Reviews

I can't say I was particularly looking forward to the remake of Arthur. I'd seen the original on HBO at some point as a teen, and it didn't do much for me. I didn't understand the Oscar wins for John Gielgud (Supporting Actor) and Best Original Song win for Christopher Cross' "Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)." I never really got Liza Minnelli's appeal, either.

The film fared considerably better when I watched it on Netflix Streaming earlier today. Gielgud's sandpaper dry wit impressed. Liza was more likable than I'd recalled. The song--well, I still hate the song. But the screenplay and direction by Steve Gordon is solid throughout, and Dudley Moore is perfect in the lead role.

Which brings us to the new Arthur and the trepidation I felt even more strongly after watching the original. The commercials and trailers have focused on Russell Brand's Arthur as an even-more cartoony playboy than Moore's version, including over-the-top adventures such as dressing as Batman and driving around in the Batmobile.

I've also never been completely sold on Brand, who at 6-2 stands about a full foot taller than did Moore. I've liked him in small portions, as in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but found him a bit tiring in larger doses. The casting of Jennifer Garner--and her prominent billing on the poster--also seemed strange: This is the role of Susan, the bride in Arthur's arranged marriage, not the female lead. Instead, indie queen Greta Gerwig (who is so "art house" she actually starred in a film entitled "Art House") would be playing the Liza Minnelli role (Linda then, Naomi now) of Arthur's working-class true love.

Only the presence of Helen Mirren, taking over for Gielgud in the gender-switched role of Hobson, left me feeling much hope that the new Arthur wouldn't be a complete wreck.

I was way off. This movie's actually quite good. And if you're factoring in it being a remake (most suck) and a romantic comedy (most suck), the new Arthur is especially impressive. The commercials are doing it a disservice: The new Arthur is very funny throughout its running time, updates the story to modern-day sensibilities in an intelligent fashion, and manages to broaden and expand upon the more dramatic aspects of the original. In some ways, quite honestly, it's a better film.

Hats off in particular to screenwriter Peter Baynham, who handled this tricky assignment with aplomb. His script actually is fairly reverent to the 30-year-old original, selectively using plot lines, scenes and even occasional dialogue where it fits. But he also brings the relationships and sexual/class politics into the 21st century, and finds an intelligent way to address the elephant in the room: in both films, Arthur is an alcoholic.

The original film, for example, has Moore swigging from a bottle of rum in a paper bag while driving on the highway... without any consequences. His alcoholism is treated simply as an aspect of his immaturity. Brand's Arthur never drives drunk--his chauffeur, Bitterman (Luis Guzman in the remake) handles all the driving--but his drinking causes real consequences, and he's forced to address them.

Does that sound too heavy for a romantic comedy? It doesn't play that way, thanks to Baynham's script, savvy performances by the leads, and nuanced direction by Jason Winer (making his feature film debut). It's not surprising that Winer is the co-executive producer (and a regular director) of Modern Family, because Arthur replicates that show's mix of believable character interactions and laugh-out-loud humor.

Anyone who's seen the original will know all the major plot points, because this truly is a remake in that sense. You reach the same destination, you just take a few different roads (including a couple of gender twists).

Arthur, an immature playboy who has never worked a day in his life, will be cut off from the family fortune--close to $1 billion--unless he marries Susan (Garner), whose family ties can be beneficial to the corporation run by Arthur's mother (father in the original). Unfortunately, Arthur has fallen in love with another: Naomi, who runs illegal (albeit popular) tours of Grand Central Station and other NYC landmarks.

The casting is mostly on point. Mirren is pitch-perfect in the plum role of Hobson, giving the relationship with Arthur an intriguing maternal slant absent from the original. Gerwig finds just enough grit in her character to keep Naomi from becoming too pixie-like. And Garner fits perfectly in a role right in her range, providing the toughness and attitude the character of Susan desperately needed in the original.

As for Brand... he's really not too bad. The comic scenes are his forte, of course, and he's a blast throughout those--funny, smart, charismatic, appealing. He's a bit less successful in the dramatic scenes, but still not too bad. We don't quite get a peek into the darkness we know is dwelling deep inside Arthur, but Brand certainly goes a few places he's never gone before and shows promise.

