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21 Loosely adapted from Ben Mezrich's fact-based bestseller Bringing Down the House, 21 is an entertaining and fast-paced film that occasionally manages to make the act of counting cards seem as exciting as this past winter's Super Bowl – and as perilous as climbing Mount Everest with both eyes closed. Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe) plays Ben Campbell, a brilliant MIT student who needs some serious dough in order to be able to afford a stint at Harvard. He catches the eye of Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey), a shrewd professor whose extracurricular activity is training a hand-picked group of students in the art of counting cards at the blackjack table. Micky welcomes Ben to a gang that already includes two guys (Aaron Yoo and Jacob Pitts) and two girls (Kate Bosworth and Liza Lapira), and together they set off on weekly excursions to Las Vegas to clean up. Yet although they believe they're operating under the wire, their winning ways – not to mention squabbles from within – catch the eye of an old-school casino enforcer (Laurence Fishburne) who casually takes cheaters to a back room and beats them to a pulp. 21 works best during its first act, when the fascinating con game is explained to Ben (and to us), and during its second act, when Ben feels his life spiraling out of control. Scripters Peter Steinfeld and Allan Loeb only lose their grip during the third act, when an important plot point too lumpy to swallow leads to a series of increasingly unbelievable developments. Yet even during this convoluted section, director Robert Luketic and a perfectly cast Spacey insure that this stylish film maintains a winning hand. ***
UNDER THE SAME MOON The story of a boy struggling mightily to be reunited with his mother can be approached in any number of ways. This film's title suggests perhaps a whiff of magical surrealism; the sidebar topic (illegal immigration) hints at far more somber material. The end result falls somewhere in between, and somehow it works – at least until all those pesky coincidences get in the way. Director Patricia Riggen's movie centers on 9-year-old Carlitos (adorable Adrian Alonso), a Mexican lad who's been living with his grandmother for the past four years while his mother Rosario (Kate del Castillo) has been working in Los Angeles. Once Granny dies, Carlitos elects to hightail it to the States with a wad of cash in his pocket. Crossing the border proves to be a tricky situation, but his real problems begin when he inconveniently (but oh-so-conveniently for the sake of the narrative) loses his poorly secured dough and must make it to L.A. relying only on his wits and the occasional kindness of strangers. Did I say occasional? Except for a druggie who attempts to sell the kid to a sicko sex lord, Carlitos encounters nothing but kindly folks – even a grouchy laborer (Eugenio Derbez) with no love for children eventually takes the lad under his wing. It's a warmhearted story with some nice humorous touches – best of all, the inclusion of the song "Superman es ilegal," which persuasively makes the case that the foreign-born Man of Steel is no more American than the Mexicans trying to sneak into the United States – yet all of the film's cumulative power repeatedly gets let out via lazy plot contrivances shamelessly included by scripter Ligiah Villalobos as a simplistic way to move the story from Point A to B and beyond. **1/2
OPENS FRIDAY, APRIL 25:
BABY MAMA: Tina Fey, Amy Poehler.
DECEPTION: Hugh Jackman, Ewan McGregor.
HAROLD AND KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY: Kal Penn, John Cho.
