GireWire

Emma (Katie Cassidy), left, Meg (Leighton Meester) and Grace (Selena Gomez) get involved in a case of mistaken identity in the comic romance “Monte Carlo.”

---

Of all the filmmakers who worked on “Monte Carlo,” only composer Michael Giacchino actually gets what the movie should be: a crazy Blake Edwards farce where nutty things happen (like lightning striking a character or two) and all the cast members are in on the joke.

That’s why the best part of Thomas Bezucha’s wilted romance is Giacchino’s music — a bouncy, brassy, ebullient score that would feel right at home in any of Edwards’ wacky “Pink Panther” movies from the 1960s and 1970s.

By turning “Monte Carlo” into a broad farce, Bezucha could sidestep the moral dilemmas his movie and characters try to ignore — hey, aren’t the three female leads lying, cheating and stealing for their own benefit? — and pump up the film’s woefully deficient humor quotient.

The story — entirely revealed in TV commercials and theatrical trailers — involves three young Texas women who go to France, where one of them gets mistaken for a rich and snooty, look-alike heiress.

Graduating senior Grace (Selena Gomez) has been saving money for years for the trip. Her considerably older best friend Emma (Katie Cassidy) plans to go with her, despite that her longtime boyfriend Owen (Corey Monteith) wants her to stay home.

At the last moment, Grace’s dad (Brett Cullen) insists that Grace’s nasty, pessimistic stepsister Meg (Leighton Meester) go with them. (Read more…)

Downsized store manager Larry (director Tom Hanks) falls for his college public speaking instructor (Julia Roberts) in the comic romance “Larry Crowne.”

---

I have actually taught an introductory class in speech communications at Eastern Illinois University, and that is how I know Tom Hanks’ new romantic comedy “Larry Crowne” nails the essence of that experience.

“Larry Crowne” tells the story of a downsized, middle-aged big-box store manager who sees education as the key to his future.

So he enrolls in classes at East Valley Community College: one in economics taught by the scariest teacher in higher education (erstwhile Mr. Sulu, George Takei); the other in informal speech taught by a disillusioned woman (Julia Roberts) trapped in a terrible marriage.

Hanks, who directed and co-wrote this screenplay with Nia “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” Vardalos, stars as the titular character, Larry Crowne.

He spent 20 years in the U.S. Navy as a cook and never attended college. So, his employer U-Mart cuts him loose because it regards him as a less desirable worker.

“Larry Crowne” has many facets to its story.

It offers a reassuring, fresh take on the reinventing-yourself-after-being-laid-off story.

It addresses finding romance on life’s rebound with a maturity and sincerity we seldom see in Hollywood rom-coms. (Read more…)

Shia LaBeouf plays Sam Witwicky in “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.”

---

It takes about an hour and a half for Michael Bay’s shrill and noisy action thriller “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” to get to the good stuff.

And when I write “good stuff,” I really mean the stuff that’s not as bad as the stuff in the rest of the movie.

At the 95-minute mark, the battle between the bad Decepticons and the good Autobots comes to the Windy City where we see our beloved skyscrapers and favorite stores blown to smithereens, torn to pieces and reduced to rubble.

That’s fun for a while.

Still, “Dark of the Moon” is one of the dumbest, silliest alien invasion movies to come down the cinematic pipeline since “Skyline.”

At least Bay’s second “Transformers” sequel is a slight improvement over his first, “Revenge of the Fallen,” which featured three main characters being “killed,” then being magically resurrected.

Shia LaBeouf stars once again as Sam, who has gone from an American hero to a college grad desperately looking for work.

His new girlfriend, Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, bumping out Megan Fox from the earlier films), looks like a fashion model with other redeeming features. She’s employed by the wealthy and lecherous Dylan (Patrick Dempsey), who has his eye on Carly.

Bay doesn’t handle women characters very well, but then he doesn’t handle the men much better. (Read more…)

Cameron Diaz shakes up a middle school fundraiser as the “Bad Teacher.”

---

Columbia Pictures screened “Bad Teacher” for the press Wednesday night after many regular newspaper deadlines, a sign the studio doesn’t think the movie will be a winner with critics and the public. (We held the presses for our readers, naturally.)

“Bad Teacher” isn’t all that bad. Not all that good, either.

