CASE 39 Case 39 is one of those unwanted Hollywood bastards, a production that was completed years ago and has even been released in other territories but is only now making its stateside debut. Just how old is this picture? Let's just say that when filming began, David O. Selznick was still combing the country for the perfect Scarlett O'Hara. OK, so I exaggerate by a decade or seven, but the point is that for this to have had a shot at succeeding, it probably needed to predate Orphan, The Omen and perhaps even The Bad Seed in the "evil that kids do" mini-genre. As it stands, its thudding familiarity is only compounded by its narratively limp and technically humdrum presentation. Renee Zellweger stars as a social worker who saves 10-year-old Lilith (Jodelle Ferland) from execution by her seemingly religious-wacko parents, only to eventually figure out that the adults were only trying to save the world from their demonic daughter. Along the way, cop Ian McShane demonstrates remarkably poor aim when it comes to firearms, child psychiatrist Bradley Cooper discovers hornets crawling out of every bodily orifice, and Zellweger manages to make a horror film that isn't even one-tenth as terrifying as her romantic comedy New In Town. *1/2

CONVICTION This relates the true-life tale of Betty Anne Waters (Hilary Swank), who spends close to two decades trying to prove the innocence of her brother Kenny (Sam Rockwell). Charged with murder, Kenny's serving a life sentence thanks in no small part to the efforts of a humorless police officer (Melissa Leo) and the testimonies of his wife (Clea DuVall) and girlfriend (Juliette Lewis). But Betty Anne is convinced that he's not guilty, so this woman of limited education concentrates on the single goal of becoming a lawyer so she can work to free her sibling. The cast members, especially Swank and Rockwell, do their best to sell what on paper is a worthy story, but their game efforts come up short against the thudding treatment by director Tony Goldwyn and scripter Pamela Gray. The two filmmakers are so myopic in their focus on their heroine's pitbull approach to judiciary matters that they fail to provide much in the way of context, with important background details either painted in broad strokes or ignored altogether. Worse, their limitations result in a picture that operates at the same speed throughout, with little variation in tone. Ultimately, the finale will have audiences on their feet, but for the wrong reason — not as part of a standing ovation but in an effort to beat a hasty retreat to the exit. **

DESPICABLE ME When James Stewart offers to lasso the moon for Donna Reed in Frank Capra's classic It's a Wonderful Life, it's purely a romantic gesture. When Gru (Steve Carell), the star of the 3-D opus Despicable Me, plots to shrink the moon to a size small enough so that he can make off with it, it's clearly to show that he's the baddest dude around. After all, if a supervillain isn't feared and respected, then what good is he? Despicable Me is a witty, congenial lark that obviously won't have the staying power of Toy Story 3 but serves quite nicely as a pleasing placeholder in the cinematic summer of 2010. Sweet-natured yet also avoiding the cloying sentiment that tarnishes any great number of toon tales, this finds Gru enlisting the aid of three oblivious orphan girls to help him one-up his biggest competitor in the supervillain sweepstakes, a self-satisfied nebbish (Jason Segel) who calls himself Vector. Naturally, Gru knows nothing about children, and just as naturally, the girls will teach him about family and responsibility. But that comes later. First, the movie has to let loose with a volley of inspired sight gags, a smattering of adult-oriented humor (note the homage to The Godfather), and some screen-pushing innovations to justify the 3-D expense. ***

DEVIL Agatha Christie meets M. Night Shyamalan in Devil, and damn if the mystery author's inspiration doesn't put the hack auteur's career back on the right path. Make no mistake: There's nothing special about Devil, but after a string of notorious flops, it's surprising to see Shyamalan involved with a film that's at the very least watchable. Still, any praise should be followed by an asterisk, since his contributions are relegated to co-producing the picture and coming up with the storyline (John Erick Dowdle and Brian Nelson get credit for the direction and screenplay, respectively). But regardless of how the muted kudos is parceled out, the end result is a moderately entertaining tale that borrows Christie's Ten Little Indians template of putting a group of strangers together and having them get picked off one by one. Here, we find five people trapped together on a stuck elevator, with the added element of having the killer among the quintet actually being the devil in disguise. The supernatural angle occasionally lapses into silliness (the pontificating by a superstitious security guard grows overbearing), but Dowdle comes up with some interesting visuals, and the atmospheric score by Fernando Velazquez (The Orphanage) is, uh, heaven-sent. **1/2

