Review: "Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation"

An interesting idea that turned into a rehashed sequel that now is a bona fide animation franchise desperately in need of a stake through its cold, black heart, “Hotel Transylvania” is the undead visitor that arrives every third year for an unwanted visit, thrilling your kids but leaving you groaning.

Or, slumbering: I fell asleep during the screening. Several times. Not for long, I think, but propriety requires that I disclose this is a review of only about 96% of the movie.

You know the setup: Dracula (voice of Adam Sandler) has traded in blood-sucking for running a posh hotel for monsters, who have come out of the darkness to live (mostly) in harmony with humans. To wit: his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) has married goofy human Jonathan (Andy Samberg) and produced a half-vampire grandson, Dennis (Asher Blinkoff).

Tagging along are buds Frankenstein (Kevin James), Wayne the werewolf (Steve Buscemi), Murray the mummy (Keegan-Michael Key), and Griffin the invisible man (David Spade).

Things are pretty hectic running a hotel and watching over a passel of monsters, who come in sorts of shapes, colors and sizes. So Mavis decides the family needs a vacation aboard the Legacy, an ocean liner catering to their kind. Stops include an underwater volcano and Atlantis, which has risen from the sea in the form of a tawdry waterlogged version of Las Vegas.

Dracula soon finds himself directing his killer gaze at Ericka (Kathryn Hahn), the human captain of the ship. He’s been a widower for more than a century, but is surprised to find he can still “zing” -- the monster term for falling instantly in love.

But Ericka has some not-nice hidden motives, which are demonstrated by suddenly scowling while her face is underlit with red light that appears from nowhere to let you know she’s thinking evil thoughts.

Mel Brooks plays Drac’s dad Vlad, an old-schooler who eventually came around on not biting people. He gets some of the film’s best laughs strutting around in a tiny bathing suit, proudly flaunting his 500-year-old body. The gaggle of witches are appreciative, though.

The heavy is Van Helsing, Dracula’s old nemesis who is still kept alive through a steampunk contraption that animates his head and hands, along with a few struggling organs in jars. He’s voiced by Jim Gaffigan, doing his best impression of Bill Hader.

There’s a lot of colors, and boingy action, and spontaneous dancing. They even revive a couple of tunes from the last movie; I guess the filmmakers didn’t want to shell out for another songwriter. There’s even a DJ contest late in the game where they dust off “Macarena” as the epitome of all that is good and positive. Well.

Kids will probably enjoy “Transylvania 3,” but for anyone over the age of 10 it’s a sack of garlic, a beam of sunshine and a wooden cross all rolled into one.

Review: "Hotel Transylvania 2"

The first "Hotel Transylvania" was an uninspired amalgam of other movies, stitching together the current cinematic fascination with vampires, zombies and the like with angsty teen imperatives. The sequel is a distinct improvement, though curiously almost none of it takes place in the titular hotel.

The last go-round was about Dracula (Adam Sandler, sounding like a Borscht Belt Bela Lugosi) learning to find tolerance for humans when his teen daughter -- well, hundred-and-teens, anyway -- Mavis (Selena Gomez) fell in love with goofy human Jonathan (Andy Samberg).

Flash forward a few years. Mavis and Jonathan are now happily wed and have an adorable tyke, Dennis (Asher Blinkoff). Drac is thoroughly delighted with his grandson ... though he's a little worried that he has yet to indicate any vampire-ish abilities. He seems to be a carbon copy of Jonathan: big poof of red hair, pasty skin, normal, non-sharp incisors, etc.

"He's just a late fanger," Dracula dismisses, though he's secretly worried the kid is really all human. And how disappointing would that be!

Mavis is considering moving their family to Santa Cruz to raise him alongside Jonathan's parents (chirpy Molly Shannon and droll Nick Offerman) and other regular humans. Drac can't stand the idea of being apart from them, so while they're away scouting out the potential new hometown, he and his crew whip up a plan for a road trip to encourage Dennis' monsterish side to come out.

Hijinks ensue, of the lightly scary/slightly vulgar variety.

