Movie Nation

Any team-up of one of the cinema’s most enduring off-camera couples, Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon, should be cherished. They’re both so very good and “natural” doesn’t begin to describe their onscreen chemistry together. They’re as close as Hollywood gets to a Lunt & Fontanne, these days.

And if their latest film outing as a couple, “The Best You Can,” isn’t all it might have been, they’re still grand in it.

It’s a lurching, cloying and uneven romance that folds in a lot of drama — some of it organic, much of it contrived — as it tosses in the odd tone-deaf scene, moment or performance.

Written and directed by sitcom vet Michael J. Weithorn (“The King of Queens”), it bears the trademark of sitcom writer/creators adapting to the big screen. A TV season’s clutter of characters and situations and story arcs are crammed into a 100 minute film.

Sedgwick plays Cynthia, a New York urologist finally facing the end game of marrying an older spouse. Warren Rand (Judd Hirsch) was a legal tyro in his day, a government attorney who held Nixon and his criminal crew accountable for Watergate. Now, he’s forgetting things, having “episodes. He’ll gregariously go to the wrong table in a restaurant and continue an earlier conversation or anecdote — sometimes from MUCH earlier — with strangers.

“He’s older than me,” 60something Cynthia keeps telling folks. “Older than most people.”

The 25 or so year age difference is taking its toll and rattling her.

Bacon plays Stan, an ex-cop and divorced dad coping with his first blast of prostate issues. His constant need for pee breaks makes his night patrolman for a home security company job an ordeal. And that’s not going to make his casual sex and sexting affair with a cashier (Olivia Luccardi) with a “hot old guy thing” any easier.

Cynthia meets Stan when somebody tries to break into the Rands’ townhouse. The way she chatters away tells us she’s a bit rattled, and maybe grateful to have a conversation with somebody who can stay on topic. She babbles on even after Stan begs to use their bathroom.

Yes, the urologist asks him to “call my office.” Yes, there’s an exam. But an informal friendship blooms from this unlikely meet up. They have the same birthday, and now each has a contemporary to talk to.

The text chats are intimate without intimacy. They share jokes about “fragile” Gen Z, as he has a troubled but talented daughter (Brittany O’Grady). She shares her efforts to get her husband to write a book about his colorful life while he still can, hiring a grad student researcher, with Warren able to remember a lot even as he forgets they’re “working” and wanders off.

It’s all very sweet and innocent. How long can that last?

Weithorn shoehorns in lines, dialogue exchanges, characters and situations you usually see in broadly played sitcoms — a lurch or two into sex talk, a two couples dinner conversation in a restaurant that turns to “My first time” — a sitcommy/joky “consulation” with an old colleague (Ray Romano) who is so tactless in discussing her husband’s dementia that you’d swear he’s a surgeon and not a neurologist.

But there are still lovely moments — Cynthia hiring a nurse (Meer Rohit Kumhbani) whose compassion extends to letting Warren tell her his life story, for posterity, hot-tempered Stan finally “hearing” his nervous, afraid of performing daughter and doing something more than play his ukulele in support.

The picture is — like life itself once you’ve gotten that “Welcome” letter from the AARP — a mixed bag. The supporting characters are less fleshed-out, so much so that when Stan’s daughter shows us her many “triggers,” we scratch our head.

And when Luccardi’s gum-snapping 20something throws her “hot old guy” thing out there, it plays like it sounds — like an older screenwriter’s male wish fulfillment fantasy.

But Bacon plays a little and sings a little, Sedgwick handles jokes and pathos and in the scenes that count and turns “professional” in a heartbeat. And each gets across a shared empathy and humanity that bridges any gap in class and life experience.

They’re the reasons to watch “The Best You Can.” The writer director? Well, let’s just hope this wasn’t his “best.”

