'Thor' swings a mighty (loud) hammer

Thor's motto: Talk loudly and carry a big hammer. Kenneth Branagh's entry into the world of superheroes provides some fun.

Thor drops the hammer that gets the summer-movie parade rolling, and if it doesn't quite hit the nail on the head, it delivers a pretty loud whack.

A Marvel Comics character since 1962, Thor does his hammer throwing in a grandly scaled entertainment that hits the screen with enough sound and fury to leave little room for doubt: Another comic book hero has left his calling card at the nation's multiplexes, and has done so in bold, emphatic fashion.

In chronicling Thor's transition from arrogant warrior to humble king, director Kenneth Branagh goes big, flooding the screen with everything from epic-sized fights to lightening-like flashes of energy to large men wearing Viking helmets that go heavy on horns.

What can I tell you? Any movie that makes room for Frost Giants and Anthony Hopkins can't be accused of taking itself too seriously. Hopkins plays Odin, Thor's father and king of Asgard, the realm where Thor and his fellow Norse gods cavort in robust fashion.

Thor is played by Chris Hemsworth, an Australian actor who looks like a cross between a Norse warrior and a California surfer. Hemsworth, who slips into the American argot as easily as he tosses off the script's portentous dialog, helps keep the movie from swirling down the cosmic drain. He's strong enough to pull a slightly scattered script together, has a godlike physique and manages to make his character more likable as the movie progresses.

After an hour so, you may feel comfortable enough around Thor to call him, "Dude,'' as in "Dude, where's your hammer?" Or maybe, "Dude, I like your cape." Better known for staging Shakespeare than for throwing spears, Branagh piles on the special effects as he paves the way for next year's Avengers movie, an exercise in comic book crossbreeding in which Thor joins other Marvel superheroes.

In this edition, the action alternates between Asgard and Earth. Thor lands in New Mexico after displeasing daddy. As punishment for leading an unauthorized raid on Jotunheim, the realm where the Frost Giants reside, Thor is banished to Earth.

Had Thor been less arrogant, he would have ascended to the throne in the movie's early going. Evidently ready for retirement, Odin wants to cede his kingdom to Thor. But the old king is put off by his son's epic-sized flaws: arrogance, impetuousness and an eagerness to make war.

Thor and Odin have an argument in which they shout mightily. Get used to it. At key moments, the actors don't talk; they bellow.

Working from a script by a trio of writers, Branagh mostly finds the right balance for a comic-book movie, blending action, humor, stabs at grandeur and thematic issues involving fathers, sons, sibling rivalry and a burgeoning love between a mortal and a god.

Natalie Portman portrays Jane, an astrophysicist who catches Thor's eye, setting up a possible romance between a mortal and a god. During his exile on Earth, Thor also encounters a group of scientists led by Erik Selvig, played by Stellan Skarsgard, whose befuddled expression suggests he may be asking himself exactly he's doing in this movie.

Despite her recently acquired best-actress Oscar, Portman's stuck in a supporting role, and she's not as interesting as another of Selvig's colleagues, portrayed by an acerbic Kat Dennings. On the Asgard side, we're introduced to various Thor loyalists, notably Volstagg, an ebullient Norse warrior played by Ray Stevenson with enough hair and beard to clog a thousand drains. A more carefully groomed Tom Hiddleston plays Thor's younger brother, Loki, a character with a complicated background that steers him toward treachery.

As is the case with most such movies, Earthlings in black suits eventually show up to add a note of bureaucratic menace. S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) leads the contingent of black suits; he's an investigator we've already met in the Iron Man movies.

Many of the Asgard scenes sprawl across spectacular backdrops that can't quite disguise their artificial look, but there's enough going on here to please comic-book fans, as well as those who like movies that leave them feeling as if they've been subjected to sonic boom.

And don't look now, but there's more where Thor came from. Due later this summer, another movie taken from Marvel's superhero storehouse: Captain America.

Two wedding invitations from Hollywood

This weekend, Hollywood has issued invitations to two weddings, but I wouldn't necessarily rush to RSVP. Both movies -- Something Borrowed and Jumping the Broom -- have problems, but given the choice, I'd head for Martha's Vineyard, where the livelier and slightly more realistic Jumping the Broom takes place. Both movies have a sitcom flavor and both are heavily reliant on contrivance, but I prefer Angela Bassett and Paula Patton (as mother and daughter) to Ginnifer Goodwin and Kate Hudson (as best friends). Besides, Jumping the Broom, unlike its competitor, offers some real laughs.