A few small problems hurt the film. It runs a bit long at 110 minutes; an even 100 would have worked better, especially near the end. Those trims would have been welcome in a few scenes around the film's middle where Arthur tries his hand at gainful employment; they felt like studio-mandated bits of broad humor that don't play well with the drier wit and general smarts of the rest. Finally, Nick Nolte appears in a couple of scenes as Susan's tough-guy father, and he's frankly hard to understand.

Despite those issues, the new Arthur really is a lot of fun. Compared to most romantic comedies, it's funnier, smarter, sharper and even occasionally touching, and Mirren's performance is worth at least an Oscar nomination of her own.

You'd be hard pressed to find a better example of a film ruined by trying to be too many things to too many people than Red Riding Hood, which opens Friday and, by all rights, should close Saturday.

The most obvious audience Hood hopes to attract is fans of the Twilight film series, snagging the director of the first film, Catherine Hardwicke, and refashioning the Little Red Riding Hood folk tale into, in a remarkably halfhearted way, a love triangle between three extraordinarily uninteresting characters. (If all three had been eaten by the wolf in the first act, we might have been onto something.)

What's weird about Hood, which inexplicably counts Leonardo DiCaprio as one of its producers (stick to swimming in icy water, Leo), is that this romantic angle is not its main thrust. It doesn't have a main thrust.

In fact, for a supposedly sexier take on a classic folk tale, it's in desperate need of thrust in general.

It flits around the idea of being a more adult folk tale but never commits. It throws in a bit of (pretty bad) CGI werewolf attack action from time to time, but it's nowhere near violent or bloody enough (it's PG-13) to interest action or horror fans. It has moments of campy fun, specifically every second Gary Oldman appears as a sinister Cardinal Richelieu-type character, but other scenes are played ridiculously straight.

Perhaps the film's biggest mistake — and that's saying something — is structuring itself like a Scream film. The Big Bad Wolf is indeed a werewolf, and our sweet little Red (named Valerie, played by Amanda Seyfried) has to figure out which of her fellow villagers turns into a beast when the moon is full. Is it her forbidden love, the dull as dishwater Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), who presumably equates to the hunter of the folk tale? Or is it the man she's been arranged to marry, the somehow even duller Henry (Max Irons)? Or is it one the other remarkably dull villagers? And given how dull Valerie is, who the hell really cares?

On looks alone, Seyfried perhaps is perfectly cast as Red, considering Christina Ricci might be a bit too old for the role. Seyfried's pristine, alabaster skin and enormous eyes give Red just the right look, but every time she opens her mouth you're begging for that werewolf to put her out of our misery.

To be fair, no actor could be expected to excel given the cheesy dialogue and Hardwicke's uninspired direction; solid veterans such as Virginia Madsen, Julie Christie and Lukas Haas struggle to make an impression, with Christie holding up the best. As Red's father, Billy Burke seems more zoned out than James Franco at the Oscars, suggesting he's only here for one more Twilight connection.

Only Oldman acquits himself well, simply because he treats the film as the campfest it should have been from the opening credits. He's acting in an entirely different movie, a Sam Raimi romp like Army of Darkness or Drag Me to Hell, and Red Riding Hood briefly becomes almost fun during Oldman's most animated scenes.

The film doesn't even look that great in a technical sense: The exteriors look fake, all clearly shot on soundstages, and not fake in an intentional "this is a dreamy heightened reality, because this is a folk tale" way. They look fake in a "we really suck at our jobs" way.

Red Riding Hood is pretending to be a darker, more adult take on the folk tale, but it's hardly the first: Neil Jordan mined the territory in 1984 with the R-rated The Company of Wolves, focusing more on sexual metaphors and heavy werewolf action. It wasn't great, but at least it knew what it wanted to be. Red Riding Hood tries to be a little bit of everything, but ultimately it succeeds only in being a tedious mess.

It's remarkable how quickly the new comedy Dinner for Schmucks disappears from your brain. I can recall laughing my way through the vast majority of the film--mostly soft laughs, but there were more than a few big, hearty laughs from deep down in the diaphragm. (One might more economically call such a laugh a "guffaw," but guffaw is such a silly word I refuse to acknowledge I might ever participate in one.)

