LOVE SONGS
Unrated, 95 minutes

Do you want New Wave or do you want the truth? Christophe Honoré’s silly “Love Songs,” a French import from IFC Films, aims to play as an homage to the dandy days of Jean-Luc Godard’s “A Woman Is a Woman” and its ilk, with much ado about ménage-a-trois, generational angst, fleet-hearted gamines, and spontaneous outbursts of song (but, oddly, no dance!).

The ubiquitous Louis Garrel plays the usual Louis Garrel role, with its intimations of all those French movies (especially François Truffaut’s) in which the guy ends up sharing a bed with two women, and all three read from heady philosophical tracts. The ladies in question are Julie (Ludivine Sagnier) and Alice (Clotilde Hesme, Mr. Garrel’s cohort in his father’s better-by-light-years “Regular Lovers”), a blonde and a brunette, who themselves are sorting out their confusing relationship with each other.

Cute and coy to a fault, the film floats along with a tone weightless enough to sustain the sudden death of a principal character without triggering much off-screen emotion, merely propelling the saga into the next series of sexual adventures, in which boys who love girls who love girls come to love boys, too. Perhaps that development is enough of an update on the model to justify revisiting a mini-genre that already was ripe for spoofery in 1967 (when “A Woman Is a Woman” star Anna Karina reprised the routine in “Anna,” a gratuitous-but-giddy French television production in which Serge Gainsbourg and Jean-Claude Brialy competed for her affections). But probably not.

Gainsbourg, at least, knew how to give the vernacular a winning savoir-faire. This movie’s songs, by Alex Beaupain, often thrive on devil-may-care references to bodily secretions and excretions and, while not exactly Snoop Dogg, remain a far cry from Cole Porter. The term “piss-elegant” was never so apt.

– Steve Dollar

DRILLBIT TAYLOR
PG-13, 102 minutes

One would think that if Hollywood’s reigning king of comedy, Judd Apatow, were to turn Seth Rogan (half of the writing duo behind “Superbad”) and Kristofor Brown (Mr. Rogan’s fellow “Undeclared” writer’s-room vet) loose on an unproduced scenario written (under a pseudonym) by John Hughes, hilarity would ensue. Unfortunately, the result of this dream team’s efforts, “Drillbit Taylor,” which arrives in theaters Friday as a vehicle for Owen Wilson, falls way short of funny.

Directed with dreary inertia by “Mighty Ducks” scribe and frequent Adam Sandler collaborator Steven Brill, “Drillbit Taylor” belly flops so gracelessly at every turn that I suspect in Messrs. Rogan and Brown were required by contract to write the script in one night.

Mr. Wilson is woefully miscast in the title role as a traumatized, homeless army deserter who hires himself out under false pretenses as bodyguard to a trio of geeky high school freshmen (Nate Hartley as skinny Wade, Troy Gentile as unskinny Ryan, and David Dorfman as the human equivalent of nails-on-a-blackboard Emmit) suffering under a relentless bully named Filkins (Alex Frost). Drillbit’s either in it for the money, to make amends, or to keep company with randy English teacher Lisa (Mr. Apatow’s spouse and stock-company regular Leslie Mann), depending on where you are in a lifeless and clichéd narrative that might as well be the same 10-minute short repeated 11 times.

“Drillbit Taylor” isn’t just bereft of laughs — it’s also 100% free of the trenchant, underlying observations about male friendship and the war of the sexes that will make “Superbad,” “Knocked Up,” and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” pop-culture time capsules in the decades to come. Heartless yet mawkishly sentimental, familiarly over-plotted yet utterly unbelievable, “Drillbit Taylor” is a throwback to Mr. Hughes’s sloppy 1990s work and the scores of other limp and mean-spirited mainstream American comedies that Mr. Apatow’s braintrust has, until now, mercifully helped to erase from memory.

– Bruce Bennett

THE HAMMER
R, 89 minutes

Adam Carolla will never be mistaken for a subtle comedian. He co-created “The Man Show,” which closed each episode with footage of chesty women jumping on trampolines. He doled out snide sex advice for a decade on the syndicated radio program “Loveline.” He is friends with Jimmy Kimmel.

Now comes “The Hammer,” a new film that was written, produced, and stars Mr. Carolla. Predictably, it’s about as refined as, well, a hammer. Of course, subtly isn’t everything, especially in comedy. But “The Hammer” opens with its hero brewing coffee through a feminine hygiene product and proceeds downward from there.

The plot is loosely based on Mr. Carolla’s own life story. Jerry Ferro, a 40-year-old construction worker, is nursing a pile of regrets from his disappointing amateur boxing career. When a grizzly coach (Tom Quinn) offers him a chance to compete again, Jerry begins a quest for Olympic Gold. He’s joined on his journey by his Nicaragua-born pal Oswaldo (frequent Carolla sidekick Oswaldo Castillo), who provides moral support, and by sparring partner Robert Brown (Harold House Moore), who provides glowering stares and blows to the head.

Mr. Carolla’s delivery is typically flat, which worked fine when he was playing the role of nonplussed “Loveline” co-host. But it becomes dull when he responds with a nasal monotone to both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat in “The Hammer.” And far too often, director Charles Herman-Wurmfeld seems to want to keep every improvised line that pops into Mr. Carolla’s head, cutting back over and over as his lead actor joylessly riffs on, say, the lameness of the La Brea Tar Pits. Other things that are hilarious in the movie’s judgment: the fact that Nicaraguans eat cactuses, the concept of the Gay Games, and the notion that blacks are superior athletes. At least the mastodons at the tar pits don’t know they’re being insulted.

Mr. Carolla’s love interest, a sensible public defender, is played by the likeable Heather Juergensen. The actress co-wrote and starred in the delightful feminist comedy “Kissing Jessica Stein” (2001), which was helmed by Mr. Wurmfield. It’s a bit sad to see Ms. Juergensen in “The Hammer,” which wraps up its plot in a neat bow that utterly ignores a plausible alternative conclusion — equally tidy — that would have left her character better than she started off. The really annoying thing is that Mr. Carolla probably never thought of the alternative.

– Ruth Graham