The term “family film” is often used in a derogatory fashion, usually when referencing some new movie involving kids, animals, or a decidedly inoffensive element (alien, magical creature, etc.) that is singing, dancing, or both. Normally, these kinds of movies are dismissed by “serious” film buffs due to their lack of any complex characters or story, and a general cheeriness that tends to alienate those looking for dark, brooding characters and ultra-violence. So, in an effort to combine all of these elements, six years ago George Miller made a movie about America’s current obsession with penguins, in an all-singing, all-dancing animated/live-action tribute to pop music called Happy Feet. Now, just because a movie features cute animals voiced by famous people who sing all of today’s top hits, doesn’t mean it can’t be an offensively terrible piece of shit, and, somehow, that’s what Happy Feet was. It was a bafflingly jumbled music video with awkwardly blended in live action, and some of the most heavy-handed environmental and anti-religious overtones I’ve ever seen in any film, let alone a kid’s movie about dancing penguins. So, walking into the sequel to this awful excuse for family entertainment, one wouldn’t expect to be impressed, but, surprisingly, Happy Feet 2, while not exactly a great movie, is far, far better than its predecessor.

Picking up several years after the first movie, Happy Feet 2 follows the dancing phenomenon, Mumble, as he attempts to help his young son, Erik, gain some self confidence and find his true talent, all while their colony is trapped at the bottom of an ice canyon after a glacial shift. While the environmental message is just as much a part of the story here as it was in the original, it’s not nearly as forced, and leaves more of a meaningful impact than the originals’ “be nice to penguins” message. However, the best part of Happy Feet 2 (and what desperately screams for it’s own spin-off) is the inclusion of Will and Bill the krill, respectively voiced by Brad Pitt and Matt Damon. These two miniscule characters spend the movie epitomizing the “everyone, no matter how small, can make a difference” message, as two of the smallest creatures in the ocean, attempting to break away from their swarm, and discover their place in the universe. It’s this yearning for a more complete life, and a completely sincere motivation that makes these two so much more interesting and entertaining than the rest of the movies other stories and characters. Also, it doesn’t hurt that they’re basically gay, vegan shrimp who strive to “chew on something with a face”, and end up stealing the show.

Unfortunately, these things don’t save the movie from falling into the same awful, cringe-inducing habits of its predecessor. Almost every scene involving the colony is still filled with a bunch of annoyingly specific songs with their words changed to reflect the adorable protagonists of the movie, mashed together so as to pack as many “I know this!” moments into each minute. And for every action set piece that provides any kind of genuine tension or excitement, there’s another scene that provides nothing but free-styling penguins and fart jokes.

It’s a shame that despite being such a step up from the original, Happy Feet 2 isn’t more consistently good, and often falls prey to its own misguided sense of what it has to be to please its target audience. Will and Bill the krill alone are two of the most interesting, developed, and hilarious animated characters from a movie this year, yet their story is far overshadowed by a series of events that are far less engaging and far more annoying. While dancing, or as Will puts it, “a momentary release from (the) existential fear of life”, may keep these arctic creatures happy, it won’t do much for anyone in the audience over the age of ten.

5 out of 10.

Alexander Payne is no stranger to grief. As with his titular character’s journey after the death of his wife in About Schmidt, all of his movies feature protagonists who face the possibility that their lives are not the lives they’d like to be living, often following them as they valiantly struggle against the current situation their decisions have pulled them towards. In his latest film, The Descendants, Payne continues to chronicle the pain of a man caught in an unfortunate situation, this time focusing on Matt King (George Clooney), a father who finds out about his wife’s infidelity just as she is about to be taken off of life support after a tragic boating accident. And while The Descendants is, aside from a few calculated moments of levity, as depressing as it sounds, unfortunately, it’s not nearly as meaningful or emotional as it desperately attempts to be.