Despite the inarguable fact that I was entertained throughout the entirety of Dinner for Schmucks -- a film that never actually uses the word "schmuck," but we'll get to that -- I can't deny feeling rather empty while considering it a little more than a day later. I think this must be why many reviewers are giving the flick fairly lukewarm marks, though they had to be laughing their respective asses off on occasion just as I was.

There are lots of reasons not to respect the movie. There's the fact that it's reportedly a fairly pale "reimagination" of a French film, Francis Veber's Le dîner de cons (The Dinner Game). (I haven't seen the original, so I can't compare.) The screenplay is inarguably mediocre. Some of the characters, especially those at the eventual dinner, are lazily imagined. And it's disappointing to see Paul Rudd, who's capable of much more interesting, brilliantly caustic characters (in Wet Hot American Summer and Anchorman, for starters) relegated to playing yet another purely-reactive straight man.

And yet... Dinner for Schmucks is funny. Very funny. Occasionally laugh- out-loud funny. It's like a frozen Snickers bite-size bar when you're having a chocolate craving: Incredibly satisfying for about five minutes... after which, you'll forget all about it.

Yet I can't help wanting to recommend Schmucks, and dammit, that's exactly what I'm going to do. Because for the ninety minutes you're in the theater, it is a lot of fun. It's a much better date night film than, say, the relentlessly mediocre Date Night.

Those two films don't just share a star in Steve Carell. They also share a philosophy: Take a half-interesting situation, flesh it out a bit with half-written characters and a half-written screenplay, and let the stars make it sing. Date Night was only moderately tolerable because it had Carell and the always-entertaining Tina Fey as its leads. With Carell and Rudd joined by a far more interesting supporting cast (and a much sharper director), Schmucks is like Date Night done right.

Carell and Rudd are consummate comedic pros with perfect chemistry together. You can't help but figure working together in Anchorman and The 40-Year-Old Virgin played a role there. With the expert guidance of director Jay Roach (helmer of the Austin Powers and Meet the Parents/Fockers series), they mine every possible laugh out of every line, every expression, every reaction shot.

That's especially impressive because neither actor is working with a particularly well-crafted role here. Barry (Carell) is an amalgam of all sorts of odd eccentricities and levels of confusion, though his meticulous talent at turning dead mice into works of art suggests he's some sort of idiot savant. As many a commercial has already informed you, he gets invited to a very different sort of social dinner by Tim, a finance executive desperate to impress his bosses.

Tim is virtually indistinguishable from the other "straight men" Rudd has played in recent comedies. Only the goofball buddy and the gorgeous girlfriend change. In Role Models, Rudd suffers through Seann William Scott's crazy schemes, which threaten his relationship with Elizabeth Banks. In I Love You, Man, Rudd's new "bromance" with Jason Segal threatens his engagement to Rashida Jones. And in Schmucks, Rudd's dinner plans with Carell threaten to derail his planned engagement to fresh face Stephanie Szostak.

Schmucks ramps up the funny thanks to Roach's direction and some extremely well-chosen supporting players. It's very strange that Zach Galifianakis' name doesn't even appear on the Schmucks poster, especially given how hot he is following The Hangover and how heavily he's featured in the commercials. Though he appears in what amounts to only two scenes, the actor hijacks the film wholesale, and not in the wild, over-the-top sort of cameo you might expect from, say, a Will Ferrell or Ben Stiller.

Following suit, albeit with much more screen time, is Flight of the Conchords' Jemaine Clement, who does do the over-the-top thing as avant garde artist Kieran, and it's perfectly brilliant. (One can easily foresee a Get Him to the Greek-type spin off for the character.) Every time Schmucks threatens to stall, it wisely finds a way to weave Kieran back into the proceedings.

The longest period in which we don't see Kieran is also Schmucks' weakest stretch, the actual dinner itself. The French original apparently never included the actual dinner, and maybe that was a good move. The boss who puts on the dinner actually considers it a "dinner for idiots" -- the word "schmucks" is never used, and one figures that term came from some studio exec worried about the word "idiot."

