Part “Waiting for Guffman”, part “Stand & Deliver”, part “Rushmore”, “Hamlet 2″ gives Steve Coogan a lot of room to run free; a very good thing if you like his brand of humor.

Coogan plays failed actor Dana Marschz. (Yes, his last name is meant to be unpronounceable.) He lives in Tuscon, Arizona, a place writers Pam Brady and Andrew Fleming hint is where “dreams go to die”. Marschz is in charge of Drama at a high school and has a whopping two students. His plays are lame, reproductions of Hollywood fare and he gets deservedly reamed (or “raped in the face” as Marschz puts it) by the school paper drama critic, played well by sharp newcomer Shea Pepe.

Asbestos in the portable classrooms and the axing of almost all electives suddenly gives Marschz a room full of indifferent students. At the same time, the school principal gives Marschz a pink slip, telling him the money is just not there for Drama. Standing in front of a wall of sports trophies, the principal pronounces that all the arts are “on the chopping block”. If you, however, think this movie has an undercurrent serious agenda, you’re in for a disappointment.

At the urging of the school paper drama critic, who Marschz sees as some sort of a mentor/father figure, Marschz decides to create his own play; a play which will serve to save the school’s Drama department. “Hamlet 2” is born. Marschz uses the play to work out his issues with his father and to rip off a number of famous songs. Marschz, as your stereotypical dramatist, is quite the eccentric and his inspired opus’ themes touch a nerve in Tuscon. The principal tries to cancel the show, Christians are offended by his portrayal of Jesus Christ, most people with decent taste are outraged, threats are received; all this without anyone actually having seen the play.

The grand finale is, of course, the play itself, and though it begins somewhat clunkily, it does manage to find some sort of salvation towards its end. It’s so over the top with elaborate staging, wired action sequences, and a number of very adult themes, that the audience (both of them) are manipulated into a state of bewildered amazement.

“Hamlet 2″ does have a number of laughs, almost all of which are thanks to Coogan. Personally, I think he is excellent. Much to his credit, he rivals Christopher Guest’s “Corky St. Clair” of “Waiting for Guffman” fame. Coogan, thankfully, has the humility and ability to riff off of teenagers, cats, inanimate objects, you name it. He is the film’s saving grace because most of the side players are poorly written, poorly acted, or both. We know Catherine Keener can act, but she’s not doing much of it here. David Arquette, on the other hand, even fails at a bit part playing a dumbass. Amy Poehler is wasted, forced to recycle the same joke over and over again. One bright spot is Melanie Diaz, who was good in “Be Kind Rewind” and continues to show a level of depth which rises above the superficial pithy mostly seen here.

I tend to enjoy movies about midlife crises. You can build a wonderful story around a character whose well-established life is falling apart. You can keep the audience on their toes because in the midst of a crisis, it’s not always clear in which direction a character will go. “Meet Bill” falls under the midlife crisis category and, based on preliminary information about the film, I thought it would be a decent film. Bill is played by Aaron Eckhart, whose performance in “Thank You For Smoking” was stellar. Throw in a bit of eye candy in the form of Elizabeth Banks and Jessica Alba and we got us a movie, right? Wrong. Oh, so very wrong.

“Meet Bill” tries to follow in the footsteps of “American Beauty” and “The Weatherman”, but has no real story to support its sagging dead weight. From the get go we’re supposed to sympathize with Bill because he’s got a gut, messy hair, and compulsively eats Snickers bars. We quickly find out that his wife Jess (Elizabeth Banks) is shacking up with a local TV news reporter Chip (Timothy Olyphant). The in-laws think Bill is a lame push-over and he works as a phony executive at his father in law’s bank. He dreams of independence, and thus wishes to take part in donut shop franchise.

The final part of the puzzle is “the Kid”, a prep school student played by young Logan Lerman. His job is to shake things up further, providing Bill with the youthful spirit he needs to shake off his middle age slumber.

Meet Bill provides actor Eckhart with plenty of chances to embarrass himself, but none of them are particularly funny. In fact, the movie is rarely funny. There is a good comedic turn by a firecracker salesman (Paul Goetz) with his “Get excited” commentary. SNL’s Kristen Wig is also funny as the donut franchise maestro.

The movie loses steam very quickly. Elizabeth Banks seems to be about as human as the doll in “Lars and the Real Girl” and the movie is slapped carelessly together. I’m not one to notice continuity errors, especially when I’m just trying to stay awake during bombs like “Meet Bill”. And yet, I couldn’t help but notice one of the worst continuity errors I’ve ever seen. Bill is eating a donut and is about one bite from finishing her off, and in the next cut the donut has only one bite in it. Stuff like that just throws me right out of the film. Later. after an accident, one character doesn’t if mention the accident or what happened to the injured character. I’m assuming they cut out scenes that didn’t work, because I can’t believe they didn’t write those scenes into the screenplay.

