The season's second extended-family comedy deals with the problem of writing for 20 kids by largely ignoring them, concentrating instead on the slapstick-inducing rivalry between heads-of-household Steve Martin and Eugene Levy. Subplots for a few of the children are invented and forgottena as needed backdrop for Martin's beleaguered-father schtick, an endless cycle of concerned, overprotective, bumbling and repentant antics. Director Adam Shankman proved his ability to bring out the incompetence of talented comedians in Bringing Down the House. Now, his lack of effort seems to have infected his collaborators, from images that defy an audience to keep their eyes from wandering to indifferent performances by the unwieldy ensemble (especially the skeletal Hilary Duff, who spends her time splayed on a lounge chair, paging through Allure). Even Levy gives his gymnastic eyebrows a rest, leaving the acting to his ridiculously shellacked hair. Martin has been rehashing this character since 1989's Parenthood, and one wishes that his pet projects better justified these cynical paycheck gigs. But it'll take more than Shopgirl to atone for Steve Martin stumbling after a rat.

Now playing at area theaters

Casanova

What better way to reassert one's heterosexuality than by playing history's most famous lover? (Well, makin' babies with the female co-star of your gay cowboy movie helps, too.) But this version of the story may not do the trick. Despite the trailers playing up Casanova as a blissed-out romance á la Chocolat, Heath Ledger is reduced to playing the pretty face at the center of an old-fashioned farce. Romance is present, of course, in the form of Sienna Miller's proto-feminist, whose very disgust at Casanova's libertine methods makes her the only woman who can inspire him to settle down, but Lasse Hallstrom is content to play lip service to his title character's exploits. The sexless affair is continually upstaged by the colorful supporting cast: Oliver Platt in false teeth and fat suit, Jeremy Irons hamming it up as the foppish Grand Inquisitor, and especially Omid Djalili as Ledger's unflappable valet. The humor is anachronistic in both directions, making winking reference to modern topics while keeping its sex humor to a quaint ribaldry, double entendres muttered coquettishly from behind an obscuring fan. The actors may speak in Olde Europe accents, but Shakespeare's audiences could have anticipated every twist in this parade of mistaken identities, cross-dressing women and buffoonish villains. Hallstrom barely blows off the dust, content to produce a lavishly photographed juggling act. It's mildly diverting, but you're simply watching for when—no question of if or where—the balls will drop.

Opens Dec. 25 at Ritz Bourse

Broad and blustery, the film version of Mel Brooks' musical (not to be confused with the nonmusical film on which the musical is based) is too long and too strained to be much fun. As most everyone knows, the story involves an odd couple, cynical Broadway producer/old-lady-Lothario Max Bialystock (Nathan Lane) and accountant/aspiring producer Leo Bloom (Matthew Broderick), who conjure a surefire plan for profits: They will produce the worst show ever, collect lots of financing and close it opening night. Written by and starring Franz Liebkind (Will Ferrell), Springtime for Hitler means to set the record straight on Der Führer, but when Liebkind breaks a leg on opening night, flaming director Roger De Bris (Gary Beach) steps in, and the show's a stupendous hit. The producers are ruined. Or, almost. Leo has meantime fallen in love with their secretary/co-star Ulla (Uma Thurman), a romance that leads to a couple of stunning numbers—one in Max's all-white office, the other during Max's eventual trial, where Leo shows up to describe how their meeting changed his life. It's easily the most affecting song in the piece (and the only one where Broderick reveals a lovely voice), making you realize Ulla's complete redundancy. The film's grandeur seems left over from the stage; director/choreographer Susan Stroman leaves the gigantic gestures and boomy orchestration in place. The best thing to be said for the whole shebang is that it might put some brakes on the rage to bring stage musicals to film, particularly with movie actors who are neither singers nor dancers.

