Helen T. Verongos

Anyone who has seen one of these movies can just take over for the characters and guess their lines as easily as the three cousins can swap clothes and accents to impersonate one another.

Yes, The Princess Switch: Switched Again is syrupy, and no, beyond its central gimmick, there is little substance to be found. But the same could be said for many a beloved romance film or holiday movie.

While the sisterhood in Easter Cove is indeed powerful, the secrets that bind its members prove to be fairly simple, and the result is intriguing enough to make you wonder what these writer-directors might accomplish if they applied their vision to a more expansive canvas.

A respectable and all-too-real introduction to a chilling chapter of a Hollywood horror story.

Although it offers a dungeon, a curse and a shocking theft, this flat, anodyne movie is unlikely to join the pantheon of holiday classics, so keep a rein on your expectations and accept that you’ll need something more to salvage the evening.

The lack of local color notwithstanding, the movie more than fulfills its promise to unsettle and to incite shivers — and it doesn’t quit.

The movie becomes a cavalcade of tired gags — less com than rom.

The tantalizing clues, occasional laughs and lapses in reality are not enough to hold this film together.

The delight of Echo in the Canyon is in the delicious details its subjects impart.

It’s rare that a director’s first feature film, accomplished with an ensemble of nonprofessional actors, proves to be as quietly powerful as Jean-Bernard Marlin’s simple but lyrical “Shéhérazade.”