It offers flourishes of funny stuff, a tamely sexy carwash sequence with Cameron Diaz in wet cutoffs, some rude and crude language, a little drug comedy, a few un-PC ethnic slurs and a sellout ending in which the title character undergoes an unbelievable change of personality unsupported by any life-changing event in the movie.

The movie is set in Illinois (the students even take a trip to see the Lincoln exhibit down in Springfield), and an Illinois state academic test booklet is apparently printed in Schaumburg.

Still, why isn’t the R-rated “Bad Teacher” badder? (Read more…)

Race car Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson), left, joins tow truck Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) and spy car Finn McMissile in the action-packed “Cars 2.”

---

Pixar’s computer-animated sequel “Cars 2” races through record numbers of visual and verbal gags, and they fly by at such speed that multiple viewings may be required just to absorb them, let alone appreciate them.

That being noted, “Cars 2” represents another slight disappointment from Pixar, whose 2006 release “Cars” still ranks as the least impressive addition to the Pixar canon of excellent animated motion pictures.

“Cars” the sequel may be faster, noisier and funnier than the original, but it can’t touch Pixar’s “Ratatouille,” “WALL-E,” “Up” or “Toy Story 3” for the character development, clever plotting and animated innovation we’ve come to expect from Pixar.

If anything, “Cars 2” takes the low road by relying on lots of guns, bullets, explosions and car chases (as opposed to races) to fuel its narrative.

Back in Radiator Springs, exhausted race car hero Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) wants to take a pit stop and spend some idling time with his fiance Sally (Bonnie Hunt) and tow truck pal Mater (Larry the Cable Guy).

Then a cocky Italian racer named Francesco Bernoulli (John Turturro) challenges McQueen by virtually insulting the size of his engine.

So, McQueen agrees to meet Bernoulli in the World Grand Prix, a trilogy of races sponsored by Miles Axelrod (Eddie Izzard), an oil tycoon with plans to have the cars use his new green fuel that will revolutionize the world.

But there’s a fly wheel in the ointment. (Read more…)

Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) answers the call to defend the Earth from evil in the comic book-based superhero adventure “Green Lantern.”

---

I wasn’t much of a Green Lantern fan back in the ’60s when I read a lot of comic books, both from the DC and Marvel brands.

How powerful can a superhero be if he can be crippled by the color yellow? I mean, a box of crayons might kill him.

DC’s Green Lantern, aka Hal Jordan, struck me as a generic, second-tier superhero, the guy I’d read about only after I’d pored over the adventures of Superman, Batman, the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man.

I had high hopes when 007 director Martin “Casino Royale” Campbell directed “Green Lantern” starring a ripped Ryan Reynolds as test pilot Hal Jordan, chosen by a mystical ring to protect the universe from evil.

Campbell’s “Green Lantern” packs in plenty of cool CGI-effects, brutal fights (a hypodermic needle in the face!), spectacular explosions, and a classic clash between good and evil. (The yellow weakness device, thankfully, no longer applies.)

But this is no “Casino Royale.”

Like Hal Jordan, “Green Lantern” comes off as a generic, second-tier superhero movie that brings nothing new to the genre.

The opening of “Green Lantern” feels like rewarmed “Top Gun” with its supersonic jet fighters zipping through their maneuvers, with another maverick rebel pilot. (Read more…)

Tom Popper (Jim Carrey) leads six birds in a dance number during the unappealingly preposterous “Mr. Popper’s Penguins.”

---

The alleged family comedy “Mr. Popper’s Penguins” lacks wit, cleverness, convincing characters, a serviceable plot, worthy messages about parenting and real fun.

It’s the kind of bleak, soul-deprived comedy that even Dean Jones would refuse to do, and we’re talking about the survivor of some of Walt Disney’s shallowest and most mechanical family movies.

“Mr. Popper’s Penguins” wallows in abject dumbness. It showers us with stupidity.

Take a scene near the end when Tom Popper, played by erstwhile funnyman Jim Carrey, rushes into a restaurant to stop it from being sold. He bursts into the room, inexplicably pretending to move in slow motion.

“St-oooooop … th-uuuuh … saaaayle!” he shouts, slowly.

Then, Popper apologizes to everyone for his slow motion act, explaining, “I needed to get your attention!”

