Ratings based on four-star system.
‘Date Night’
Rated PG-13
??1/2
“Date Night” is a product substantially inferior to the material routinely finessed by stars Steve Carell and Tina Fey, on their respective hit TV shows, into comic gold. A married couple leave the kids with a sitter and hit Manhattan for dinner. In an effort to be seated at a trendy restaurant, they claim another couple’s vacated reservation, leading to mistaken-identity trouble. The script is weak, but the actors keep saving this one, including James Franco and Mila Kunis, whose only scene is a memorable one.

‘Death at a Funeral’
Rated R
??1/2
Ragged in its technique but pretty funny anyway, the remake of the 2007 British comedy “Death at a Funeral” won’t please everyone, but seeing so many good, resourceful actors mix it up has its satisfactions. The nominal leads belong to Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence, rivalrous brothers whose father has passed, and whose down-low life they know nothing about until a mystery man (Peter Dinklage, repeating his role in the original) shows up with incriminating photos. Tracy Morgan, Danny Glover and Zoe Saldana are also part of the high-powered cast.

‘How to Train Your Dragon’
Rated PG
??? 1/2
The swoops and dives of this exuberant animated feature, in which the teen hero befriends the winged enemy, should prove as addicting to its target audience as similar scenes have in “Avatar.” On the Island of Berk, the Vikings have been putting up with dragon attacks for 300 years. Hiccup (voice of Jay Baruchel) meets one of the dreaded beasts and learns dragons are a misjudged species, which puts him at odds with his father (Gerard Butler) and the rest of the village. The flying scenes are fantastic, so seeing “Dragon” in 3-D really is a must.

‘Iron Man 2’
Rated PG-13
?? 1/2
“A passable knock-off”: That’s how the obscenely rich but heartsick industrialist played by Robert Downey Jr. characterizes the electro-weaponry wielded by his adversary (Mickey Rourke) in “Iron Man 2.” Much of this scattershot sequel to the 2008 smash feels like a passable knock-off as well. Here and there, director Jon Favreau’s diversion takes us back to the considerable satisfactions of the first “Iron Man,” but “Iron Man 2” has a harder time with matters of story clarity and momentum.

‘Just Wright’
Rated PG
???
Audiences may be stunned by the genuine display of niceness in this romantic comedy. Queen Latifah plays a physical therapist who has two months to rehab the man she secretly loves, the nicest guy the NBA, played by Common, after a knee injury threatens to derail his career. Director Sanaa Hamri deftly preserves the heart of this film. The reason “Just Wright” works is simple. It finds ways to let familiar characters move around inside a familiar premise like living, breathing, likable human beings.

‘Letters to Juliet’
Rated PG
???
Amanda Seyfried stars in this enjoyable rom-com as Sophie, a bright-eyed girl on vacation with her single-minded fiance in Verona, Italy. Here, centuries ago, Romeo met Juliet. Today lovelorn letters to the tragic heroine are left at a sacred spot. When Sophie replies to a letter written fifty years earlier, its author Claire, a remarkable Vanessa Redgrave, returns to Verona where the two join forces to scour the countryside for Claire’s long-lost Italian beau. It ain’t Shakespeare. But it’s no “Bounty Hunter” either.

‘Marmaduke’
Rated PG
? 1/2
“Marmaduke,” the comic strip about life with a 200-pound Great Dane, earns a dull but harmless big-screen comedy aimed at the youngest moviegoers. Voiced by Owen Wilson, this canine narrates and chats up his fellow members of the House-pet Kingdom thanks to digital assistance, moving from Kansas to Southern California with his family: “Dr. No” (Lee Pace, not funny), Dr. No’s wife (Judy Greer, given nothing funny to do) and their “two-legger” children. SoCal turns out to be “like high school, for dogs,” complete with dog park cliques, bullies and, of course, dog surfing.

‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’
Rated R
??
By today’s standards, this reboot of Wes Craven’s iconic 1984 horror film is only medium-bloody, though it’s more than usually grim. Yet it affords precious little sadistic pleasure, partly because it “dares” to lay out more directly the pedophiliac demons plaguing Freddy the serial killer (Jackie Earle Haley). With Craven’s original, the blurred borderlines between dreamscape and reality gave the best images an eerie force and unpredictability. The remake works the same idea to death.

‘Please Give’
Rated R
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??? 1/2

With her poignant, funny new film, writer-director Nicole Holofcener (“Walking and Talking,” ‘’Friends With Money”) is at the top of her game. Catherine Keener plays a woman whose roles as wife, mother, businesswoman and neighbor play out against the background of her self-recriminating sense that a person in her privileged position ought to be doing more to make the world a better place. This is a film that focuses on the tiny moments of connection and consolation that sustain us in a hard-edged world because they are all we have.

‘Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time’
Rated PG-13
2 1/2 stars
Like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of movies based on video games. This film, which is moderately entertaining chaos, follows Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal), a street urchin adopted by the king, as he battles to keep a magical, time-shifting dagger out of enemy hands. A blessedly exuberant performance by Alfred Molina as an ostrich race promoter (!) enlivens a product you might otherwise forget.

‘Robin Hood’
Rated PG-13
3 stars
Ridley Scott’s updated prequel to the outlaw legend brings “Gladiator”-like intensity to Sherwood Forest, reestablishing Russell Crowe’s Robin and Cate Blanchett’s Lady Marion as the linchpins to key Middle Ages historical events. Audiences had better keep up with the frenetic battle sequences, because when Scott storms a castle, he wants you to feel the danger and the thwwwunnnch of the arrow entering flesh. Ultimately, this new “Robin Hood” provides no revelations, but remains a satisfying, large-scale genre movie.

‘Sex and the City 2’
Rated R
2 stars
While Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Samantha (Kim Cattrall), Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) are off to Abu Dhabi for more fashion, flings and Cosmopolitans, this franchise’s pre-sold fan base might respond to this second installment with, “Oh … You four again.” Many fans of the series will enjoy this wallow, just as they turned out for the first feature, although I wonder if anyone on the planet, including writer-director Michael Patrick King, honestly believes “Sex 2” makes the most of its running time.

‘Shrek Forever After’
Rated PG
2 stars
Dreamworks seems bored with the ogre who laid the golden egg. “Shrek Forever After,” the fourth film in the lucrative franchise, barely tampers with the Shrek formula (one-liners, flatulence jokes, pop tunes) and not enough to breathe life into the exhausted series. Shrek (voiced by Mike Myers), feeling buried under the celebrity and the diapers, makes an unwise trade with a wizard named Rumpelstiltskin (Walt Dohrn) and is sent back to a time before he was actually born.

‘Splice’
Rated R
3 stars
This crafty new thriller features Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley as genetic engineers and lovers who successfully create a new hybrid creature out of DNA from various species. Naturally, the experiments go too far, creating “Dren,” a thing that’s partly human (she’s female), but with some various other horror genre features like a tail with a deadly stinger; legs like a dinosaur; and an accelerated life cycle. The film doesn’t deliver “the usual” and is provocative in its eerie violence.
— Tribune Media Services