Capsule reviews: 'Megamind,' 'Due Date' (AP)

Capsule reviews of films opening this week:

"127 Hours" — This strangely serves as a persuasive tourism promotion for getting away from it all and going exploring in middle-of-nowhere Utah. Really, it does, even after James Franco finds himself trapped beneath a boulder for — that's right — 127 hours while exploring caves and canyons by himself. Director Danny Boyle, working again with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle ("Slumdog Millionaire," "28 Days Later") as well as Enrique Chediak ("28 Weeks Later"), makes this remote, sun-drenched part of the country look dazzling — appealing in its vastness, dramatic in its severity. And even though the movie is about a man who's stagnant for five days straight, Boyle makes the story vital and vibrant in his signature kinetic style. Despite the physical restrictions of this real-life tale, the way Boyle and co-writer Simon Beaufoy tell it are boundless. "127 Hours" skips around in time and place. It takes us outside the canyon and deep within one man's isolation and fear. It's the one-man Franco show, and the actor gives a tour-de-force performance, displaying every bit of his range. R for language and some disturbing violent content/bloody images. 90 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

• Christy Lemire, AP Movie Critic

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"Due Date" — Robert Downey Jr. is miserable, stuck on a cross-country drive with a creepy Zach Galifianakis. And it's easy to imagine how he feels: It's often torturous just sitting through the movie, and we're not the ones trapped in the middle of Texas with the guy. From the commercials alone, though, it's clear we're probably going to be in trouble here: They cut away early and often to a French bulldog in all his smushy-faced, bat-eared adorableness. When you need to go to the dog for easy, reliable laughs, there's something wrong with your script — and this is coming from a dog person. That script comes from director Todd Phillips, hot off the success of "The Hangover," and three other writers. But "Due Date" lacks the consistent hilarity and originality of that last-summer hit; it's got some individual laughs here and there but lacks sufficient story or character development to hold the whole endeavor together. Downey plays Peter Highman, a stylish, uptight architect whose wife (Michelle Monaghan) is about to give birth to their first child. Galifianakis plays Ethan Tremblay, a clueless aspiring actor Peter bumps into at the airport in Atlanta. Through a series of massive contrivances, they're forced to share a rental car all the way back to Los Angeles. R for language, drug use and sexual content. 95 minutes. Two stars out of four.

• Christy Lemire, AP Movie Critic

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"Fair Game" — Despite taking place just a few years ago, this feels like a throwback to the political thrillers of the 1970s: globe-trotting and intelligent, serious and substantial, deliberately paced yet filled with mounting suspense. It also boasts excellent performances from Naomi Watts and Sean Penn (no surprise there) as exposed CIA officer Valerie Plame and her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson — all of which makes it so frustrating when "Fair Game" implodes at the end in a heap of righteous indignation. What happened to Plame and Wilson should make us angry and mistrustful. It should spur us into action, or at least inspire us to become more informed about what our political leaders are doing. But that much is evident from the first moments of director Doug Liman's film, based on a script by brothers Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, which itself is based on Plame and Wilson's memoirs. The film makes its case clearly and efficiently: These people were betrayed by the very government they served. It doesn't need to repeat its points with heavy-handed preaching at the end. Still, until then, "Fair Game" moves well and keeps us riveted, even as it encompasses a great deal of complex material. PG-13 for some language. 106 minutes. Three stars out of four.

• Christy Lemire, AP Movie Critic

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"For Colored Girls" — For director Tyler Perry, who specializes in extreme melodrama, done quick and cheap, this is not much of a departure. It's based on the Obie Award-winning play, "for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf," by Ntozake Shange. The play, first performed in 1974, was a powerful flow of eloquent, full-blooded testifying by solitary black female characters — a "choreopoem," as Shange called it. Perry has gathered nine of its characters in an overlapping narrative centered on a Harlem apartment building. It plays very much like a typical Perry soap opera, with the exception that every now and then his characters spout a poetic soliloquy. The rich language of the ruminations is utterly disconnected from Perry's dialogue, and the film can only go down as a missed opportunity, a work of art that should have been trusted to more capable hands. With a hollow Janet Jackson as a fashion editor, an over-the-top Whoopi Goldberg as a religious zealot and more rounded performances from Tessa Thompson, Anika Noni Rose and Kimberly Elise. R for some disturbing violence including a rape, sexual content and language. 120 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.

• Jake Coyle, AP Entertainment Writer

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"Four Lions" — If the Three Stooges tried to carry out their own Islamic jihad, the results could not be funnier than director Chris Morris' wonderfully absurdist nightmare about terrorist wannabes. Riz Ahmed, Nigel Lindsay, Kayvan Novak, Adeel Akhtar and Arsher Ali play a group of phenomenally incompetent British Muslims aiming to carry out a round of suicide bombings. This is a movie that will have you gasping in horror even as you choke on your own guffaws. The stuff these guys say and do — from the motions they make to confound possible camera surveillance to tweaking "The Lion King" into a jihadist parable — makes this one of the funniest movies of the year. It's also one of the scariest and saddest. As these "lions" approach their goal of sacrificing their lives in acts of mass murder, we cringe and hope they'll turn aside from their plot, not only because of the innocent lives they aim to take, but because we've actually come to care about these idiots, the way we care about Curly, Larry and Moe. R for some language, including sexual references throughout. 97 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

• David Germain, AP Movie Writer

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"Megamind" — A dastardly super-villain who turned evil because of a bad upbringing finds himself seduced to the good side to defeat an even badder guy. Didn't we just see this last summer in "Despicable Me"? This latest action comedy from DreamWorks Animation features dazzling computer-animated design and action. Yet despite a clever hook — what's a villain to do when he manages to defeat his superhero nemesis? — it's a thin story that feels familiar and unfolds with no surprises. The movie offers an amiably goofy voice cast led by Will Ferrell, Brad Pitt, Tina Fey and Jonah Hill, whose wisecracks are cute if not terribly memorable. Ferrell's the title character, an alien villain struggling to fill the void in his life after one of his plans to get rid of superhero Metro Man (Pitt) actually succeeds. The most impressive thing about the movie is the setting, a richly detailed skyline of steely skyscrapers. The dizzying heights are so authentic in digital 3-D projection that some of the mid-air action sequences bring on a faint sense of vertigo. PG for action and some language. 96 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

• David Germain, AP Movie Writer

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