RATING:

Technically, Charlie St. Cloud is about a promising young man (Zac Efron), about to leave for Stanford on a sailing scholarship, who is driving his kid brother one night when they are struck by a truck. Charlie flatlines, but is revived by a medic (Ray Liotta). Eleven-year-old Sam (Charlie Tahan) doesn’t make it.

But in reality, Charlie St. Cloud is about Zac Efron’s face. Sometimes his abs, too, but mostly his face. Director Burr Steers shoots him in beautiful, golden light, always in closeup, often for several exquisite moments at a time.

Zac Efron face porn aside, Charlie St. Cloud plays like a particuarly mystical installment of the Nicholas Sparks canon. Five years after Sam’s death, Charlie has deferred the scholarship and is now the caretaker at the graveyard where his brother is buried. He also has kept a promise to play catch with Sam every day at sundown. Oh yeah, and he also sometimes has conversations with a good buddy . . . who died in the Iraq War.

I suppose you could surmise that these dead loved ones are figments of Charlie’s imagination, but the film actually suggests that Charlie’s near death experience allows him to see and communicate with the other side. He’s like the creepy kid from Sixth Sense, if he were also a model in an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue.

Eventually, there will be a romance with a female sailor (Amanda Crew) and perhaps a life to save, but I don’t want to give it all away. I confess, Charlie St. Cloud had a twist or two I didn’t see coming.

I’ve now seen the enormously likeable Zac Efron in several movies and I still can’t quite decide if I think he’s a real actor. I liked him best in Hairspray, where he gave Link Larkin a crisp, cheesy swagger. And he had his moments in 17 Again, channeling a young Matthew Perry.

In Charlie St. Cloud, he cries a lot and mopes around gorgeously. But he’s supposed to be a wreck of a man and I didn’t buy that he was damaged goods (or a grown man, for that matter). Maybe he needs one of those serious beards that Ryan Gosling grew in The Notebook (can Efron even grow facial hair?). The verdict may still be out on Efron’s talents as a serious actor but one thing’s for sure: The kid gives good face.

RATING:

The producers of Salt had two bits of good fortune on their side: The first is that Russian spies have been in the news lately, otherwise their film might’ve seemed like a dusty Cold War retread.

The second is that Angelina Jolie agreed to play the titular role of Eveyln Salt. Without her, Salt is a fairly routine action film. With her, it’s a summer film to be reckoned with.

We’ve all seen the trailer, with its delicious hook: A Russian whistleblower is being interviewed by a CIA operative. He says that a Russian double agent named Eveyln Salt is about to assassinate the president.

“I’m Evelyn Salt,” says the operative.

“Then you are a Russian spy.”

Great set-up. And from there, Evelyn is on the run—to protect her husband? To kill the president? Is she one of us? One of them? Who cares when it’s Jolie—speaking Russian, kicking Ruskie butt, and looking damn sexy in the process.

Directed by the talented Phillip Noyce, the film clearly has a huge Jason Bourne jones. But while Salt has a similar propulsive energy—it moves like a bullet—the individual set pieces aren’t as slick or giddily elaborate as in the Bourne films. What’s more, Salt’s skills, while impressive (you’ll love what she does with a pair of handcuffs), are often far-fetched. We can see Jason Bourne’s brain working as he orchestrates a daring but plausible escape; Salt jumps off things a lot, defying death.

Still, I’m always looking for the elusive role that allows Jolie to exploit her enormous movie star presence. Salt comes close, especially when Jolie puts on a fur hat and goes all Ninotchka on us. It’s a fast-paced action thriller with a bonafide movie star in the lead. And with apologies to Cameron and Tom, it’s the best of its kind of the summer.

RATING:

The miracle of Lisa Cholodenko’s funny, wise, and warm The Kids Are All Right is not that it successfully showcases a lesbian family, but that it successfully showcases a family, period.

The first time we see Jules (Julianne Moore), she’s at the table with her teenage children Laser (Josh Hutchinson) and Joni (Mia Wasikowksa), dishing salad from a wooden bowl onto their plates. When Jules’s doctor wife Nic (Annette Bening) comes home, first offering a weak apology for being late and then subtly suggesting that Jules has put out the wrong wine, we believe—and this is crucial—that she and Jules are really married, that these are really their children, and that we have simply dropped in on a typical family dinner.

