BY LEAH ROZEN
ACTION
We've all met great-looking people who can't manage to string a complete sentence together. Well, meet the movie equivalent. Writer-director Michael Mann's slick update of Miami Vice, his classic 1984-1989 TV series about Florida drug cops (best remembered as the show that convinced grown men to skip shaving and pair pink silk T-shirts with aquamarine linen suits), looks fabulous. Too bad it's so tedious.
In the shimmery new Vice, the show's undercover detectives Sonny Crockett (now played by a torpid Farrell) and Ricardo Tubbs (Foxx) chase narcotics barons across borders while Crockett romances one of their girlfriends (Li). Or something like that, since the plot is mired in complicated blather. This dreary film only seems to wake up near the end, when the heroes meet baddies in a spectacular shoot-out. Heads are blown open, blood splatters copiously, and you can't help thinking—between shudders—that it's all kind of cool. Too little, too late. (R)
Scarlett Johansson, Hugh Jackman, Woody Allen, Ian McShane
COMEDY
The change of scenery that so reinvigorated Woody Allen—switching to London from New York City—in Match Point, last winter's deft tale of social climbing and murder, fails to provide the same lift a second time. Scoop starts off with frothy flair but, even at a scant 96 minutes, sputters across the finish line.
Like Allen's last movie, Scoop concerns itself with social climbing and murder in London, but for comedic effect. When a recently deceased veteran newspaperman (Deadwood's McShane) gets a tip in the Great Beyond that a titled Englishman (Jackman) may be a notorious serial killer, his ghost manages to pass the information along to an American college-age journalism student (Johansson) visiting London. A magician (Allen) helps her investigate, all the while warning her against falling for the dashing aristocrat.
Writer-director Allen tosses in allusions to Alfred Hitchcock films (specifically Suspicion and Notorious), but much of Scoop is devoted to recycled Yanks vs. Limeys jokes. Johansson looks lustrous and is often amusing, but she can't carry this piffle on her own. Allen dithers, and Jackman is given little to do but be debonair and, possibly, evil. (PG-13)
Jesse Metcalfe, Brittany Snow
COMEDY
Three popular high school girls discover that—Oh. My. God!—they're all being romanced by the same lying jock (Desperate Housewives' Metcalfe). Time to get even. But what if he's not quite the horndog he seems? The sassy John Tucker Must Die is a smart enough teen comedy, but its concerns (the prom, the big game) are too narrow to appeal to many beyond its intended audience. As for Metcalfe, he dexterously doffs his shirt early and often. (PG-13)
Voices by Julia Roberts, Nicolas Cage
CRITIC'S CHOICE
ANIMATED
It's always wonderful to see a child suddenly get a joke, gleefully comprehending why it's funny. In the delightful Ant Bully, such moments come repeatedly when six-legged insect characters refer to everyday items in the human world by their ant names. Jelly beans are "sweet rocks," a street is "the Great Flat Rock," and cars are "metal cocoons." In telling how Lucas, a boy shrunk to ant size, comes to understand why he was wrong to turn a water pistol on the anthill in his front yard, Bully is about seeing the world from another perspective. It's also about letting such performers as Roberts, Cage and Meryl Streep fly high, imbuing their invertebrate cartoon characters with vivid personalities. (PG)
DON JOHNSON
From 1996 to 2001, Johnson, 56, played a TV cop on Nash Bridges and recently appeared in the short-lived WB series Just Legal. Although he's faced personal woes—including a '96 divorce from Melanie Griffith—he's now focused on family, welcoming a fifth child, Deacon, by second wife Kelley Phleger, 38, in April. Next up: the family flick Moondance Alexander.
PHILIP MICHAEL THOMAS
"There's a time when you're king of the mountain, and then you go back to the valley," Thomas, 57, has said of life post-Vice. Since the show ended in '89, the Miami-based actor has run a theater company and appeared in bit movie roles. Most recently he voiced the role of a drug dealer in the video game Grand Theft Auto.
Terrence Howard took the plunge for his role in the upcoming Pride. To play real-life Philadelphia Department of Recreation swimming coach Jim Ellis—who founded the city's first African-American swim team in 1973—the 37-year-old Hustle & Flow Oscar nominee spent hours in the pool practicing his strokes, losing 30 lbs. in the process. His trainer? None other than Ellis himself, who put Howard through drills with the current PDR team. So was Howard much of a swimmer? "Not really," says Pride director Svinuari Obert Gonera. "But when [Ellis] got ahold of him, he learned so quickly. He was absolutely determined." The perfectionist performer also proved a convincing coach. "Terrence loves teaching, and the kids responded to him as if he were their real coach," Gonera says. Pride hits theaters in December.
... IS LITTLE MISS A-LIST
At 10, Abigail Breslin has already worked with Mel Gibson and Kate Hudson. But as a plucky pageant hopeful in Little Miss Sunshine, she steals the movie. Look out, Lindsay, there's a new girl in town!
ON BEAUTY CONTESTS They might be a little fun, but they might not. It would be such hard work!
ON GETTING INTO CHARACTER I had to wear a padded suit, and I can't say that I miss that. And I don't wear glasses in real life. It was like looking through a bar of soap.
THE BETTY FORD REVELATION I'm a complete phone addict! I have a cell phone, but I'm not allowed to use it. Only sometimes, only in an emergency.
SKELETONS IN HER CLOSET I have a grandmother who wears clothes with pictures of cats, and another who wears big beads. They're both a little crazy, but so am I. My friends call me crazy, so what can I say?
V for Vendetta ($34.99) Turns out that Batman isn't the only masked vigilante who can deliver thrills. A young woman (Natalie Portman, baring her soul ... and her scalp) teams up with V, a man disguised as Guy Fawkes (who attempted to blow up Parliament in 1605) and hell-bent on toppling England's totalitarian government. Its gripping action scenes and subversive politics make Vendetta the rare film with style and substance. Extras: The two-disc special edition is lightweight, save for informative featurettes on Fawkes and the history of the Vendetta graphic novel. Stick to the bare-bones single-disc edition. (R) Movie:
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