EASY A Heathers in the 1980s. Clueless in the '90s. Mean Girls in the noughts. It seems like every decade insists on producing a razor-sharp high school satire centered around the travails of a likable female protagonist. Easy A appears to be this new decade's first entry in the sweepstakes, and while it can't quite compare to its enduring predecessors, it will do just fine until something more permanent comes along. Emma Stone gives a bright performance as Olive, a virginal wallflower who erroneously ends up being tagged as the biggest slut at her high school. Soon, Olive is likening her situation to Hester Prynne's in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and rather than fight the rumors, she starts wearing tight-fitting clothes accentuated by a red letter "A." The Hawthorne comparisons are often clumsy, and Olive's friends and tormentors are a rather nondescript lot. But there's still much to enjoy: Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as the Coolest Parents Ever; Thomas Haden Church wearing sensitivity well as a congenial teacher; Lisa Kudrow in a welcome appearance as a shallow guidance counselor; and no shortage of clever retorts penned by debuting scripter Bert V. Royal. Easy A may be about the kids, but aside from Stone's contribution, it mostly benefits from all the adult supervision. **1/2

EAT PRAY LOVE Not haven't read Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir, it's entirely possible that, in comparison, this film version seems about as complicated as an episode of Dora the Explorer. But on its own, it's a richly rewarding experience, following one woman's journey both across the globe and within herself. Julia Roberts delivers her strongest performance since Erin Brockovich a full decade ago — as Liz Gilbert, she brings to the forefront the doubts, frustrations and longings inherent in a woman who realizes she's not content with her marriage or her surroundings and elects to set out on new adventures. Liz finds both spiritual and physical nourishment during her travels to Italy, India and Bali, but her lessons aren't conveyed to us in the usual cookie-cutter platitudes; instead, the dialogue is frequently lyrical and lovely, never cheapening the thoughts or feelings being revealed. In a summer that was dominated (as always) by male-skewering titles, Eat Pray Love is certain to get dismissed in some quarters as Sex and the City 2's sister in failed counter programming. But with its themes of self-discovery and its impressive roster of award-caliber actors (Javier Bardem, Richard Jenkins, Viola Davis), it's actually an intelligent movie for discerning grownups who wouldn't be caught dead seeing Grown Ups. ***1/2

THE EXPENDABLES The Truth In Advertising award for the summer of 2010 goes to The Expendables, which employs (however unintentionally) its own title to push the fact that this is a disposable action film that will dissipate from memory almost immediately. Its primary — make that only — selling point is its large cast of macho action stars ... but the truth only goes as far as the marquee. As the leader of a group of mercenaries hired to take down a South American dictator, Sylvester Stallone is almost always front and center, but those expecting him to share significant screen time with fellow Big Boys Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger will be disappointed that the other two are only in one scene. And really, is it that big a deal to have a cast that includes Steve Austin, Randy Couture and Terry Crews? These guys would line up for a straight-to-DVD American Pie sequel if asked. Nobody goes to this type of movie for the acting, but given the lack of excitement in most of the action scenes (more mano-a-mano skirmishes would have better served the film rather than the ceaseless gunfire and explosions), there's little else to discuss. Faring best are Jason Statham and Mickey Rourke; delivering the worst performance is Dolph Lundgren, who apparently hasn't learned a single thing after 25 years in the business. **

