Metro Pulse Online: Movies, Past &Amp; Future

Armed only with his mysterious mental connection to the feral minds of studio executives, the Movie Guru reveals just how good or bad this week's new releases will be:

Dumb and Dumberer (PG-13)
Inventing earlier versions of the characters made "famous" by Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels, Eric Christian Olsen as Lloyd and Derek Richardson as Harry try to prove themselves worthy of attending regular high school, rather than their special needs classes, in this prequel to Dumb and Dumber.
Prediction: Crude, tasteless, offensive—it should be a box-office smash.

Hollywood Homicide (PG-13)
How original. Another mismatched buddy cop movie. Harrison Ford is the veteran LAPD homicide detective and Josh Hartnett is the rookie he's supposed to show the ropes while investigating the gangland-style murder of a rap duo.
Prediction: Like Robert DeNiro before him, Ford is trying to a carve a new niche for himself in the action-comedy sub-genre. If the previews of this flick are any indication, he fails.

Rugrats Go Wild! (PG)
The rugrats take a vacation, get stranded on a desert island, and meet that other animated clan, the Thornberrys, whom they hope will help them get back to civilization. With Bruce Willis as the voice of Spike the Dog.
Prediction: This meeting was inevitable, wasn't it? No doubt it will help move tickets.

Family Whys

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of spouses? Made in 2000, but only recently released, The Weight of Water (R) depends heavily on that very question for its plot.

Jean Janes (Catherine McCormack) is a photographer working on a book about a pair of murders committed on an island off the New Hampshire coast in 1873. Thanks to the eyewitness testimony of survivor Maren (Sarah Polley), an itinerant fisherman was hanged for the crime, but questions over his guilt have lingered. Jean, her famous husband-poet Thomas (Sean Penn), his brother Rich (Josh Lucas), and Rich's sexpot girlfriend Adaline (Elizabeth Hurley) charter a sailboat to take a "working holiday" to the scene of the crime.

This modern story is intercut with the tale of Maren's life with her husband and relatives up until the time of the murder. Although the two stories share themes of familial jealousy, they don't parallel one another, and their forced pairing only waters downs their dramatic impact. And for a movie that depends on its characters' emotions to both forward the plot and maintain the suspense, Water is too obvious about who's feeling what about whom.

A slightly more entertaining film about the ties that bind is The Sleeping Dictionary (R, 2002). Set in the 1939 British colony of Sarawak in Malaysia, Dictionary is the story of a young, idealistic English officer (Hugh Dancy), who wants to continue his father's mission of educating and "civilizing" the natives. His primly proper intentions are quickly upset by the cynical old governor of the place (Bob Hoskins), who insists that the young man accept a "sleeping dictionary," a native woman (Jessica Alba, of TV's Dark Angel) who will be his lover and teach him the local language. Naturally, Dancy and Alba's characters find their attraction for one another stronger than a mere sleeping arrangement, a development that violates both tribal custom and British sensibilities.

There's nothing new in this unevenly paced culture-clash romantic melodrama, but the scenery is spectacular, Dancy and Alba are pretty, and watching old warhorses Hoskins and Brenda Blethyn (as Hoskins' wife) transform underwritten characters into more nuanced creations is a treat.

—Scott McNutt