It's not only shameless, it detracts from what this movie could have been, and still is when the self-promoting Harvey shuts up.

If you currently own a G.I. Joe toy or if you've dressed like a ninja at least twice since Halloween, you're going to find a lot to "hooah" about in "G.I. Joe: Retaliation."

What you won't find amid the clashing cutlasses and flashing foils, however, is anything resembling a rapier wit.

Niccol and Meyer -- who co-produces this, her first post-"Twilight" film -- choose to trade away any shred of the ripe social subtext that has made other body-snatcher films so rich. In its place: the kind of supernatural, star-crossed romance that generates so much swooning from Team "Twilight."

As well-shot and well-acted as it is, one can't help feeling there's a good movie in there somewhere. Unfortunately, it's buried beneath such an avalanche of extraneousness and artistic posing.

This is a movie that confuses teary with sweet. Mopey with sad. Discomfort with humor. And, worst of all, it confuses weird with odd.

It's done with affection, so it's hard to begrudge Hill for indulging in a postcard cliché or two. After all, it - like Hill's movie as a whole - certainly beats a bullet to the head.

As with its gooey, smoochy predecessors, The Lucky One is, beneath it all, a fairy-tale romance, just one with modern trappings.

Never coalesces into anything memorable, much less meaningful.

Not only did Hughes shoot a handful of prominent scene-setting exteriors in the Big Apple itself, but he does an exceptional job of camouflaging his New Orleans scenes.

Because while it can boast of some truly extraordinary special effects -- stomach-churning, face-hacking, arm-slicing visual effects, the kind that are sure to titillate the gleefully twisted -- this Evil Dead is far more gruesome than awesome.

Never elevated beyond much more than mere presidential puffery.

Pros and cons aside, Sinister has the benefit of arriving in the thick of Halloween season, right when movie-goers are most hungry for a few scares. And they'll get them from Derrickson's film, too.

The resulting film, despite its occasional outbursts of action and tension, is less an action film than a psychological thriller, although even there it fumbles the ball.

There's a germ of a good story there, and Intruders isn't without the occasional tense moment. But unfortunately Hollowface is as undeveloped as the other characters in Intruders, which is the film's biggest flaw of all.

Beautiful Creatures is still an unabashed imitator, hewing closely to the "Twilight" blueprint. Some might go so far as to call it a blatant ripoff, as the differences between the two are cosmetic at best.

With a scattered, meandering script, a stable of throwaway characters and an almost laughably drawn-out ending, it's all amounts to standard movie-of-the-week fare dressed up in Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes.

The result is exactly what you would expect from a concept whose odometer has been running for so long: uneven laughs, sparked largely by spurts of shock comedy but marred by a general sense of familiarity.

Some of those detours are fun ideas - like Marty's O. Henry-esque tale of the Amish psychopath. Mostly, though, they feel out of place, like so much filler that distracts from the half-developed main story. Call me crazy, but I need more from my movie.

Has potential to be fun and meaningful, but it's not exactly a novel idea. In fact, it feels like a literary-minded "Lars and the Real Girl," the 2007 dramatic comedy that starred Ryan Gosling as a man who falls in love with a sex doll, and which coasted along on its charm and smarts.

At some point, Lee as a storyteller must step in to move things along, to dig the rudder deep into the narrative waters and steer this ship. The destination is almost irrelevant - just steer it somewhere.

Sleepwalk With Me is a decent film -- even if its not one that lingers.

Alas, in Cronenberg's hands, it just comes across as cold and lifeless and exhausting.

What the Duplasses end up with is a film that is amusing at times, a touch repetitive at others, but one that never quite shakes the feeling that it is something of an unfinished thought. And perhaps something they've also grown beyond.

What we end up with is an arm's-length film that feels more haunted than haunting -- and one that audiences will want to forget rather than remember.

Celeste and Jesse Forever isn't a movie many people will outright hate, but if this is the most original romantic comedy that Hollywood can muster, forever can't come soon enough.

There's no "place" in this place, no clear destination -- and no real payoff in a film that stands a cinematic curiosity but little more.

Thank goodness for Rainey. Even when the story feels false, he never does, operating with an open-faced sense of easy honesty that is missing from much of the rest of the film.

More seriously -- and substantively -- "A Late Quartet" was a quiet but thoughtful meditation on the power, and the necessary pain, of human connections. By comparison, Quartet is a flimsy bit of cinematic puffery that takes every obvious path on its way to its even more obvious "seize-the-day" message.

One only wishes that Ewing and Grady had chosen to dig deeper as they explored it.

This is the sort of movie that Charles Bronson would have made back in the day, and indeed a shot of Johnson standing in a sporting goods store, contemplating a wall of shotguns as he gets ready to get busy, could have come from any "Death Wish."

This is a tragedy, not a comedy.

Lillard's film ends up being more unsatisfying than anything else. His "Fat Kid" might rule the world, but it doesn't quite rule the screen.

There's not much meat to the story. So while the picture on the menu suggests filet mignon, we really get mostly fish-and-chips stuff.