Rating: R, sexual situations, some drug use, profanity

Cast: Kyra Sedgwick, Kevin Bacon, Brittany O’Grady, Olivia Luccardi, Meera Rohit Kumbhani, Ray Romano and Judd Hirsch

Credits: Directed by Michael J. Weithorn. A Sony Pictures release on Netflix.

Running time: 1:43

The latest Peter Farrelly of The Farrelly Bros. comedy is a tale of condoms, testicular protection, the South American cocaine trade, the World Cup and two doofuses who find one “fine mess” after another to get themselves into.

“Balls Up” is a buddy picture that leans hard into vulgar laughs and finds even them hard to come by. Shockingly.

I was impressed by Mark Wahlberg‘s commitment and energy level in a movie where over-acting is demanded by the lumbering, nearly lifeless script. Take away the usual Farrelly shocks — penises, alligator corpse desecration and Molly Shannon showering the soundtrack with F-bombs — and there’s a whole not of nothing funny or even all that interesting going on in this never-quite-promising farce that gets worse the longer it goes on.

Buddy comedy pro Wahlberg is paired with slow and slow-talking sight-gaggy Paul Walter Hauser of “I, Tonya” and “BlackKlansman” and that just doesn’t pay or play.

Hauser plays Elijah, a pedantic, humor-impaired and risk-averse designer at a condom company that hopes to become the official prophylactic of the (fictional) World Cup 2025, slated for Brazil.

Wahlberg’ is ace salesman Brad, who might save Royal Blue Condom Company’s “Testicle Sentinel” innovation and its very existence by closing this deal.

Watching Elijah’s pained and off-color/over-sharing”presentation” of this innovation to the corporate higher ups (Molly Shannon is CEO) makes that seem like its own Project Hail Mary. Even the introduction of a blue dildo vibrator doesn’t help.

But Brad aces his “Let us cup you and yours at the next World Cup” pitch to Brazilian honcho Santos (Benjamin Bratt, a hoot) and his South American underlings. If only they’d stopped there, and not talked “nine years sober” Santos into celebratory drinks at the sort of vast, production-designed nightclub you only see in the movies.

The cheap shots and mockery of Alcoholics Anonymous are vintage Farrelly (“Dumb and Dumber,” “Kingpin”). Peter and his brother Bobby invented “Oh no they DIDN’T” sacred-cow mockery.

“Joo know what aye haven’tried een a long time,” Bratt purrs?

“Skee-ball,” Brad guesses?

“CRACK!”

But the evening and the movie slip into a coma after that early transgressive buzz as our “heroes” get fired and the company closes, only to have uncanceled tickets arrive months later for the condom designer and “Brad from Sales,” who get to fly down to see Brazil battle Argentina for the title.

There’s an “incident.” The game is compromised and a whole country wants the blood of “os estupidos,” as they call the Ugly Americans.

Screenwriters Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese cut and paste together a story of “You’re free to go…be lynched by Brazilians” official corruption, a more sympathetic and comically-accented drug lord played by Sacha Baron Cohen who has something else in mind for those condoms these two are responsible for, and a visit to Amazonia, where cultish environmentalists do ayuhuasca and protect native species by killing anybody they think is a poacher.

Chelsy Crisp and Eric André try to breathe life into those latter scenes. And a little of S.B. Cohen goes a long way.

Depending on your sense of humor and chemically altered state, there might be half a dozen chuckles in “Balls Up” — less if you’re sober.

The movie and time itself slows to a crawl through the excruciatingly unamusing latter acts. And just when you think it can’t fall more completely to pieces, here comes a finale that further lowers the bar.

Farrelly’s movie, like his comic shock-shtick, gets old in a hurry.

Rating: R, violence, nudity, drug content and profanity

Cast: Mark Walhberg, Paul Walter Hauser, Molly Shannon, Daniela Melchior, Eva de Dominic, Chelsey Crisp, Eric André, Sacha Baron Cohen and Benjamin Bratt.