A QUICK LOOK AT SOMETHING BORROWED

In the thoroughly mediocre Something Borrowed, Ginnifer Goodwin plays Rachel, a lawyer who has two best friends: Darcy (Kate Hudson), a woman Rachel has known since childhood, and Dex (Colin Egglesfield), a guy with whom she attended law school. When Rachel fails to acknowledge her romantic interest in Dex, Darcy swoops in for the kill. Dex and Darcy clearly make for an oil-and-water couple, but they're soon engaged. It doesn't take long for the movie to start feeling like junior high school with the principal characters trying to outdo one another. Meanwhile, Rachel's level-headed buddy (John Krasinski) encourages her not to defer to Darcy. The trailer gives away the movie's major twist, so I don't feel bad about including it in this brief review: Rachel and Dex sleep together, which puts Dex in a tough spot. He must decide whether to go through with the wedding or follow his heart. Goodwin (the new Doris Day?) knows how to handle this kind of role; Hudson tends to be shrill and over-the-top; and Egglesfield seems longer on looks than personality. As romcoms go, Something Borrowed feels entirely familiar, less a full-bodied movie than a cardboard cutout.

CLASSES MINGLE AND CLASH AT AN UPSCALE WEDDING

After a variety of unsatisfying one-night stands, Paula Patton's Sabrina pledges not to sleep with another man until she's married. It doesn't take long for Sabrina to become engaged to Jason (Laz Alonso), a New York investment banker who grew up in downscale Brooklyn. Conflicts arise when it becomes clear that Sabrina's well-heeled family is unprepared to accept Jason's mom, a truculent postal worker played by Loretta Devine. Devine squares off against Angela Bassett, who plays Sabrina's take-no-prisoner's mom. The script by Elizabeth Hunter and Arlene Gibb finds comedy in class conflict as families and friends gather at the Martha's Vineyard home where the wedding is to be held. The script also makes room for a couple of stock characters who add humor: the outspoken Shonda (Tasha Smith), best friend of the groom's mother, and Willie Earl (Mike Epps), the groom's equally outspoken uncle. The movie was produced by J.D. Jakes, a Dallas-based preacher who may be responsible for the movie's mild religious tilt. To its credit, though, Jumping the Broom seems more interested in entertaining than in proselytizing. The movie is not without clinkers, not the least of which involves a melodramatic twist the script easily could have done without. But director Salim Akil keeps the movie percolating as it heads toward its predictable conclusion, having only flirted with a few real issues, but at least acknowledging the world in which they exist.

Love in a time of brutal war

There's at least as much passion in the filmmaking as in the various romances in Bertrand Tavernier’s The Princess of Montpensier, a 16th century story set against a backdrop of brutal war between Roman Catholics and Protestant Huguenots.

Philippe Sarde's edgy score and Tavernier's fluid camera infuse this period piece with plenty of urgency. Tavernier also reminds us that few conflicts are more vicious than religious wars, a message that resonates as loudly today as it did in the 1500s.

The Princess of Montpensier is based on a short story by Madame de La Fayette, a 17th century writer who’s credited with having penned the first historical novel, The Princess of Cleves. Tavernier preserves La Fayette’s fascination with courtly intrigue, and also gives us a vivid feel for life in war-torn France during the 1500s.

If the public life of France is torn apart by war, the private lives of the movie’s characters seems equally tumultuous. A series of clashing passions revolve around Marie (Melanie Thierry), a young woman who’s forced into marriage by a father who’s more interested in cementing a land deal than in ensuring his daughter’s happiness.

The dashing Henri de Guise (Gaspard Ulliel) – Marie’s original beau -- continues his pursuit, even after Marie has been married off to Prince de Montpensier (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet). Later, Marie turns the head of yet another man, the dashing Duc d’Anjou (Raphael Personnaz).

As the story unfolds, Marie’s husband becomes increasingly jealous – and with good cause.

The movie’s most interesting male character arrives in the person of Comte de Chabannes (Lambert Wilson), a warrior who decides to withdraw from battle after he kills a pregnant woman. Comte de Chabannes, who taught the Prince de Montpensier the arts of war, becomes Marie’s tutor, instructing her in everything from the reading to herbal cures. He, too, falls under Marie’s spell.

Each of the men desires Marie for different reasons: the prince because she’s his wife; de Guise because he can’t have her; Duc d’ Anjou because he’s vain; and Comte de Cabannes because Marie revives his sense of youth and innocence. The Comte’s love probably is the purest and least self-serving.

