As in the ‘30s radio serial, and ‘60s TV series featuring Bruce Lee, it centers on newspaper publisher Britt Reid (Rogen) and his confidant, Kato (Jay Chou), who moonlight as masked crime fighters posing as criminals in order to infiltrate the criminal underworld. Here they try to stop a Russian mobster (Christoph Waltz) from uniting Los Angeles’ crime families.

The movie as a whole is meant to be a lark, I guess, but it still would have helped to have a main character to root for. We don’t get that with Rogen, who helped write the thing. He plays the same old slacker man-child he always does, albeit a rich one. So instead of a hero who takes getting shot at seriously, we get a boorish frat boy who thinks it’s cool to go after gun-toting bad guys. He’s what Batman would be if Bruce Wayne were full of himself.

As well Rogen doesn’t act so much as goof his way through his lines, which results in some pretty awful scenes, like when he interviews Cameron Diaz to be his new secretary. Scowling is about the extent of his actual emoting. None of this would matter, of course, had there been someone to pick up his slack. Diaz has little to do besides spraying Rogen with mace, Chou looks the part but lacks Lee’s charisma, and Oscar-winner Waltz tries hard to be funny but somehow falls flat (though he does get the world’s coolest gun).

The numerous action scenes are what make the film watchable. For sure Gondry’s good with massive explosions–the bulldozer getting blown into the air is especially cool–but he also gives the shootouts, car chases and Chou’s martial arts brawls an entertainingly off-kilter energy. Watch how, when Chou jumps over a car’s hood to get at some thugs, the car suddenly looks like it’s being reflected in a slew of mirrors. Or how Chou pops into a bad-guy SUV and takes out the thugs inside.

I almost forgot about Black Beauty, the duo’s sleek supercar that’s one of the sweetest-looking set of superhero wheels around, decked out as it is with green headlights, ejector seats, rocket launchers, side-door machine guns, wheel saws and, for our more enlightened era, a bean bag launcher. During the action-crazy finale, Rogen and Chou are still able to drive around in its front half after it gets cut in half going up in an elevator. That ability alone makes it more of a star than the humans around it.- [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Action/Comedy/Crime

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date: 5/6/11

The plot has an ordinary person (Diaz) becoming entangled in international intrigue, in this case a mission involving Cruise’s rogue CIA agent, the nerdy creator (Paul Dano) of a battery-sized perpetual energy source and the agent (Peter Sarsgaard) assigned to catch Cruise.

Most of the film’s humor is generated by the way Cruise plays his patented cocky-guy act for laughs. During the middle of a firefight, for instance, he tells Diaz how great she’s doing. While clinging to the hood of a speeding FBI SUV containing Diaz, he tells her he likes the dress she’s wearing. He’s nothing if not courteous.

Diaz doesn’t really have a whole lot to do besides react to her outrageous situation or look hot in a bikini (not a complaint), though I liked that her character is a classic-muscle-car expert. And she can definitely be funny, like in the scene where she’s injected with truth serum by a Spanish arms dealer (Jordi Molla) and then informs him that she really doesn’t like him.

Perhaps the biggest surprise here is how James Mangold, normally a director of Oscar-winning dramas like Walk the Line, proves so adept at crafting action scenes. I especially liked the rousing car chase through the streets of Spain during the Running of the Bulls, though the previously mentioned sequence where Cruise takes out government SUVs comes in a close second.

Mangold also manages to sustain an enjoyably light, caperish tone. The opening sequence itself, in which Cruise cases a Kansas airport, has a nice, easy flow to it, while the scene where Cruise uses a whip to stealthily snatch away some Spanish thugs escorting the truth-drugged Diaz hits just the right comic note.

Having said all that, the film is not perfect. Some of the attempts at humor simply fizzle, like the odd scene in which Cruise tries to tell Diaz about the dire situation their plane is in. Or when Cruise confronts Diaz and her firefighter friend (Marc Blucas) in a restaurant. Not to mention that, if you’re going to make an airliner crash land in a cornfield, make it look convincing. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Action/Adventure/Comedy

Rated PG-13

It’s based on a book by Jodi Picoult and involves an 11-year-old girl (Abigail Breslin) who, having been conceived by her parents (Jason Patric and Cameron Diaz) primarily to provide spare parts for her leukemia-stricken sister (Sofia Vassilieva), files for medical emancipation. We hear voiceovers from a number of characters, including the lone son (Evan Ellingson).

To me, having to choose sides–determined Diaz or bright Breslin?–makes things more interesting. It’s obvious, though, that Cassavetes, who co-wrote the script, has already chosen, as Diaz is portrayed as something of a shrew for caring more about her dying daughter than her healthy one. We also get a twist late in the teary game meant to excuse Breslin for her seemingly selfish actions.

I imagine Diaz appeared in this thing either to increase her Oscar chances or earn some dramatic credibility. She acts mad, becomes a little crazy, cries, all that. But it’s all on the surface, and she doesn’t have the range to go deeper. Patric does a decent job as the patient firefighter dad, for sure, but I’ve always found him somewhat bland and he isn’t given much of a character to work with here.

Better is Alec Baldwin as the slightly slick but good-hearted lawyer who takes on Breslin’s case while hiding a condition of his own from her. Better still is Joan Cusack as the judge presiding over the case, a woman who recently lost her own daughter. The scene where she chats with Breslin in her chambers really resonates. As for Breslin, well, she’s not bad, either.

I don’t necessarily blame you if you cry at all this. Cancer is not a happy thing, and watching a kid vomit is not pleasant, nor is seeing her with a bald head and red-rimmed eyes and a bloody nose. But Cassavetes does include some smile-inducing elements, most notably Vassilieva having a romance with a fellow cancer patient (Thomas Dekker) that allows her to be happy and get dressed up.

Still, you will cry, especially when the family goes to the beach. As Breslin and Ellingson dash around, and Patric and Vassilieva and Diaz sit on a blanket, Vassilieva, wrapped in a blanket and with a handkerchief wrapped around her head, struggles up and walks toward the ocean as “Feels Like Home” swells on the soundtrack. Resistance is futile.

I have to give Cassavetes credit, though, for eschewing big speeches and death scenes, and for composing some truly nice shots. Like the scene when Diaz comforts her sick girl after delivering devastating news, or when Ellingson is on a rooftop, tearing up a picture he’s drawn and letting it blow away in the wind.

In the end, the film manipulates emotions a little too much, fails to fully flesh out its characters and features some really ridiculous courtroom stuff. It’s neither as entertaining as Terms of Endearment nor nearly as good as the wrenching Wit, which stars Emma Thompson. It does seem less syrupy than The Bucket List, but watching it is hardly something I’d include on such a list. – [DVD]

Drama

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date: 11/17/09