Written and directed by Kevin Smith

Starring Ben Affleck, George Carlin, Raquel Castro

“It’s the film I’m most proud of,” says Ben Affleck of Jersey Girl, his new dramatic comedy about the gooey joys of fatherhood. Considering that his last two films – Gigli and Paycheck – were world-class stinkers, that’s not really saying much, is it? I’ve got to assume he’s talking about his performance (which is at least earnest for a change) rather than the movie itself, because Jersey Girl is a trial to get through, what with its manufactured situations and paint-by-numbers emotional beats. I find it hard to believe this icky concoction was written and directed by the same Kevin Smith who made Chasing Amy and Dogma. I guess that’s what happens to directors when they have kids.

As everyone surely knows by now, this is the project that brought Affleck and co-star Jennifer Lopez together. (Their white-hot romance crashed and burned three months ago.) She plays Gertie, a glamorous book editor; Affleck is Ollie Trinke (are these terrible names, or what?), the “youngest and most successful music publicist in New York City,” circa 1994. (He’s sharp, alright: He thinks George Michael is “all about the ladies” and a pre-Independence Day Will Smith is a “two-bit TV actor” who hasn’t a chance in hell of having a movie career.) They fall in love, she gets pregnant, and she dies in childbirth, leaving him with a baby girl (also unfortunately named Gertie). When he gets sacked for mouthing off to a roomful of journalists at a press conference, he moves back to New Jersey to live with his grouchy blue-collar dad (George Carlin, well cast), doing lowly maintenance work for the city as he tries to land a new PR job. He’s a terrible father, of course, until his paternal instincts kick in. (Affleck’s tearful monologue to infant Gertie, while overlong, shows him to good advantage.)

Fast forward: Gertie (Raquel Castro, a cute girl who smiles too much) is a precocious seven-year-old in elementary school; Ollie is still single and driving a street cleaner. Ah, but love awaits him at his local video store in the form of willowy Maya (Liv Tyler), a grad student willing to give him a “mercy jump” because he hasn’t had sex since his wife died. Will Ollie make the right choice and realize his life isn’t “slinging bullshit” in Manhattan, but rather being “the best daddy in the world” to Gertie, and settling down in Jersey with Maya?

No need to ask, since you’ll be able to predict almost every second of this sweet but badly written, disappointingly conventional crowd-pleaser, which will surely cause some Kevin Smith fans to upchuck their popcorn. Even Carlin, once a cutting-edge comedian famous for his routine “Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television”, has been blanded out and turned into processed cheese. (Playing citywide)

Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen

Starring Tom Hanks, Irma P. Hall, Marlon Wayans

I laughed so often during Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Ladykillers that I’m tempted to give it higher praise than it actually deserves. The brothers’ irreverent “retelling” of the 1955 British comedy (which I haven’t seen) starring Alec Guinness has a sprinkling of classic moments (including a great opening 10 minutes and a memorable ending), and it’s certainly better than 99 percent of the comedies out there.

Yet still it’s not quite good enough – at least not for the guys who made Fargo and Raising Arizona. (Neither was their last outing, Intolerable Cruelty.)

Tom Hanks stars as Professor Goldthwait Higginson Dorr II, Ph.D, the Southern, fancy-talking mastermind behind a plot to rob a riverboat casino with a band of “experts” drafted from a help wanted ad. There’s Garth (J.K. Simmons), a demolitions expert with Irritable Bowel Syndrome; The General (Izi Ma), a mostly silent trained killer; the Inside Man, dim-witted custodian Gawain (Marlon Wayans); and the team’s “Muscle,” a battering ram of a football player named Lump (Ryan Hurst). The Professor shows up at the door of Marva Munson (mighty 67-year-old Irma P. Hall), a devout church-goer who disapproves of coarse language and “hippity-hop” music, looking to rent a room. Her root cellar is a straight line to the casino’s money room, which means Dorr and his cronies will have to pretend to be rehearsing “music of the Renaissance” while carving out a tunnel to the cash. When she stumbles onto their caper, the General’s sagely advice is to “float like a leaf on the river of life … kill the old lady.” But plucky Marva proves to be a more formidable antagonist than Dorr imagined.

Though we’ve seen upteen variations of this “heist” scenario, the Coens focus less on the mechanics of the job than the ragtag crew of misfits trying to pull it off. And therein lies the crippling problem with The Ladykillers: caricatured central characters who grate on the nerves.

Lump is a total moron, right down to the dumb-ox voice. Garth is loud and unlikable. The General seems pulled from a bad Vietnam movie, while obscenity-spewing, gold-chain-wearing Gawain is a maddeningly offensive portrayal of blacks. As for the Professor, his constant speechifying and goofball laugh quickly grow thin. Only Mrs. Munson is winning (even though she too is a stereotype of sorts), in part because Hall is such a terrific actress. She, along with Roger Deakins’ brilliant cinematography, is the best reason to see the hit-or-miss (but still worth seeing) The Ladykillers. (Playing citywide)

Recommended: Writer-director George Hickenlooper’s Mayor of the Sunset Strip, a wonderfully entertaining portrait of long-time Los Angeles DJ Rodney Bingenheimer, AKA “Rodney on the ROQ,” the strange but fascinating (as he calls himself) “bridge between the famous and not-so-famous” in the music business. Chock-a-block with choice interviews. (Landmark’s Ken Cinema, April 9-15)

**** a must-see

*** good

** average

* poor

BOMB (think The Adventures of Pluto Nash)

Kyle Counts is the film critic for the Gay and Lesbian Times