All of this might have been more effective had Thierry been able to endow the princess with a little more mystery. The buxom, blonde Thierry plays a young woman who has yet to learn to conceal her intentions, assuming she even knows them. I suppose that's the way she is, but it makes the story less interesting than it should be.

I’m a great admirer of Tavernier’s work – from A Sunday in the Country to Captain Conan with a stopover at ‘Round Midnight. Some of Tavernier’s recent films (In the Electric Mist and Holy Lola) have not received wide exposure in the U.S., but he remains one of the world’s important filmmakers. A director who refuses to be imprisoned by genre, Tavernier seems to break new personal ground in nearly every movie.

Princess of Montpensier allows Tavernier to pit large-scale historical events against a personal story of less-than-epic proportions, and Tavernier’s deep love of cinema is palpable in nearly every frame, as is his commitment to authenticity.

So even if a Tavernier movie is a little less than hoped for (as is the case here), it's still worth watching a master at work.

'Fast Five's' best when it speeds and bleeds

Fast Five' doesn't make much sense, but its action works and it also reminds us that Hollywood's summer thrill ride is fast approaching.

Fast Five makes no real sense, features some of the year's least interesting acting and revolves around a disappointingly generic heist plot: Regulars from the "Fast and Furious" series angle to steal $100 million from a Brazilian drug lord.

Does any of that matter? Not really. If you're a fan of fast-paced, improbable action, Fast Five delivers the frenzied goods, although you may find yourself twiddling your thumbs between action set pieces.

Thankfully, director Justin Lin stages the action on a grand, pulse-pounding scale, affording us the opportunity to watch a bus do aerial flips, to see high-priced cars being hijacked from a speeding train, and to witness a climactic chase sequence that threatens to destroy half of Rio de Janeiro while maiming nearly every member of the city's police force.
In case you're wondering, all that belongs on the plus side of the movie's ledger.

The series' two franchise players are back: Vin Diesel, who looks like a man constructed entirely from biceps, returns along with Paul Walker, whose all-American looks are marred only by some obligatory stubble. Diesel and Walker play Dominic Toretto and Brian O'Conner, a champion street racer and a former cop who wind up in Brazil after Brian helps spring Dominic from jail.

Jordana Brewster returns as Mia, Dominic's sister and Brian's main squeeze. Brian and Mia don't have much time for squeezing, though. Like everyone else in the movie, they're too busy showing off their muscles, sweating profusely or planning a totally preposterous robbery.

Dwayne Johnson, formerly known as The Rock, constitutes the biggest (as well as bulkiest) addition. Johnson portrays Hobbs, a supercop who's pursuing our heroes. Sporting a goatee, bulging veins and a determined expression, Johnson joins the kick-ass festivities with as much gusto as he can muster.

In typical B-movie fashion, Brian and Dominic assemble a gang to pull off the job, a task that provides the movie with a reason to add a large supporting cast. Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Tyrese Gibson, Sung Kang, Gal Gadot and Tego Calderon add humor, some of it by way of comic action, notably a bit in which the toilets in a men's room are blown up. Very messy.

If you see the Fast and Furious movies because you love street racing, you may feel short-changed. At one point, Dominic and Paul seek out Rio's street-racing scene, but Lin ignores the race in which they compete.

I won't describe any more of the action because most of the fun involves the surprisingly ingenious ways in which Lin, working from a script by Chris Morgan, piles on the carnage as the movie races through Rio's impoverished favelas and across its sleek downtown.

The roar of the action and the crackle of gunfire tend to drown out the small voice in us that wonders what happened to logic. Oh well, with a movie such as Fast Five, credibility takes a back seat to stunts, grunts, artfully designed mayhem and fake grit.

Fans will want to stay through the end credits for a postscript that Lin has added. The rest of the world should know what it probably already suspects: Fast Five is more product than movie, a pre-summer money machine that probably will rev up the box office before the bigger boys arrive. Think of it as Hollywood stripping down to its T-shirt as it starts to flex its thrill-ride muscles.

A two-continent search for a better world

In A Better World features strong acting and some fine moments, but its ending is too pat and its script is too committed to scoring moral points..

Last February, Danish director Susanne Bier won the best foreign-language film Oscar for In A Better World, a movie that tries -- boy, does it try -- to explore the impulses that lead to violence. To accomplish her task, Bier splits her narrative, following developments in her native Denmark and in a dusty, unnamed African country where villagers receive sporadic medical care.

