“Bride Wars”
* 1/2 RATING | Candace Bergen’s Murphy Brown would have zero sympathy for the battle best friends Liv and Emma dive into once their nuptials are booked for the same day at the same dreamed-of venue. Yet wedding planner Marion St. Claire (Bergen) isn’t just the agent of their spiraling cat-spat; she also narrates this very slim fable about female friendship, starring Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway. Vera Wang-clad gladiators: Let the games begin. Hudson and Hathaway are adept at the physical comedy demanded by escalating pranks. But neither is blessed here with material worth any other sort of stretch. The menfolk get the kinder, gentler, often funnier toss-off lines. Collectively, interchangeably, each reminds us how absurd all this is becoming. The lesson here seems to be: Women are seldom truly happy for one another. But wait, this can’t be the comedy’s moral, can it? Rescuing it, however, from its own cynicism proves as difficult as getting a June wedding date at the Plaza. PG-13. 1 hour, 28 minutes. Lisa Kennedy
“Bedtime Stories”
** RATING | Adam Sandler plays Skeeter, a hotel maintenance man who gets roped into watching his sister’s kids for a week. although he is ill-equipped for that chore. Skeeter feeds the young’uns junk food and sends them to bed early with wildly implausible bedtime stories. The next day, however, Skeeter finds the stories coming true. It rains gumballs. Angry dwarfs kick him in the leg. Beautiful damsels require his chivalrous heroics. So, naturally, Skeeter tries to bend the stories to his benefit. PG. 1 hour, 35 minutes. David Frese, McClatchy Newspapers
“Donkey Punch”
** RATING | What if “Gossip Girl” suddenly turned into one of those last-hottie-standing slasher films? It might go something like “Donkey Punch,” a thriller starring nubile, tan, young things on a yacht in the Mediterranean. The naughtiness turns nasty, the nastiness turns fatal, and the kids gradually turn against one another. R. 1 hour, 39 minutes. Wesley Morris, The Boston Globe
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