The gang of supporting characters are back, including Steve Buscemi as a werewolf hectored by his wolf-wife and small army of pups; Frankenstein (Kevin James), big and blandly nice; a fabulous mummy (Keegan-Michael Key); and an invisible man (David Spade), who keeps trying to convince his buddies he has an invisible girlfriend.

The new guy on the block is Dracula's daddy, Vlad, wonderfully voiced by Mel Brooks. He's an old-school type who keeps the fires of hate toward humans well-stoked, and he's got a crew of giant vampire bat henchman to do his bidding. Drac takes steps to ensure Vlad doesn't find out his great-grandkid isn't a bloodsucker.

Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky with a screenplay by Sandler and buddy Robert Smigel, "Hotel Transylvania 2" won't win any contests for originality. It's television-quality storytelling with better animation and voice cast.

But it's breezy, fun and dopey, and sure to keep your little monsters entertained for an hour and a half.

Review: "Pixels"

"Pixels" is the dream revenge movie for pretty much every kid who came of age post-1980: the world needs a hero, and it can only be someone who wasted countless hours and a Smaug-sized pile of quarters playing primitive arcade games at the Electric Dreams Factory (or whatever it was called in your town).

Isn't this the ultimate geek fantasy? To have the skills that were laughed at as a kid suddenly become valued in society the same way throwing deceased porcine hide is?

Since this is a geek movie, we've got to have some geeks to cheer for. Enter Adam Sandler, Josh Gad, Kevin James and Peter Dinklage. All were video game superstars circa 1982, culminating in a championship marathon in which one emerged as the victor, his exploits recorded on video for posterity and sent into space.

Unfortunately, alien boogums found the video and mistook the old-school games -- Pac-Man, Defender, Centipede, Joust, Frogger, Q-bert, etc. -- as a challenge. They whipped up some versions of these digital "warriors" and sent them to Earth to do battle with humans.

They even look like the old 8-bit versions of the arcade characters, crude and seemingly pixilated when blown up to giant size. Though not as big as you might think: the poster shows a behemoth Pac-Man slurping up San Francisco in one gulp, but in the movie he's about the size of a smallish RV.

It's a goofy premise, courtesy of screenwriters Tim Herlihy and Timothy Dowling, based on a short film by Patrick Jean. It's kind of a rip-off of "Ghostbusters," with brainy losers vaulted into champions, but the notion still holds appeal.

Directed by hitmeister Chris Columbus, "Pixels" is breezy, dimwitted, action-filled and goofy. I certainly was never bored, though some of the gags and story threads were better left snipped on the editing room floor.

For instance, we're supposed to believe that James' character, Cooper, has grown up to be the President of the United States. Except he's not some competent, savvy politician, but the standard doofus Kevin James character he plays in every movie. Not surprisingly, his POTUS has become a laughingstock.

It's hard to believe anybody would ever vote such a guy into the highest office in the land... though I should note as I write this, Donald Trump is leading in the polls.

Brenner (a bored-looking Sandler) had the most natural talent of any gamer, but his confidence was shot when he lost the championship. Now he's become a Geek Squad-like drone who sets up tech for other people. Getting tapped by his best buddy in the White House to lead the fight against the invaders starts his underachiever-cum-savior journey.

Gad plays Ludlow, a wallflower who grew up to be a conspiracy theorist. He gets some of the best lines in the picture, and the "Book of Mormon" star also gets to belt out a tune for no good reason, other than it's nice to listen to.

Michelle Monaghan shows up, because the studio honchos felt we needed a pretty girl to look at. She's a military officer who takes an instant shine/dislike/maybe love? attitude toward the Sandler character.

Dinklage steals most of his scenes as Eddie, aka "Fire Blaster," an egocentric gamer who won the '82 championship (and also gave himself that nickname). Sporting a ferocious mullet and Southern-fried patter of quips about how awesome he is, Eddie is a despicable hoot. Actually, with the hair and self-puffery he reminds me of Donald Trump, though reportedly Dinklage based him on a real-life jerk seen in the excellent video game documentary, "The King of Kong."

Arriving as the summer movie season is cooling down, "Pixels" is clearly third-string fare, the sort of thing you go see while waiting for the movies that came out in May to hit video. It's decently entertaining, though it needed less Sandler and more mullet for the win.