In the Danish segments, school bullying becomes a springboard for a larger inquiry into the origins of violent behavior. In Africa, the movie explores violence generated by the wanton abuse of power in a lawless society: A local tyrant -- referred to only as Big Man -- brutalizes villagers, sometimes cutting open the bellies of pregnant women to settle trivial bets about the gender of an unborn child.

Anton (Mikael Persbrandt), a physician, provides the link between the Danish and African segments. A man of liberal conscience, Anton travels to Africa to minister to the poor. His wife Marianne (Trine Dyrholm), also a doctor, has assumed most of the responsibility for raising their two sons, one of whom (Markus Rygaard) is being bullied at school.

Anton and Marianne are newly separated, as a result of an affair Anton's had, but they still try to act in concert when it comes to their children. Though sometimes hampered by geographical distance, Anton's relationship with Elias seems tender and loving. And the kid clearly adores his father.

But Elias also responds to the overtures of a friend (William Johnk Nielsen), a new kid who has just lost his mother and who only recently moved to his grandmother's farm with his businessman father (Ulrich Thomsen). Thomsen's Christian responds violently to the bully most responsible for Elias' humiliation. A volatile mixture of anger and grief pushes Christian toward extremes, and Bier generates suspense about how far Elias will go in supporting his unforgiving pal.

After Anton returns from Africa, he attempts to teach Elias and Christian a lesson about the futility of violence. When he breaks up a playground fight, Anton gets crosswise with another father, an adult bully who knows he's in the wrong but insists that only he can tell his child what to do. Despite ample provocation, Anton refuses to fight the man, insisting that there's little to be gained from confronting the bully on his own terms. Christian can't accept such a "pacifist' approach. He thinks violence should be met with greater violence.

Throughout the movie, Bier creates situations that test her characters. At one point, Big Man suffers a severe leg wound, and asks Anton for treatment. Anton must grapple with a troubling ethical problem: Is he obligated to treat a man who has inflicted so much harm on others? Should he ignore the pleas of villagers who would be only too happy to see Big Man die?

The plot often feels as if it has been burdened by a need to illustrate such problems, but Bier does a lot right here, too. Anton's pain, Marianne's anger, Elias' loneliness, and Christian's fury all feel real; these elements may have been enough for any movie to handle without also wandering off to Africa, which (in truth) receives short shrift here.

Sometimes when a movie tries to do too much -- and this may be one of those cases -- it fails to do enough. Put another way: In casting such a wide net, Bier doesn't go deep enough. Full of promise and often absorbing, In A Better World winds up being too pat for a film that has dared so much.

As funny as being hit with a wrench

Geek power carried to a vicious extreme.

Here's another movie about a geek who attempts to transform himself into a superhero. The fact that Kick-Ass already filled that bill makes Super mostly superfluous. The fact that the movie's superhero -- played by Rainn Wilson -- decides to use a pipe wrench to beat evildoers senseless undermines Super's attempts at humor. * If there's any saving grace here -- and it turns out to be a small one -- it arrives in the person of Ellen Page, who plays Wilson's sidekick. He's the Crimson Bolt, and she's Boltie. * Page brings comic exuberance to a movie that desperately needs it. * But the rest? Liv Tyler plays a drug addict who falls under the sway of a rock musician (Kevin Bacon). The trouble: She's engaged to Wilson's character, a short-order cook who becomes a superhero to liberate the love of his life from the clutches of addiction. * Super not only follows in the footsteps of better movies, but can't really convince us that its violence should be taken as an expression of cartoon zest. * A total commitment to the dark side might have made Super more interesting, but in this battle between humor and menace, no one emerges a winner.

A slow-moving 'Water for Elephants'

Witherspoon and Pattinson try to carry Water for Elephants, which has its charms, but never quite gels.

It's an old caution, but there's a reason actors don't like to work with animals. Four-legged performers seem to have an easier time capturing our affections than those who walk upright, even if one of the two-legged creatures happens to be Tween heartthrob Robert Pattinson.

Water for Elephants - a carefully burnished adaptation of Sara Gruen's best-selling 2007 novel about a struggling circus -- proves the point, at least it did for me. Humans aside, the character I most cared about in this diligent adaptation of Gruen's novel was Rosie, an elephant.

Set during the Depression, Water for Elephants quickly establishes itself as a nostalgia-heavy hybrid: part love story and part animal act.

