Jude Dry

Before the movie came along, the show had an ardent critic in Liam Kennedy, a criminology professor who believes “PAW Patrol” “encourages complicity in a global capitalist system that produces inequalities and causes environmental harms.” While it’s doubtful the humorless dirge of a movie will make enough of an impression to mold young minds in any lasting way, the critique of “PAW Patrol” is useful as an amalgamation of certain favorite Hollywood themes that ought to be retired.

For a movie with so much going on, (not even counting the CGI cougar Bella befriends), A Dog’s Way Home is wildly devoid of meaning or humor.

The movie is weighed down by too many secondary characters, which only serve to dissipate their flickering charms. No one in the film, even our heroine, gets more than a hint of backstory as the single-minded plot careens toward its predictable conclusion.

What is the meaning of life? Are we here for a reason? Is there a point to any of this? We may never know, but knowing this movie exists may bring some viewers one step closer to giving up on the whole damn thing.

Without the star power of Mandy Moore and the relative sophistication of the single location predicament, 47 Meters Down: Uncaged is just the last gasp of a shark saga that didn’t need to come up for air.

Though the movie is clearly enamored with its own creativity, it’s not fun for anyone else. The title alone has already inspired titters online, and the movie is just as clunky and overwrought.

Even in the weak signal that is the January movie season, xXx: The Return of Xander Cage hardly registers.

With every note as predictable as the next, the movie just blends into a discordant mess. Even Rodriguez’s smile can’t salvage this disappointing remake, but at least it provides a welcome reminder to check out the movie that inspired it.

Rather than going out with a bang, however, the final installment in the franchise hinges its loose plot around the marital infidelities of younger, humorless characters so thinly sketched that it is impossible to care about them.

If this is the best Hollywood can offer these women, it’s not their fault for wanting to work. Instead, it’s on writers and studios to stop treating seniors like some sort of oddities to squeeze a few laughs out of before they croak.

The War With Grandpa is a sluggish hodgepodge of slapstick humor that barely holds together its illogically motivated plot.

Like a Boss may preach friendship above all else, but sitting through it together would test even the strongest of ties.

With the bizarre way Whit and his crew talk about numbers and money, Collateral Beauty is just another story about spoiled rich people.