Mischa Hayek's picks...

Rad Bennett's picks...

This laughless comedy stars Adam Sandler and Kevin James as Chuck and Larry, New York City firefighters who are best friends. Larry, a widower with two children, saves the life of Chuck, a single womanizer. Chuck now owes Larry, who discovers that he can’t legally change the beneficiary of his pension/insurance policy from his dead wife’s name. But if Larry becomes Chuck’s domestic partner, Chuck can become the beneficiary and look after Larry’s kids. The premise is ludicrous, and neither character is likable: Larry is a wimp, Chuck is unbearably obnoxious, and the scriptwriters have tossed in every lame, tasteless gay joke they could come up with. Even the shapely Jessica Biel, who plays the couple’s lawyer and love object, can’t save this film.

I had a feeling about this one up front, but being a Sandra Bullock fan, I decided to give it a whirl. I should have listened to that little voice that said "no." It isn’t that the plot is hackneyed, Bill Kelly’s script stale, or Klaus Badelt’s music imitative (and excessive) -- though they are. It’s that I expected more from the leading lady. Bullock can usually raise the level of a B flick by her very presence, but she seems to have been able to do nothing to pull this turkey out of the muck, and in fact keeps it there with a performance so wooden that I wondered what was up with her and director Mennan Yapo. Bullock’s face wears the same unchanging expression for every one of the many difficult situations into which Premonition plummets her. Leaving the theater, it was the first time in a long time that I felt actually cheated by a film.