HEREAFTER Throughout his career, Clint Eastwood has offered increasingly mature treatises on the subject of death, specifically how it relates to the act of one person taking another's life. Hereafter finds the filmmaker coming at us from a quieter place, examining the notion of death away from the sudden impact of a .357 Magnum or other forms of violent, purposeful retribution. The script by Peter Morgan (The Queen) follows three separate stories that eventually dovetail in one satisfying finale: A bona fide psychic (Matt Damon) copes with loneliness; a French journalist (Cecile de France) tries to function after a near-death experience; and twin boys (Frankie McLaren and George McLaren) in London deal with a tragic incident. This haunting picture unfolds with the patience of a good book, a factor likely to turn off more antsy audience members. Yet more discerning viewers who don't flinch at its meditative rhythms will find much to appreciate, starting with the understated manner in which Eastwood and Morgan present their material. Steadfastly refusing to engage in dogmatic pursuits, the pair are content to offer a universally accessible look at the manner in which people become so preoccupied with the notion of death that they are unable or unwilling to live for themselves. ***

INCEPTION Christopher Nolan's first film since the eye-popping success of The Dark Knight is a moviegoing marvel with the ability to get cineastes intoxicated on the pure pleasure and the pure possibility of the medium of film. Offering any sort of synopsis is a risky business, since this is one of those pretzel-shaped pictures that rewards the unaware. Suffice it to say that it's set in what appears to be the near future, when it will be possible to enter other people's dreams. Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is the best in the business of creeping into targets' minds and extracting valuable secrets for which others will pay a hefty price. But his latest assignment doesn't go exactly as planned. Tackling such prominent themes as (to borrow from dream expert Salvador Dali) the persistence of memory, Nolan has created a head-scratching one-of-a-kind that's both knotty enough and ambiguous enough to lead to conflicting opinions down the years. Nolan also slyly borrows from the classics of yesteryear, with particularly obvious nods to 2001: A Space Odyssey, Citizen Kane and select Hitchcock titles. It all adds up to a superb motion picture, one with the ability to infiltrate both our dream state and our waking life. ****

THE LAST EXORCISM The prospect of journeying to Hell and back seemed less daunting than sitting through another horror yarn made in the faux-documentary style of The Blair Witch Project, but this one proves to be a pleasant surprise. Director Daniel Stamm uses the fake cinema verite style to milk a lot of tension out of this feature in which the disillusioned Reverend Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian) takes along a documentary crew to perform an exorcism in some remote Louisiana hellhole, to prove that exorcisms are bogus and merely prey upon the superstitions of rubes. Cotton thinks he's found a perfect showcase as devout farmer Louis Sweetzer (Louis Herthum) insists that his sweet teenage daughter Nell (Ashley Bell) is demonically possessed. After some initial scoffing, Cotton realizes that there is indeed something wrong with the girl, but is it merely psychological trauma or is Satan really hanging around? Propelled by unexceptionally fine performances from Fabian and Bell, this creepy yarn builds to a powerhouse ending that would be even stronger were it not so choppy and truncated. In fact, too many unanswered questions prevent this movie from soaring to even greater heights. Still, as a deftly executed piece of unsettling cinema, it's only fair to give Daniel Stamm — and the devil — their due. ***

MY SOUL TO TAKE The best thing about this dud is that it may force folks to revisit Wes Craven's past works and finally realize that he's always been nothing more than a hack in the horror field, a Uwe Boll with a better sense of where to place the camera. (Forget Scream and Freddy Krueger; Red Eye and The Hills Have Eyes, neither great but both certainly watchable, represent his apex of aptitude.) In this head-smackingly stupid film, seven children are born on the same night that a serial killer known as the Ripper is brought down. Sixteen years later, the kids are being picked off one by one, begging the question: Is the Ripper still out there somewhere, or did his soul enter one of the babies on that fateful night long ago? To his credit, Craven keeps his rampant misogyny in check — in most of his films, it's the victimized women who receive the fetishistic close-ups and elongated death scenes, but here, each slaying (male and female) is as dully and incompetently presented as the next. His screenplay is so haphazard that one wonders if he was writing pages minutes before each day's shooting commenced; additionally, there are no horror set-pieces worth mentioning, and Craven's stock high school characters would have made John Hughes cringe. It all adds up to a soul-crushing waste of time. *

