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LETTERS TO JULIET This immediately tips its hand that it's going to be a formulaic romantic comedy straight off the assembly line — nothing more, nothing less. Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) heads to Italy for a "pre-wedding" honeymoon, a chance to spend some quality time with her fiancé (Gael Garcia Bernal) before they get married. But it's apparent from the start that he's 100% prime jerk, begging the question, "Why is someone like Sophie engaged to him in the first place?" Answer: Because giving Sophie a decent boyfriend, someone worth keeping, might cause audience members to feel uncomfortable when she later starts dallying with another man. It's better to saddle her with an obvious loser so viewers don't have to clutter their minds with moral quandaries. The rest of the picture is just as bland, with Sophie unearthing a 50-year-old love letter and attempting to unite the British woman (Vanessa Redgrave) who wrote it with her Italian suitor (Franco Nero). Naturally, Claire has a grandson Sophie's age, and just as naturally, this lad (dull-as-dirt Christopher Egan) and Claire bicker incessantly before falling in love. Predictable? Let's just say this is the sort of movie where if a character is shown climbing up some shrubbery, you just know a branch will break and send him tumbling earthward. **
THE OTHER GUYS It makes sense for a film like, say, An Inconvenient Truth or Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room to end with a plea to our sense of activism or with a mountain of hard data about the evils of unchecked capitalism. But what to make of The Other Guys, featuring closing credits that are packed with statistics concerning government bailouts and the glaring discrepancy between the average salaries of CEOs and the rest of us poor clods? No matter: The film's ample laughs had already dried up long before this ode to Michael Moore muckraking. That's a shame, because for its first hour, The Other Guys is a very funny movie, as two desk cops, meek Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell) and hotheaded Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg), are provided a chance to step up once New York's finest (Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson) are put out of commission. Ferrell holds his excesses in check more than usual (though still not enough to my liking), and he and Wahlberg prove to be an amusing team — whether scripted or improvised, their banter is often top-grade. But humor largely vacates the premises during the second half, as the emphasis is placed more on autopilot action sequences and, worse, a topical, torn-from-the-headlines scam that's an ill — and dull — fit for this sort of raucous outing. **1/2
PREDATORS It may not have seemed like much at the time, but in retrospect, 1987's Predator now stands as one of the better pictures on Arnold Schwarzenegger's surprisingly underwhelming resume, behind only the first two Terminator films and Total Recall. Predators, on the other hand, won't seem like the cream of anybody's crop; instead, time will dismiss it as yet one more belated sequel hoping to turn name recognition into cash value. In this flabby outing, the hapless earthlings are all imported to a distant planet for the amusement of the alien hunters. You know priorities are out of whack when the most interesting performer, Machete's Danny Trejo, checks out waaay too early while the worst actor in the bunch, the perpetually hammy Walton Goggins, is allowed to hang around. As for the action, it's dutifully handled, but there isn't much here that quickens the pulse or jolts the imagination. In fact, if there's a central failing in Predators, it's that true innovation is in desperately short supply. The film comes armed with memorable monsters and a workable premise, but by offering little more than one-dimensional variations of the original's entertaining characters as well as basically duplicating its lush forest setting, this qualifies as little more than a bungle in the jungle. **
PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME To say that this isn't as bad as other films adapted from video games is a bit like saying that day-old roadkill doesn't smell as bad as week-old roadkill: It isn't praise so much as it's looking for the silver lining in an otherwise unfortunate situation. Certainly, Prince of Persia is far better than such wretched works as Super Mario Bros. and Resident Evil, but it's still little more than an average fantasy flick. The plot concerns the efforts of a buff prince (a game but miscast Jake Gyllenhaal) to aid a princess (dull Gemma Arterton) in protecting a mystical dagger from falling into the wrong hands. The blade, you see, has the power to turn back time, although the specifics of this procedure seem to change at the writers' whims as well as sometimes allow the holder to end up at the most convenient points in time imaginable. As expected, the film is packed with CGI effects, some more believable than others. The only original characters are the ostriches, and it must be noted that they deliver the best performances. The film takes chances with the fates of some of the characters but then serves up an ending that leaves the viewer feeling absolutely cheated. I won't reveal how this plays out, but let's just say that this device should be retired right alongside the hoary "It's all a dream." **
