This Steve Carell vehicle is family friendly, but with a reported budget of $150 million, the most expensive comedy of all time is unlikely to recoup its costs because it forgot to pack the ark with enough jokes. You don't have to subscribe to Vanity Fair to know that young Mr. LaBeouf is the poster boy of Summer Cinema 2007.
Starting with the surprise hit Disturbia, through the underrated 'toon Surf's Up and the deservedly huge Transformers, LaBeouf, 21, has been camped at the multiplex for three months. And next year, he will co-star with Harrison Ford in the new Indiana Jones movie. Not quite a heartthrob, LaBeouf is being touted as the next Tom Hanks (although we'd still bet a few chips on Justin Long, Bruce Willis' sidekick in Live Free or Die Hard ).
Talent show winner: Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose. If Jamie Foxx can win an Oscar while lip-syncing in Ray, there's hope for the little dynamo who channels the spirit of singer Edith Piaf in this French import. Michael Moore may seem like the class clown, but he does his homework.
Sanjay Gupta implied this week that Moore's new documentary about the health-care industry misstated some facts, Moore dissected him, and the next day Gupta admitted that CNN had erred. Plays well with others: Leslie Mann in Knocked Up, Imelda Staunton in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Jeff Bridges in Surf's Up. Sometimes a co-star is the key to a movie's success.
Mann is hysterical as a resentfully aging party girl. Staunton portrays the new Hogwarts headmistress as the pink-uniformed love child of Mussolini and Nurse Ratched. And supplying the voice of an animated surf guru, Bridges serves us a cocktail combining equal parts Yoda from Star Wars and the Dude from The Big Lebowski.
With the Stephen King pedigree, the spooky 1408 has done respectable business. But the public may be losing its taste for the harder stuff. Unlike its predecessor, the sadistic Hostel: Part II barely made a peep at the box office.
The next test is this weekend, when the brutal Captivity sneaks into theaters. At first we gave it a solid B+. But seeing it again at the Sky-View Drive-in in Belleville, enveloped by the Euro-jazzy soundtrack on the car stereo and by the all-American food smells in the air, we realized that Ratatouille is an honor student.
It's unusually sophisticated for an animated film, with a balletic grace and a grown-up appreciation of art for art's sake. Under the circumstances, we forgive it for making the villain a critic. Top of page E-mail this story to a friend This Steve Carell vehicle is family friendly, but with a reported budget of $150 million, the most expensive comedy of all time is unlikely to recoup its costs because it forgot to pack the ark with enough jokes.
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