Barry's fellow idiots at the dinner aren't particularly funny, and this is where the film goes for some fairly broad laughs that are only fitfully amusing. In fact, the best part of the dinner is when Barry gets to show off some of his "mousterpieces," a segment that's more than a little touching.

Despite such faults, Schmucks plays it smart most of the time. It's sad that Office Space's Ron Livingston doesn't have much to do as Tim's nemesis, but two Daily Show personalities, Larry Wilmore and Kristen Schaal (also of Conchords), are pitch-perfect in small roles.

On the whole, Schmucks isn't one of the decade's great comedies. But if you're satisfied with laughing for 90 minutes, and enjoying talented actors rise (well) above their material, it's definitely worth your time.

Bear with me for a minute while I talk about dinner. Trust me, it's relevant.

Tuesday was a busy day. I was racing around to get everything done before the Knight and Day screening in downtown Denver.

The YMCA where I exercise is just a few blocks from the theater. I got my workout in, but I only had a few minutes to eat before the movie. So I popped into the Taco Bell down the street, got two Beefy 5-layer burritos and ate them as I walked to the theater.

Now, Taco Bell's Beefy 5-layer burrito is a glorious thing. It's 89 cents, which is awesome. It's incredibly filling, which is awesome. And here's the thing: It actually tastes pretty damn good. So even though I figured they'd be rotting in my colon until the day I die, at the time I was pretty damn happy with those two Beefy 5-layer burritos.

A few hours later, however, I was regretting those burritos. Yummy as they were at the time, they left me feeling rather sick and bloated. My cholesterol probably hiked up about 50 points, matched only by my blood pressure. All of the good work I did at the Y, destroyed in one beefy, cheesy swoop.

Which brings us to Knight and Day, the Taco Bell 5-layer burrito of the 2010 summer movie season.

Actually, the metaphor doesn't quite hold true — the 5-layer burrito is less than a buck, whereas you'll be paying around 10 bucks for this action comedy starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. It would be a lot more palatable at 98 cents.

Like my burrito, Knight and Day tastes pretty good on the first few bites. Cruise is in full-on funny, charming mode as Roy Miller, a (possibly) rogue federal agent assigned to protect a fancy energy source and its nerdy inventor. As June Havens, a Boston classic car restorer swept into Miller's mission, Diaz channels the winning sexy-goofy balance that served her well in the first Charlie's Angels movie.

Though some other reviews say the starring pair lack chemistry together, I disagree. In fact, just about all of Knight and Day's charms come from the stars' interplay as Roy and June cruise along from one dangerous situation to another.

And yes, "cruise along" is exactly what I mean — there's never the slightest sense of danger in the film, which apparently is exactly what director James Mangold was going for.

If his name wasn't there on screen, you'd never guess Mangold helmed Knight and Day, which couldn't be further removed from his (far superior) other credits, which include 3:10 to Yuma, Walk the Line and Girl, Interrupted.

It's hard to know whether Mangold or Patrick O'Neill's screenplay is to blame, but the flippant way Knight and Day handles its story — this is all just a video game, as grounded in reality as a Matrix film — wears out its welcome very quickly.

One conceit that runs through the film has Roy drugging June whenever the action gets heavy. And since June is (mostly) the audience's proxy, that means we fade to black whenever she does. Thus, numerous scenes stop abruptly, and we never get to see the resolution. June just wakes up in a new locale. It feels like a massive cheat, perhaps intended only to lower the budget.

Cruise and Diaz's star power is enough to overcome that problem for much of the first half, but after that the wheels come off.

Knight and Day subjects us to some of the thinnest supporting characters of any film this year — specifically, the agents heading up the charge to corral Miller. These roles have all the weight of a Sarah Palin interview. (My conservative buddy Christian won't like that, but I hope he'll understand.)

What's worse is that producers cast two superb actors in these roles — Peter Sarsgaard (An Education, Flightplan) and Viola Davis (Doubt, State of Play) — and give them nothing to work with!

Also, why cast someone as recognizable as Maggie Grace (Taken, TV's "Lost") as June's sister and give her nothing but a couple of lines? What a massive waste of talent! It's a stark contrast to this summer's The A-Team, in which a couple of supporting roles were among the film's most interesting.

