THE HELP

Based on Kathryn Stockett's much-loved bestseller, The Help concerns the tenuous relationships between black domestic workers and their privileged white employers in early-'60s Mississippi, and it's a fairly obvious movie, with director Tate Taylor opting for broad brushstrokes over subtlety, and the occasionally wrenching drama sitting, rather uncomfortably, alongside klutzy jokiness. Yet offhand, I can't think of another popular entertainment whose flaws matter less than this film's, because everything that's lacking in the picture is more than made up for in the fearless, emotionally precise, and oftentimes devastating portrayals of Taylor's cast. The Help is easy to complain about, but all it takes is one of the magnificent Viola Davis' fierce, tearful stares - or a blast of Octavia Spencer's anger, or a flash of Emma Stone's heartbreak, or a burst of Jessica Chastain's joy - to make your complaints feel positively moot.

THE CHANGE-UP

The Change-Up, in which Jason Bateman's discontented husband and father magically swaps bodies with Ryan Reynolds' perfectly contented slacker dumb-ass, is an appallingly smutty and juvenile slapstick. In the segment that finds Reynolds (in Bateman's body) preparing a late-night feeding for his pal's infant twins - with one tot seen playing with butcher knives and the other reaching into the blender and sticking his tongue into an electrical socket - it features one of the most painfully unfunny scenes in cinema history, and I'm not excluding any given scene in Sophie's Choice or Schindler's List.

FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS

Modern romantic comedies are in such generally dismal shape that I feel ungrateful for wishing that Friends with Benefits were better than it actually is. But while it's impossible to fully dislike any movie that finds a nitwit shrieking "John Mayer is our generation's Sheryl Crow!" or features a couple making a solemn vow on the Bible app of the woman's iPad, I left director Will Gluck's latest thinking that the film had just missed its mark. And that, after two frequently hysterical features in a row (2009's Fired Up!, Gluck's directorial debut, and last year's Easy A), its helmer had just missed his trifecta. Damn it.

HARRY POTTER & THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2

As the end credits began rolling at my screening of Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, the (need I say it?) final installment in the film series adapted from J.K. Rowling's beloved novels, I'll admit that I anticipated more applause than I actually heard. Then again, it's awfully hard to clap while simultaneously wiping tears from your cheeks.