Written and directed by Craig Chester

With: Craig Chester, Malcolm Gets, Parker Posey and Chris Kattan

99 minutes

Think back to those unforgettable moments in cinema when a dog is brought into a hospital emergency room and what film stands out? The Babe Ruth Story, of course. Poor little Pee-Wee runs on the field just in time for oafish Bill Bendix to slam a line drive foul into the poor pooch’s kishkes. (Animals were harmed during the making of this film.) The uncultured Bambino quickly scoops up the pup and rushes it to the nearest E.R.

The only reason I reference the cinema’s Sultan of Swill in this context is because I derived more pleasure thinking of this scene while watching Adam & Steve than I did from anything else the film had to offer. It is also how the title characters reunite in this agonizingly unfunny romantic comedy.

How’s this for a socko opening? It’s the late ’80s and childlike goth Adam Bernstein (writer/director Craig Chester), is about to spend the night of his life with Steve (Malcolm Gets), the glam-rocking man of his dreams. They snort a boatload of cocaine laced with baby laxative (it’s clearly spelled out in the dialogue) and the singer drops a soft-serve stream on the rug followed by a burst of projectile vomit strewn from his once and future lover’s mouth. After another reel, I knew just how they felt.

Flash-forward 17 years to find Adam lonelier, more neurotic and trying hard to steer clear of the crack pipe. An accident with a salami-knife finds Adam rushing his wounded pet to the emergency room to be looked after by kindhearted Dr. Steve. Neither of them recognizes the other from their catastrophic first encounter, and eventually the two become lovers.

It gets even lower when you consider that former indie darling Parker Posey, Adam’s fag hag confrere, is initially reduced to hiding beneath layers of latex tonnage and trawling for jokes by chowing down on a slab of ribs she carries in her purse. Flash forward 17 years to find her on stage, minus the fat suit and performing an outdated stand-up routine conceived for her former full-figure self. Couldn’t they afford Brittany Murphy?

Among the numerous poorly executed slapstick sight gags (not a laugh in the bunch), one stands out as particularly homophobic. Adam and Steve dine al fresco. Sucking on opposite ends of a spaghetti strand, the couple inch closer together and connect with a kiss. Suddenly, a beer bottle enters the frame and shatters against Adam’s head. Played strictly for laughs, the source of the bottle is never revealed, leaving one with the uncomfortable notion that it was thrown by someone disgusted by the sight of two men kissing. A cutaway to a klutz on a balcony could have smoothed things out in addition to perfectly blending in with the film’s meager notion of humor.

I think that Chester was trying for a crossover date movie. If that’s the case, cross over to another theater and hope for something more engaging, like The Benchwarmers.

Rating: 0 stars

Written and directed by Doug Atchison

With: Keke Palmer, Laurence Fishburne, Angela Bassett and JR Villarreal

112 minutes in CinemaScope

The independent documentary Spellbound inexplicably captured the hearts of the middle-class. Soon after, ESPN began primetime broadcasts of spelling bee championships. (Were there Vegas odds on the kids?) If The Exorcist can spawn Abby and The Godfather can beget Disco Godfather, why shouldn’t contemporary black filmmakers cash in on a killer bee craze? What’s next? Kung-fu Scrabble? Inuit Perquackey?

The Jews were first to hop on the cinematic bandwagon with Bee Season. Why is it OK for goyisha kup Richard Gere to play a Jew? Audiences would have rioted had he undertaken Laurence Fishburne’s role as Akeelah’s coach in blackface. Just keepin’ it real.

With the exception of Keke Palmer’s breakthrough performance as Akeelah, there is nothing even remotely unique about the picture. Akeelah and her friends all speak a compulsory style of Hollywood Ebonics so that coach Fishburne, over enunciating in a manner that makes James Earl Jones sound like Georgie Jessel, can later rid her of the habit.

Akeelah’s mom tells her to turn off the TV during dinner. Her brother asks Akeelah to flip to ESPN for him to check a score. Wouldn’t you know it? Instead of a football game, the spelling bee championships just happen to be on. Don’t you hate it when an unskilled screenwriter has to rely on cutting to a TV screen at just the right moment to help advance the plot?

What about spelling coaches with dead daughters finding students with dead fathers to mutually feed off of? Do you smell that? It’s the stench of an ABC Sunday Night Movie burning through the screen. The only trick director Atchison missed was having the bee unite Fishburne and Basset in happily-ever-afterhood. They made a much better Ike and Tina Turner.

As reported on imdb.com, during a Q&A at the Tribeca Film Festival, a brave audience member had the fortitude to call Atchison out on the film’s haphazard editing style, particularly the numerous forced transition shots. Atchison did what any lightweight filmmaker would have done in a similar situation: He blamed the projectionist for sloppy reel changes.

Starbucks bankrolled the muddy brew. Can you spell VINEGAR MACCHIATO? I was embarrassed to be holding a cup of their product during the screening. If they dispensed coffee as poorly as they greenlight well-intentioned film projects, restroom walls across America would be coated with projectile crappucino.

The power of Oprah will compel her zombies to dutifully buy tickets. People who never watch films made before 1990 and/or children under the age of 8 will probably find Akeelah refreshingly contrivance-free.

Rating: * (1 star)

Directed by JJ Abrams

With: Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Michelle Monaghan and Billy Crudup

126 minutes in CinemaScope

Here is exactly what you want to know up front: It’s much better than the DePalma and nowhere near as good as the Woo.

Scientology cover (up) boy Tom Cruise returns as IMF agent Ethan Hunt, a James Bond carbon copy minus the tux and sense of humor. We commence in mid-action with maniacal villain Philip Seymour Hoffman brutally torturing Tom’s missus (Michelle Monaghan) while the helpless hubby looks on. An off-screen gunshot aimed at Monaghan concludes the pre-credit scene and is intended to keep us guessing for six reels whether or not the bullet hit its intended target.

In flashback, the action resumes when Cruise decides to accept a mission to track down colleague Keri Russell in Berlin. Borrowing a page from Charles Bronson’s Death Wish quintet, any woman that becomes close to Cruise either dies or takes a bullet. TV’s former Felicity playing a gun-toting, kick-ass action chick brings unintended chuckles to a film and star/producer that take themselves way too seriously.

Surrounded by heavyweights like Hoffman, Ving Rhames and Laurence Fishburne, Cruise’s tortured facial expressions and emotional fuming appear ludicrous. This is a brain-on-pause summer thrill ride, but judging by Cruise’s strained intensity, it might as well be Hamlet. Only when the script calls for Tom to disguise himself as the bad guy (Hoffman plays his own double) does his performance come to life.

The rest of the film is precisely what you would expect. It’s loud, loaded with car chases, explosions and Tom doing impossible stunts, the most improbable of which find him driving a DHL truck and shopping at a 7-Eleven.

The first two installments were commissioned to box office specialists Brian DePalma, John Woo and screenwriter Robert Towne. Cruise opted for a relative newcomer to helm the picture instead of shoveling cash to big name, behind-the-scenes talent. Less money to the writer/director means more for the star/producer.

JJ Abrams created “Felicity,” “Alias” and “Lost” in addition to penning the laugh-out-loud-awful Armageddon. His direction is slick and impersonal: get ’em on, blow something up, get ’em off and cut to the next international location. It is everything the general public wants and expects from a summer blockbuster. Consider that a warning.

Rating: * (1 star)