Movies starring Zac Efron

A single phrase might be all that's necessary to review The Lucky One: "A Nicholas Sparks movie." Sure, Scott Hicks (Shine) is the director and Will Fetters (Remember Me) gets a screenplay credit, but the average movie-goer who settles into a theat...

Me and Orson Welles is about the theater, or at least the theater as it was in the 1930s. Based on the semi-fictional novel by Robert Kaplow and set in New York City around the time of the opening of the Mercury Theater, the film is rich in period ...

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates exemplifies what passes for “raunchy comedy” these days: plenty of vulgarity and profanity without many accompanying laughs. In trying to push the R-rated envelope, filmmakers have become so focused on bei...

Neighbors contains many of the qualities that make raunchy, profane comedies a popular commodity: sex, T&A, drugs, a barrage of four-letter words, and slapstick of the broadest kind. At first glance, one might be tempted to lump Neighbors into the ...

It’s the same sad story: a small movie becomes an unexpected success and, for purely financial reasons, a sequel is commissioned. The follow-up proves not only to be creatively bankrupt but a disappointment on all levels and thereby tarnishes t...

Whatever else it may be cited for, The Paperboy, Lee Daniels' follow-up to Precious, is not going be called "the feel-good movie of 2012." An unsettling period piece mystery (the period being the late 1960s), The Paperboy is steeped in the so-calle...

Scooby-Doo entered the public’s consciousness as America’s most lovable (and cowardly) Great Dane in 1969 with the CBS-TV debut of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? For years, Scooby and his four human friends – Shaggy, Velma, Fred, and Dap...

That Awkward Moment exudes an "old school" romantic comedy vibe. (Since it borrows from Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, the "old" really applies here.) The script has an '80s/'90s sensibility wrapped in a layer of lewd, crude, rude packaging. S...

We Are Your Friends is presented in three very different acts. The first is at times fresh and inventive, with playful elements that enliven the narrative. The second is solid but familiar. The third is meandering and strangely unsatisfying, even tho...