Credits: Directed by Peter Farrelly, scripted by Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese. An MGM release on Amazon Prime

Running time: 1:45

A fun and furious phenomenon of the ’90s New York punk scene is given its due and another faint glimpse of the spotlight in “Pretty Ugly: The Story of the Lunachicks,” a wry, wizened and not remotely bitter doc about a band that never quite made it, but should have.

They were a respected and popular (not THAT popular) “all girl” ’90s punk band — contemporaries of The Go Go’s, musical, spiritual and showmanship descendents of The Runaways.

The documentary’s decades of performance footage, capturing them as enthusiastic and musically polished teens and onward, makes their case for them all over again. With a sometimes-model lead singer (Theo Kogan) who looks like an ABBA love child and sounds like Cherie Currie (Runaways), howling guitars (played by Gina Volpe and Sindi Benezra) and a thunderous beat provided by bassist Sydney “Squid” Silver and a passing parade of drummers, they should be household names.

A rock journalist working on their biography, Jeanne Fury, assures them that they’d made a huge splash if they reunited. But as that book came out to good reviews and vanished and this documentary finished its film festival run quite a while ago, that didn’t exactly turn out to be the case.

Writer-director Ilya Chaiken’s film still makes for a light and heavily tattooed tour of that Nirvana/Offspring punk era — the rank sexism and abuse the band faced, the internal melodrama of bandmates as lovers and/or junkies and chances the Lunachicks had at the big brass ring.

Forming in the not-yet-Disneyfied New York of the ’80s, when CBGBs was still a thing and punk refused to die, they “wanted to be KISS,” Volpe laughs. They played up a “demented Barbie dolls” image in their stage attire, and titled their albums and EPs “Pretty Ugly,” “Binge & Purge” and “Babysitters on Acid.”

What’s not to love?

The band had minor label record deals, occasional TV and radio exposure, showcase appearances in the Vans Warped Tour, Reading Festival and tours opening for the likes of The Ramones, The Go Go’s, The Buzzcocks, The Dictators, Offspring, Joan Jett, Dinosaur Jr., GWAR and even No Doubt.

They faced sexist taunting from some headliners and mosh pit violence from the mostly-male audience directed at women in the crowd and in the band. Each Lunachick felt they had “something to prove,” “a wall to break down” various members remember.

Their feminism and sex appeal, their polished and frenetic playing, over-the-top shows and tongue-in-cheek tunes — “Jan Brady,” “Spork,” “Buttplug” and “Bitterness Barbie” among them — gave this New York quintet hipster cachet and a rabid following — especially among their punk contemporaries.

But the all-too-familiar story of how success or the lack of it eats away at band harmony plays out here — a taste of the wrong kind of “fame” (Howard Stern running gags, an infamous Calvin Klein heroin chic ad campaign), squabbles about money and credits and resentment over the attention “the beautiful one” gets.

Still, you know there’s a hatchet-burying to come and when it arrives, you can’t help but be touched. And if you aren’t tracking down their tunes after seeing this, your only excuse is “doctor’s orders” about your tinnitus.

Rating: unrated, some nudity, profanity

Cast: Theo Kogan, Gina Volpe, Chip English, Sindi Benezra, Sydney Silver, Becky Wreck and Jeanne Fury, with members of L7, The Offspring, Blondie and The Go Go’s, among others

Credits: Scripted and directed by Ilya Chaiken. A Giant release.

Running time: 1:31

What a time to be alive and a witness to Bob Odenkirk, the Badass Years.

The “Mr. Show” alumnus and ex-“Saturday Night Live” writer, a bit player on every sitcom from “Seinfeld” to “How I Met Your Mother” tapped into something dark and capable of violence with his supporting turn on the breakout series “Breaking Bad.”

Let the murderous mayhem begin as “Better Call Saul” begat “Nobody” and “Nobody 2” and now a tale of a “Normal” town gone in a “Minnesota Nice” way.

