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"From the writers of 'The Hangover'" comes "21 and Over," another comedy about people getting really drunk and then having a bunch of crude and insane things happen to them. The difference here is that the three leads are not trying to find their buddy; they're instead trying to find their buddy's house. Oh, and the buddy whose house they're trying to find has passed out and has to be carried from place to place as the circumstances around them continue to get more dire.

Let's back up a bit. It's Jeff Chang's (Justin Chon) 21st birthday. He's a pre-med student who has a big interview the next morning. His best friends, Miller (Miles Teller) and Casey (Skylar Astin), have come to his apartment to surprise him and take him out for drinks, as is the American custom. Upon learning that the biggest interview of his life is the next day, Casey does the responsible thing and says that those plans can be postponed. Miller threatens to keep Jeff Chang up all night if he doesn't come out. "One drink," we're told. Like that's going to happen.

We don't even see Jeff Chang resist the party once it starts. He's loaded by the time we've zoomed forward in time, and only gets worse over the montage depicting the group's bar-hopping. Eventually, he's passed out and time is running out to get him home and to bed. The other two friends are from out of town -- they've all separated once college started, I guess -- so they don't know their way around. They spend nearly the rest of the film attempting to get him into bed before 7AM.

Doesn't this sound familiar? Three guys trolling around a certain location in hopes of finding something, or someone? While doing so, they find themselves in a bunch of "I can't believe it" situations, while also learning things about the others that perhaps should have been better left a secret. When Casey and Miller find a gun in Jeff Chang's pocket, and later learn that he was arrested by the police, we have a mystery on our hands. One whose conclusion is mishandled so badly that I thought there must have been an alternate ending.

It feels too similar, I suppose. We've seen movies that contain situations more shocking than this. When a guy gets run over by a buffalo -- which we don't actually get to see, by the way, because the camera cuts to black before impact -- that winds up being one of the more "crazy" points of the film. Sure, a couple of other moments are funny at the time, if only because at least one of the guys -- Casey -- doesn't seem like he deserved to be put through them, but they're kind of bland for the genre.

There are a few running gags scattered throughout -- always calling Jeff Chang by his full name being one of them -- but most of the humor in "21 and Over" comes from the situations themselves. That can work for some people. Many of you might find a lot of the film funny. It wasn't for me. Watching stupid people act pretty stupid and have bad things happen to them isn't the funniest thing in the world. Like I said, there are a few good moments, but not enough of them to fill the 90-minute running time.

Moving away from the amount of laughter, which is about all that matters in a comedy, the dialogue also leaves a lot to be desired. The film was written and directed by "The Hangover" writers, after all, so that should be expected. It's all profane and silly, and accomplishes one of two things: exposition or forced character development. The dialogue itself rarely attempts to make us laugh. That's a problem, since there's a good deal of time spent walking from place to place.

It says a lot about our main characters that they wind up being chased and/or hated by everyone they come into contact with. They wind up being hunted by at least three groups of people as the film progresses, all of whom show up seemingly at random. These groups are often forgotten about until the script calls for them to pop up for a few minutes. You forget, too, and it makes their reappearances seem to come out of the blue. Sure, the film is about these three guys -- although it's really two of them because Jeff Chang isn't awake for most of his screen time -- but if you want to continue bringing back these secondary characters, at least treat them with a little respect.

I'm sure that all of these actors have talent. Justin Chon turns in the best performance in the film whenever he's awake. Skylar Astin was in "Pitch Perfect" and fared much better there. He delivers every line with great sincerity, but that doesn't work with this type of character. Miles Teller was in "Project X," and plays the same type of role here. He isn't good in either.

"21 and Over" is pretty much the exact type of movie that you expect it to be. If you think "The Hangover" is funny, you'll probably find this movie hilarious as well. It has issues with its characters, dialogue and situations, but if you find it funny you probably won't notice. I didn't like "21 and Over," but if it sounds like your type of thing, you'll probably get some enjoyment out of it.

It's only the second release week of 2013 and already we have a strong contender for "most inconsequential film of the year." Shot and edited without any idea of how to make it exciting, written like what a 12- year-old might think a tough gangster movie would sound like, and looking surprisingly modern for a period piece that takes place in 1949 and is "inspired by true events," "Gangster Squad" is a perfect example of mediocrity hitting the big screen.