NANNY MCPHEE RETURNS Considering that 2005's Nanny McPhee hasn't exactly established itself on this side of the Atlantic as a family classic, there's nothing about the title Nanny McPhee Returns to suggest that this sequel will fare any better. Perhaps Universal Pictures would have been wise to keep the film's original British moniker, Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, in the hopes that a few ill-informed folks stateside would mistake it for a softcore romp and hand over their hard-earned dollars. Certainly, this children's tale could use more bang for the filmgoer's buck, relating an occasionally clever but often daft yarn about the efforts of the title character (again played by Emma Thompson) to help a struggling mother (Maggie Gyllenhaal, affecting a fine English accent) with her brood while her husband's off fighting in World War II. The children are all well-cast, but this overdoses on the saccharine: Watching CGI critters do supposedly cute things (a bird constantly belching, pigs engaging in synchronized swimming) isn't exactly my cup of tea — English Breakfast, English Afternoon, or otherwise. **

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

RED One of the better action spectacles of recent vintage, Red is a smart, slick endeavor that gets added mileage from its cast of seasoned screen vets. How seasoned? The arithmetic mean of the five top-billed stars' ages is 59; throw 93-year-old supporting player Ernest Borgnine into the equation, and the calculator starts to overheat. Based on the DC comic book, this plays like a wink to Danny Glover's classic line from the Lethal Weapon series: "I'm too old for this shit." In Red, these aging ex-agents (played by Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren) are definitely not too old for the challenges placed in front of them, all of which stem from the fact that they've been marked for termination for shady reasons. Frank Moses (Willis) is one of these former CIA hotshots trying to save his own skin, a task made more difficult by the fact that he also has to protect the innocent woman (a winsome Mary-Louise Parker) inadvertently mixed up in these dangerous dealings. By employing imagination in all facets of the production, Red manages to avoid being lumped together with another recent title with AARP credentials: the generic, geriatric The Expendables. Besides, in a celebrity smackdown between Sylvester Stallone and Helen Mirren, my money's on the great Dame. ***

SALT A neo-Cold War thriller would seem like just the ticket for cineastes who fondly recall Iron Curtain-courting capers on the order of The Spy Who Came In from the Cold and select James Bond tales. And the title even suggests a nod to that chunk of 20th century history involving U.S.-U.S.S.R. tensions, as SALT was the name given to discussions centering on reducing both nations' arsenals of nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, the majority of this film fails to honor either its cinematic predecessors or its real-life milieu: Extracting the occasional misplaced titter from viewers, it stirs memories less of John le Carre and more of Yakov Smirnoff. Angelina Jolie headlines as Evelyn Salt, a CIA agent accused of being a Russian spy; as she follows a trail of clues in an effort to clear her name, it begins to appear as if maybe even she's not completely certain about her own identity. Jolie is practically the whole show; the rest is negligible, from the repetitive (if well-staged) chase sequences to the absurd plotting, which — thanks to obvious casting in a key role — culminates in a final twist that can be spotted even before moviegoers manage to crack the top layer of their buttered popcorn. There's already talk of a sequel to Salt, but it's going to have to provide a lot more flavor than this bland offering. **

SECRETARIAT Until the Sports Illustrated subscription runs out at the Walt Disney Studios offices, I expect audiences will continue to be privy to cookie-cutter yarns centered around notable achievements in the sports world. Secretariat is the latest from the studio stable, and it relates the truly remarkable story of the magnificent racehorse that set records while winning the Triple Crown in 1973 (and simultaneously appeared on the covers of Time, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated while doing so). The races are exciting, but to get to these sequences, we're forced to wade through a lot of vanilla material about the difficulties faced by Secretariat's determined owner (typically reliable Diane Lane) and flamboyant trainer (John Malkovich, taking neither his role nor the movie seriously). Despite these tepidly staged interludes, the overall picture isn't quite as bland as, say, The Rookie or Miracle. Still, the staidness made me long for the studio's earlier sports flick Alive — at least that one had rugby players munching down on each other. **1/2

