M.V. Moorhead

The director is in fine form with The Closet, an expertly acted divertissement that may well be headed for a Yank incarnation within the next few years.

Forster is the reason that even non-Mamet-heads might consider giving Lakeboat a shot. It's worth it just to see him in his long one-take exchange with Johnston about booze, but he's remarkable throughout.

The highpoint of the film, acting-wise, comes from Bernadette Peters.

The movie may be intellectually sophomoric, dramatically adolescent and morally vacuous, but it's good fun while it lasts.

It's sweet, tart, brightly colored, insubstantial, and utterly lacking in nutritional value. It's also fun to consume, and harmless enough as long as it isn't your whole diet.

Originally, somebody may have wanted the film to be a serious exploration of the dark side of high school sports, but it ended up as just one more sports picture.

Most of it is incredibly, gleefully crude and tasteless, but it is also good-natured and harmless, and there's a pretty good chance you'll find yourself laughing.

It's a modest family comedy, probably fun for kids and reasonably cute, or at least not too insufferable, for most of the grownups who will take them.

It would be hard to imagine a less exciting movie. Still, inoffensiveness can sometimes lead to success, at least initially, for a family film.

It's a crude, visually ugly, and peculiarly over-plotted movie, but the blunt, pungent, physical shtick is often pretty funny.