In keeping with the official theme of summer 2010 — “Eh, Good Enough” — this week’s new wide releases are all B-minuses. They fall within the “good” range, but not very far into it. They’re good enough that I wouldn’t try to discourage anyone who was thinking of seeing them from doing so, but neither would I recommend them to anyone who wasn’t already considering them. Basically, whatever your plans were this weekend, go ahead.
“Dinner for Schmucks” is funny but not as funny as it should have been. “Charlie St. Cloud” (review at Film.com) is better than you’re expecting from a teen-focused weeper, but nothing special. “Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore” (review at Film.com) has some laughs in it.
In limited release, “The Kids Are All Right” is all right. Well, better than that. It’s pretty good. But “‘The Kids Are All Right’ is all right” sounds better.
At Film.com, “Eric’s Bad Movies” is about “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” an amazing 1978 failure featuring the songs of the Beatles but no Beatles. “What’s the Big Deal?” is about “Last Year at Marienbad,” a trippy 1961 French art film that’s come up recently in conversations about “Inception” (conversations with people prone to mentioning French art films, anyway). I also addressed the question of whether Kevin Smith — or anyone — is “relevant.”
At Cinematical, I cracked a few jokes about the trailer for “The Town.” This led an elderly gentleman at Vanity Fair to discover that there is a thing called the “Internet,” and that it has “blogs” on it, and that sometimes those blogs contain jokes. It also led to a commendation by Jeff Wells, which produced mixed feelings in me, to say the least.
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