Jessica Alba as a lingerie shop employee is mildly passable, and Logan Lerman plays a good kid, but his character is poorly written. Even worse is the TV reporter Chip, a complete waste of Olyphant, who was good in movies such as “Go” and “Die Hard 4″.

In conclusion, by all means, do not “Meet Bill”.

This movie has practically every living comedian in it — David Cross, Cheryl Hines, Chris Parnell, Michael McKean, Ray Romano, Jason Alexander, Hank Azaria, Estelle Harris, Richard Kind, and the list goes on. If you were combine all the jokes possible from all these funny people, you would have a very funny movie. And yet, this movie is very moderately funny.

Its main man is One Eyed Jack Faro (Woody Harrelson), kind of a Keith Richards of the casino world. His excessive lifestyle has lost him the casino he inherited from his dad. The Grand poker tournament is his chance to win it back.

Not being a poker player myself, I can’t vouch for the quality of the poker games on hand, but I have a strong hunch that this is no Rounders. The tournament does give the movie momentum, but there’s just too many shabby ideas thrown in to really add up to a good film. The Grand also heavily borrows from movies like Best in Show and Blades of Glory. As in Best in Show, it has its atypical tournament finalist Andy Andrews (Richard Kind) and it copies its over-the-top superbowl character introductions from Blades of Glory. In fact, much of this film feels like a commercial, or a bad parody of poker TV. Perhaps it’s tartgeting folks with extremely low attention spans, because just as things start to get slow, BAMN, the next loud song or flashy segue.

Woody Harrelson and Cheryl Hines are quite good, but others such as Ray Romano or Michael McKean just drone on and it gets very old, very fast. I do like a lot of the movies that The Grand copies from, but I can’t say I like The Grand.

The latest pairing of the Farrelly Brothers and Ben Stiller is a loose remake of a 1972 film of the same name — a tale of a honeymoon gone very wrong. In the Farrelly version we have Eddie, played by Stiller, a 40-year-old catching a bunch of slack from his father and best friend because he blew his one big chance at marriage and isn’t getting any younger. Eddie is certainly a bit timid, but it doesn’t help that his dad (played by Stiller’s real father) is somewhat of an old perv and his best friend is a bit of an emasculated married hack. This is the Farrelly brothers, so don’t expect a ton of depth.

Eddie does, however, have what appears to be a stroke of luck. By chance one day, he helps a woman who’s just been robbed. Obviously, this woman, Lila, played by Malin Akerman, turns out be Eddie’s love interest. What follows is a montage of scenes demonstrating the pair’s chemistry and their home town, San Francisco. Hats off, as the scene is pretty funny and, hot damn does SF look good.

What follows is a rushed-into marriage and a honeymoon in Cabo. This is where the film really starts going for big laughs, including the Farrelly’s trademark high cringe factor. Lila turns out to be quite a bit different than the woman Eddie thought she was, resulting in a number of really funny scenes. To make matters worse, Eddie stumbles upon Miranda (Michelle Monaghan) in Cabo, a woman who seems to have all the qualities which Lila lacks. Through a number of misunderstandings, Lila doesn’t realize that Eddie is on his honeymoon and the two of them really hit it off.

Up until the film’s final act, I was honestly surprised at how worthy this film was. Until then, the film stays funny without reducing itself to slapstick nonsense. Ben Stiller doesn’t flex any acting muscle here, but he really doesn’t need to for this fare. He sort of plays a combination of his characters in Along Came Polly and There’s Something About Mary. Stiller is an international star for a reason, and he’s just good at being Stiller. In that sense, he doesn’t disappoint here.

The leading ladies are also both good. Akerman is hilarious and scary and Monaghan, who has grown on me a ton since Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, is truly adorable. They don’t write in a lot of laughs for her part, but she plays very well alongside Stiller.

If it weren’t for a weak last act and a few overdone Farrellyisms, I would call this a pretty good film. If you like other Farrelly stuff and are into Stiller, you will be entertained. All in all, a decent slapstick flick.

Buy The Heartbreak Kid (Widescreen Edition) from Amazon.

It’s a shame this film hasn’t aged better, because it’s quite possibly the finest SNL feature film. Yes, better than “Wayne’s World”, “Superstar”, “The Ladies Man”, etc.

