THE BOURNE IDENTITY With real-life best buddy Ben Affleck off trying to save the world in the current The Sum of All Fears, it's only fitting that Matt Damon would be involved in his own spy game in The Bourne Identity. In an attempt to make the dog-eared espionage genre more palatable to younger audiences, Universal Pictures elected to go with a young director (Doug Liman of Swingers fame) and a youthful star (Damon's Jason Bourne is at least a decade younger than the book's Bourne, who was previously played at a more appropriate age by Richard Chamberlain in a 1988 TV-movie adaptation). Damon's a better actor than Affleck, yet it was easier to accept Affleck as a greenhorn CIA analyst learning the ropes than it is to believe Damon as a seasoned CIA assassin. Nevertheless, Damon brings the proper conviction to his role as an amnesiac who slowly uncovers clues to his identity even as he's being pursued across Europe by various killers working for a slippery government suit (Chris Cooper). With so-so action sequences that often elicit as many giggles as gasps and an impressive supporting cast that largely goes to waste (Clive Owen, the exciting new talent from Croupier and Gosford Park, is criminally underused as one of Bourne's pursuers), The Bourne Identity stands no chance of ranking with the classic espionage epics of yesteryear. At the same time, Damon enjoys a strong rapport with co-star Franka Potente (the Run Lola Run actress plays an innocent passerby who ends up aiding Bourne in his quest), and the constant locale switches (a prerequisite in all thrillers of this nature) help ensure that the movie's breathless pace never flags. 1/2

THE DANGEROUS LIVES OF ALTAR BOYS Can this be? Director Peter Care has previously spent his career helming TV commercials and music videos, but rather than taking the usual route and making his feature film debut with, say, Armageddon 2, he has elected to oversee this soft-spoken adaptation of the late Chris Fuhrman's coming-of-age novel. Rough in spots and overreaching at times (especially during its finale), Altar Boys nevertheless does an exquisite job at capturing that period during adolescence when important issues no longer fit into black or white compartments but instead spill over onto murky, even hazardous, terrain. Kieran Culkin and newcomer Emile Hirsch (making a strong debut) portray Tim and Francis, two Catholic high school boys who spend most of their time alternating between drawing superhero comic strips and tormenting their teacher, the strict Sister Assumpta (Jodie Foster). But matters take a sharp turn once Francis falls for a classmate (Jena Malone) harboring a dark secret and Tim begins orchestrating a series of increasingly risky pranks. The film's gamble to occasionally break up the live-action scenes with animated sequences featuring the kids' superhero creations pays off (Spawn creator Todd McFarlane handles toon duties), as does its sensitive handling of some delicate subject matter.

DIVINE SECRETS OF THE YA-YA SISTERHOOD Because it largely takes place in Louisiana (though filming was done in Wilmington), it's appropriate to tag this adaptation of two novels by Rebecca Wells as a big pot of gumbo, with varied ingredients all swimming together in a sea of saucy girl power. Yet while many of these ingredients may stick to the heart, they don't necessarily stick to the head: Divine Secrets is sloppy in a number of fundamental ways, with the chronology making little sense (the story whiplashes between at least three different time periods), entire themes getting discarded within a matter of seconds, and important characters given too little screen time. And yet, for all its random chaos, this works because of the power of its convictions -- and its cast. Ellen Burstyn, Maggie Smith, Fionnula Flanagan and Shirley Knight play the title lifelong friends in their advanced years, with three of them coming to the rescue to prevent the fourth (Burstyn) from severing all ties with her angry young daughter (Sandra Bullock), who doesn't know the dark secrets that have haunted her mother over the years (Ashley Judd plays the young Burstyn in the flashback sequences). The tough-love approach taken by writer-director Callie Khouri (still best known for her Oscar-winning script for Thelma & Louise) makes this a curious yet ultimately satisfying melodrama.

LILO & STITCH Give the Disney studio credit for fashioning an animated feature that steps outside the boundaries of their traditional fare, then take it away for coming up with a maddening work as lumpy and unwieldy as this one. Lilo and Stitch certainly aren't your everyday Disney heroes like Aladdin or Simba; instead, Lilo is a troubled Hawaiian girl who at the outset looks like she could use a good child psychiatrist, while Stitch is an outer space visitor whose only instinct is to destroy everything around him. Naturally, these two bond, but their mutual journey of self-discovery is disrupted by various elements, including other aliens hell-bent on taking Stitch back to his home planet. The old-fashioned animation is fine, but the screenplay is remarkably rough, with little regard for smooth transitions or believable character arcs. Stitch's antics eventually grow tiresome -- it's more fun to watch the old Warner Bros. toon gang get wild and crazy than this Gremlins toss-off -- and the film's message about family unity (the oft-repeated motto is "No one gets left behind," which kept flashing me back to Black Hawk Down's tagline) is clumsily presented. On the plus side, the soundtrack at least provides us with Elvis Presley classics rather than dreadful new Oscar-bait tunes by Phil Collins or Sting.