Review: "Little Boy"

"Little Boy" is a little film that, like its main character, seemingly has no friends. I guess I'll have to do.

This sweet and, yes, somewhat sappy movie is being released into a few theaters with very little fanfare or media. (No screenings were arranged for critics; heck, we weren't even told it was coming out. I had to backdoor it to the studio's publicity chief to beg an online screener.)

It's a faith-based production, which tend to be seen as less legitimate by the press and audiences of a certain persuasion. As if stories and characters that come from the wellspring of Christian beliefs somehow cannot be worthy as, say, the latest horror flick or mushy romance.

I was raised Catholic myself, and if "fallen" isn't quite the right descriptor that requires being added to that designation, then let's just say I'm a few floors down from flush.

Still, the religious aspects of the film are not a wall but an invitation. I found "Little Boy" to be an utterly charming picture with a terrifically engaging performance by young Jakob Salvati as Pepper Flynt Busbee.

Pepper is being raised in the idyllic California fishing town of O'Hare during World War II. Eights years old, he's still the size of a toddler. Earnest and intelligent, Pepper wonders if he really is a "midget" like he keeps getting called. The local doctor (Kevin James) isn't sure if Pepper actually has dwarfism, or if he's just a "little boy."

Alas, nicknames like that tend to stick; soon all the other kids in town bully and mistreat him. His only friend is his dad (Michael Rapaport), who plays all sorts of games of imagination with him where they pretend to be cowboys, or pirates, or masked detectives, and so on. Their adventures always conclude with dad asking Pepper, "Partner, do you believe you can do this?!?"

The lad's faith is tested when Dad goes off to war and is soon declared a prisoner of war. Worse, Pepper follows his volatile older brother London (David Henrie) in taking his frustrations out on Hashimoto (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), the local Japanese-American who suffers a similar ostracism from the townsfolk.

Father Oliver (Tom Wilkinson), the gutsy town priest, takes Pepper under his wing and advises him to keep his faith that his father will come home. The priest gives him a list of actions he must perform in order to build his faith: clothe the naked, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, etc. Chief on that list, which is part penance and part hope, is to befriend Hashimoto. The slow, tenuous way in which the boy opens up to the "foreign" stranger are quite stirring.

But the boy is also taken with the idea of Ben Eagle, a magician/hero of the serial movies and comic books Pepper consumes. When a live stage version of Ben Eagle comes to town, Pepper is picked out of the audience to perform a feat of telekinesis that, of course, he believes is real.

In the kid's mind, the teachings of the priest and the charlatan sort of get mashed up together. Pepper begins to think he's capable of actual super powers, pointing his hands and groaning with concentration. Every evening performs does his prestidigitations toward the setting sun, where his father is a prisoner.

It's a great-looking movie, with authentic period costumes and cars, and bright, sun-dappled cinematography. Visually and thematically, it reminded me a lot of "Forrest Gump."

Some might dismiss the story -- director Alejandro Gómez Monteverde co-wrote the script with Pepe Portillo -- as pure pap. And it surely is an earnest, sentimental picture. But I believe "Little Boy" earns its emotions, by carefully showing how the characters arrive at their feelings instead of just assuming they're there.

And Jakob Salvati holds our attention, and our emotions. With his open face and green-gray eyes, he evokes a sense of inner toughness and sensitivity in equal measures. Emily Watson also has a nice turn as his mother, dealing with challenges from several fronts.

I'm really glad I saw "Little Boy." Sometimes, you just have to exert your will -- and show a little faith -- to achieve your goals.

Video review: "Hotel Transylvania"

Even in an extraordinarily weak year for animation, “Hotel Transylvania” did not receive an Academy Award nomination for best animated feature. And it’s no surprise: this derivative monster tale featuring Adam Sandler is a Frankenstein-like assemblage of bits ‘n’ pieces from other movies.

Actually, Frankenstein himself is here (voiced by Kevin James), along with Dracula (Sandler), the Wolfman (Steve Buscemi), the Mummy (CeeLo Green) and a rogues’ gallery of every other creature feature from the past 80 years. The set-up is that they’ve all come to the hotel for their once-a-year celebratory bash, centered around the birthday of Dracula’s daughter, Mavis (Selena Gomez).

