Critics are musing: is Bratz much better than Barbie? Since 2001, the ethnically diverse dolls have built an empire based on their unique brand of girl power and lip gloss, including this film adaptation featuring four girls overcoming their differences and joining together in holy BFFness. But critics deem Bratz: The Movie a vapid and clueless enterprise, with characters who don't seem to have any discernable characteristics beyond fashion and material wealth. And it freely employs stereotypes (girls must be skinny, boys must be dreamy, and adults are idiots) while paradoxically arguing stereotypes are bad.

You loved him when he was drinking Mr. Pibb with a Red Vines straw, and you loved him when he was cutting holes in boxes. But will you love Andy Samberg in Hot Rod, his feature-length debut in which he stars an awful amateur daredevil trying to raise money for his ill stepfather? Though Samberg is singled out for his enthusiastic, mischievous charm, little else appears to impress the critics. They say Hot Rod tries for an anarchic brand of physical and lowbrow jokes, but ends up irritating and random instead, the kind of disjointed comedy that gives SNL movies its bad name.

It's been said before, but it bears repeating: Don Cheadle is one of the best actors in Hollywood today. In his latest, Talk to Me, Cheadle gives a performance that some pundits are calling Oscar-worthy -- while noting his co-star, Chiwetal Ejiofor, is no slouch as well. Cheadle plays proto-shock jock Petey Green, an ex-con who brought freshness, humor, and irreverence to the medium during the tumultuous and heady late 1960s. While some pundits note that the film has some bumpy patches -- often a problem for biopics -- they say the performances and energy are strong enough to overlook most flaws.

Hector Lavoe isn't widely known with the American public. And that probably won't change much with the release of El Cantante, a biopic based on the late Puerto Rican salsa singer's life. Marc Anthony stars as Lavoe, but it's the life of Lavoe's wife (played by Jennifer Lopez) that, for better or worse, you'll remember the most vividly from the movie. Critics call Lopez's scenery-chewing a vanity acting job, as the rest of the movie relishes in a loose structure, creating a vacuum of character and narrative focus. And while El Cantante relishes in biopic clich?s, it never bothers revealing why Hector Lavoe was even worthy of an inspiring biopic in the first place.