MEN IN BLACK II It's almost a given that most sequels aren't going to retain the freshness of their predecessors, but this follow-up to the 1997 smash disappoints deeper than most simply because of the high quality of the original picture. Most of its spark comes courtesy of Will Smith, who's all easygoing swagger in his reprisal of his role as Agent J, forced to bring his mentor and former partner, Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones), back into the fold to help defeat an evil alien who's disguised as a lingerie model (dull Lara Flynn Boyle) and her moronic sidekick (tiresome Johnny Knoxville). What made the first picture so special was the interplay between Smith and Jones, but the latter is largely neutralized here, not turning up until well into the film and then forced to tread water as his brainwashed character must wait to regain his dominating demeanor. Makeup artist Rick Baker's various alien creations are for the most part merely brought out for display rather than integrated into the story, and the presence of Linda Fiorentino (excellent as the kinky morgue attendant in the '97 original) is sorely missed (Rosario Dawson as Smith's love interest is a poor substitute). There are a few laughs and clever sight gags scattered about, but not enough to make this anything more than another big-budget bust.

MINORITY REPORT Isn't there something a tad obscene about the fact that, while most moviemakers are lucky to helm even one motion picture that will be remembered through the ages, here we have a director who creates enduring gems about as frequently as the LA Lakers win championships? Steven Spielberg's Minority Report, a dazzling adaptation of the 1956 short story by Philip K. Dick, may not quite belong on the same exalted level as past Spielberg classics, but it's so markedly superior to most everything else that's been in theaters over the past several months, it instantly reduces the competition to also-ran status. Set in Washington, DC in the year 2054, the complex script by Scott Frank and Jon Cohen centers on the Pre-Crime Unit, whose law enforcement officers, guided by the visions of three "Pre-Cogs" who have the ability to see murders before they even occur, are able to arrest the killers before they've actually killed anybody. The unit head (Tom Cruise) believes it's a perfect system -- or at least until he's pegged as a murderer, destined to assassinate a man he hasn't even met. Minority Report succeeds as a sci-fi yarn, a film noir drama and an adventure romp, and in a post-9/11 environment in which polls show many Americans are willing to sacrifice some of their personal freedoms for the sake of feeling safer, it gains additional relevance by presenting a future world that shows the frightening price of this way of thinking. Working as both a popcorn picture and a message movie, Minority Report shows once again that perhaps no other director since Alfred Hitchcock has been able to so masterfully (and so consistently) blend art and entertainment into one irresistible package as Steven Spielberg.

MR. DEEDS The latest Adam Sandler vehicle is a remake of 1936's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, but watching it, I was less reminded of that Frank Capra heartwarmer than I was of AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap." After all, here's a studio quickie so threadbare in every department, one can only assume the entire budget went toward its star's exorbitant salary. And here's a comedy so low-brow, it removes much of the wit and pointed social commentary of the original and replaces it with gags involving wayward tennis balls and pizzas made out of Oreo cookies. And yet, while Mr. Deeds rates merely as a mediocrity, that's certainly a step up from Sandler's past two pictures, the I-wouldn't-wish-them-upon-my-worst-enemy pair of Big Daddy and Little Nicky. Sandler's in easy-going Wedding Singer mode here, playing a scruffy doofus who inherits $40 billion yet retains his small-town appeal as he goes up against unfeeling New York sharks. Winona Ryder is far too talented to be slumming in the slender role of the hard-hearted journalist who falls for Deeds (given her current off-screen travails and her recent choice of parts, can this career be saved?), and the movie features a plethora of pointless cameos by the likes of John McEnroe and Al Sharpton. Yet if this disposable tissue has one wild card, it's John Turturro, who's simply fab as a Spanish butler with a foot fetish; you may find yourself wishing for a sequel if only to watch him reprise his role.

MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING A repertory theater would have an ideal marquee match-up pairing this with the recent arthouse hit Monsoon Wedding. Yet while Greek isn't nearly as accomplished as Monsoon, it's still a gratifying romantic comedy that gently tweaks stereotypes even as its characters wallow in them. Adapted by Nia Vardalos from her own one-woman show, this centers on the plight of Toula Portokalos (Vardalos), a 30-year-old single woman who's constantly being pressured by her family, most notably the Greek-and-proud-of-it patriarch (Michael Constantine), to get married to a nice Greek boy and start producing plenty of babies. Toula finally meets the man of her dreams, but much to the dismay of everyone around her, he most decidedly isn't Greek -- not with the name Ian Miller (smoothly played by John Corbett). The usual culture clashes come to the forefront in this disarming tale that occasionally overplays the eccentricities (Dad goes around spraying Windex on everything, believing there's nothing it can't cure) but on balance remains lovably recognizable in its presentation of the strengths required -- and struggles revealed -- in the battle for family unity and cultural preservation. As Toula, the frump who blossoms into a flower, Vardalos delivers a lovely performance.

THE POWERPUFF GIRLS MOVIE Alas, this job doesn't pay enough to get me to sit through Hey, Arnold! The Movie or Recess: School's Out, but as far as big-screen adaptations of crudely drawn TV toons are concerned, the appeal of this wildly popular Cartoon Network series gave it a better fighting chance than most. It certainly turns out to be a worthy effort, even if (as with many spin-offs of boob tube fodder) it doesn't quite sustain its feature-film length. This picture relates in detail the origins of the title trio, showing how Professor Utonium accidentally created three super-tykes -- the smart Blossom, the sweet Bubbles and the surly Buttercup -- and how they had to learn to use their powers to protect the city of Townsville from the nefarious machinations of the evil monkey Mojo Jojo. Employing the same vibrant color scheme and short-hand animation style that work so well for the TV show, this 80-minute effort swoops along when focusing on character dynamics yet drags during the woefully overlong action sequences. Still, it's hard to resist a movie in which the main headline on the daily paper reads, "Freaky Bug-Eyed Weirdo Girls Broke Everything." 1/2

SCOOBY-DOO To simply blast the film version of Scooby-Doo because it's cheesy and redundant would be like criticizing a red pepper because it's hot and spicy. For better or worse, a movie that purports to recapture the spirit of the original cartoon would by necessity have to include all manner of elements sure to draw groans and cringes, and on that count, Scooby-Doo works. Yet while that may hardly sound like a ringing endorsement, it's the film's very awareness of its own kitsch quotient that allows it to qualify as a likable lark. Indeed, there's a certain intelligence at work in the way the movie subtly connects to the cartoon show in which four meddling kids -- Fred, Daphne, Velma and Shaggy -- and their dog spend each episode solving a spooky mystery. Director Raja Gosnell (Big Momma's House) possesses the right sensibility to bring to life the slapdash drive of the cartoon, while the script includes funny toss-offs regarding everything from Velma's sweater to Shaggy's rumored pothead status to that infernal pup Scrappy-Doo. Three spectacularly bad actors -- Freddie Prinze Jr., Sarah Michelle Gellar and Matthew Lillard -- are respectively cast as Fred, Daphne and Shaggy (Velma, long presented as one of the homeliest characters in comicdom, is played by the cute-as-a-button Linda Cardellini), yet while Prinze and Gellar never come to life, Lillard steals the show with his dead-on Shaggy impersonation. Still, a tone that was tolerable in 30-minute chunks on TV grows oppressive within the framework of an 80-minute movie, and the filmmakers' efforts to update the action for modern sensibilities (for starters, there's an interminable sequence in which Shaggy and Scooby engage in a flatulence face-off) will invariably make the movie seem even more dated than the animated series. 1/2

WINDTALKERS On the heels of the art-house effort Enigma comes another movie about the wartime practice of speaking in codes. Yet where that previous picture smoothly integrated its World War II history into an absorbing "cloak and dagger" yarn, this latest endeavor brings up a fascinating footnote in US history then largely ignores it in favor of spinning an overly familiar action pic that won't impress anyone who's caught, say, The Sands of Iwo Jima or The Naked and the Dead on late-night Turner. Nicolas Cage, who hasn't delivered a particularly memorable performance since his Oscar-winning turn in Leaving Las Vegas seven years ago, is all brooding boredom as Joe Enders, a psychologically tortured Marine (all the men under his command were killed during a recent Pacific battle) whose latest mission pairs him with Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach), a Navajo whose language has been adopted by the US military as the foundation for a code that the Japanese have proven unable to crack. Enders' mission is to protect the code, not the man, meaning that Yahzee's life is expendable should it appear that he's about to fall into enemy hands. There's a terrific movie buried somewhere in Windtalkers, but director John Woo (Mission: Impossible 2) and his scripters downplay it in favor of spitting out yet another stale "war is hell" bombardment of the senses, with redundant action sequences and character types that have largely worn out their welcome (most notably the "woman left behind," played by Frances O'Connor in an embarrassingly unwieldy role).