Opens Dec. 25 at area theaters

The Ringer

Bringing Bobby and Peter Farrelly's fascination with mentally challenged humor to the fore, this oddly sweet comedy stars Johnny Knoxville as Steve Barker, a hapless loser who poses as a Special Olympian to get money for a friend's operation. His mercenary uncle (cigar-chomping Brian Cox) tells Steve "a buncha feebs" don't stand a chance against Steve's high-school track training, but six-time champion Jimmy (Leonard Flowers) leaves him in the dust, and his dorm mates quickly see through his disguise (the alias "Jeffy Dahmor" might have something to do with it). Luckily, it turns out Jimmy is a vainglorious boaster (complete with limo and entourage), and Steve's new friends are just as happy to see him win; cue midnight training sessions and the Magnificent Seven score. Written by Family Guy's Ricky Blitt and directed by Barry Blaustein (writer of many Eddie Murphy vehicles and director of the pro wrestling documentary Under the Mat), The Ringer bears the Farrellys' imprimatur and some of their faults (haphazard construction, indifferent-to-ugly visuals), but also clearly extends their attempt to let mentally challenged audiences in on the joke. Steve/Jeffy's six-man posse (who include Jed Rees, Edward Barbanell and Geoffrey Arend) get all the good jokes (if none of the physical humor) and seem much more at ease than Knoxville, who, to be fair, is saddled with a nigh-impossible task: playing a comic lead without playing retardation for laughs. In some respects, The Ringer is playing with fire: There's no guarantee the audience will laugh with instead of at, and indeed, the public screening I attended was studded with look-at-the-'tard sniggers. But the crowd's reaction audibly shifted as the movie went on, perhaps because they realized Steve's friends weren't just there for novelty's sake. The Ringer isn't a great movie; it's barely even good. But in its own, extremely modest way, it's as revolutionary as Brokeback Mountain, even if its year-end slot has more to do with studio housecleaning than Oscar prep.

Opens Dec. 23 at area theaters

By the very act of invoking The Graduate, Rob Reiner's latest makes a tacit admission: Mainstream American film has gotten old and boring. Reiner's own employment, as a last-minute replacement for writer Ted Griffin at Kevin Costner's insistence, is a rebuke to the sort of individual authorial stamps brought to the original by Mike Nichols and Buck Henry. Where the 1967 film somehow managed to grab hold of a popular audience with a witty and sexy (if now very dated) dive into the psyche of a young man terrified of maturity, Rumor states plainly that passion is a sign of stunted adolescence which must be squelched in favor of a life of complacent comfort. Dustin Hoffman may have finally accepted stability with Katharine Ross, but the decision came with a moment of window-shattering romance, not a dull-eyed shrug. This account of the "real life" characters behind Henry's story goes so far as to rewrite the ending so that Costner's proto-Hoffman in fact lost the girl and became an aging Lothario. Reiner's final cozy acceptance of Aniston's shallow Pasadena family (after spending the film's first half taking cheap shots at their expense) seems to accept that every young idealist Meathead wises up into a bald suburban Republican. Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson.

Opens Dec. 25 at area theaters

A snuff film masquerading as entertainment, Greg McLean's slick, sick thriller follows three backpackers into the Australian outback, where they're promptly kidnapped and tortured by Nathan Phillips' towering redneck. McLean feints at establishing rapport among the attractive young trio (John Jarratt, Cassandra Magrath and Kestie Morassi), but he's patently just getting his hooks in so it will hurt more when they're abducted, just as their sophomoric ruminations on mortality are meant to give the illusion of depth. That Wolf Creek is purportedly based on a real case (and co-financed by the True Crime Channel) makes its depravation closer to grave-robbing: These are, at least ostensibly, real deaths being staged for our titillation (or, in my case, indigestion). Shot in hand-held video, McLean's vacuous horror show apes Texas Chainsaw Massacre's grainy verisimilitude, but only testifies to its creators' coddled insularity; its factitious Vietnam references only underline the movie's rootless depravity. Too late to hope there won't be a viler movie this year; let's pray for the future instead.

Opens Dec. 25 at area theaters