Carell, The Rock Dish on Liplock

Animated feature is strong, if generic, hyper: critics

(NEWSER) - Critics agree that French studio Illumination Entertainment has made a strong first entry into feature animation with Despicable Me, featuring Steve Carrell voicing a cartoon baddy who adopts three little girls. But it has the misfortune to premiere within weeks of Pixar's beloved Toy Story 3.

• Despicable Me "cannot be faulted for lack of trying," AO Scott writes in the New York Times . "If anything, it tries much too hard, stuffing great gobs of second-rate action, secondhand humor and warmed-over sentiment into every nook and cranny of its relentlessly busy 3-D frames. It tries so hard to be likable that you may hate yourself for hating it."

Fey-Carell vehicle wins down-to-the-wire weekend battle

(NEWSER) - Steve Carell and Tina Fey held off a challenge from a horde of 3D Greek gods as Date Night recorded a narrow preliminary victory over Clash of the Titans at the weekend box office, Variety reports. The mistaken-identity caper raked in $27.1 million to $26.9 million for the action fantasy flick. In third place, the animated How to Train Your Dragon ($25.4 million) turned in another solid performance. More»

The onetime Rock is well-cast

(NEWSER) - Kids’ adventure flick Race to Witch Mountain—the story of a pair of alien teens who meet Dwayne (don't call him the Rock) Johnson and try to save Earth—is good fun, critics say. Here's a rundown:

• "Thoroughly modern in every way, Race to Witch Mountain bears little resemblance to its predecessor, 1975's Escape to Witch Mountain. So anybody who loved the original as a kid would be well served to check their expectations at the door," says Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News.

With 'Evan Almighty,' Universal skews pious in comedy division

(NEWSER) - God is returning to the big screen this Friday in Universal's Evan Almighty, a big-budget comedy aimed at the churchgoing. The LA TImes recalls that Hollywood used to balk at religiously-inflected films, but saw the light when Mel Gibson's spiritual blockbuster The Passion of the Christ raked in $370M in 2004. More»

But Nicolas Cage seems to get it: critics

(NEWSER) - Critics agree: Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is ridiculous. But they're divided over whether the silliness of the sequel, once again starring Nicolas Cage as the devilish superhero, is funny or just bad.

• In the Merced Sun-Star , Roger Moore calls the movie "a profoundly silly mash-up of comic book and quasi-religious 'prophecy' about a motorcyclist who sold his soul to the devil." It beats the original: "This time around, Cage and everybody else on board are in on the joke," and that makes it "almost a great bad movie."