It’s in these first few scenes that Cholodenko deftly establishes much of the film’s dynamic: That Jules is starting a new landscaping business, although Nic dismissively calls it “that gardening thing.” That Nic is a control freak who is somewhat disapproving of her wife’s hippie-ish ways. (“If your mom had it her way, you guys would never send thank you notes, just good vibes,” she tells the kids.) That Laser has fallen in with a new friend whom both moms consider to be a bad influence. And that Joni, a good student, is heading off to college.

Of course, Cholodenko throws a wrench into the mix in the form of Paul (Mark Ruffalo), the man who anonymously donated the sperm Nic and Jules used to create their family. Paul, a shaggy biker/philosopher type, is easygoing to a fault, so he doesn’t hesitate when the sperm bank calls and asks if he wants to meet his children (it was Laser’s idea).

They meet, secretly, at the restaurant/food co-op that Paul owns, and suddenly Paul is a new presence in the family’s life: playing basketball with Laser, hiring Jules to landscape his garden (and falling for her in the process), bonding with Joni over organic food, and generally irritating Nic.

I get the feeling that Cholodenko, who also directed High Art and Laurel Canyon, runs a very laid back set, because she always manages to tease the most natural and unaffected performances from her cast. Both the teen stars—Hutchinson, as the sweet kid who hides behind a false mask of disaffection, and Wasikowksa, as the good daughter growing weary of her own dutifulness—are excellent. And the adult stars have never been better.

Bening, who is always great but sometimes puts a few too many sharp edges on her roles, could’ve easily overplayed Nic’s passive aggression. Instead, she plays Nic as though she fears that losing control is tantamount to losing her family.

Moore, in essence, is playing the kind of part we saw a lot in the ’70s—a woman trying to define herself beyond the confines of her spouse and children. Moore shows Jules’s burgeoning delight as she realizes that someone can still be taken with her feminine charms.

As for Ruffalo, he hasn’t had a part this suited to his gifts since You Can Count on Me. In some ways, the Paul is the masculine ideal—decent, earthy, and sexy. But in other ways, he’s a fraud. Getting a glimpse at a family that could’ve been his own, he begins to realize that his carefree life may have a hollow center.

Cholodenko’s insights into the small ways that families hurt (and heal) each other is remarkable. But it would all mean nothing if she hadn’t achieved the most essential thing—convincing us that this flawed but lovable family existed before the film began and will go on existing long after the closing credits are through.

RATING:

Fans of the hit TV show Lost often complained that, while they loved the plot’s myriad twists and turns, they sometimes feared that the producers were making it up as they went along.

That is certainly not the case with Christopher Nolan’s Inception, one of the most elaborately diagramed films I have ever seen. M.C. Escher himself could not have created a more precise piece of work.

Ten years ago, Nolan made a film that I absolutely adored called Memento. Like Inception, that film—about a man with no short term memory trying to solve the riddle of his wife’s death—challenges the audience’s assumptions and has us questioning our own take on reality. But Memento was quick and dirty—a calling card of sorts, a young upstart showing the establishment how it could be done.

Inception works on a much larger scale—Nolan, after all, is a huge director now (he went on to make the two Christian Bale Batman films)—but I’m not sure it’s to the film’s benefit. For all of its genius, Inception left me a little bit cold.

Here’s the premise: Leonardo DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, an underground dream thief. He has the technology to penetrate your subconscious and extract all your deep dark secrets. But Dom has secrets of his own, including why he’s on the run from the law and what happened between him and his wife (Marion Cotillard).

Dom is tracked down by a powerful corporate executive named Saito (Ken Watanabe) to go beyond his “extraction” work and do something called “inception”—that is, to actually plant an idea in the victim’s subconscious mind. Specifically, he wants Dom to penetrate the mind of a young man (Cillian Murphy) who just inherited his father’s multinational company and convince him to break it up and sell it.

According to the film’s mythology, this is no easy task: The very nature of dreams is that they always start in the middle, but an idea has a germ, a genesis. To plant that inception, you’d have to go deep into the victim’s subconscious: Not just a dream, not even just a dream within a dream, but a dream within a dream within a dream. And the deeper you go into someone’s subconscious, the more dangerous it is that you’ll lose your grip on what is real and what is imaginary.