All of that considered, Knight and Day remains fairly entertaining until the final act, when the formula really gets old. Sure, there's a cute bit where Diaz gets to have fun with June being under the influence of truth serum (yeah, she gets drugged a lot, which is a bit creepy).

But then we get the crappiest of Knight and Day's action pieces, a car/motorcycle chase through Spanish streets that happens to coincide with the running of the bulls. The special effects for this stretch are mind-numbingly bad, looking worse than whatever your 12-year-old nephew could throw together on his Power Mac.

The film has other issues, even if you're grading on the "lighthearted summer fun" curve. The title only half makes sense, and the way it's not-really explained seems arbitrary at best. Worse, the movie never provides a reason for Diaz's character to be involved in the story past the first half-hour.

Knight and Day isn't the complete wreck the pre-release buzz might have suggested. It has some cute dialogue, some genuinely funny moments and some entertaining fight scenes. On the whole, however, it's a 5-layer burrito that's missing at least three layers. And two just won't do.

If any film demands to be graded on a curve, it's The A-Team.

Simply consider the notion of making a big-budget summer movie from of one of the cheesiest television shows of a cheesy TV era.

It's a crafty plan to lower your expectations. As long the movie isn't two hours of punching grandmothers and kicking puppies, you're likely to leave the theater saying, "That was better than I expected."

Guess what? It works like a charm.

The A-Team, against all odds, is one extremely entertaining film. It puts pedal to metal about 90 seconds in and never lets up. That's also savvy because it's also kind of a mess that would collapse under its own weight if it slowed down for more than two minutes.

Director Joe Carnahan (Smokin' Aces, Narc) isn't taking that chance. Action scenes come flying at you hard and heavy from start to finish. The results are mixed: Some sequences are choppy and confusing, others thrilling. But like a comedy that never stops pitching jokes, content if only half of them stick, The A-Team pitches action, action, action, with a side of action and a little action to wash it down.

The plot follows the general concept of the TV series with a few tweaks. A (very) lengthy credits sequence set in Mexico shows us how the team of former Army Rangers comes together: Leader John "Hannibal" Smith (Liam Neeson), his right-hand man Templeton "Face" Peck (Bradley Cooper), powerful Bosco "B.A." Baracus (Quinton "Rampage" Jackson) and loony pilot James "Howling Mad" Murdock (Sharlto Copley).

We jump ahead several years, where the A-Team is now an Army covert operations crew with dozens of successful missions under their belts. But when they're set up for a fall by a variety of villainous forces, the boys have to break out of jail and fight to clear their names.

That's pretty much all you wanted to know about the plot, right? Because it gets pretty confusing from there and doesn't matter in the slightest anyway. It's only there to support – that's right – action.

Before I tell you why A-Team is worth your hard-earned cash, I should lay out its many faults.

Though Carnahan directed, it's not surprising to see director Tony Scott was one of the producers. Too many scenes evince Scott's "look" – the camera shoved in way too tight on the actors, so you can't tell what the hell's going on in fight scenes or big gun battles.

The special effects are wildly uneven too, especially in the climax. It looks like the usual Hollywood problem of the CGI being "just good enough" to make a locked-in release date. This time, it's nowhere near good enough.

But then, The A-Team is a nitpicker's dream, if you really want to go there. Jessica Biel's casting seems like an inside joke – "we're not taking this seriously, and neither should you, so let's cast a gorgeous but astonishingly wooden actor in this role."

Maybe you're wondering whether she's really that bad. Look at it this way: This is the first major film role for "Rampage" Jackson, an MMA fighter. He's not great, but he's not too bad – and that's high praise for a non-actor stepping into the iconic role. Yet he's a good bit more believable than Biel.

So with those issues, what makes The A-Team so entertaining? The rest of the cast, actually. If you can look past Biel (actually, look right at her, that's what she's there for), the film is jam-packed with colorful, charismatic performances.

Neeson seems a bit odd at first stepping into George Peppard's shoes as Hannibal, being considerably taller, leaner and tougher. But that's appropriate for the movie, which is basically the TV show on (lots and lots of) steroids. No attempt is made to explain his Irish accent, nor that of Copley, who is South African. It doesn't matter: Somehow in this film, it works.