A welcome crack of the ringmaster's whip might have sped us through some of the movie's duller spots, and the movie's cast never quite gets, but Water for Elephants survives on atmosphere and grace, partly because it has been photographed with a keen appreciation for Americana by cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto.

Working from a script by Richard LaGravenese, director Francis Lawrence applies liberal amounts of storybook glow to a production that makes improbable co-stars out of Pattinson of Twilight fame and Oscar winners Reese Witherspoon (Walk the Line) and Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds).

Pattinson may draw fans to a movie that displays him in a warmer light than the Twilight series in which he plays a vampire and world-class brooder. I'm still not sure about Pattinson's acting, but I'm relieved to know he can smile.

In Water for Elephants, Pattinson plays Jacob Jankowsi, a senior at Cornell University. Jacob's about to receive his degree in veterinary science, when he learns that his Polish immigrant parents have been killed in an automobile accident.

Distraught and disoriented, Jacob leaves school and hops a freight. He quickly learns that he's caught a ride with a train belonging to the Benzini Bros. Circus. Jacob signs on as a roustabout, but his veterinary talents soon earn him a higher spot on the circus totem.

The movie, of course, is no Dr. Dolitte. Jacob's immediately attracted to Marlena (Witherspoon), the star of the circus' centerpiece act. Decked out in glittering costumes, Marlena stands on the backs of galloping horses. Why this is such a special act never is made clear: I'm no circus expert, but women atop horses seems like three-ring boilerplate to me.

Every movie romance needs an obstacle. So it's no surprise that Marlena is married. Her husband August (Waltz) owns the circus; he's an impresario who blends old-world charm, entrepreneurial gusto, show-business savvy and outright sadism.

August, who regards himself as the ruler of this empire of illusion, employs a unique method of downsizing. When times get tough, he throws an excess worker or two off his moving train, a procedure called "redlighting." He also brutalizes the animals in his circus.

Someone decided that Witherspoon should adopt a Jean Harlow platinum blonde look that fits the period. But she's in a role that would have perfectly fit a young Jessica Lange, someone with less of a cheerleader vibe.

Pattinson and Witherspoon may be a bit of a mismatch. There's chemistry between them - just not enough.

An alternately charming and scary Waltz does a semi-reprise of the sadistic Nazi he played in Inglourious Basterds. "The guy certainly knows how to hold the screen.

Water for Elephants both sentimentalizes and deglamorizes circus life, where all the patrons are known as rubes and the workers make up a close-knit fraternity of the alienated.

Lawrence begins the story with framing device. Hal Holbrook appears as the aged Jacob, a 90-year-old who has escaped from the old age home where he resides to visit a circus that has hit town. A circus manager listens as Jacob tells what has become a legendary story: how the Benzini Bros. Circus finally collapsed.

Because Jacob provides the story with off-screen narration, I found it mildly troubling that Lawrence used Pattinson to narrate instead of relying on Holbook's barrel-aged tones, which would have given the story more flavor.

The story becomes increasingly melodramatic, and no one is likely to confuse Water for Elephants with a realistic look at the Depression, but Lawrence seems to be bending over backward to be respectful of Gruen's novel, an understandable strategy but one that doesn't always result in the best movie.

Fittingly, the other star of Water for Elephants is Rosie, an elephant August buys to boost the circus' sagging box office. And, yes, Rosie steals every scene in which she appears. So let me relieve you of some guilt. If you feel more for Rosie than for any of the movie's human characters, I doubt whether you'll be alone. That says a lot for Tai (the 42-year-old elephant playing Rosie) and not as much for the movie itself.

A history lesson from Robert Redford

The Conspirator tells an interesting story, but it's awfully earnest -- and that's the trouble.

What do you do when a movie tackles an interesting subject, boasts a prestigious cast, delivers a message with which you generally agree, and you still give it your enthusiastic endorsement?

Here's what I do: I say that you may want to see Robert Redford's new movie The Conspirator, but you probably shouldn't expect to be blown away. Redford's movie has its virtues, but it's also overly earnest and dry, a bit of civics lesson on film.

I'm betting that not many Americans know the story of Mary Surratt, a 42-year-old woman who was hanged in 1865 for being part of the conspiracy that led to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth. Surratt, a staunch Catholic and proud Southerner, owned a Washington, D.C., boarding house where the conspirators plotted the president's murder. She claimed innocence.