On its most basic level, Inception is a heist film, which means that Dom has to assemble a team: There’s his elegant right-hand man Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt); a cocky master of subconscious disguise named Eames (Tom Hardy); and a chemist (Dileep Rao), who is necessary to sedate the victims (and thieves) and awaken them from their slumber. Finally, he recruits young neophyte Ariadne (Ellen Page), an architecture student whom he teaches to create the landscape of the subconscious. She serves as our entree into Dom’s world.

Considering that the film is about dreams, it’s not very. . .dreamy. I kept wondering what a more sensual filmmaker like Wong Kar Wai would’ve done with the material. (Or, for that matter, David Lynch. Now that would’ve been one freaky movie.)

Instead, Inception has a Matrix-like precision and coolness. The dreams are complex, but they’re mostly linear. Yes, buildings spontaneously crumble and staircases go nowhere, but there is nothing even resembling surrealism in this film.

Ironically, Nolan isn’t really interested in dreams, at least not in the Freudian sense. As with Memento, he’s interested in perception versus reality. Inception is sort of the film version of that dorm room puzzle: “What if I’m the only one who exists and everyone else is a projection of my imagination?”

DiCaprio, as usual, is great as Dom, but on the heels of his (equally great) work in Shutter Island, I think he needs to put the kibosh on playing dogged men who are haunted by images of their children and wives. Maybe a comedy next?

Speaking of comedy, Inception could use some. I remember that Memento’s thrilling audacity was also quite witty. But Inception has a near solemnity. (One of its best jokes is the use of Edith Piaf on the film’s soundtrack—of course, Cotillard won an Oscar for portraying Piaf in La Vie en Rose.) Also, much as I love Joseph Gordon Levitt, I’m not sure why he was cast as Arthur. Dom needs an amusingly grizzled sidekick, not another fine young fellow like himself.

If I’m making it sound like Inception is no fun at all, then let me clarify: Christopher Nolan is one hell of a commercial filmmaker. Inception is engrossing and deliciously mind-teasing throughout (and, considering how complicated it is, surprisingly easy to follow). It is most definitely the kind of film you’ll want to see again, and discuss enthusiastically on the way out of the theater. But I didn’t care about the characters, only the puzzle. In that sense, it was as emotionally involving as hearing about somebody else’s dream.

RATING:

I didn’t get around to watching Comedy Central’s roast of Joan Rivers, and now I’m glad I didn’t. Turns out, Rivers sat in her limo before the show began, absolutely dreading it.

She knew it was going to be a litany of cruel jokes about her age and her plastic surgery abuse—and she wanted no part of it. She took the gig for the money, plain and simple. So she put on her game face as a lineup of (mostly male) comedians barraged her with mean-spirited put-downs about her appearance. (Brad Garrett screamed at the sight of her.)

There are many such cringe-inducing  moments in the fabulous new documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work—and also moments that will make you cry, cheer, and, most of all, laugh. You will leave this film remembering that Joan Rivers is one very funny woman (albeit a vulgar one). You will also see her as a woman of great strength, a true show biz survivor.

At 75 years of age, Rivers is all-too aware of her status in the show-biz arena: A has-been and something of a punchline.

But she still works—constantly. There’s small clubs (“Kathy Griffin has taken all of [the bigger ones],” she grouses), plus QVC, book tours, the red carpet (although that, too, has waned), and appearances on shows like Celebrity Apprentice, which, as if there was ever any doubt, she won. (Beating her own daughter along the way.)

No, don’t feel too sorry for Joan—she’s rich. She lives in an overstuffed New York apartment (“The way Marie Antoinette would live if she had money,” she quips) and gets chauffeured around via limousine. She has a staff. But she hustles for it—24/7.

“She never refuses a job,” we are told many times.

Arriving at a hotel at 3:30 am in God-knows-where, she says to the concierge, “I don’t care if God himself calls. I am not to be disturbed until 6:30.”

Remember, this woman is 75.

We learn that Joan Rivers has a thick skin, but never overlooks a slight. In the early 70s, she wrote and starred in a Broadway play called Fun City that opened to scathing reviews and closed 6 days later. She never forgot that—even if the rest of us did.

But the slight to end all slights—and in many ways, the defining moment of Joan’s life and career—came when she accepted an offer by the fledgling Fox television network to host her own late-night talk show. It would compete with the Tonight Show, which was hosted by her mentor Johnny Carson. He famously hung up the phone when she told him the news and never spoke to her again. Shortly after the show was cancelled, Rivers’ husband and manager, Edgar Rosenberg, committed suicide.

