“Friday the 13th
It slayed them at the box office opening weekend but that doesn’t mean director Marcus Nispel’s retread of the Jason Vorhees story should be celebrated. When his sister goes missing, Clay (Jared Padalecki) heads into the kill zone known as Camp Crystal Lake. In the woods, he finds a nemesis in smug frat boy Trent and an ally in Jenna (Danielle Panabaker). As he gets closer to learning what happened to sis, the body count mounts. The movie is short on wit. (Exception: Aaron Yoo having fun as the stoned rube who goes into the shed — no, not the shed!) But then its lead, machete-wielding character Jason has always been short on personality. Gore aficionado Keith Garcia, program manager at the Denver Film Society and tag-team partner on the Denver Post review (see denver ) put it this way: “I give it one star. For boring me to tears when it should have made me scream.” R. 1 hour, 38 minutes. Lisa Kennedy
“Fired Up”
It’s “Wedding Crashers” with high school seniors and bras and panties. Two vaguely unsympathetic hotshots duck football camp in order to join the overwhelmingly female cheerleading squad. Cheer camp, they learn, is a rolling meadow of pliable teen nubility. PG-13. 1 hour, 34 minutes. Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
