THE WEDDING RINGER & BLACKHAT

year: 2015 rating: **

THE WEDDING RINGER: Replacing one letter from the Adam Sandler comedy, RINGER is more of a BRIDESMAIDS meets WEDDING CRASHERS combined with (and especially) I LOVE YOU MAN, where a guy with no male friends puts out an ad for his Best Man...

Which is the same exact plot except the RINGER, Jimmy, played by Kevin Hart, has his own underground Best Man For Hire business with no strings attached: his job is to give a picture perfect toast after gathering a row of groomsmen, in this case all seven.

2015 rating: *

Other than to make his fiancé and her jerky parents happy, there’s no motivation or urgency for Josh Gad’s Doug Harris to go through this elaborate and far too complicated ruse – the entire premise is built on practically nothing at all. This makes for plenty of HANGOVER style shenanigans highlighted by a "bromance" between the two mismatched leads: their relatively thoughtful conversations are the best thing going, allowing Gad to actually act and Kevin Hart to finally stop talking in his rapid fire banter, seeming like a frantic imitation of a dozen funnier comics that gets tiresome, quick. OVERALL RANK: Jedi, Rebel, Droid, Sith. 

BLACKHAT: The fast-paced special effects in the introduction takes us zipping around inside a computer: without being used as a canvas for opening credits, we're catapulted into a world of high end technology.

Chris Hemsworth is a rogue hacker given a prison furlough to find another hacker who caused the destruction of a Chinese nuclear plant. In going beneath his larger than life Marvel persona, he plays a mumbling grouch with more brooding restraint that actual power while the film itself, balancing dull espionage with shaky action sequences, is a lot more interesting inside the computer than outside. OVERALL RANK: Jedi, Rebel, Droid, Sith.