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”.

When you’ve got hind quarters like Jessica Alba, acting skills are optional. In Into the Blue, she plays Sam, a young woman living in the Bahamas with her diving instructor boyrfriend, Jared (Paul Walker). Together they scrape together a humble life on an old house boat. For Jared, being a diving instructor is just his day job, as he dreams of an exciting life as a prospector, hunting for buried treasure. A hurricane has recently swept through and he hastily gets fired, deciding that his time is now and that it’s “all part of the plan”.

The bad guy is introduced early in the form of Bates (Josh Brolin, the only real actor here), a successful prospector and bona fide asshole. He and Jared have a macho rivalry, though Jared doesn’t have much to show for it.

The plot thickens when Jared’s friend Bryce (Scott Caan) and his girlfriend of five days (Ashely Scott) arrive. Bryce has the dough that Jared needs to start doing some serious treasure hunting. Bryce is also a show off who is willing to put his pocket before his heart. Things start to get complicated when one of their diving expeditions leads to a sunken plane filled with cocaine. At this point, a moral battle starts bubbling to the surface. Jared can definitely use the money and for Blake there really is no question. Sam, however, will have nothing of it.

Into the Blue has magnificent underwater sequences, not the least of whcih involve Jessica Alba flummoxing about. On the other hand, the flim is often very lame, in particular when the cheesy soundtrack kicks in or when the wooden actors poorly deliver badly written dialogue. Big no five to Scott Caan whose non-performance is one of the worst I’ve ever seen. Paul Walker is a bit less inept, and he certainly does have that blue-eyed, hawk look appeal, but he would be much more at home in an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog. Into the Blue is certainly nice to look at, but you won’t discover much beneath the surface.

Buy Into the Blue [Blu-ray] or Into the Blue (Widescreen Edition) from Amazon.