That suicide created a rift between Joan and her daughter Melissa, that was mended by a—wait for it—made-for-TV movie in which the two played themselves. (!) Melissa remains a big part of her mother’s life.

“Her career was like me having a sister,” Melissa says, with only a small trace of regret.

As for Joan’s famous affinity for plastic surgery, it, too, looms over the film like a specter (we see many close-ups of her blotchy, makeup-free skin, sometimes swollen from the latest procedure). “I started with the plastic surgery,” Rivers says plainly. “Then I became the poster girl. Then I become the joke of it.”

Joan does allow herself a few moments of self-pity—when she talks about her friends who have died, or her occasional loneliness—but mostly she seems to love her life, relish her life’s work, and see the comic absurdity in all of it.

“My whole life has been jokes,” she says at one point, showing off a filing cabinet that is stuffed with jokes in alphabetical order. (“Cooking to Tony Danza” reads one file).

And with the success Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (it’s gotten rave reviews and was a huge hit at Sundance), it seems, as usual, that Joan Rivers will get the last laugh.

Note: I caught Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work at the Landmark E Street Cinema in D.C.  As of today, there is no opening date set for Baltimore. I’ll let you know if that changes.

RATING:

Twilight has a two word problem: True Blood. Anyone who’s seen the HBO series knows that it’s dangerous, funny, outrageous, and kinky. Now that’s a vampire story you can sink your teeth into!

By comparison, the Twilight series is Hannah Montana: The Undead Years.

But if you can get past the fact that Twilight doesn’t compare to True Blood—or Buffy the Vampire Slayer for that matter (hilarious tee-shirt in circulation: “And then Buffy Staked Edward. The End”)—it delivers on its own terms: An old fashioned love story about a moody girl torn between two boys—one a brooding, Byronic poet type; the other athletic and well-adjusted. One just happens to be a vampire and the other happens to be a werewolf.

(And, as I said in my first review of Twilight, this is the most chaste vampire story ever told. Bella practically throws herself at Edward, but he is committed to her chastity. “I’m liking this Edward guy more and more,” muses Charlie (Billy Burke), Bella’s police officer dad.)

But here’s the good news: Eclipse is the best of the series so far. The love triangle heats up: The idea that anyone could be on Team Jacob (Taylor Lautner) had seemed inconceivable to me, but now I get it. Jacob is flesh and blood, unlike the undead Edward (Robert Pattinson). And, since Bella has made her allegiance to Edward clear, Jacob’s the one doing the pining, always an attractive quality in a man. Also, he's often shirtless. So there's that.

Meanwhile, Edward can’t even keep his woman warm on a snowy hideout in the woods. In one of the film’s best scenes, Edward has to watch in agony as Jacob cuddles with Bella to keep her from freezing to death. Nice touch.

Also, the action picks up quite a bit here. The first two films were big on romantic declarations, low on vampire butt-kicking. But in Eclipse, the werewolves and the good vampires (those model-tastic Cullens) team up against a mysterious army of reckless “newborns”—newly created vampires—who are after Bella. Butts—of the vampire, werewolf, and human variety—are most definitely kicked.

The acting remains solid if unspectacular. Pattinson has chosen to play Edward as if every moment in Bella’s presence fills him with exquisite pain. Lautner exudes a hunky decency: he's like the popular kid at school who’s even nice to the ugly girls. And the (bad) weave that Kristen Stewart is sporting has helped rid her of that annoying hair-playing tic.  She’s a better actress than she’s shown in this series (see The Runaways), but at least her blunt, tom-boy beauty makes her credible as both an outsider and an object of desire.

Bottom line: It’s safe to take your girlfriend, daughter, or any other Twihard in your life to this film. You won't admit it in mixed company, but you might actually enjoy yourself.

For an expanded version of this review, check out the August issue of Baltimore.

RATING:

I didn’t expect Grown Ups to be good, but I at least expected to give it one of those “it looks like they’re having more fun on screen than we are in the audience” type reviews.

That’s usually what happens when a big star like Adam Sandler rounds up his pals—in this case, Rob Schneider, Chris Rock, David Spade, and Kevin James—to make a movie: The film is beset with inside jokes and a kind of giddy camaraderie that doesn’t quite translate into a satisfying viewing experience.