But the film decides early on to focus on Cooper, hot off his success in The Hangover, and it's the right choice. You'd never have guessed the guy who played eighth fiddle on Alias would be front-and-center for a star-making performance, but it's true.

The A-Team shows off Cooper's buffed-up physique almost to the point of absurdity – he's shirtless on screen more than Mark Wahlberg in Date Night – but Cooper's charisma carries the day throughout.

A well-rounded supporting cast also delivers. Patrick Wilson and Brian Bloom, as potentially shady characters related to the A-Team's troubles, steal every scene they're in. (It probably doesn't hurt that Bloom, a veteran actor mostly relegated to TV work, gets co-writing credit.) Their wonderfully brash characters bring welcome levity to the pounding machine of gunfights and explosions that propels The A-Team.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't note the drinking game that by all rights should be born from this film: Drink whenever a guy with icy blue eyes is on screen. You'd pass out halfway through the film.

There's Cooper and Neeson alone, plus Bloom and Wilson, with a little Gerald McRaney – yes, Major Dad himself – thrown in for good measure.

If you're really into dudes with bright blue eyes, The A-Team is like porn. If you're into nonstop action and lots of male bonding, The A-Team is like porn. If you're into deep, fully-realized female characters – well, look elsewhere.

But if you had to ask me what I would want a big-screen take on a really silly TV show to be, The A-Team more than fits the bill. It's ridiculous, sure. But it's also a ridiculous amount of fun.

The new sci-fi thriller Splice, a modern-day take on Frankenstein that opens Friday (June 4) in theaters, is a gorgeous film that impresses on many levels.

The visuals are breathtaking, a perfect balance between practical and computer-generated effects. The cinematography and art direction often are stunning.

The stars are two top-notch actors, Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley, in what is essentially a three-character piece for the majority of its running time. And through its first two acts, the film surrounds viewers with a constant feeling of tension and discomfort peaking with one of the darkest scenes I've seen in a mainstream film in awhile.

And then the third act arrives, and Splice takes a abrupt nosedive right into the crapper.

With one incredibly miscalculated, over-the-top scene, Splice suddenly pitches any empathy we had remaining for our characters and devolves straight into camp.

I'm guessing writer-director Vincenzo Natali didn't intend that, since the following scene is supposed to be heavy and serious, but viewers in my screening laughed through the entire thing. The film never recovers, devolving into an even-sillier resolution that tries way to hard to uncomfortably marry an action-film climax with the dark parenting and sexual metaphors that dominated the second act.

I'll only say a tiny bit about Splice's plot to respect its twists and turns. Natali's story wears its Frankenstein influence on its sleeve, even naming its main characters after the actors (Colin Clive, Elsa Lanchester) who starred in the 1935 classic Bride of Frankenstein.

Thus we're introduced to Clive (Brody) and Elsa (Polley), scientists who are partners inside and outside the lab. The pair are splicing together the DNA of various animals in hopes of finding cures for diseases.

All goes well until the lab's corporate parent puts profit ahead of technology, prompting the pair to initiate a secret experiment of their own: mixing human DNA with animal. In short order, they're the sorta- proud parents of Dren, a brand-new lifeform — part little girl, part kitchen sink of DNA — who has to be seen to be believed.

Bringing Dren to life is not only the most impressive thing Elsa and Clive do — it's far and away the most impressive thing Splice does. Dren is mostly portrayed by French actor Delphine Chanéac — and she does an excellent job, in fact — but Dren also is a mix of great makeup and extremely believable CGI.

Too bad the story isn't anywhere near as believable. Natali (who co- wrote and directed the brilliantly original Cube back in 1997) clearly is aping director David Cronenberg — particularly The Fly and The Brood — but where it comes to story and characters, Natali doesn't have Cronenberg's chops. Whereas the shocks in Cronenberg's films tend to be deeply disturbing, most in Splice just come off as outrageous.

Again, there's a lot to like about Splice, especially the aforementioned cinematography and art direction, which are respectively by Tetsuo Nagata and Joshu de Cartier. The makeup and special effects, led by Howard Berger and K.N.B. Effects Group, are out of this world.

