Review: Blades of Glory, The Lookout, Robinsons

"Blades of Glory" — Will Ferrell and Jon Heder's figure-skating comedy offers a few prime gags but a flimsy premise that loses its novelty quickly. The idea sounds like a great little "Saturday Night Live" sketch: Ferrell's an arrogant rebel of a men's champ, Heder's his fastidious rival, and the two end up teaming as the first men's pair after they're barred for life from solo competition. And there's about enough funny material for a great little "Saturday Night Live" sketch. The trouble is, there's an extra 80 minutes or so of down time in which Ferrell, Heder and co-stars Craig T. Nelson, Jenna Fischer, Will Arnett and Amy Poehler are pretty much repeating their characters' shallow schtick again and again. PG-13 for crude and sexual humor, language, a comic violent image and some drug references. 94 min. Two stars out of four. • David Germain, AP Movie Writer ______ "The Lookout" — This may look like just another bank heist caper, but it's actually a beautifully drawn character drama, and the rare film that manages to balance subtlety with suspense. Then again, that shouldn't seem too surprising coming from longtime screenwriter Scott Frank, an Oscar nominee for Steven Soderbergh's "Out of Sight" who also wrote the scripts for "Get Shorty" and "Minority Report," among many others. "The Lookout" also marks Frank's debut as a director, and he shows a keen instinct for eliciting strong performances from his talented young actors, especially Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Formerly of TV's "3rd Rock From the Sun," Gordon-Levitt is developing into an intriguing performer of unexpected depth. Here he plays a once-promising high school athlete who suffers a head injury in a car crash. One night, he makes some dangerous new friends (led by Matthew Goode and Isla Fisher) who talk him into serving as the lookout while they rob the bank where he works as a janitor. Except for a couple of coincidences that feel a bit too convenient, the script is close to perfect. R for language, some violence and sexual content. 99 min. Three stars out of four. • Christy Lemire, AP Movie Critic ______ "Meet the Robinsons" — There's been such an onslaught of animated movies over the past year or so, it only seems like they're coming at you in 3-D. This one actually does, and it's one of the more tolerable of the genre in recent memory. Thankfully, it doesn't consist of smart-alecky talking animals spewing one-liners and pop culture references. And the three-dimensional effects are pretty spectacular. A lot of times with this technology, it's too easy to zing and fling things at the audience, simply because you can. It's gratuitous; the most recent "Spy Kids" movie is a prime example. Here, the effects spring organically from the story. You feel like you're immersed, the way the ground slopes toward you or objects seem to come from behind you and enter the screen. The story itself, however, is strictly two-dimensional. Young Lewis (voiced by Daniel Hansen) is left at an orphanage as an infant. Being the science geek that he is, he invents a memory scanner to go back and find his mom. Instead, he winds up in the future, where a family of lovable misfits and weirdoes takes him in. Angela Bassett and Tom Selleck are among the vocal cast. G. 93 min. Two and a half stars out of four. • Christy Lemire, AP Movie Critic