Cineman

Friday - July 04, 2008
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AT OAHU MOVIE THEATERS THIS WEEK

WALL-E

The talented men and machines at Pixar have outdone themselves with this mesmerizing tale of two robots in love. Any movie eclectic enough to salute both Hello Dolly! and 2001: A Space Odyssey while conveying a vital green message and imagining a dystopian sci-fi future in which Fred Willard is the corporate overseer warrants repeated viewings and deserves all the superlatives it gets. (G)

WANTED

An office drone (James McAvoy) is recruited by an ancient fraternity of assassins. Ignore how the plot, derived from a comic book, turns out to be conventional. These killers can bend bullets, the action sequences are amazing, and humor leavens the desensitizing violence. With Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie. (R)

Get Smart

Maxwell Smart (Steve Carell) is a nerdy analyst promoted to field operative by Chief of CONTROL (Alan Arkin) and paired with svelte Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway) to stop KAOS from stockpiling nuclear warheads. Despite the incorporation of trademark gadgets and gags, it comes “that” close to being a runof-the-mill spy comedy. (PG-13)

Kung Fu Panda

Instead of taking over his father’s noodle shop, martial arts fanbear Po becomes a corpulent karate kid and fulfills his destiny in a cartoon that demonstrates the power of a healthy appetite, layers of protective fat and pratfalls. Voices of Dustin Hoffman, Ian McShane, Angelina Jolie and Jack Black. (PG)

The Incredible Hulk

While trying to elude capture by General Ross (William Hurt) and protect his beloved (Liv Tyler), the ferocious alter ego of scientist Bruce Banner (Ed Norton) smashes everything in his path, including a rival beast. Mushy romance notwithstanding, this is the kind of straightforward flick that 10-year-old boys will go ape over. (PG-13)

The Love Guru

Mike Myers plays Pitka, an Indian self-help mystic hired to counsel the best player on the Toronto Maple Leafs. A freewheeling randomness suggests the movie might eventually rise above diarrhea jokes, feeble wordplay and pop culture references. No such luck. With Jessica Alba, Justin Timberlake and Ben Kingsley. (PG-13)

Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Indy shouldn’t be put out to pasture just yet, but he’s not in Triple Crown shape either. Long, digitized action sequences and new sidekick Shia LaBeouf can’t invigorate a creaky plot featuring Indy’s close encounters with space aliens, an atom bomb, a cardboard Russian villainess (Cate Blanchett) and Karen Allen. (PG-13)

The Happening

M. Night Shyamalan’s slight thriller about a teacher (Mark Wahlberg) and his wife (Zooey Deschanel) who flee Philadelphia when a mysterious toxin strikes the Northeast, causing people to harm themselves. Unnerving at best, the picture begins at a hysterical point and plunges headlong into triteness. (R)