Splice does have some very effective scenes drenched with (occasionally too-obvious) metaphor. And despite some occasionally clunky dialogue, the performances are uniformly strong, particularly Polley, giving her all for what ultimately becomes a very silly movie.

Brody is solid, but the best part of his casting is that he kinda looks like the result of a gene-splicing experiment in the first place.

Sadly, it's all in service of a story that goes completely off the rails in its final act — and sorry, that's about all I can say to avoid spoiling it. I'll cut Natali some slack on the final 15 minutes, because they smell like studio influence and possibly re-shoots. But Splice jumps the shark well before then, wrecking some fantastic film-making in one fell swoop. Rating: R

Picture the 1984 horror classic A Nightmare on Elm Street. Now picture that film if it was produced by bombastic Michael Bay, director of Pearl Harbor and the Transformers films. Now picture all of the worst possible outcomes of that marriage.

You don't have to. You could just plunk down your hard-earned cash – better yet, don't – for this lame remake.

Not that I can stop you from seeing it. No number of bad reviews (and this will be just one of many) would have kept me away. Curiosity alone demanded I see the new Elm Street, so when a critic buddy asked if I'd like to tag along to a screening, I did.

I mean, it couldn't be awful, right? It's a darker take on a character that had fallen into parody. Its screenplay was co-written by Wesley Strick, who has worked with Martin Scorsese (1991's Cape Fear). And supernatural killer Freddy Krueger is played by Jackie Earle Haley, an Oscar-nominated actor who was so creepy as Rorschach in Watchmen. How bad could it be?

Really bad, it turns out. Astonishingly, amazingly, how-could-you- possibly-screw-this-up-any-worse bad.

Samuel Bayer, a longtime music video director making his feature-film debut, accomplished his stated goal of draining away all the cheeky fun of the Freddy films. Unfortunately, he also drained away all the scares. What's left is a dreary, poorly-lit slog with uninteresting characters, wooden acting and a complete lack of tension, suspense or energy.

We could spend all day talking about the problems, but two big ones sink this new Nightmare all on their own.

The first is the new Freddy – he's not scary at all. (Robert Englund's original Freddy at least was creepy for a couple of films before falling into camp.) Haley's tiny frame makes Freddy look puny and his voice sounds like an even-more-ridiculous take on the raspy Christian Bale "Batman" voice.

Haley's not helped by the terrible new Freddy makeup, which presumably is supposed to look like a more "realistic" burn victim, but it robs him of any expression. Freddy's not scary; worse, he's not even interesting.

You'd expect the new Nightmare to provide some creative new "kills," but that's the second huge problem. There are only a handful of kills throughout, and the better ones are taken directly from the 1984 original. In fact, fans of the original will note several virtually- identical scenes, all of them done on a higher budget but without a whit of artistry.

Special note has to be made of the acting, which (with a couple of exceptions) is dreadful. I'll blame Bayer, because a few of these folks have been decent in other things, but they're laughable here. (I'm pretty sure Thomas Dekker was attempting to portray Casey Affleck if Casey Affleck had suddenly completely forgotten how to act. And he's one of the better ones.)

Of all the leads, only Kyle Gallner manages to bring some desperately- needed personality and humor to the proceedings. Gallner single-handedly makes the final act interesting, since you'll have wanted every other character dead from the opening minutes.

But he can't overcome Bayer's clueless direction, which telegraphs every shock and dream sequence from a mile away. One of the most effective elements of an Elm Street film is the subtle slide back and forth from the real world to the dream world. Bayer doesn't get this at all. Every dream sequence is clearly defined, completely destroying any suspense.

The film spends two-thirds of its running time having its leads uncover Freddy's "story," which is ridiculous because it's a story everyone already knows. It momentarily plays with a slight twist on the original plot – a second of creativity, emerging like a flower through a crack in the sidewalk – then immediately chucks it.

Don't get me wrong: I love horror films. I don't even ask too much of them. I only ask that they be either A) scary or B) fun. If they can be both, that's awesome.

But with none of A and far too little of B, the new Elm Street barely rises above an F.