Comedy

[6] Taking a cue from the staged reality antics of Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat, Bruno), Spike Jonze, Johnny Knoxville, and director Jeff Tremaine team up for a slightly more scripted endeavor than their usual daredevil showcases. Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa features Knoxville under old age makeup, playing a horny old widower suddenly charged with the care of his young grandson. The two hit the road …

[5] Bird on a Wire is a big, goofy Hollywood action spectacular with two likeable stars at its center. Mel Gibson plays an FBI informant in witness protection and Goldie Hawn plays an old flame he left at the altar when the feds reassigned him a new identity. Now they’re reunited and on the lam from a dirty fed and his hit men. This is …

[4] Meryl Streep stars as a food critic reluctant to remarry. But who can resist the charm of Jack Nicholson? The two marry and squeeze out a kid, and then sure enough, he cheats on her and the infidelity escalates from there. Heartburn is written by the late Nora Ephron (Sleepless in Seattle) and directed by Mike Nichols (The Graduate), and given that pedigree, it’s …

[7] Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft star as leaders of a Polish theater troop forced to entertain the Nazis while simultaneously plotting their escape to Allied territory. You might think the material is too heavy for a comedy, but To Be or Not to Be manages to stay light and breezy without being disrespectful. It certainly helps that most of the laughs come at the …

[5] I thought I’d get a lot more from a dark comedy directed by Richard Donner (Superman, Lethal Weapon) and starring Bill Murray, but Scrooged is neither dark nor funny enough to leave much of a lasting impression. Murray plays a cutthroat TV executive named Frank Cross, the film’s equivalent to Ebenezer Scrooge, who makes life a living hell for everyone around him. Until of …

[7] Gizmo the cute Mogwai is back, and he gets wet again — this time in a New York City skyscraper run by a Donald Trump-like billionaire. Billy Peltzer and Kate Beringer (returning stars Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates) both work there and re-team with their furry companion just in time to do battle with another army of nasty gremlins. This sequel to the 1984 …

[6] Katharine Hepburn plays a journalist who bad-mouths sports in her widely-read column. Spencer Tracy plays a sportswriter who publishes a rebuttal. The two continue sparring publicly until they meet in person… and start to fall in love. Now don’t get me wrong — I love it when Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy spar and make up, but this (their first pairing) is not among …

[8] A high school boy named Cameron (Joseph Gordon Levitt) wants the beautiful Bianca (Larisa Oleynik) to be his prom date, but the girl’s tyrannical father (Larry Miller) won’t allow it unless her vitriolic older sister, Katarina (Julia Stiles), tags along. So Cameron and his friends set out to buy Katarina a date. The mysterious bad boy of the school, Patrick (Heath Ledger), agrees to …

[7] I don’t like the vast majority of comedies. So why I fancy this one is beyond me, but there you have it. Granted, I do often find Ashton Kutcher and Sean William Scott adorable. Here they play pot-smokers who wake one morning to discover their car is missing. The car quest is just a plot McGuffin, of course, because this is really a story …

[7] An aimless playboy and a dorky middle-schooler become friends through serendipity in About a Boy, based on the book by Nick Hornby and directed by Chris and Paul Weitz of American Pie fame. Hugh Grant plays the playboy, coasting on royalties from a famous song his father wrote. Nicholas Hoult, who would later grow up to later star in X-Men: First Class and Warm …

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