Critical Week: Guilty pleasures

Finally, the summer produces a gleeful, guilty-pleasure action comedy. Against all odds, The Other Guys is enormous good fun, with terrific chemistry between Will Ferrell and Mark Walhberg and a sharp, smart script. The week's other surprise was the Eli Roth-produced thriller The Last Exorcism, which is much more cerebral than expected, and scarier as a result. Sure it's another Blair Witch-style handheld horror, but it's thoughtful enough to keep our minds engaged even as we're being freaked out.

Rather less exciting was the violent heist thriller Takers, which wastes its decent ensemble on incoherent action. Jonah Hex lays waste to its source material and a strong cast by being merely loud and chaotic. And Vampires Suck only mimics Twilight without coming up with anything remotely clever, although it's strangely more engaging than the Twilight movies simply because the cast seems to be having fun. And finally, The Special Relationship is the third in Peter Morgan and Michael Sheen's Tony Blair trilogy (after The Deal and The Queen), insightfully tracing the Prime Minister's interaction with Bill Clinton. But by ending just as George W enters the frame, the TV movie misses the chance to say something really interesting.

Coming up this week: Ryan Reynolds gets Buried alive, documentary filmmaker explores the financial Collapse, a wild tiger is Burning Bright for Brianna Evigan, Chow Yun-Fat takes an epic journey as Confucius, Oscar-nominee The Secret of Kells finally hits Britain, and Fritz Lang's Metropolis gets restored.