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College comedy is slacking in humorous material

As a grandiose string version of The Who's "Baba O'Riley" plays in the background, three college students pull off an equally well-orchestrated cheating scam. Sam (Jason Segel) feigns a traffic accident that allows Jeff (Michael C. Maronna) to steal a University Blue Book from the back of a ...

‘Sam’ the sham

Sam Dawson (Sean Penn) is a devoted single father to the beautiful, precocious Lucy (Dakota Fanning). He works hard, pays the bills and spends lots of quality time with his little girl. He also has the mental development of a 7-year-old.So what happens when his daughter reaches her 7th ...

Low sword count

Adaptations of Alexandre Dumas' novels pop up on movie screens with the regularity of seasonal foliage. With their combinations of adventure, romance and scenic locales, it's a safe bet the 19thcentury writer could be on the A-list for some time to come. Sadly, many of the recent takes on his ...

Unsolved mystery

There are two sure-fire ways to make a movie truly scary. One is to create an internal logic that closes in on the audience, building suspense by making everything horrifyingly inevitable. The other is to plunge viewers into a nightmare world, where every dark narrative corner contains some ...

Shooting party

At age 76, Kansas City-born Robert Altman is still among the edgiest filmmakers around one who is equally brilliant and frustrating.Though the ultimate actor's director again makes use of an oppressively large ensemble cast, he ventures away from his usual Americana subject matter with "Gosford ...

The ultimate ‘Player’

Lady Sylvia: Mr. Weissman, tell us about the film you're going to make.Morris Weissman: It's a detective story about a murder in the middle of the night, a lot of guests for the weekend, everyone's a suspect.Constance: And who turns out to have done it?Morris Weissman: I couldn't tell you that. ...

All in the family

On the surface, there is nothing realistic about "The Royal Tenenbaums." Everyone in it is some kind of misunderstood genius, riddled with bizarre personality quirks and existing in an inscrutable time period, a "present day" where people routinely use rotary phones and dress like it's 1975. ...

‘Beauty’ secrets

It's not surprising that the 1991 Disney version of "Beauty and the Beast" is heading back into theaters. A box office smash, it became the first animated feature to receive a Best Picture Academy Award nomination and has inspired video sequels, a TV-series and even a successful Broadway ...

A little too sleight of hand

Playwright and filmmaker David Mamet has a soft spot for crooks. From"Glengarry Glen Ross" (about ethically bankrupt real estate salesmen)to "The Spanish Prisoner" (about corporate scam artists), the writerhas explored confidence games with voyeuristic glee that often rubsoff on a viewer. His ...

Out of the shallow end

Could it be that the Farrelly brothers have mellowed? The guys whocreated "Dumb & Dumber" and "There's Something About Mary" havealways given their films a touch of sweetness, but they were mostlyabout seeing how many ways people could be grossed out. Although"Shallow Hal" still has ...