Yes, it’s cheesy. It’s corny. It’s pumped full of backstage musical clichés older than your grandparents. But it’s hard to imagine anyone eager to see a gay camp extravaganza called Burlesque (Sony), starring Christina Aguilera and Cher, coming away disappointed. Drawing from sources as evergreen as A Star Is Born and All About Eve, the film is about plucky dream-girls and shimmering sequins, and it goes about its business with cheery sexlessness…
Based on Aron Ralston’s book about his days-long ordeal of being pinned under a rock during a solo climbing expedition, Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours (Fox) has more intensity than depth: It connects with the visceral agony of its hero’s situation without drawing much profundity from it. Still, the film topped a great year for James Franco, who earned a well-deserved Oscar nod for his wide-ranging performance…
In the early going, Love And Other Drugs (Sony) has a refreshingly libertine, almost European attitude about casual sex, with Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal showing great chemistry (and skin) as lovers reluctant to take their relationship outside the bedroom. But it’s an Edward Zwick (Glory, Blood Diamond) film, so it eventually marries their romance to a leaden screed about the evils of the pharmaceutical industry…
Faster (CBS) opens with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson getting released from a 10-year prison sentence and promptly running to a nearby junkyard, hopping in a muscle car, scanning a list of names, and setting about exacting revenge on everyone on the list. It wouldn’t seem possible to screw up a premise that simple, but director George Tillman Jr. forgets the title of his own movie and gets hung up in an unforgivable third-act message about forgiveness.