But that is not what happens here. Because everyone involved with Grown Ups seems miserable. Beyond miserable—filled with a kind of unspeakable, existential dread. Kevin James, in particular, looks like Admiral James Stockdale: “Who am I? How did I get here?” (There are also a few women, real actresses no less—Salma Hayak, Maya Rudolph, Maria Bello—who got roped into this fiasco. They will be no doubt be wiping this film from their resumes.)

The premise is this: Five guys, who played on a championship middle school basketball team together, gather 30 years later for the funeral of their beloved coach. Sandler’s character is a hotshot Hollywood agent married to a fashion designer (Hayek); Rock is a house husband, bullied by his mother-in-law; Schneider is a New Age type married to a much older woman; James is a regular guy, embarrassed by his relative lack of wealth; and Spade is a single ladies’ man. (Ewww.)

They are supposed to be old friends, but they all seem to hate each other.

At various times, characters are mocked for being fat, for being incontinent, for wearing a toupee, for having a bunion, for being too feminine, for being too old, for having a funny voice, for farting. . . and on and on and on. The insults fly, fast and furious, but they are not funny. They are just nasty. At times, they seem strangely personal.

There is also physical humor: Kevin James flies into a tree. David Spade lands face-first in a pile of dog excrement. Rob Schneider gets stabbed with an arrow. Steve Buscemi, in a small role, ends up in a full-body cast.

What gives? I’ve loved Sandler’s recent work in Reign Over Me and Funny People, but if this off-putting film is any indication, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to be friends with the guy.

RATING:

Could Toy Story be the greatest trilogy of all time?

I often cite Toy Story 2 as an example of that rare sequel that is as good, maybe better, than the original. And now, improbably—because after 10 years, the magic had to be gone, right?—Toy Story 3 is its every bit as good as the first two.

Thing is, I figured there was no story left to tell about the anthropomorphized toys who watch helplessly as their children grow up and leave them behind. Hadn’t I laughed (and cried) enough at the affectionate squabbling of Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head (Don Rickles and Estelle Harris), the doom and gloom fatalism of Hamm the pig (John Ratzenberger), the alpha male bravado of Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), the fretting of dinosaur Rex (Wallace Shawn), the yearning to be loved of Jessie the rag doll (Joan Cusack), and the folksy leadership of Woody (Tom Hanks)?

But I was obviously underestimating the material’s staying power: The toys represent our childhood, of course, and our attachment to the things that we leave behind, but they’re also great characters—ripe for fresh takes and new adventures. Plus, every time a new toy is introduced it’s another chance to exploit the filmmakers’ seemingly endless capacity for inventive humor and nostalgia.

Oh, Pixar, how did I ever doubt thee?

Toy Story 3 is set up, hilariously, as a prison escape film. Little Andy is now leaving for college and, in a mix-up, his toys end up being donated to the Sunnyside Day Care Center. (He meant to store them in the attic.) Woody is horrified by this development—but the rest of the toys think Sunnyside might be okay. After all, to be played with again, isn’t that all a toy could hope for? And things seem almost too good to be true when they first arrive. There’s a kindly teddy bear named Lotso (Ned Beatty) who runs the place, tons of children, and even an unctuous Ken doll (Michael Keaton) for Barbie (Jodi Benson).

But when the new toys get placed in the toddler room—not to be played with, but to be trampled, gouged, and drooled over—it becomes clear that Sunnyside is not quite the utopia it first seemed.

In fact, Lotso is not a huggable charmer, but a wretched creature who was scarred by an abandonment incident in his past. As for his giant, children-of-the-damned babydoll sidekick? Terrifying—and funny as heck.

There’s all sorts of genius bits in Toy Story 3: Mr. Potatohead taking temporary ownership of a tortilla when his potato goes missing; a once-happy clown that has gone the way of Shakes; a thespian hedgehog plush toy who follows the Method school; and a misfired wire that turns Buzz into a Latin lover.

Tom Hanks remains the film’s heart. It’s in these films, more than any others, that he stands as the true successor to Jimmy Stewart: possessing a kind of innate masculinity that is quintessentially decent and brave.

Toy Story 3 has some moments—a few run-ins with the trash incinerator; a betrayal by a friend—that might be a little intense for the wee ones. Assure them that all will turn out okay—and take them. Toy Story 3 is a gift to be savored with friends and family of all ages.

You find me a better trilogy.