Seemingly structured to squeeze every possible ounce of emotion from any given situation, The Descendants mainly follows Matt as he makes the rounds with his two daughters, telling all of the family’s friends and relatives about the oncoming death of his wife, while also seeking out the man she was going to leave him for. However, despite any sympathy or compassion we’re supposed to have for the family, there’s never a moment that feels genuine or earned throughout the whole movie. Every turn feels like it was designed to show us one more Oscar-worthy, grief stricken performance, instead of using the time to build characters or relationships to a point that would have anybody care about these people enough to get the desired reaction, but without having to resort to soap-opera twists and melodramatic tactics. And what characters we do get, aside from Matt and his daughter, Alexandra (Shailene Woodley), seem to all serve the sole purpose of just showing up at times to show their grief, share some information, or add a few laughs to an otherwise dour moment. Alexandra’s boyfriend, Sid (Nick Krause), for example, is the typical dumb, surfer archetype, often adding his trademark, politically incorrect and ill-informed opinions to various situations, except for the one moment where Matt need him to share a little insight, and drop some completely unpredictable perspective at the most convenient of times. Matt’s other daughter, ten-year-old Scottie (Amara Miller), also suffers from this lack of characterization, seeming only to exist here to follow her father and sister around, curse when it’s necessary to liven up a scene, and add cringe-worthy exclamations to the ends of exchanges, such as the always welcome, “You got served!”, after her father is put in his place by another character. Oh, and also so she could be saved for last in line in the order of people being told that her mother is dying, so as to pack the biggest emotional punch.

It’s this seemingly inauthentic attempt to push the most basic and blatant examples of extreme emotion at any given moment that hurts The Descendants the most. From an over-expositional and bland voiceover that plagues the beginning of the movie, keeping it from unfolding in any kind of interesting or challenging way, to its eager-to-please, easy characterizations, which pretty much lump everyone into one of three categories (grieving, too strong to grieve, or too dumb to grieve), The Descendants offers nothing special or distinctive from the usual awards-season tripe.

Aside from these complaints, however, The Descendants is not without its merits, as minor as they may be. It does have a pretty noble message about legacy and personal history, which stems from a side story involving the struggle between Matt and his family as they decide whether or not to sell a large plot of land that’s been in the family for several generations, as well as one of George Clooney’s more subdued, yet heartfelt performances. Unfortunately, this doesn’t save it from its numerous flaws and insincere emotional string pulling, leaving The Descendants nothing more than a poorly executed exercise in attempting to make an audience feel something, and failing.

5 out of 10.

It’s a fact of this world that we live in that for any good that there might be, it cannot exist without some bad to go along with it. Naturally, this can be applied to the world of movies, as, while every year sees the release of many good movies, there are conversely many, many bad ones released as well. However, bad movies are not all made equally. Sure, there’s your typical boring, bland, ineffective and unentertaining bad movies, and then there are the cult classics, the poorly made and terribly acted, laughably bad movies.

Then, there’s Jack and Jill.

Jack and Jill, a new comedy which stars Adam Sandler as both a twin brother and sister who reunite for the holidays, can be classified in a special class of bad movies: the bafflingly bad. It’s the kind of movie you do not watch, but witness, staring at it with a dumbfounded expression, that can only express the inability one must feel to logically process what’s flashing before their eyes. And it’s not that there’s anything overly complex about the plot or characters, but just the idea that dozens, if not hundreds, of people participated in the creation of such a bizarre, awkward and stupid movie, well…it just boggles the mind.

It’s not even that it’s all that bad, really. Unlike a lot of bad movies, there is a coherent story, with barely defined main characters, and the special effects and production of it all seem fairly competent, if not somewhat mediocre. It’s just the “who”s and “what”s of it that make it so unbelievable. That this even got past the “hot-boxed-in-a-stoner’s-mini-van” conception stage, not to mention the fact that Al Pacino was willing to solidify the “Shadow Of His Former Self Sell Out” status (which he’s embodied for at least fifteen years now) with his participation, and the fact that it was backed by millions of studio dollars and, amongst a multitude of others, the likes of Shaquille O’Neill, Regis Philbin, Drew Carey and Johnny Depp (oh yeah) willingly have cameos in this, just doesn’t make sense. It’s like a fantasy, a weird fever dream of a demented fanboy who decided that, after his 500th viewing of Little Nicky, the world needed to know what Adam Sandler playing his own twin sister would look like, and that he should pimp her out in order to get Al Pacino to star in a Dunkin’ Donuts ad.