It would have been unfunny enough if Carrey had performed this stale and moldy slo-mo bit and gone on with the scene. But to apologize and explain why he did it?

This movie lacks the courage of its nonexistent convictions.

“Mr. Popper’s Penguins” concerns another archetypal Hollywood businessman who has made a fortune, but at the cost of his family. (Read more…)

Martha Plimpton, Stephen Colbert and Neil Patrick Harris sing away in a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s 1970 musical “Company,” in movie theaters on four nights only.

---

What makes for good live theater doesn’t always make for a good movie, and the proof lies in the New York Philharmonic’s all-star revival of “Company,” Stephen Sondheim’s 1970 musical tribute to the ambivalence of the matrimonial state, opening at select movie theaters today.

“Company” was recorded in April at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall in New York.

Its cast features popular TV stars such as Jon Cryer (“Two and a Half Men”), Christina Hendricks (“Mad Men”) and Stephen Colbert (“The Colbert Report”) aligned with Broadway powerhouse diva Patti “Evita” LuPone.

Led by the talented and personable Tony Awards host (and Xfinity TV pitch man) Neil Patrick Harris, the TV transplants acquit themselves nicely in voice, movement and comic timing.

Their primary challenge isn’t the lyrics, music and stripped-down sets, but the orchestra.

Oh, the musicians are fine. But they’re on the stage. Right behind the actors.

If you’re in Row 2 at the theater — OK, Row 40 — this would not be a distraction. Your suspension of disbelief is extremely willing.

But in the more literal medium of movies, seeing a musician sitting right behind the performers and looking bored out of his mind is a monumental distraction. (Read more…)

When you think about it, a lot of places can tell filmmakers how to make movies: Columbia College. UCLA. USC. NYU.

• But how many of them can tell filmmakers ways to avoid bad reviews of their movies?
• I can.
• I offer 100 ways to warn filmmakers – beginners and veterans – on how they can avoid making simple errors that can cost them major critical points when their pictures go to market.
• Let’s face the ugly truth. Creative inbreeding in Hollywood has reached “Deliverance” proportions. I defy anyone to sit through three movies — any three of any genre – and not notice the same rusty lines of dialogue, the same arthritic visual devices, even the same lame props and set-ups.
• Except for a handful of filmmakers who actually think outside of the Cliché Box (Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme lead the very short list), many Hollywood storytellers seem content to let their movies become narrative viruses that simply replicate themselves as quickly as possible, with different casts, of course.

So, here come the next 10 of the 100 lamest, most unimaginative ways filmmakers can dare critics to dis their works. As for those filmmakers who continue to use the following elements of creative stagnation, I can only say on behalf of film critics everywhere, “Thank you. You’ve made our day.”

Read my 100 Ways To Get A Bad Review Page.

Martin (Gabriel Basso), left, Cary (Ryan Lee), Joe (Joel Courtney) and Charles (Riley Griffiths) witness a terrible train derailment in “Super 8.”

---

The kids in J.J. Abrams’ science-fiction thriller “Super 8” are so personable, so funny, so transparent and so real that it feels like a distraction when a hokey, angry extraterrestrial drops in on them to create some spectacular mayhem.

“Super 8” is a mess, but an endearing, nostalgic mess that replicates vintage Steven Spielberg from the late 1970s.

If you’ve never seen Spielberg’s 1977 alien opus “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” Ridley Scott’s 1979 horror show “Alien,” or Richard Donner’s 1985 kids’ adventure “The Goonies,” you’re in luck.

“Super 8” combines all three of them, plus tips its celluloid hat to Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 mystery “Blow Up” in which a photographer inadvertently snaps a nefarious act.

Abrams, who directed 2009’s savvy “Star Trek” reboot, hasn’t achieved the stature of a Spielberg or a Scott. Not yet.

“Super 8” is at best a diminished duplicate of its obvious inspirations.

It emulates Spielberg’s style (awe-struck children’s faces, shadowy military figures, dramatically sweeping camera movements) so well that Abrams has little chance to put his own stamp on the work, just as Tobe Hooper’s “Poltergeist” looked like a Spielbergian clone.

“Super 8” takes place in 1979, set in the Ohio town of Lillian, a rusty, blue-collar version of Spielberg’s clean-cut, middle-class suburbia. (No coincidence, Spielberg served as executive producer here.) (Read more…)