Also this issue:

Jack's Back
The caustic About Schmidt showcases Jack Nicholson’s greatest performance in decades.
-Sam Adams

Straight to the Points
The Two Towers cuts to the chase.
-Sam Adams

Gunga Din
Gangs of New York is an epic so noisy you can't hear a thing.
-Sam Adams

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
Life, art and fantasy get jumbled up in Adaptation.
-Cindy Fuchs

Screen Picks
-Sam Adams

Continuing

Repertory Film

Showtimes

December 19-25, 2002

movie shorts

New

EVELYN

I haven't checked to see if there's a Touched by an Angel Christmas special this year. If you have, and there isn't, by all means go see this movie instead. Fresh off his fourth Bondstravaganza, Pierce Brosnan has a license to swill as Desmond Doyle, an alcoholic, unemployed Dublin housepainter whose three kids are made wards of the state after his wife abandons the family. The oldest child, Evelyn, is sent to live with mean old nuns, and even after Doyle gets work and gives up the drink (you know he's sober when he starts shaving), a technicality of Irish law requiring the approval of both parents for release keeps Evelyn at the convent. Urged on by wholesome bartender Julianna Margulies and wholesome lawyers Stephen Rea, Aidan Quinn and Alan Bates, Doyle takes his case to the media and to the Supreme Court. Ripped from 1954's headlines, Bruce Beresford's not-without-my-daughter paean to bland faith is cockle-warming enough to drive Miss Daisy to distraction. I don't know if it's more disturbing that the contents of a child's prayer were crucial to a major court case in a modern democratic nation, or that they're crucial to the plot of a movie that some people might actually pay to see. All but the most lachrymose should skip Evelyn; do yourself a favor and cry another day.--Ryan Godfrey (Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

TWO WEEKS NOTICE

Any copy editor will tell you that there should be an apostrophe in the title of this Hugh Grant/Sandra Bullock romcom, and anyone who sees the film will tell you that there should be some justification for this snoozer's existence included with the price of admission. While I was sleeping, Bullock's schlumpy, idealistic community lawyer Lucy Kelson accepted a job with Grant's callow, womanizing multimillionaire developer George Wade in a bid to save the Coney Island community center from the wrecking ball. Over a few montage-y months, George W. grows utterly dependent on Lucy for her legal knowledge, shirt-choosing acumen and bimbo wrangling, so when she decides to leave Wade Corp. for something more liberal, fake movie love has just two weeks to work its impractical magic. Grant and Bullock have about 15 romantic comedies under their collective belt, so their collaboration here is both inevitable and inevitably ordinary. Writer and first-time director Marc Lawrence's script is so square, bland and twist-free, he may well have submitted it on ceramic floor tile. Hugh, Sandy, love ya, but it's time to think about giving your own notice to the genre. Hope you got plenty of severance pay. (In the U.K., I believe they call it redundancy.)--R.G. (AMC Andorra; AMC Orleans; Bala; Bridge; Ritz 16; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Riverview)

THE WILD THORNBERRYS MOVIE

If you don't know the Nickelodeon TV series, the film fills in details: Following a fluky run-in with a shaman, 12-year-old Eliza (voiced by Lacey Chabert) can talk to animals, and uses her gift to save creatures she meets while traveling across Africa with her parents (Tim Curry and Jodi Carlisle), prissy older sister Debbie (Danielle Harris), spastic baby brother Donnie (Flea), and on occasion, her spirited self-piloting grandmother (Lynn Redgrave). When poachers (Rupert Everett and Marisa Tomei) kidnap a cheetah cub, Eliza promises the mother (Alfre Woodard) that she'll get him back. This adventure is complicated by the fact that she has to sneak off from an oppressive British boarding school (where she is sent to keep her from tracking the cheetah), but a promise is a promise, so Eliza and her best friend Darwin the chimp (Tom Kane) make the journey over sea and land. The energetically cute animation and blandly cute soundtrack (including songs by Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel) don't cover over the basic, disquieting distinction drawn by Kate Boutilier's script -- the English-speaking, white humans are set apart from the "Africans," be they human or animal. On its surface, Eliza defeating the poachers and saving a lot of elephants from their own herdishness is a pleasant fantasy for (presumably young) viewers identifying with her, but also vaguely Disney-like, i.e., imperialistic. --Cindy Fuchs (AMC Andorra; AMC Orleans; Bala; Cinemagic; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Riverview)