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The Switch (2010)

When I heard about The Switch, a romantic comedy starring Jennifer Aniston as a Manhattan singleton who decides to get pregnant on her own, I confess that I had no desire to see it. I’d already been through Jennifer Lopez in The Back-Up Plan, and frankly, one screwball sperm-donor chick flick per year seemed more than enough. But The Switch is a pleasant surprise. It’s a by-the-numbers movie, but the dots that get connected feel new. Aniston, playing a forward-thinking…

Despicable Me (2010)

In the gadget-fond super-villain ’toon Despicable Me, he plays a meanie so mean that he’ll fashion balloon animals to console distraught children, only to pop them with a pin and walk off with maniacal satisfaction. What Carell brings to this cruel mastermind, actually the hero, is a mad Russian accent, lugubrious timing, and a general air of knowing exactly what he’s doing — one not wholly shared by the movie around him.
The picture is a first venture into 3D…

Knight and Day (2010)

Early reports about Knight And Day, a film that’s been in development hell for ages, suggested another flop after Lions for Lambs and Valkyrie. Cruise’s enduring success — and the intensity with which he has clung to it — has always been the most fascinating thing about him: what’s left when the halo slips?
Knight and Day, directed by James Mangold (Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma) from a script by Patrick O’Neill, goes out of its way to avoid…

Get Him to the Greek (2010)

Frantic. If there’s one word that defines Get Him To The Greek — its goals, characteristics, limitations — frantic is it. It’s a film that’s impatient to vault its lead star Russell Brand to the big time, to winch him from the petty, spiteful world of Daily Mail vendettas to the lustrous freedoms of Hollywood stardom. It’s a road movie that’s boosted, artificially stimulated even, by many scenes designed to make you feel you’re at a party gorging on the…

Sex and the City 2 (2010)

Carrie has finally snagged Big, but misses the excitement of evenings out on the town. Charlotte’s worried that husband Harry is smitten with the new and very bra-less nanny. Samantha’s overdoing pills and ointments to stave off the menopause. Miranda’s packed in her job because she can’t hear her own voice at work.
In short, they’re all getting older, and developing a new set of neuroses to cultivate between their continued shopping frenzies.
“Neuroses” is a heavy way of putting…

Shrek Forever After (2010)

The not-so-scary villain in “Shrek Forever After,” the fourth and supposed final installment of the “Shrek” franchise, is a sleazy mortgage lender for a bank that’s too big to fail. Well, not exactly.

He is actually Rumpelstiltskin (Walt Dohrn), the Brothers Grimm trickster, with spiky red hair and larcenous eyes rolled up to the sky, his thin lips twisted into a malevolent smirk. As the volatile king of the land of Far Far Away in an alternate universe, he dons…

Killers (2010)

In Killers, Spencer (Ashton Kutcher) is a gorgeous spy with a perfect body who hangs out with hot models and drives fancy cars when he’s not killing bad guys (shirtless!) but longs to give it all up because the bad guys aren’t always bad and suburbia and normalcy is starting to sound awfully good. Just as he’s coming to this conclusion, he meets Jen (Katherine Heigl), an awkward, neurotic, freshly dumped woman who’s on vacation in Nice with her parents;…

Date Night (2010)

Phil and Claire Foster (Steve Carell and Tina Fey) are a self-proclaimed boring couple from New Jersey. Work and parenting dominate every moment of their lives, leaving them in a comfortable but passionless rut. Not wanting to end up like their divorced friends, Phil and Claire opt to do something really special this time for their regular date night away from the kids: dinner at a posh Manhattan restaurant. But when it looks like they won’t land a table, Phil…

Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010)

The new family comedy Diary of a Wimpy Kid, based on the best-selling book series by Jeff Kinney, follows smart-alecky Greg Heffley (Zachary Gordon) as he begins his first year at middle school. Smaller than the other kids (but not the smallest, thankfully) and not yet smitten with the opposite sex, Greg sees this period as a silly but necessary rite of passage before he can get on with becoming the rich, famous, handsome and powerful man he believes he’ll…

Cop Out (2010)

An homage to the ’80s buddy-cop comedy, right down to the Harold Faltermeyer synth score, the extensively ad-libbed “Cop Out” doesn’t cop out on talking the talk, but it falls down on the job whenever it comes to walking the walk. Directed by — but, in a departure, not written by — Kevin Smith, this Bruce Willis-Tracy Morgan matchup definitely has its amusing moments, but ultimately all that improvised shtick gets mighty tired without any real break in the nonaction.…