In Brief

OVER THE HEDGEPG, 84 minutesPity the children. From the awful “Chicken Little” to the boring “Hoot,” the quality of recent kids’ films has been at an all-time low and the ads for Dreamworks’s “Over the Hedge” make it look as much fun as being kicked in the teeth. But, as a kids’ film once taught me, you can’t judge a book by its cover and “Over the Hedge” is much, much better than you’ve heard.RJ (Bruce Willis) is a raccoon with one week to replace the junk food stash of a bad news bear named Vincent (Nick Nolte) or he’ll be eaten. He’s doomed to failure unless he can con some saps into doing the leg work for him. He finds said saps emerging from hibernation in a tiny patch of woods isolated in the middle of a planned suburban community. Led by the turtle Verne (Gary Shandling), the crew includes a pair of possums (William Shatner and Avril Lavigne) and a hyperactive squirrel named Hammy (Steve Carell – the best thing in the film). They’re stocking up on nuts and berries when RJ gets them hooked on addictive junk food and before you can say “EZ Cheez,” they’re breaking into homes and stealing all the snacks they can find.Dreamworks made its fortune on the two “Shrek” movies, but “Over the Hedge” is a big improvement. The gross-out quota is lower and the humor now comes from the characters rather than from endless stream of pop culture references. And whereas Pixar now markets adult-approved message movies, Dreamworks is marketing rebellion. Parents will be mortified, and kids will be thrilled, to learn that this movie glorifies disgusting, empty caloried, non-nutritious, cheesepowder-coated, fattening junk food. In these nutritiously conservative times that’s the equivalent of wearing a leather jacket in the 1950s. Expect editorials.– Grady HendrixLEMMINGunrated, 129 minutesWhy anyone in a French movie still skips off to a “nice little place in the country” is beyond me. You only have to watch “Swimming Pool” and “High Tension” to know you’ll face psychosexual menace or outright slaughter. Worse, thanks to some bad trickster-narrative mojo afflicting the Gallic countryside, you’ll ultimately have no idea what the hell just happened.A cabin hideaway and an ungainly twist also figure in “Lemming,” the new bourgeois thriller by Dominik Moll (whose last film, “With a Friend Like Harry,” was about an ill-fated family on, you guessed it, vacation). The downfall of this Nice young couple might give the creeps to some, but it struck me as facile and (especially after one rodent-swarmed moment) a little silly.Call it a supernatural thriller of manners. “Lemming” introduces the threat to wellgroomed young engineer Alain (Laurent Lucas) and his wife Benedicte (Charlotte Gainsbourg) in the form of a disruption to a ceremonial occasion: having the boss, Mr. Pollock, and his wife over for dinner. The importunate Mrs. Pollock (Charlotte Rampling), who never takes off her shades, calls Mr. Pollock a whoremonger.Through awkward moments like these, and the miraculous appearance of a Scandinavian critter clogging a pipe, Mr. Moll builds up a sense of imbalance and dislocation. But the ensuing transition from this vaguely Chabrolian realm to a more unearthly one isn’t nearly as hypnotic as intended. Mr. Moll can wend from Mrs. Pollock’s attempted seduction of Alain to her having an offscreen “Exorcist” moment of mania and Alain hallucinating hundreds of lemmings, but it all feels like what it is: a dressed-up infidelity anxiety-ridden dream.“Lemming” opened last year’s Cannes Film Festival, no surprise given the ponderous titular metaphor and the arty reflexivity of Alain’s prize invention, a remote-control flying camera. Maybe Mr. Moll can try sci-fi next and leave the poor hand-wringing bourgeoisie alone.– Nicolas RapoldTHE KINGR, 105 minutes“The King” is the sort of drama that thinks you need to deploy a murderous cipher (played by hottie homunculus Gael Garcia Bernal) to talk about America, Christianity, and family. This indie prestige exercise about a bastard son’s homecoming bears the strategic hallmarks and hypocrisy of “American Beauty,” another know-it-all take by a British director with a screenplay and an aesthetic that allegedly tell us what we want to hear.Mr. Bernal plays Elvis (ding!), just out of the Navy and rearing to meet the father he never knew (William Hurt), now the pastor of a large congregation. Elvis sleeps with the pastor’s virginal daughter (Pell James), hangs around at his motel, stabs the pastor’s overprotective son (Paul Dano), hangs around some more, and finally, naturally, is adopted into the family.Mr. Bernal wears virtually the same expression through most of this, and at about the time of the stabbing you realize that he and the other actors have totally submitted to the director’s grand plan, which isn’t terribly interesting.In this Corpus Christi parable, James Marsh (“Wisconsin Death Trip”) pairs Southern sun and a nervously reframing camera with trite scenes and a brisk but entirely unwarranted confidence.The actors take a mostly diffident stance to the material and are mostly drowned out. The nasally mumbling Mr. Hurt needs more room to shuffle around than this. Mr. Dano, as his devout son, is convincing despite being stuck with a subplot making him advocate intelligent design in his school curriculum.The idea of an interloping visitor ultimately always recalls Pasolini’s “Teorema,” but in that classic, Terence Stamp at least had the decency to seduce all the members of the family.– N.R.MOUTH TO MOUTHunrated, 101 minutesThe plot of “Mouth to Mouth” is a scenario so neurotic and nightmarish that Woody Allen could have come up with it: A girl runs away to join a revolutionary group only to have her mother join – and become an even more committed member. When a drifting teenager named Sherry wanders into Berlin, she hooks up with a group bearing the unfortunate name of SPARK (Street People Armed with Radical Knowledge). Oblivious to the potential evil lurking within those capable of creating such a genuinely lousy name for themselves, Sherry is instead impressed by their utopian ideals and efforts to give runaways the foraging and first aid skills necessary to survive on the streets. The fact that they also party all night and are full of hunky, shirtless guys like the elder statesman, Harry, and the buff and beautiful Tiger doesn’t hurt either.Her mother, Rose, comes looking for her, reeking of regret for having been born too late for the sixties, and before you know it she’s joined SPARK, too, and may even be shacking up with Tiger. The group heads for an idyllic grape farm and slowly darkens into a cult, eschewing sex and alcohol, and engaging in public criticisms and group punishments.First time director Alison Murray has an explosively good story here and there are great scenes where the potential of the material is realized. But a soggy ending, an unwillingness to go for broke, and a deeply unfortunate tendency to put the actors in awful modern dance routines undermines the film. There are 60 great minutes in “Mouth to Mouth” and that’s too bad, because that leaves another 41 minutes to screw it up for everyone.– G.H.

In Brief

In Brief

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