At one point, Surratt was offered leniency on condition that she disclose the whereabouts of her youngest son, John. John later admitted to helping hatch a plot to kidnap Lincoln, but insisted that he had no part in the president's assassination. John Surratt remained in hiding during his mother's trial; he ultimately was tried and acquitted.

In telling Surratt's story, Redford takes a step forward from his last directorial outing, 2007's Lions For Lambs. Preachy and obvious, Lions made a head-on attempt to deal with the consequences of the war in Afghanistan. Steeped in period atmosphere, The Conspirator proves more subtle, although it's impossible not to see parallels between the issues raised by the Surratt trial and those surrounding military proceedings at Guantanamo.

Rather than providing us with a definitive answer about Surratt's guilt, Redford uses the movie to defend a principle: A nation of laws - especially during times of heated public sentiment -- must offer fair trials even to those whose guilt seems beyond question. Justice must be served; the craving for vengeance, resisted.

Working from a script by James D. Solomon, Redford focuses on Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy), the lawyer who's assigned to defend Surratt before a military tribunal.

At first Aiken wants no part of the Surratt case. Like just about everyone else in Washington, he has little doubt about her guilt. As the story develops, Aiken begins to understand that, at minimum, Surratt deserves a hearing, something the military seems disinclined to provide.

Redford surrounds McAvoy with a powerful cast. Robin Wright portrays Surratt as a strong and devoted mother: She won't betray her son to save he own life. Surratt makes no bones about her loyalty to the Confederacy, but insists she knew nothing about what the plotters were discussing when they gathered in her boarding house.

Tom Wilkinson plays Reverdy Johnson, the Maryland lawyer who involved Aiken in Surratt's defense; Danny Huston portrays Joseph Holt, the prosecuting attorney; and Kevin Kline appears as Edwin Stanton, Lincoln's Secretary of War.

According to the movie, Stanton wanted a quick verdict; he was interested in satisfying the public hunger for vengeance that followed the assassination. Kline's Stanton is a severe, unforgiving man who thinks the demands of the nation, as he sees them, take precedence over individual rights.

Evan Rachel Wood terrific as Veda Pierce in HBO's recent version of Mildred Pierce, brings emotional urgency to a movie that sometimes seems to be striking courtroom-drama poses. She plays Surratt's daughter.

Credit Redford & company for attempting to illuminate a little-known chapter of American history, and giving the movie a persuasive period look, but The Conspirator can feel restricted by its courtroom setting and by what seems a carefully worked-out agenda, the need to remind us that emergency situations shouldn't obliterate our freedoms. At times, the movie seems as committed to making points as it is to telling a story.

Still, there's no point damning Redford's effort, even if it ultimately emerges as a musty addition to the canon of socially conscious movies that don't so much raise questions as answer them.

New 'Scream,' same as the old 'Scream'

Wes Craven revisits the Scream franchise, but gives us little to shout about.

Scream 4 offers little that we haven't seen before as it jauntily follows in the self-conscious, bloody footprints of its three predecessors.

Directed by horror maven Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson -- the duo that has overseen all the Scream movies -- this fourth edition builds toward a variety of moments that have been engineered to create whoops and hollers in any crowd that's already primed to have a good time and doesn't care if that good time is not entirely distinguishable from the experiences it associates with the previous films.

Scream 4 loads the screen with characters as it mingles appearances by original cast members (Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette) with new arrivals (Rory Culkin. Emma Roberts and Hayden Panettiere).

This edition finds Sidney returning to Woodsboro to hype Out of the Darkness, a book she's written about how she survived her horrific experiences.

Ghostface, the series' resident killer, also returns, evidently inspired by Sidney's reappearance. Ghostface, of course, slaughters many teens, high-school students being the most expendable ingredient in most horror movies.

As fans of the series know, Ghostface is a phone freak; this being 2011, he uses lots of cell phone minutes. He always tries to call his victims before he strikes, speaking in a gravely menacing voice supplied by Roger Jackson, an actor whose name I mention as a courtesy to those who plan on entering trivia contests over the weekend.

Roberts plays Sidney's cousin, the teen-ager around whom the other kids gather for self-referential dialog, as well as for the typical events that pass for plot in horror movies that do little more than alternate jokes and stabbings.

The finale will score in some quarters, but by then I was pretty sick of the whole thing. Even with a little updating, Scream 4 feels old hat, a helping of horror that too often left me bored and bummed.

And when the script tries to get meaningful – serving up blather about the emptiness of fame and celebrity – my eyes rolled. Even in a small, ironically intended doses, social significance is the last thing I want from a Scream movie.