THE SOCIAL NETWORK Like the screwball comedies and film noir staples of yore, The Social Network exhibits an extraordinary gift for gab. Words fly like machine gun strafes, and arguments generally end with the more verbally adroit speaker standing over the other person like a wave that's managed to tumble a surfer. If screenwriting was considered a sport, Aaron Sorkin's script wouldn't just be competing for movie awards but for Olympic gold as well. One of the best films of the year, this is the fascinating story of how Harvard nerd Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) created Facebook and in the process became the world's youngest billionaire. Yet this isn't an inspiring movie about an underdog beating the odds as much as it's a prickly mishmash of how one person's insecurities led to material gains even as his personality remained stuck in an arrogant, off-putting zone. Director David Fincher keeps the proceedings moving at a rapid clip, a task made easier by Sorkin's breezy, biting dialogue and great performances by the entire cast. But a quick pace isn't the same as a hurried one, and The Social Network takes its time in showing how one loner was able to unite 500 million friends, even as he remained perpetually hidden on the other side of the cold, glaring screen. ***1/2

THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE The penchant for creating faux-excitement simply by making everything blaring and calamitous is a specialty of both producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Jon Turteltaub, who previously gave us two daft National Treasure movies. This is basically more of the same, although unlike that twofer, this at least has the decency to clock in at under two hours. Nicolas Cage is miscast as Balthazar Blake, one of Merlin's original disciples(!) who turns up in modern-day NYC searching for a novice wizard. He finds him in geeky college kid Dave Stutler (Jay Baruchel), and they team up to battle another Merlin disciple: treacherous Maxim Horvarth (Alfred Molina). Inspired in part by the delightful Mickey Mouse sequence from Disney's 1940 Fantasia (there's even a scene in which Dave battles dancing mops), The Sorcerer's Apprentice is strictly standard action-fantasy fare, not too bad as these Bruckheimer boom boxes go. There's some clever CGI trickery mixed in with the more lackluster effects, Baruchel is appealing in his limited way, and the jackhammer pace insures that there's no time to get bored. But is any of it memorable? Hardly. I remember the contours of my theater seat better than I recall the particulars of this cinematic sleight of hand. **

STONE Has Robert De Niro been replaced by a pod person straight out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Once a national treasure, he hasn't delivered a truly noteworthy performance since Clinton was in the Oval Office. There's an obvious difference between elegant underplaying and merely going through the motions, and while, say, Michael Caine still excels at the former, De Niro has sadly become a master of the latter. Here, he plays Jack Mabry, a parole officer assigned to a tough guy nicknamed Stone (Edward Norton). After eight years in prison, Stone wants out, and he involves his sultry wife (Milla Jovovich) in his dealings with Jack; that of course translates into her carrying on an affair with the unhappily married lawman. Both Jack and Stone are seeking some form of spiritual salvation, and it's this added layer of complexity that paradoxically elevates the movie even as it's dooming it. Scripter Angus MacLachlan clearly has a lot on his mind — in addition to the characters' soul-searching, he also hopes to show how the respectable parole officer is as morally bankrupt as the incarcerated criminal — but everything about the film remains doggedly murky and unconvincing. A failed attempt at something meaningful, Stone sinks under the weight of its own poorly realized ambitions. *1/2

THE SWITCH Deciding that Jeffrey Eugenides' short story would be perfect for expanding into a wacky comedy, this film's creators ran with the premise of Jennifer Aniston as a single woman who badly wants a baby. Aniston's Kassie opts to go the route of a sperm donor, despite the objections of her whiny best friend Wally (Jason Bateman). The donor is a hunky athlete (Patrick Wilson), but through circumstances too mind-numbingly stupid to detail here, a drunken Wally spills the filled baby-batter cup and replaces the lost content with his own seed. Will the dumb-as-a-brick Kassie ever learn that Wally made a switch? And did none of the filmmakers — or the audience members at my screening — realize that Wally's action of implanting his unwanted sperm into an unwilling woman qualifies as a form of rape? If the film ever addressed this issue beyond some ever-so-modest poo-pooing by Wally's confidant (Jeff Goldblum, the lone bright spot), it might warrant some respect, but everything is played at an inane sitcom level, and we're supposed to cheer Wally on as he tries to bag his woman (shouldn't he be going to jail instead?). Strip away the ramifications of the plot and The Switch is merely one more failed Aniston rom-com bomb. But add it back in and we're talking about a fairly revolting piece of work. *

