THE WASHINGTON POST • FRIDAY, JUNE 4, 2010

26

MovieReviews

RATINGS GUIDE

BBBB Masterpiece BBB Good BB Pretty good B Not so good

No stars: Failure

GET HIM TO THE GREEK

Russell Brand plays a wild British rock star in a funny story whose sentimental ending feels tacked on. 27

MARMADUKE

The Great Dane moves to California and learns to be to himself in this lame adaptation from the

comics. 29

PLUS

WARNER BROS. PICTURES

Part human, part who knows what, the creepy creature Dren is the creation of a biotech scientist played by Sarah Polley, at right, in “Splice.”

SPLICE

Inhuman punishment

by Ann Hornaday

The yuck factor spins off the charts in “Splice,” a thoroughly repulsive science fiction-horror flick that slicks up its B-movie tawdriness with high-gloss production values and two otherwise classy stars. Oscar winner Adrien Brody famous- ly kissed Halle Berry when he got his award, and he apparently got some iffy career advice from

her that night: He delivers his own “Catwoman” groaner here as a brilliant genetic researcher. Sarah Polley, herself nominated for an Academy Award for her screenplay for “Away From Her,” plays his ambitious girlfriend, who while work- ing for a biotech company goes rogue and cre- ates her own part-human, part-animal hybrid. And the animal? A hairless, E.T.-like creature, she seems to be cobbled together from a harp seal, a deer, an albatross and Polley herself, who

possesses the same lambent dark eyes and ethe- real pallor. As the being — which the protago- nists name Dren — grows, the three form a weird kind of family unit, with the usual psycho- dramas and tensions. When it’s not trafficking in creepy images of gooey, squishy things that go blurp in the lab, “Splice” trots out every tired plot trick and risibly sudden reverse (“You never

splice continued on 28

HOLY ROLLERS

Straying too easily from the straight and narrow

by Rachel Saslow

In the indie coming-of-age movie “Holy Roll-

ers,” Jesse Eisenberg plays Sam Gold, an innocent 20-year-old breaking away from his overbearing family. Older, wiser characters introduce him to girls, booze and nightclubs. He stutters through awkward romantic encounters, saying things like, “I think I should talk more or less, I can’t tell.”

We’ve met this character before (Eisenberg in last year’s “Adventureland”; most Michael Cera roles), although never in full Hasidic dress. “Holy Rollers” is based on the true story of a

Hasidic drug ring in Brooklyn, N.Y., in the late 1990s. Authorities estimate that the small group imported a million doses of ecstasy from Europe before getting caught. Sam is recruited to carry the “medicine” from Amsterdam to New York in his suitcase by his neighbor Yosef (Justin Bartha). The central conflict of the film is whether Sam

will stay a drug mule or return to his traditional Jewish community. Unfortunately, new director Kevin Asch and writer Antonio Macia don’t show any positive aspects of Sam’s home life, so it’s hard to see the appeal of the straight and narrow path. Home life: nagging parents, an undesired career as a rabbi and an arranged marriage with a girl who wants eight children. Drug life: a hot Hebrew

holy rollers continued on 29

Ran 27

The City of Your Final Destination

28

Living in

Emergency 28

OPENING NEXT WEEK

Special Forces soldiers who were set up for a crime they didn’t commit try to clear their names in The A-Team... An American boy living in China masters kung fu in a remake of The Karate Kid ... A man takes revenge against arms manufacturers in the French comedy Micmacs . . . A German couple meets a happier couple on vacation and begins to question their own relationship in Everyone Else ... An Irish fisherman believes he has caught a mermaid in Ondine ... The French version of James Bond beds women and saves the world in OSS117: Lost in Rio . . . A man whose life is in disarray gets a second chance in

Solitary Man.

FIRST INDEPENDENT PICTURES

Jesse Eisenberg plays a young man caught up in a Hasidic drug ring in “Holy Rollers.”

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