indeed, the largely computer-generated Jack acts the pants off his co-stars, which can and should be taken with a whole trough full of salt.

Takes the giant leap from your run-of-the-mill mediocrity into an alternative universe of awfulness.

Wretched. And while the dirtiest, low-rottenest part of me wouldn’t mind watching the institution of Ben/Jen get reamed, the heft of the blame should be shouldered by Hollywood vet Martin Brest, who wrote an incoherent, incompetent script and further mangled it with his direction.

Though the three leads are all likable performers, their lunkheaded characters are as thinly drawn as their cartoon counterparts, and the supporting cast is littered with one racial stereotype after another.

The politest way to assess Spike Lee's latest polemic is to call it too ambitious. "An unholy mess" might come closer to the truth.

Little Black Book isn't your run-of-the-mill romantic comedy – it's much worse – and, rather disgustingly, the devils on earth it unmasks are all female and vindictive.

Everything else here – from the gross caricatures to the so-called comic mayhem – is sour to taste.

No film that requires a woman to jump in water and dogpaddle toward a man has the "sisterhood's" best interests at heart.

Some things are best left undiscovered.

Vacant and pointless.

Novelty alone does not a good idea make, and in the case of Gnomeo and Juliet, it's rather a disturbing, even fetishy one.

Appallingly bad stuff.

It's hard to decide what rankles most: what an astonishing monument to Shadyac's self-absorption I Am is, or how flat-out bad – incompetent, even – the filmmaking is.

Flaccid, endlessly irksome coming-of-age drama.

About as humorless – and joyless – as they come.

In his English-language debut, Wirkola dabbles in everything but commits to nothing, making for an unmemorable brew best left untasted.

The damn thing is boring. Dull as dirt. Despite the many fine actors involved, View From the Top is a third-class production through and through and, frankly, I'd rather be pelted in the head with stale, salty peanuts than sit through it again.

Astonishingly dull. The leads have zero chemistry, the supporting actors are even worse, and the script is a lifeless, draggy thing.

It's cheap and it's lowdown, and to those responsible for this exercise in devolution: Honestly, I'm not sure I want to know someone like you.

With all the wrong Stealing Harvard has done, it at least bestows one gift upon its audience: the gift of forgettableness.

It’s a lot like hearing the play-by-play account of a heated game of bridge. Only not half as gripping.

Never aims higher than the urinal.

Jovovich, who's shown sensitivity in her dramatic work, looks spectacularly bored as she power-kicks her way through one bloody pile-up after another. That boredom, like the mystery virus at the center of the film, is contagious.

Hey, guys, when you repurpose a disco hit to poke fun at gay men, not only do you look like assholes, you look like assholes who rip their jokes off of YouTube.

It's not particularly fun, or funny, for starters.

I'd be hard-pressed to name another recent film so deeply noxious, soul-sick, and unfunny.

How do movies this bad still get made?

The Virginity Hit is repugnant.