In fact, the only interesting thing about this movie is how it came to be released in January and not in September like was originally planned. As many of you will note, the Aurora shooting spree took place, and was a tragedy. In "Gangster Squad"'s trailer, the titular squad shoots up a movie theater. Thinking that keeping that scene in would be rather tasteless, the studio pulled back the release date and re-shot portions of the film to have the big shootout take place somewhere else. They then scheduled a new release date of January 11, 2013, instead of September 7, 2012.

Perhaps it's just the cynic in me thinking this, but if the film was any good, why would it get released in January, which is the dumping ground for bad films? If the studio had faith that it was great, surely holding it back another couple of months would have been the right thing to do. My theory is that they knew this wasn't going to be anything special, or even good, so it was dumped in January, even despite its cast of stars and surprisingly large budget of $75 million.

The basic idea of "Gangster Squad" is that a group of LAPD Detectives got together and formed a team whose goal it was to stop the gangsters who threatened to take control of Los Angeles. The villain is a ruthless man named Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn), a former boxer who pays off anyone who gets in the way of his "business dealings," which are illegal. Nobody can touch him, everyone thinks, but since we know the film is about the titular squad, we're pretty sure that he can, at the very least, be upset, if not fully removed from the equation.

The gang: John O'Mara (Josh Brolin), a family man and our protagonist/narrator; Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling), a ladies' man and nothing more; Rocky Washington (Anthony Mackie), someone who really hates heroin; Max Kennard (Robert Patrick), the fastest draw in the Wild West -- seriously, he sounds like he's from the 1840s, not the 1940s; Navidad Ramirez (Michael Peña) a rookie cop nobody takes seriously because he's Mexican; and Conway Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi), another family man and the one tasked with listening in to a bugged television set.

Does that not seem like some sort of dream cast? Throw in Nick Nolte as the police chief who orders John to do this and Emma Stone as the love interest for one or possibly more of the characters, and you're talking quite a strong group of actors. It's just a shame they had to go and make this, such a lifeless, bland, uninspired movie. Did we really need a soft-remake of "The Untouchables"? That's really what "Gangster Squad" feels like.

Much of the problem comes from the director, Ruben Fleischer, whose previous feature-length work is made up entirely of comedies. He did "Zombieland," which was a lot of fun, and "30 Minutes or Less," which was not. He does manage to inject "Gangster Squad" with some genuinely funny moments -- the best of which involved a knockout blow which failed in its target; you rarely see that in non-comedies at the cinema -- but most of the time he feels completely wrong for this material. He doesn't seem to "get" the feel of this type of movie.

There is no depth to any of the characters. The dialogue is so cheesy and unfitting that it feels like it was written by someone who maybe watch a gangster film once in high school and is trying to remember what the characters sounded like, there's more slow motion than in a Zack Snyder movie, but used without any purpose. Seriously, there's a shootout late in the movie that is done entirely in slow motion and it accomplishes nothing -- especially when you know that none of the main characters will die.

Despite the overuse of slow motion, the action scenes are still cut together in such a way so as to not allow you any idea of who's doing what to whom at any given moment. There's even a car fight, but since all of the characters look similar and the cars are the same models, you never know what's going on. The same is true of the fist fights -- the climax is one, which is to be expected, and is the only decent action in the entire film -- and many of the shootouts.

There's nothing to "Gangster Squad." Under the gangster movie surface, it's an empty, hollow movie, and there's absolutely no reason to watch it. You trudge through it, hoping the payoff will be worth the almost two hours of your life that it takes to finish -- and it feels a lot longer than that -- and you won't get that. "The Untouchables" exists so this film doesn't have to. It has an attractive cast and some touches of humor, but "Gangster Squad" is a cheap knockoff of one of what used to be one of the most reliable genres around.

Set in 1988, Ken Kwapis' "Big Miracle" starts off with a basic premise (trapped whales), adds in a great deal of colourful characters all at each other's throats, and tops it all off with the worst possible things happening at the worst possible moments. Here is a movie about rescuing animals that becomes far more political than one might expect, while also including real human beings for characters instead of genre archetypes.