Mavis is in her rebellious teenage phase -- it happens around age 118 for vampires -- and wants to venture forth and see the world. But Drac and the rest of the gruesome crew say it’s too dangerous, what with all the humans out there with their torches, pitchforks and paranoia. Then the red-blooded problem arrives on their doorstep in the form of Jonathan (Andy Samberg), a dim-witted backpacker dude. Dracula dresses him up as a Frankenstein cousin, and door-slamming farce ensues.

The animation is truly wonderful, a cartoony (non-scary) take on the nightmarish creatures of legend. I loved how the Wolfman wears a short-sleeved shirt and tie like a middle manager on holiday, and Frankenstein has a tendency to lose his stitching and fall to pieces.

But the story plays out with all the predictability of a werewolf needing a haircut on a full moon. Jonathan and Mavis start making gooey eyes at each other, dear dead dad isn’t very happy about it, and the scary humans turn out to be not so scary after all.

The animators did their job creating a visually vibrant world, but the script has all the life of a vampire with a stake through its heart.

Video extras are decent without being extravagant. The DVD comes with deleted scenes, feature-length commentary, music video and a short film, “Goodnight Mr. Foot.”

Upgrade to the Blu-ray version, and you get three making-of documentaries covering the voice cast and animation process.

Movie: 2 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "Here Comes the Boom"

"Here Comes the Boom" is the perfect star vehicle for Kevin James, because in many ways it's a reflection of his persona -- goofy, flabby around the middle, a little bit crude but with a soft, heartwarming center.

The movie, about a high school teacher who fights in mixed martial arts bouts to raise money, has a slightly amateurish feel to it and swings wild on a lot of its storytelling punches. But it connects when it counts.

A number of observers have pointed out that "Boom" is essentially a comedic version of last year's "Warrior," in which Joel Edgerton played a teacher who gets back in the ring to earn cash for his family. Scott Voss' motives are in some ways even purer -- he wants to save the job of his pal the music teacher, Marty (Henry Winkler), who faces the axe when the entire music program is threatened with extinction.

Scott was a champion wrestler in college, but that was 20 years ago and time has taken its toll not just on his body but his soul. A former Teacher of the Year a decade ago, the biology instructor is barely phoning it in, showing up late and reading the newspaper while his kids chatter among themselves.

Malia (played by Filipino songstress Charice) is the smart girl in the front row craving for a mentor, but Scott is too wound up in his own cynicism to show any interest. His only act of initiative is continually hitting on the health teacher, Bella (Salma Hayek), whose mouth says no-no but whose eyes say maybe-maybe.

When the evil principal -- are there any good principals in movies anymore? -- threatens to shut down the music program, Scott offers to come up with the $48,000 needed to save it. He doesn't really have any idea how, and his notion of teaching night citizenship classes barely brings in enough to bother.

It does spur an encounter with one of his students, a burly Dutchman named Niko, played by real-life retired MMA fighter Bas Rutten. Niko is a muscle-bound bundle of giddy personality, happily jumping around or singing as the mood strikes him. Rutten can't really act, but he brings a lot of enthusiasm to the role.

Through Niko he gets the idea of getting in the MMA ring, despite a total lack of experience. His first bout goes badly, getting knocked out by a kick within the first two seconds. But he learns to play defense, with the goal of losing but not getting hurt. The money starts piling up.

Then a funny thing happens: Scott gets angry and wins a bout. Astonished by the fact that the winner gets paid twice as much as the loser, he starts really putting himself into training. Now the wins start coming, and before long real-life UFC announcer Joe Rogan comes calling to offer a high-profile fight in Las Vegas.

The usual sideline stuff happens. The principal finds out about the fighting and thinks the involvement with MMA reflects badly on the school. The students pass around YouTube videos of their teacher's most embarrassing fight, but nonetheless start to form some respect for him. In turn Scott begins to actually teach in the classroom, and Bella warms up.

It's scriptwriting 1-2-3, with all the pieces falling together in seemingly preordained order. James co-write the screenplay with Rock Reuben and Allan Loeb, while James' frequent co-conspirator Frank Coraci directs.

