The premise behind Peter Care’s coming-of-age tale is good enough you wish a better filmmaker had gotten a hold of it. The fantasies of the film’s core group of four Catholic school teenagers are played out in animated comic book-style sequences, which, for example, incorporate an authoritarian nun (Jodie Foster) as a motorcycle-riding arch-villain called Pegleg. But Care’s film heads in so many directions that the fantasy sequences have nothing to match up to, and its attempts to instill seriousness by inserting soap opera twists fall painfully flat (although Jena Malone is good enough to make you believe the drivel coming out of her mouth). Apart from the fact that the fantasy sequences initially involve the quest to unite a sword and a pearl, the scenes, designed by the execrable Todd MacFarlane (Spawn), go for facile charms instead of mythic resonance. Oh, what Buñuel could have done with the idea. Instead, Lives flops in different directions without choosing a course, and winds up spinning its wheels. --Sam Adams (Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

Where Tony Curtis, Dustin Hoffman, Robin Williams and Martin Lawrence have gone before, so now goes Miguel A. Núñez Jr. That is, into the frightening world of makeup, high heels, curlers, bras and self-loving suitors. In first-time director Jesse Vaughan's comedy, Nuñez is a star basketballer kicked out of the league for his stubbornly egocentric behavior (namely, stripping at a game and tossing his jock on a fan's hotdog). Abandoned by his fans, friends, no-longer-patient agent (Kevin Pollak) and expensively dressed wife (Lil’ Kim), he decides to do better, that is, join the women's league. Hired by the Charlotte Banshees (whose screaming girl logo is not a little obnoxious), he falls for their star player, Vivica A. Fox (who plainly can do anything, as she makes even this sorry role look good). Playing good-sorta-lesbian girlfriend to Fox, resisting oh-no-is-he-gay-ish advances by Tommy Davidson (as a gold-toothed rapper named Puff Smokey Smoke), impressing his sensible aunt (Jenifer Lewis) with his newfound sincerity and learning to be a dependable and generous teammate, Nuñez becomes a better man. Next. --Cindy Fuchs (AMC Andorra; AMC Orleans; UA Riverview; UA 69th St.)

Lilo & Stitch

The latest Disney animated offering puts the fun back in dysfunctional. First there is Stitch, who looks like a shorter, four-armed version of Gizmo from Gremlins and has a temperament that makes a rabid pitbull seem cute. Stitch was created by an evil scientist with four eyes who for some reason has a Russian accent (voiced by David Ogden Stiers). Then there is Lilo, a 5-year-old rugrat who packs a mean Hawaiian punch. In one of her first scenes, Lilo is straddled atop a dance school classmate, pummeling her with her right fist. Lilo -- whose parents died in a car crash -- lives with her 19-year-old sister Nani in a filth-strewn oceanside villa and is visited by a gargantuan social worker named Cobra Bubbles. Bubbles threatens to take custody of Lilo yet incomprehensibly a) gives the kids three days in which to get their house in order before removing said brat and b) is decked out in a black suit even though he is in Hawaii. Eventually Lilo meets Stitch, intergalactic hijinx ensue and everyone lives happily ever after. --Howard Altman (AMC Andorra; AMC Orleans; Baederwood; UA Grant; UA Riverview; UA 69th St.)