THE SWITCH

Since it's a romantic comedy starring Jennifer Aniston that actually doesn't suck, it's temping to overrate The Switch, which opens with Aniston's Kassie preparing to be artificially inseminated, and BFF Wally (Jason Bateman) - who secretly loves her - swapping her sperm donor's donation for one of his own.

Movie

The River Is Life

Veterans Memorial Park

Saturday, August 28, 8 p.m.

In describing his documentary adventure The River Is Life - in which two intrepid buddies kayak 2,300 miles down the Mississippi River - filmmaker Phillip Hullquist says that the movie follows him and fellow traveler Ryan Jeanes "from black bears in the north to gators in the south." He also says that his films "tend to be about things people would love to do, but are letting some reason, real or imaginary, hold them back."

For my part, black bears and gators are exactly the reasons I'd never kayak down the Mississippi, but Hullquist is clearly made of stronger stuff than I.

The idea, says former Creedence Clearwater Revival bassist Stu Cook, began simply enough.

"Back in the mid-'90s, I relocated from southern California up to Lake Tahoe in northern Nevada, and Doug [Clifford, Creedence's former percussionist] had been living there with his family for 15, 20 years. We hadn't lived in the same area for decades, and we started hanging out every day, and playing music, and just talking about how much fun it was, and how it felt to play together again.

"So we were bound to get into trouble," says Cook with a laugh. "And goodness, look what happened."

STEP UP 3D

From its opening, outdoor melee, in which we're assaulted by soap bubbles and multi-colored balloons, to its jaw-dropping dance-off finale, which suggests a mass seizure titled Attack of the TRON Clones, Step Up 3D is proudly, even profoundly, ridiculous.