In a sense, the fim details the sisyphean struggle of outsiders desperately trying to gain access. In this case, it’s the Butabi brothers and the impenetrable Roxbury nighclub.

“A Night at the Roxbury” really belongs to Will Ferrell. On the surface, he plays the chump, a mix of Steinbeck’s Lenny and Ted of “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure”. Upon closer inspection, however, he’s a bit more like a stargazed mystic. A pre-coitus Ferrell stares at a painting and exclaims, “We look at this and see a picture of this lady, but to this lady are we just a picture of us? Did you ever think of that?” His misapprehensive gold-digging damsel views this as sheer stupidity, but is it? Will Ferrell’s Butabi shrugs it off, but to me these are the roots of what led to “Stranger than Fiction”; these are his true thesp beginnings.

Walk Hard is a portrayal of fictional music legend Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly). He’s slept with 411 women, married three of them, spawned 22 children and 14 stepchildren. He starred in his own 70’s TV show, befriended Elvis, The Beatles, a chimpanzee, has taken all drugs known to man, and has tried to get off all of them. Thanks to this mystique, or in spite of it, Cox has become a national idol.

Hollywood’s hottest comedy talent of the moment has struck again: this time, hit producer and screenwriter Judd Apatow (“Knocked Up“, “The 40-Year-Old Virgin“) picks apart successful music dramas such as “Walk the Line”, “Ray”, “The Doors”. Top comedian John C. Reilly kicks out the jams in the starring role as a loveable American full-blooded music legend. A number of high profile cameos spice things up. Jack White of “The White Stripes” portrays Elvis, Eddie Vedder of “Pearl Jam” shows up as himself, and Jack Black tries his luck as “Paul McCartney”.

Walk Hard, which also features past and present Saturday Night Live cast members, is much like Cox’s career itself — at times things are looking up, other times they’re dreadful. In my opinion, the finest SNL feature film remains “A Night At The Roxbury” which never took itself seriously, but also managed to be dramatically believable. “Walk Hard” makes the mistake of taking topics which are not satire-worthy like Johhny Cash losing his older brother or Ray Charles his eyesight, and trying to cash in on jokes from them. Admittedly, Cox’s loss of smell does land a few jokes later on in the film, but for a clever man like Apatow, these gutter dunks are unforgiveable.

Though I thought the premise was a bit primitive, I was really looking forward to seeing Reilly in a starring role. I thorougly enjoyed his role as a monologue pick-me-up cop in Magnolia. I would have to say that he ties with William H. Macy as its finest feature. In a way, I can understand the allure of playing the starring role in a big Hollywood production. On the other hand, Reilly should take his fine acting chops to higher ground, and stay away from low-brow junk like “Walk Hard” and the garbage Will Ferrell collaborations (“Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Rick Bobby”, “Step Brothers”).

Buy Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2-Disc Unrated Edition) [Blu-ray] or Walk Hard - The Dewey Cox Story (Two-Disc Special Edition) from Amazon.

“The Savages” seems to follow a recent trend of creating thoroughly miserable motion pictures. I mean, who enjoys watching a story about two siblings watching their father slowly deteriorate and die? A show of hands please. That’s right, no one.

Any glimpse of entertainment value is salvaged by the dead-on interplay of the sibling pair played by Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman. You just know they’re going to be good. Laura Linney shined in “The Squid and the Whale” and here she continues to excel as a quirky, intelligent, approachable female. In fact, “The Savages” passes more than a fleeting resemblance to another sibling movie starring Linney, “You Can Count On Me”. The latter is clearly the better film as it takes you an a journey, albeit a rough one, as opposed to “The Savages” which feels more akin to a plunge into dark water.

“The Savages” also finds Hoffman back on his A-game. I thought his performance in “Before The Devil Knows Your Dead” was a let down. I just didn’t buy it. He was, however, amazing in films such as “Magnolia”, “Almost Famous”, “Owning Mahowny”, and “State and Main”. Here he plays a literature professor who is torn between what common sense dictates and deeper, conflicted feelings.

The few side stories seem to do no more than pad the running time. Linney’s character’s affair doesn’t move the plot one bit, nor does Hoffman’s character’s girlfriend’s visa problems. It was, nonetheless, a pleasure to see Cara Seymour again who was unforgettable as Patrick Bateman’s escort service fodder in “American Psycho”.

As an acting showcase, “The Savages” does pull some weight. I can also imagine it having therapeutic value to those who went through a similar situation with a parent or loved one. I suppose it took a certain amount of courage to shed light on such a dismal story. Watch it if you feel you must. If not, why not spend some time with your family?

Buy The Savages from Amazon.