The fight scenes are well-staged and occasionally thrilling, as Scott loses his green luster and actually starts to show some confidence in the ring. As an MMA brawler James is not unconvincing -- his torso is thick but not jiggly, and he has a powerful chest and shoulders. Even though he's a funnyman, it helps that he actually can appear a little intimidating.

"Here Comes the Boom" -- the title is based on a song by the heavy metal band P.O.D. that Scott plays on his walks from the locker room to the ring -- will not be confused with quality filmmaking. It's often ham-handed and obvious. But Kevin James is an amiable screen presence, and this movie seems infused with his spirit.

Sometimes it's better to be liked than respected.

2.5 stars out of four

Review: "Hotel Transylvania"

Monsters as heroes is a pretty popular theme in pop culture. Vampires are more likely to be dreamy lovers than smelly undead bloodsuckers these days. And long before "Twilight" and its ilk, Tim Burton made the ghoulish seem normal with "The Nightmare Before Christmas."

Heck, "Sesame Street" took the word "monsters" and stood it on its head more than 40 years ago but using it to refer to cute fuzzy Muppets.

Maybe that's why "Hotel Transylvania" doesn't feel terribly original. The entire premise is based on the idea that werewolves, mummies, vampires, alien blobs and zombies are outcasts hiding out from the fearsome clutches of humans who want to destroy them. The eponymous inn is the place where they get to come once a year to hang out and party in safety.

Of course, if things are so bad out there, it begs the question of why they don't all just live in the hotel year round. But applying logic to a movie like this is like Dracula deciding he needs a tan.

Speaking of Dracula, he's voiced by Adam Sandler doing a sort of Borscht Belt version of the familiar Bela Lugosi accent. Here he's a single dad trying to run a business where the help consists of mindless zombie bellboys and haunted suits of armor. Meanwhile, he's raising a rebellious teen daughter -- as in 118 years old -- named Mavis (Selena Gomez).

She wants to go out into the world to see what there is to see, but Drac takes steps to convince her to stick around. After all, the big annual event on the monster calendar is her birthday, and he's invited all his friends and regular guests to celebrate.

The animators did a great job with the various creatures, giving them a cool cartoony look with exaggerated features. The target audience here is kids who count their age in single digits, so nothing's terribly scary. (The PG rating is mostly for a few moments involving gastrointestinal humor.)

If anything, director Genndy Tartakovsky, a TV veteran making his feature film debut, doesn't linger long enough on the monsters so we can appreciate all the little details. This movie often feels like it's being spurred on by hurry-up pacing.

I did like the way Frankenstein (Kevin James) is held together with flimsy stitches that are apt to give way, leaving him a collection of parts. Or the werewolf is named Wayne (Steve Buscemi) and resembles a hectored businessman with a pushy wife and rambunctious passel of pups.

Other notable cast members are a mummy (CeeLo Green) and Invisible Man (David Spade), who's rendered as a disembodied pair of glasses.

The fly in the ointment is Jonathan, an adventure-seeking young human (Andy Samberg) who stumbles upon the hotel while backpacking across Europe. Dracula makes him up to resemble a distant cousin of Frankenstein and introduces him as the party planner for Mavis, who soon is casting goo-goo eyes at him.

The whole thing devolves into a slamming-doors farce, with people chasing each other, stumbling into awkward situations, doing double-takes and spinning webs of lies that are soon found out.

Jonathan is about as endearing as Samberg's live-action losers, hyperfast-talking slackers who register somewhere between mentally challenged and just plain dim. I kept thinking what the movie would've been like without him. Better, certainly.

With its emphasis on boingy action and goofy comedy, "Hotel Transylvania" is meant to do little more than distract wee tykes for a little while, and for that demographic it might do the job. The adults accompanying them will just wonder how soon they can check out.

2 stars out of four

Review: "The Dilemma"

"You're bouncing around. You do that a lot."

This line, delivered in the opening moments of "The Dilemma," is used to describe Vince Vaughn's character -- which is pretty much the same as every other Vince Vaughn character.

