Ratings based on four-star system.
‘Due Date’
Rated R
1 1/2 stars
From the writer-director who gave us “The Hangover,” this film is even more of a drag. Anything you might find amusing in “Due Date,” you’ve seen already in the trailer. At the airport, a homeward-bound L.A. architect (Robert Downey Jr.) lands on a no-fly list along with a gormless would-be actor (Zach Galifianakis). They’re forced to share a rental car on their drive west. They fight. The architect burns, while the actor fiddles. They odd-couple it all the way across the south and southwest. Downey is smart enough to realize what he’s dealing with, which isn’t much.

‘For Colored Girls’
Rated R
1 1/2 stars
While Tyler Perry may have loved Ntozake Shange’s powerhouse of a play, he unfortunately becomes its undoing onscreen. Perry’s adaptation plants a group of women in a Harlem apartment building. Connections are made, drama ensues, and Perry adds in several new characters to flesh out the ensemble and give it a “Crash”-like vibe of colliding destinies. The problem is that maximum emotional volume does not always equal maximum effectiveness, and Perry ends up with 134 minutes of misjudged intensity.

‘Hereafter’
Rated PG-13
2 stars
“Hereafter” is a solemnly reassuring film made by major talents working intriguingly outside their comfort zones. Director Clint Eastwood weaves together three story strands: French journalist Marie who survives a massive CGI tsunami in Indonesia; young twin brothers in London grappling with the aftereffects of a terrorist bombing; and George (Matt Damon), a San Francisco psychic trying to come to grips with it all. While remaining neutral and inoffensive, the film lacks the power we’ve come to expect from Eastwood.

‘Life As We Know It’
Rated PG-13
2 1/2 stars
As opposed to most of this year’s rom-coms, this film does not crush your soul, only occasionally devolves into clumsy, poorly timed slapstick and outstays its modest but heartfelt welcome only by 10-15 minutes. After their best friends die in a car accident, Holly (Heigl) and Eric (Duhamel), the godparents who can barely tolerate each other, learn they’ve been named guardians of year-old Sophie. Uneasily they move in to their late friends’ spacious Atlanta home and begin playing competing versions of “house.”

‘Megamind’
Rated PG
2 1/2 stars
This new DreamWorks animated feature is about a hapless blue villain, humanized. Will Ferrell is the voice of Megamind; Brad Pitt, less crucial to the story, voices Metro Man, defender of Metro City, slightly smug in his fabulousness. An immigrant from another galaxy, raised by hardened criminals, Megamind wages attempt after attempt to take over Metro City with the aid of his minion, Minion (a fishlike critter in a space helmet). Screenwriters Alan Schoolcraft and Brent Simons do a few things right, but you have seen all this before.

‘Morning Glory’
Rated PG-13
2 1/2 stars
If this romantic comedy clicks with audiences, the Rachel McAdams factor will be the reason why. Here she plays Becky Fuller, a TV producer who gets a shot at reviving a low-rated Manhattan-based morning show. She arm-twists Murrow-esque Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford) to co-anchor, against his will, opposite an ex-beauty pageant flibbertigibbet (Diane Keaton, without enough to do). Romance blooms for Becky in the form of an Ivy League dreamboat played by Patrick Wilson. McAdams steals the show in a rom-com equivalent of a glass half-full.

‘Unstoppable’
Rated PG-13
3 stars
This runaway train thriller is one of veteran director Tony Scott’s better films. An unmanned freight train full of highly combustible chemicals is on the loose. Must be stopped. Train engineer Denzel Washington and newbie Chris Pine are on the job. Questions? Even if you resist Scott’s luxe brand of visual storytelling, this one charges down the track merrily unburdened by exposition. Washington couldn’t hit a false note if he tried; Pine, whose character is trying to get his marriage back together, keeps up solidly. Why does the film work? Simplicity.

‘127 Hours’
Rated R
2 1/2 stars
Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle proves it’s possible to make a supercharged, kinetic movie about a man who can’t move. This film follows Aron Ralston (James Franco) on his solo hike through Utah. Armed with food, water, a video camera and a dullish knife, Ralston squeezes into a slot canyon only to have his arm trapped by a dislodged boulder. It quickly becomes clear what he’ll have to do to survive. The movie rides on dizzy sensation, and Boyle proves he’s an entertainer of prodigious talent.
— Tribune Media Services