However, despite all of the terrible aspects of Jack and Jill, the one shining glimmer of something good in all of this misery is, surprisingly, Al Pacino himself. Despite the previously mentioned slow trail towards career suicide he seems to be on, Pacino plays himself not only hilariously, but with just enough of a crazed, Pacino-esque amount of overacting that he comes out of the whole mess as the one person who seems to realize just how fucked up of a movie he’s in.

Look, it’s hard to hate Sandler and director Dennis Dugan for what they’ve done here, and those who hate them for their movies have no one to blame for their continual success but the multitudes of people who pay to see them. Jack and Jill is not a good movie, but it seems that the intention was not to make a good movie, but for Sandler and Dugan to get together with some of their friends, and go on a cruise and eat a turkey. There’s no real effort here, seemingly no attempts at creating something iconic or memorable, or something that would even make Sandler’s biggest fans want to pay full price for admission. Just another in a long line of sad examples of how lazy and unconcerned with being funny Sandler’s gotten over the last few years. Hopefully, the future will hold a little less Jack and Jill, and a little more Happy Gilmore.

3 out of 10.

Even though it feels like there are several films released every year just like Martha Marcy May Marlene, there’s something about it that makes it feel…different. It’s quiet, a little slow, deathly serious, and doesn’t really fit into any one genre. It’s made with a seemingly intentional naturalism, very stripped-down and emotionally driven performances by its actors, and an overall realness that’s a characteristic of several other independent movies just like it. But even though I feel like I’ve seen this movie so many times before, I couldn’t tell you exactly what movies it really reminds me of. And while this familiarity may keep Martha Marcy May Marlene from being considered a revelation in terms of storytelling or filmmaking as a whole, it certainly doesn’t keep it from at least telling its story well and with great detail.

Elizabeth Olsen, sister of famous twins Mary-Kate and Ashley, makes her film debut as Martha, a recently escaped member of a group (not a cult…no judgment), who finds her way back to her recently married sister (Sarah Paulson), as she tries to piece together the last few months (years?) of her life. With a protagonist who thinks non-chronologically, the movie purposely tends to get a little jumbled, but instead of becoming confusing, it provides an engaging method to tell an otherwise straightforward story, making it feel more cryptic and ambiguous than it otherwise would have. While this limited point of view may make some of the other characters actions and motivations a little unclear, it helps Martha and her situation gain a more objective perspective, allowing the audience to simply see the events as they unfolded, leaving them to decipher who is good or bad, and decide just what exactly happened to this girl.

While Martha Marcy May Marlene may not provide too many explanations or answers when it comes to deciphering the actions of “cults” and their members, it does create an understanding of their appeal to vulnerable youths like Martha. On the positive side, Elizabeth Olsen and John Hawkes, as the group leader, are fantastic in their roles, and writer/director Shane Durkin gives the audience just enough information to create their own versions of what may have happened, while never making anything too clear or plain, adding a lot to the mystery of the film. However, while this makes for an interesting viewing experience, there’s not much to take away from it, as there never really seems to be a point to it all. Sure, while character pieces don’t ever necessarily strive to have grand notions on life and the world, Martha Marcy May Marlene is too vague to say anything, with a story too simple to say anything that hasn’t been said before. It’s story and characters are interesting enough to maintain the audience’s interest for the duration of the movie, but in the end, Martha Marcy May Marlene will probably be remembered for the performance of its lead actress, and not much of anything else.

7 out of 10.