Vaughn's become a bankable star employing the same charming motormouth routine over and over. His signature move is to get rolling on a verbal treadmill from which he cannot easily climb off. We've seen it so many times ("Couples Retreat," "Wedding Crashers") that we've come to understand that what he says isn't important -- it's the feat itself, keeping the words coming faster and faster as he bounces around from one thought to the next.

The standout example of this in "The Dilemma" is when his character, Ronny, is giving a toast at his girlfriend Beth's (Jennifer Connelly) parents' 40th wedding anniversary. Ronny has recently learned that his best friend Nick's (Kevin James) wife Geneva (Winona Ryder) has been playing around on him.

He tries to use the toast to talk about the importance of honesty in marriage, as a way of shaming Geneva into confessing her affair to Nick so Ronny won't have to spill the beans himself. But he gets off on a tangent about temptation, imagining scenarios of Beth's mother dallying with the pool boy, and it's all downhill from there -- zigging and zagging all the way.

"The Dilemma" bounces around a lot, too. The movie can't quite decide what it wants to be when it grows up.

Ostensibly it's a comedy about Ronny's predicament -- whether to tell the man he loves like a brother about his wife's infidelity. The movie simply forgets to be funny for long stretches, as in one sequence where Ronny prays to God for guidance. "I know I'm supposed to give you things, but I'm scared to give you this," he tells the Almighty.

The biggest thing that's missing from the story (screenplay by Allan Loeb) is a sense of how important these relationships really are. Ronny's supposed to cherish his friendship with Nick so much that the prospect of telling him about Geneva tears him up inside. But we never see them doing much more than normal buddy-buddy stuff.

Ronny's relationship with Beth is off-kilter, too. He's a 40-year-old commitment-phobe, and can't bring himself to ask her to marry him. But what she gets out of this pairing is rather murky.

Geneva doesn't make a lick of sense, either. For awhile it's suggested she might actually be nutso, as demonstrated in a scene where Ronny confronts her and she cows him by threatening to claim he's made advances toward her.

Even Ronny and Nick's business partnership is goofy. Nick is supposed to be a brilliant engineer, but their dream is rather mundane: To make electric vehicles that look and sound like muscle cars. So basically they're just installing speakers under the hood to simulate the rumble of a gasoline engine.

(The movie has caused some controversy for a scene where they're pitching some General Motors executives, and Ronny calls electric cars "gay." I'll decline to enter the fray other than saying I think "South Park" already covered this topic sufficiently.)

Queen Latifah pops up as Susan, the liaison between the car company and our boys, who has a tendency to talk in inappropriate, hyper-sexualized terms. The joke is supposed to be that usually it's the guys in movies like this who speak that way. But she just comes across as another unexplained weird quirk of the movie.

The strangest thing about "The Dilemma" is that it was directed by Ron Howard, and has to be the most un-Ron-Howard-like film he's ever made.

The depressing part is not that it's not very good, or that a guy who's mostly done serious Oscar-bait movies has returned to his comedy roots. It's that this movie could have been directed by anyone.

1.5 stars out of four

Review: "Grown Ups"

"Grown Ups," the new Adam Sandler comedy, is about what you'd expect. A quintet of childhood buds reunite 30 years later to recapture a bit of their glory days, in between hassling with their wives and kids and razzing each other mercilessly.

There's potty humor, there's sexual put-downs galore, there's inappropriate ogling of each other's daughters and/or wives. The humor is crude and broad, the hearty laughs few and far between.

In other words, it's another thingamajig stamped out by the Sandler assembly line.

You'll note I call it an Adam Sandler movie, despite the presence of co-stars Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade and Rob Schneider -- all "Saturday Night Live" alums like Sandler, except James, who had his own lowbrow TV show. Sandler wrote the screenplay (with Fred Wolf) and brought along his pet director, Dennis Dugan.

It's not very funny, but as the mob tough in "The Untouchables" said about their illicit booze, it's not supposed to be good, it's supposed to be bought. Sandler has a built-in audience that will show up for anything he does. Occasionally, something decent ("50 First Dates") slips past the machine.

Sandler plays Lenny, the leader of the 1978 summer basketball champs who've gone their separate ways. When their old coach dies, it brings them back for his funeral and a weekend at the old lake house.