RATING:

Viewers of The Karate Kid will undoubtedly fall into two camps: Those, like myself, who are fiercely protective of the original and who find the new version both unnecessary and somewhat lacking; and newcomers to the film, who will cheer the story of a fatherless boy who is bullied and then trained to become a martial arts expert by a kindly and wise father figure.

Let’s face it, you’d have to work really hard to screw that story up—and the filmmakers don’t. Their version is slick and satisfying entertainment. But compared to the original, they made some, shall we say, odd choices.

For one, the Daniel character, now named Dre and played by cutie Jaden Smith (Will and Jada’s kid) has moved from Detroit to China with his mom (Taraji P. Henson). I like that, because the fish-out-water aspect was always a big part of Daniel’s  journey. But they don’t do karate in China. They do kung fu, which the film acknowledges. Why not, then, change the name of the film to The Kung Fu Kid?

Next, there’s Mr. Miyagi, now played by Jackie Chan and named (the much less cool sounding) Mr. Han. Part of the mystique of Mr. Miyagi was that he was frail—he didn’t look like he could administer a beat down. So when he opens up a can of whup-ass on Daniel’s tormenters, it’s surprising—and spells out a lesson about respecting one’s elders and the power of mind over matter. Jackie Chan can slump his shoulders and affect a shuffling gait all he wants (as in the original, his handyman is scarred by a tragedy), but he looks like what he is—an athlete.

Speaking of that beat down: the Daniel in the original movie was about 16 (and played by the 45-year-old Ralph Macchio—just kidding). Dre is 12. And even though the scene where Mr. Han saves Dre from the bullies is played partly for laughs—Mr. Han ducks and deflects in such a way that the boys end up beating each other up—it’s still a grown man attacking a bunch of children. Awkward. (Dre’s being 12 also makes his crush on a pretty Chinese violin prodigy a bit of a stretch. When he watches a dubbed SpongeBob Squarepants on Chinese TV, it seems more realistic.)

Finally, “put the jacket on, take the jacket off” is no match for “wax on, wax off.” (I mean, really?)

Look, I can see why the Smiths, who executive produced this film (and gave their son top billing!), wanted their little tyke to star. Not only is he a fine actor—how could he not be with those genes?—he’s quite the acrobat. Dre’s highly choreographed training sessions with Mr. Han involve lots of flips and kicks and are a cut above the ones we saw with Daniel. You see that? I did find something I prefer in the new version.

RATING:

The opening credits for The A-Team go on for an inordinately long time—at least 10 minutes. We are introduced to the various members of the team—their names stamped across the screen in a bold font—in a flurry of action and dialogue that is meant to prepare us for the joy ride that is to follow. Except for one thing: The opening action is lame and the jokes are lamer. By the end of those credits, I wasn’t thinking, “Hell yeah, strap me in!” I was thinking, “Is it over yet?”

The A-Team is smugly convinced that it’s a wild ride—“the perfect blend of action and laughs” as one of the commercials touts—but it’s really just another busy, generic mess. I wasn’t a fan of the 70s cult TV show on which this film is based, so I’m not really able to compare.  But I can’t imagine any of the characters in this A-Team becoming beloved or iconic. If anything, the film actually diminishes the star power of some of its leads.

A miscast Liam Neeson seems adrift as the tough-as-nails Hannibal, who famously “loves it when a plan comes together”—he barely bothers to suppress his Irish accent. Bradley Cooper preens to an obnoxious degree as Face, the team’s oft-shirtless pretty boy. District 9’s Sharlto Copley shows some comedic chops as pilot Murdock, but his character is so sloppily written—bonkers one minute, lucid the next—he doesn’t stand a chance. And while The A-Team of TV made Mr. T a cult figure, this film’s iteration will do nothing to launch the career of wrestler Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, whose B.A. Baracus barely registers. (They give him a personality tic—he’s afraid to fly—that they milk for what they think are endless laughs.)

The plot is incredibly loose: The gang, former army rangers, are framed for the theft of treasury plates and the death of a commanding officer and have to break out of prison, find the plates, and clear their name. Meanwhile, they don’t know who to trust: The shifty CIA agent who helps them break out of jail (Patrick Wilson) or the hottie army ranger (Jessica Biel), who thinks they’re thugs. Taking its cue from the series—I guess—the film is just a series of loosely cobbled together escapes and missions. It seems to think that chaos and high decibels are a substitute for dialogue and plot. I hate it when a plan falls apart.