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RocknRolla: crackheads, Russian mobsters, a small-time hustler and Thandie Newton

RocknRolla
Written and directed by Guy Ritchie. With Gerald Butler, Tom Wilkinson, Thandie Newton, Mark Strong, Idris Elba, Tom Hardy and Toby Kebbell. (R)

What's a rocknrolla? "It's not about drums, drugs and hospital drips," explains Archy (Mark Strong), a dapper old-school mobster and right-hand man to fixer Lenny Cole (Tom Wilkinson). What it is about I'm not exactly sure, but in Guy Ritchie's high-style return to form—visually, verbally and sonically—I'm not sure it matters.

RocknRolla is set amidst London's building boom, where property values are soaring as high as the hedge-fund bonuses and Russians are trying to get in on the action. But that's just setup for the usual shenanigans. The Russians' accountant (Thandie Newton) conspires with a small-time hustler named One Two (Gerald Butler) to steal their payoff to Lenny, while the Russians' collateral, a prized painting, is stolen. The painting is never seen, because such paintings never are. There's also an actual rock'n'roller, a crackhead named Johnny Quid (Toby Kebbell) whose presumed death has spiked his record sales. Is that a hint to the soon-to-be-ex-Mrs. Ritchie?

Ritchie stumbles with flashbacks to Johnny's troubled childhood, assigning motivation when this is the kind of movie where none is needed, but he's in his element in One Two's hangout, the spieler, where snappy aphorisms ricochet between the poker tables. The only stragglers are Ludacris and Jeremy Piven as Johnny's producers, who never quite get the Runyonesque rhythms. They're like out-of-place extras, and we'll probably have to suffer them again in the sequel. Because when Joel Silver's producing, there's a sequel, and this film is essentially a setup for Ritchie's own Oceans franchise, toplined by Butler and Strong, who with his turn as the head of Jordanian intelligence in Body of Lies is this season's MVP in movies no one is watching.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno
Written and directed by Kevin Smith. With Seth Rogen, Elizabeth Banks, Craig Robertson, Jason Mewes, Jeff Anderson and Traci Lords. (R)

When Seth Rogen stuffs a hand-warmer in his pants with dire results, at the beginning of Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Elizabeth Banks unleashes that knowing, throaty laugh that hasn't been heard much since her memorable turn as a flirtatious bookstore clerk in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. If Mark Strong is this fall's most valuable player, male division, then Banks, who manages to play both Laura Bush and a would-be amateur porn star this season, takes the honors for the ladies. She's one of the few bright spots in this predictable romantic comedy about two best friends who go into porn to pay their bills.

Another is Justin Long, as a gay porn star named Brandon St. Randy, affecting Christian Bale's Batman rumble. (His boyfriend is played by another Brandon who once played a superhero.) Long's appearance, along with the presence of various iWares, may make this the first nearly NC-17-rated Apple commercial. But much of the humor relies on stale jokes about pornifying movie titles (like "Star Whores"), and Rogen's shlubby-guy-who-gets-laid has worn out its welcome. Only rarely is the absurdity of Zack and Miri's movie, described succinctly by their cameraman (Clerks' Jeff Anderson) as "shit going into other shit, in focus," mined for the left-field laughs one expects from Kevin Smith. But at least his buddy Jason Mewes is still around, walking around naked and finally getting some.

Smith has temporarily abandoned Red Bank, New Jersey for the tax breaks of Pittsburgh, home of the world's most famous home moviemaker (fans may recognize George Romero's make-up artist Tom Savini playing a landlord) and he's also left behind just about everything that makes his movies distinctive. Ironically—since Rogen says he was influenced to write Superbad after seeing Clerks as a teenager—Smith has now made what is basically a Judd Apatow film, racy on the outside and conservative at the core. This is not the filmmaker of Dogma, or even Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. It is, however, the filmmaker of Chasing Amy. Love makes Kevin Smith mushy, and it isn't a pretty sight.

Role Models
Directed by David Wain. Written by Paul Rudd & David Wain & Ken Marino and Timothy Dowling. With Paul Rudd, Seann William Scott, Elizabeth Banks, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Bobb'e J. Thompson and Jane Lynch. (R)

David Wain and his friends from comedy troupe The State take their own trip to the Apatowverse in Role Models, in which two manchildren who are spending their extended adolescence hawking an energy drink to schoolkids are forced to do community service in a mentoring program. Zack and Miri pretends to be adult while wallowing in poopie jokes, but Role Models, without a single gross-out, is this week's real envelope-pusher—and it's the envelope from Child Protective Services.

Employing the "Odd Couple/Two and a Half Men" template, Danny (Paul Rudd) is dyspeptic and attached (to Elizabeth Banks—who else?—his co-star in Wain's Wet Hot American Summer) and Wheeler (Seann William Scott) genial and womanizing. Danny is assigned to a teenager (Christopher Mintz-Plasse of Superbad) who lives only for a medieval LARP (Live Action Role Playing) game, while Wheeler gets a foul-mouthed 10-year-old (Bobb'e J. Thompson) whose idea of meeting cute is accusing his new Big Brother of molesting him. Soon Wheeler has won his charge over with lessons on how to pick up girls, but Danny takes a bit longer to come around to his single-minded nerd.

Making Wain, Apatow regular Rudd and American Pie's Scott buddies creates a mash-up frisson that keeps one foot firmly planted somewhere off the movie screen. While the rest of the cast plays to type, Christopher Guest favorite Jane Lynch gets to cut loose from her usual WASPy stuffed shirt as a tattooed ex-addict who runs the mentoring program. She's prone to misusing idioms in a way that particularly annoys Danny, a stickler for proper usage. Like the alleged Wings song that random characters keep citing as their favorite, this is the kind of quirk that keeps this formulaic comedy percolating in amusing, unexpected ways. Wain may have temporarily foregone his absurdist streak (for that there's last year's baldly theatrical—and not very funny—The Ten) but when you've got armies of adults in knight costumes jousting for meaningless glory in a city park, isn't that its own theater of the absurd?