Lenny's a Hollywood super-agent, married to Roxanne (Salma Hayek Pinault), a famous fashion designer. Their two sons are borderline brats addicted to their Playstation and ordering the nanny around.

The rest of the crew: Eric (James) is the funny fat guy, married and with a couple of kids of his own. Rock plays Kurt, a house-husband who receives a daily tag-team henpecking from his wife (Maya Rudolph) and her mother. Marcus (Spade) is the boozy swingin' single dude. And Rob (Schneider) has gotten all New Age-y and uptight.

They're stale, unimaginative parts, but let's face it: Spade, Schneider and Rock's film careers have gone ice cold lately. It's almost sad how they always run home for supporting roles in Sandler's lame flicks.

(If that's not bad enough, fellow SNLers Colin Quinn and Tim Meadow are trotted out for walk-ons in the obligatory rematch of the big game. Meadows' part is so small, I actually felt sorry for him.)

I found a handful of chuckles here and there. I liked Maya Rudolph, very pregnant, doing a little booty-and-belly dance and chanting, "Baby got front!" And there's some doofy slapstick scattered about.

But mostly the jokes are one-note, or quickly grow tiresome with repetition. Some examples:

Rob's wife (Joyce Van Patten) is much older than him, and their constant sexual fervor for each other grosses out the rest of the gang. It's funny because she's old!

Eric tries to water ski, but the boat can't budge his heft. It's funny because he's fat!

Rob's giving his (old!) wife a heated-rock massage, and burns his hands on one that stayed in the steamer too long. Then he drops it on her back and she screams. It's funny because it's hot!

Eric's improbably gorgeous wife (Maria Bello, slumming) still breast-feeds their son, even though he's four years old. It's funny because it's boobies!

I could go on, but let's save each other the trouble. We both know "Growns Ups" is the very definition of a critic-proof movie. But I'll bet the $9 you're thinking about plunking down for this moronic flick that there's something better playing at the cinema.

Well, not "Jonah Hex." Yech. But something.

1.5 stars out of four

Review: "Paul Blart: Mall Cop"

Does anybody really expect much out of a movie with a title like "Paul Blart: Mall Cop"?

Like its low-rent, fourth-tier, amateur hour hero, "Paul Blart" the movie is the underdog that deserves its lowly status. It's a star vehicle for TV comedian Kevin James, and its very existence means that Larry the Cable Guy's film career still has legs. Somewhere, Pauly Shore is watching this and thinking, "Well, if that guy can get his own movie ..."

And yet, it's hard to hold any serious hard feelings against James, or this movie. It's clearly intended for preteen kids who will respond to the abundance of facial mugging and pratfalls. Parents, and any unsuspecting unattached adults, will just have to suffer through.

James, with a body like a high school lineman gone to pot, does manage a few grace notes here and there as he's bouncing off minivans, splatting into locked glass doors or squirming through air ducts. He spends a great deal of the movie riding one of those Segway movers, and his ability to dodge and weave and swerve with that thing is sort of uncanny.

I was disappointed that James, who co-wrote the movie with his "King of Queens" co-star Nick Bakay, never jumped on the joke with the most potential: Why is it exactly that mall security guards ride around on Segways instead of just walking? Their top speed is no better than a person going at a medium trot, so it's not like they serve some sort of legitimate security reason. Their only purpose seems to be preventing people from getting some much-needed exercise.

Given the set-up, the movie pretty much writes itself. Blart is overdedicated to his job, even inventing oaths and creeds that mystify his fellow guards, who want to sneak behind a camera monitor and zone out. He's sweet on the new girl at the wig kiosk (Jayma Mays), in a role so underwritten most of her dialogue is delivered via text message.

Then a gang of skanky skateboard punks and parkour acrobats invade the mall, take everyone hostage including wig girl, and it's up to Paul to do a "Die Hard," even though everybody thinks he's a joke.

The only real flashes of originality are the presence of Blart's mother and daughter, who sign him up for a Web dating service with predictable results, and making the character a hypoglycemic.

The idea of a hero who has to stop every few minutes to pound some Pixy Stix or he'll go into a torpor is worth a few chuckles ... a very few. Most of the time, "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" is just punching the clock.

1.5 stars out of four