30 Apr 2008

Fun in the Oven: "Baby Mama," "The Forbidden Kingdom," and "Deception"

By Mike Schulz

BABY MAMA

Despite its sunny, friendly veneer, there's a rather scrappy little war being waged within writer/director Michael McCullers' Baby Mama - one between a lighthearted, pleasant sitcom and a sharper, smarter, more cynical sitcom. (Two and a Half Men versus 30 Rock, as it were.) The former wins, and we could have predicted as much, but the best parts of this engaging buddy flick suggest the truly sparkling comedy it might have been, if only it weren't so eager to be ... well, lighthearted and pleasant.

07 Sep 2004

Late-Summer Odds and Ends: "Hero," "Napoleon Dynamite," "Without a Paddle," "Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid," "Suspect Zero," and "The Exorcist: The Beginning"

By Mike Schulz

HERO

Does any moviegoer really care what Zhang Yimou's Chinese martial-arts epic Hero is actually about? You get to see adversaries battling one another while running on water! You get to see a woman warding off a bow-and-arrow onslaught using only her dressing gown! You get to see a guy splitting raindrops in half with a sword, for Pete's sake!

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