There's no sense of pacing here, as would be the case in a single feature-length narrative in which a wise filmmaker would vary the intensity level. Instead, what we get is a ceaseless visual and emotional assault. That makes for an exhausting movie-going experience. This is by no means a feel-good film. This is a feel-bad film -- and at times a feel-icky film.

For 91 minutes of its briskly paced 94-minute running time, the film works as a tightly wound bit of pins-and-needles storytelling. Then, Anderson lets it all unravel in a three-minute stretch of cheap writing that not only betrays the characters he worked so hard to develop, but that also thumbs its nose at any audience members with a brain.

You'd think that a movie about such a dynamic moment and such a vibrant ad campaign would be more dynamic and vibrant.

Unfortunately, Franklin isn't quite as successful at capturing the depth of the traditions for which Anaya's source material is so well known.

Lacks any real sense of vitality. And no matter how worthwhile a film's message is, it's difficult for audiences to care if the path to the payoff so often feels like a slog.

What Leonie is missing, however -- in its script, in its performances, really in everything about it -- is any hint of sparkle, any sort of compelling hook on which to hang its hat.

Anthony Hopkins still does elegant menace better than anyone.

Almodovar lets his movie become boring, and insufferably so.

Grant and Parker's talents are wasted on a boring, made-for-TV story punctuated by a contrived, throwaway third act.

For movie-goers who like a little cleverness with their comedy, however, one word: N-opa.

Even if The Bounty Hunter is more plot-driven than your standard romantic comedy, it's never quite as funny as it should be.

The school freak, played by Mary-Kate Olsen, misses a chance to really have some fun as this story's wicked witch.

You can't just cast an appealing actress in the lead role -- in this case Queen Latifah ("Valentine's Day, " "The Secret Life of Bees") -- and expect her to do all the heavy lifting.

Little more than a glorified situation comedy. The problem is, it's all situation and no comedy.

The really annoying thing about Jack Black's Gulliver's Travels is not so much that it's a bad movie -- it is bad, but only run-of-the-mill bad, not epic-misfire bad -- but that the movie sullies a piece of literature that has endured for nearly 300 years for the sake of a cheap kiddie flick that'll be forgotten in a month.

Dumont's fans might find this latest exercise enjoyable, but his style of filmmaking is an acquired taste. I doubt those without that taste are going to acquire it here.

It feels more like a poor man's "Poltergeist, " minus the static-filled TV.

It is fluffy, yes, but it also is ugly and annoying and something you neither want nor need.

Clever story? Pass. Originality? Nah. A smidgen of real humor to keep parents entertained along with the kiddies? Smurf you.

But Jack and Jill? Oh, Al.

Right off the bat, things start falling apart for Wiesen's film. While Highmore is more than capable of playing smart and tender, he has yet to figure out how to believably portray so much as a shred of the danger or rebelliousness required for this role.

Rather than a moving story of sisterly love, we get little more than a grandly appointed disappointment.

A message movie that struggles mightily to make an impact but never comes close to capturing the gritty realism on which any blues singer builds his career.

In the end, Carpenter offers a reasonably nice payoff to this whole misfire.

Beautifully shot, but terribly dull.

Most of the time, however, Post Grad just coasts along, flat as a mortar board, and as forgettable as a ... oh, I forgot already.

The characters aren't fully formed enough to care about, the humor is baseball-bat dull, and the story - such as it is - is never treated as anything more than a half-hearted means to get the audiences from one spectacular snuffing to the next.

Early on in The Slammin' Salmon, a customer sends back a plate of undercooked fish. I can't imagine a better metaphor for a movie that is named after a fish and that is as half-baked as this one is.

A textbook example of ye olde two-joke movie.

I guess I can't call the movie sexist as it was largely produced, directed and written by women. So I'll settle for calling it dull, corny and amateurish instead.

A movie that wears its heart on its sleeve.

Red Riding Hood needs a better agent.

Nobody has an excuse for being surprised by how low Sandler and company stoop in That's My Boy.

In the half-baked American Reunion, though, they might have accomplished what no previous chapter has: They might have just killed it.

It features predictable humor and an underdeveloped story.

Unimaginative and painfully generic.

In other words, For a Good Time is not a good time. For that, you'll have to dust off your Nintendo and reacquaint yourself with "The Legend of Zelda" -- and hope that one of these days somebody can give "Bridesmaids" some real competition.

This is the kind of film that feels like a dream - but not in the good way. Rather, it resembles a dream in that it is made up of disjointed, loosely connected bits of surrealist craziness - ideas that might have seemed interesting in the twilight hours but that don't come close to standing up to the light of day.

The fight sequences are briskly choreographed at least, gruesome though they are -- and, to be honest, that goes a long way in a film such as this. In fact they may be the only reason to see it, other than the chance to see Van Damme in full Col. Kurtz mode, all face-painted and droopy-eyed and bat-poop crazy.

No, Funeral Kings isn't quite dead on arrival -- but it's not too far from needing life support.

But artistically interesting only takes a film so far. What it needs are laughs- - or at least a compelling narrative. It's got neither -- with the result being a film that arrives as dead as a certain parrot from a certain skit. One of the funny ones.