Last Holiday ** 1/2|Directed by Wayne Wang, this comedy about a woman who goes on a Euro-spree when she learns she has three weeks to live is more candy corn than Capra corn. Too bad. Because embedded in Georgia Byrd’s sojourn to the posh Grandhotel Pupp in the Czech Republic are some truths about class and work worth pondering. Queen Latifah’s turn as a New Orleans department store sales associate who dreams big but lives hunkered within her means until bad news strikes offers some guilt- free pleasures. As Georgia’s life wanes and she begins to live large, other lives will be transformed. Gérard Depardieu, LL Cool J and Timothy Hutton also star.|PG-13|112 minutes|Released today|Lisa Kennedy
Hoodwinked ***|Making their clever CGI-animated feature debut, Cory and Todd Edwards and Tony Leech have seized a tale any big, bad wolf knows like the back of his paw. In “Hoodwinked,” the Little Red Riding Hood yarn gets retold by four unusual suspects: a granny with a secret, a wolf with an undercover job, a dunderheaded Woodsman and an increasingly rebellious ‘tween by the name of Red. Detective Nicky Flippers, the suave frog piecing together their “Rashomon”-style tales, is more Nick Charles than Sam Spade. Not only does “Hoodwinked” turn a familiar tale upside down and shake it madly, it makes winking, nudging sport of fairy tales and detective movies. Anne Hathaway, Glenn Close, David Ogden Stiers and Patrick Warburton provide their voices.|PG|83 minutes|
Released today|Lisa Kennedy
The Family Stone ***|This movie tries hard to be your new after-the-holidays weeper. Largely, it succeeds, despite stumbling in the middle. The Stone family of grown children gathers at its Massachusetts home to rally around matriarch Diane Keaton, and fight incessantly. Sarah Jessica Parker is the girlfriend meeting the family, but her character is too shallow to draw much sympathy|PG-13|95 minutes|Released today|Michael Booth
Big Momma’s House 2 * 1/2|The kindest thing that can be said about this: It’s Martin Lawrence’s best movie in years. Then again, he has made some stinkers lately. Nothing new, just more of the same broad gags as Lawrence’s FBI agent goes undercover as Big Momma to work as a nanny in a suspect’s house. But while Lawrence is in disguise, he manages to be both grotesque and endearing.|PG-13|102 minutes|Released May 9|Christy Lemire, The Associated Press
TV ON DVD
“Doogie Howser, M.D. – Season 4” Those who never watched this series, starring Neil Patrick Harris as a boy wonder who graduated from Princeton at 10 and was a second-year medical resident at 16 when the show began airing in 1989, may have mistaken it for a “My Mother the Car”-style gimmick. In fact, it was one of the most gentle and reflective sitcoms of the era. Over four years, we were able to watch an otherwise-normal teenager grow into his body and his brain. This 4-disc set contains the final 22 episodes, which had Doogie finding something like real romance with a nurse.|$39.95| Released April 25
-Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press