THE TOWN While The Town doesn't quite match the giddy pleasures of Gone Baby Gone (which, after all, was second only to No Country for Old Men on my 10 Best list for '07), it aptly illustrates that writer-director Ben Affleck won't have to contend with either the label of "beginner's luck" or "sophomore jinx." A crackling drama with a fine sense of both spacial relationships (thank Affleck the director) and character relationships (thank Affleck the writer), this adaptation of Chuck Hogan's novel Prince of Thieves (co-scripted by Peter Craig and Aaron Stockard) is set in a section of Boston known for producing more bank robbers than anywhere else in the country. One of these heist-happy fellows is Doug MacRay (Affleck), who leads his accomplices on a caper that results in the masked bandits briefly taking a hostage, bank employee Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall). Electing to keep tabs on Claire to insure she doesn't get too chummy with the FBI, Doug strikes up a friendship with the unsuspecting woman, a camaraderie that quickly turns into love. A genre flick like this can't avoid all the clichés, but it manages to sidestep some of the biggest ones — at any rate, it's the little moments that make this stand out. The film can quickly shift from funny to frightening, and it plays out in ways not entirely expected. ***1/2

WAITING FOR "SUPERMAN" Davis Guggenheim, who won an Academy Award for An Inconvenient Truth, here presents another inconvenient truth: The United States public school system just isn't working. This comes as a shock to absolutely no one, but because it's a universal issue that affects legions of folks across the country — particularly the children — it's the sort of film that begs to be seen. This documentary, heavy on the outrage and frustration and light on the inspiration and hope, often focuses on a hero (education reformer Geoffrey Canada), an anti-hero (controversial former chancellor Michelle Rhee) and a villain (the self-serving American Federation of Teachers), but the heart of the film of course rests with its youngest subjects. Central are five students (in LA, NYC and DC) whose best chance at having a bright future lies in whether they'll be randomly selected in their respective locales' education lotteries to be transferred from their low-performing neighborhood schools to successful charter schools. While this climactic section of the picture proves to be the most schematic (whose name or number will pop up next?), it's impossible not to be left either elated or heartbroken, depending on which way the (lottery) ball bounces. ***

WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS Michael Douglas won the Best Actor Oscar for his sly turn as uber-capitalist Gordon Gekko in 1987's Wall Street, but the majority of the film's running time was commandeered by Charlie Sheen as his gullible protégé Bud Fox. That timeshare worked for that picture, but with the 23-years-after-the-fact Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, it's no secret that we're all here for Douglas. But aside from a quick glimpse of him in the prologue, he doesn't return for a full half-hour, meaning that it's Shia LaBeouf calling the shots. He's passable as a financial whiz kid who's in love with Gordon's daughter (Carey Mulligan) but finds himself turning to her estranged dad to help take down a corporate nemesis (Josh Brolin). But it's Douglas' continuing commitment to his iconic role that sporadically gooses the proceedings, at least until a mawkish conclusion that resembles nothing so much as a Wall Street — and Wall Street — crash. **1/2

YOU AGAIN There's a lot about You Again that's instantly disposable, from its generic title to its bland leading lady to a storyline that's as weightless as a sponge cake. But leave it to the old pros in the cast to prevent this from completely sinking into the abyss of immediately forgotten comedies. Kristen Bell, only fitfully succeeding in making an impression, plays Marni, who's shocked to learn that her brother (Jimmy Wolk) is marrying Joanna (Odette Yustman), the girl who made her life an endless hell back in high school. Everyone in Marni's family thinks Joanna is the greatest, so Marni makes it her mission to expose her as malicious and deceitful. For her part, Marni's mom (Jamie Lee Curtis) is aghast when she discovers that Joanna's aunt is a former school chum (Sigourney Weaver) with whom she had a falling-out decades ago on prom night. The Marni-Joanna clashes offer little that's new, so the fun is in watching those exquisite older actresses, Curtis and Weaver, square off against each other. Throw in the always-welcome Victor Garber as Curtis' husband, an amusing Kristin Chenoweth as a spirited dance instructor, and a cameo by a former Dallas star that almost made me fall out of my seat, and you may want to give You Again a chance. But only if Mean Girls isn't playing on cable. **1/2