We begin in the Arctic, shooting in the town of Barrow. Our lead is Adam Carlson (John Krasinski), a likable man whom we first meet doing a news story on a Mexican restaurant. Adam's sidekick is a young boy named Nathan (Ahmaogak Sweeney), a kid who isn't too fond of his native heritage and traditions. Adam is planning on leaving the town before the week is up, but after being coerced into doing one more story, he soon discovers that whales have become trapped in the ice.

What is there to do? The natives have an idea: Harpoon the whales and eat them. Adam's ex-girlfriend, a Greenpeace activist, hears about the story and flies up there -- after berating Adam for not telling her himself, despite her orders to never call her for anything. "This is different," she exclaims. There's some tension between them, we learn, and instantly we know that they shouldn't be together. She wants to figure out a way to save the whales, most notably by mobilizing the National Guard.

Soon enough, Adam's story essentially goes viral (if such a thing could realistically happen in 1988). It plays on national television, and soon enough, every major network is sending reporters to cover the whale story. One of these reporters is Jill (Kristen Bell), whom Adam has had a crush on for some time. They hit it off after meeting, and spend a great deal of the film together, even though the character of Jill vanishes for a thirty minute stretch, eventually leading to her becoming unnecessary.

Meanwhile, the whale story has become a worldwide phenomenon. Everyone tunes into their television sets in order to bear witness to the events that are happening in northern Alaska. Even President Reagan gets involved at one point. The decision is made to haul an oil drill to break through the ice surrounding the whales so that they can swim to the sea. But currently, they're trapped with only a patch of visible water to breathe out of, and it's closing up fast.

Much of "Big Miracle" is concerned with keeping these whales alive. Taking place in a subzero climate makes it difficult to keep the ice from freezing, although various methods are tried. The whales' condition eventually worsens, other things go wrong, and a lot of improvisation takes place. Some of the tactics work, while others fail. It's surprising just how much tension can be generated when you put a few animals in a perilous situation, and "Big Miracle" milks that for all it's worth.

Despite the ever-present whale situation whose news sweeps across nations, there is also a human element to this production. It's refreshing to see your typical bad guys (the uncaring profit-driven oil driller, the Russians, and so on), put aside their differences in order to help these poor creatures. But they don't do this by completely switching around their characters, either. The businessman still doesn't like the Greenpeace activist, for example. Differences are put aside for these whales, but the whole situation doesn't define, nor is it the sole motivating factor, for these people. They're all very human characters, filled with flaws and strengths just like anyone watching the movie.

It's difficult to set a movie in the arctic and not make it atmospheric, so it should come as no surprise that "Big Miracle" is just that. You feel cold while watching this film, even if it's a little difficult to believe that the characters would be able to perform just fine in -50C weather without something to cover their faces. This is a movie that felt authentic and that everything that happened, no matter how crazy, really could (and did) take place. When you base your film on true events, this is important.

Part of what makes this film successful is the amazing job done with creating lifelike whales. While we rarely see the full creature (usually one will just come up for air and we'll see its head for a couple of seconds), one could be mistaken for thinking that real whales were used. All three of them are given different bodies so that we can tell them apart, and they function well enough as their own characters.

Where "Big Miracle" falters is in its actors and in its story, although the latter is less of a fault and says more about a potential viewer than it does of the film. Firstly, the acting is all over the place, although it gets better as the film progresses. In the first half, most of the actors seemed to struggle with their delivery, and nobody was terribly convincing. As it progressed, the acting go better. Secondly, it would be nigh impossible to tell this story without it coming across as cheesy. If you can't handle a cheesy story, then you'll want to skip this movie. This is more of a way to narrow down a target audience than a real fault, but it bears mentioning.

When it comes right down to it, "Big Miracle" is an enjoyable movie. It manages to overcome spotty acting and a corny script to become a smart film with deep-enough characters and some tension thanks to everything that just has to go wrong at exactly the worst time it can. It's worth watching if you don't mind a corny story and can handle some poorly acted scenes, especially if you want to see some very lifelike whales and learn about the real story that took place in 1988.