Step Brothers Is Harmless Fun

Vampire's Assistant has an identity crisis

(NEWSER) - Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant isn't particularly freaky, and it sure could use some assistance. Some critics' takes:

• Peter Travers doesn't deign to explain the film's loose ends. "All you need to know is that the movie is a setup for sequels that I hope never come," he writes in Rolling Stone. It also "commits the cardinal sin for a vampire movie: It’s bloodless."

Will Ferrell not enough to save picture

(NEWSER) - Land of the Lost remakes the 1970s TV series, sucking Will Ferrell into a parallel universe that mushes past, present, and future together. Keep this flick out of your own future, critics say:

• “The only marginally interesting, if unsurprising, thing about the pricey movie spinoff is that a lot of money has been spent on yet another cultural throwaway,” writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. “Not that I didn’t sometimes laugh anyway.”

Despite being a little uneven, Judd Apatow parody provides lots of laughs

(NEWSER) - Judd Apatow's Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story "is less thoughtful satire and ... more the distant cousin of Airplane!," writes Brian Orndorf of OhMyNews.com. Starring John C. Reilly as a blues prodigy who ultimately experiences success, failure, and redemption, it plays like "an extended riff on the likes of severely mediocre Oscar-bait" such as Walk the Line and Ray, Orndorf says. More»

Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones return for alien flick

(NEWSER) - Sure, no one was that desperate for a Men in Black 3—but it's actually a pretty good summer movie. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are back defending the planet from aliens, and this time, Josh Brolin's along for the ride as a young Jones.

• The movie "turns out to be so much fun," writes AO Scott in the New York Times . While it "carefully fulfills its blockbuster imperatives—with chases and explosions and elaborately contrived plot twists—it swerves into some marvelously silly, unexpectedly witty, and genuinely fresh territory."

Johnny Depp stars in Tim Burton film

(NEWSER) - Critics aren't thrilled with Tim Burton's latest offering, inspired by the late-1960s cult TV show of the same name and starring Johnny Depp as an 18th-century vampire who is buried alive, only to be accidentally dug up in 1972. The film isn't sure what it wants to be:

• Dark Shadows "tries to serve too many masters," writes Joe Neumaier in the New York Daily News . "Initially it’s an epic valentine to the show. Then it’s a vamp-out-of-water story. Soon it’s a gung-ho comedy. Finally it's a monster flick." Still, it "unearths enough fun."