Based on “Fargo Lite” story pitch by writer/actor Bob, “Normal” is a conventionally unconventional thriller about an “interim sheriff,” “sort of like a substitute teacher/a midwife with a gun,” hired the duly elected Normal County sheriff dies under circumstances no local seems to find all that unusual.

Turns out, this “half-abandoned” town with mostly-armed citizens has an ace in the hole keeping it afloat. The Yakuza (Japanese Mafia) are stashing their American profits in cash and gold in the local bank.

No nooo, there’s nothing suspicious about those two Japanese bank guards (Peter Shinkoda plays one). The mayor (Henry Winkler) is a big fan of the temp sheriff’s “light touch” — warnings, not tickets, “let’s not get involved” is a rule of thumb.

“I get to say ‘Nothing to see here” over and over again,” Sheriff Ulysses narrates in a long letter to his estranged wife Penny.

That’s the framing/expositional device here. How’d this guy work his way down the law enforcement ladder to a series of temp jobs? When did he stop giving a damn, and why? And what might make him give a damn again?

Could it be the blunt and brassy bar owner (Lena Heady)? Maybe the dead sheriff’s non-binary daughter Alex (Jess MCleod), who seems to be the only one really upset about dad’s death.

“This town used to know right from wrong.”

The tipping point comes when Temp Sheriff Ulysses (Bobby O. was feeling his oats when he came up with that name for his character) tries to de-escalate a bank robbery committed by two homeless drifters (Reena Jolly and Brendan Fletcher) whom he knows dote on their dog.

His politically ambitious top deputy (Ryan Allen) is the one who leads the town’s shootists in their fusilade of the bank and the sticking-his-nose-in-their-business “interim” sheriff.

The movie’s set-up isn’t the most original or surprising. And the story beats that follow this bank stand-off — discovering the vast arsenal that the “department” has stockpiled, just waiting for all hell to break loose, the assorted cute local “types” who turn gun nutty when provoked by Ulysses’ interference and the ticking clock counting down until the murderous top dog of the yakuza (Takahiro Inoue) lands, having flown in to see what the hell is going on with his ill-gotten gains on deposit — don’t deviate from formula.

The Minnesooooooota “types” aren’t as broadly or adorably drawn as those in “Fargo,” even if the violence is on a snowy par with the Coen Brothers’ masterpiece. And the “letter” narration is borderline lazy as a framing device.

But there’s witty banter about bank robberies in a “just tap your card” society — “Nobody uses cash any more.” And director Ben Wheatley (“Free Fire” and “Sightseers” were his) knows his way around a shoot-out, punch-out, snowplow chase or what have you.

One film fan’s “predictable” can be a lot of filmgoers’ comfort food. And kudos to Odenkirk’s personal trainer. After all, why should Liam Neeson, Jackie Chan and Denzel get all the AARP badass roles?

Rating: R, graphic violence, profanity throughout

Cast: Bob Odenkirk, Ryan Allen, Reena Jolly, Billy MacLellan, Jess McLeod, Peter Shinkoda, Takahiro Inoe, Henry Winkler and Lena Heady

Credits: Directed by Ben Wheatley, scripted Derek Kolstad and Bob Odenkirk (story). A Magnolia release.

Running time: 1:31

Dysfunction Junction is somewhere in the career-criminal packed suburbs of northern New Jersey in Dan Levy and Rachel Sennott’s “Big Mistakes,” a harder-edged, over-plotted way of covering the same ground as “Schitt’s Creek,” with little of the charm.

Bingeing this eight episode Netflix offering plays up the darkly funny “Oh no they DIDN’T” bits of business and outlandish or just plain grim plot turns. And bingeing makes nakedly plain the fact that “Mistakes” shoots its wad in the first two episodes and fiddles and faddles through the rest trying to top that.

The quarrelsome siblings in this family are Morgan (Taylor Ortega) and her adopted older brother Nicky (Levy) — “Nicholas” to his church congregation. Levy deciding that a gay Canadian Jew in the Protestant clergy is a joke doesn’t pay off nearly as well as he hoped.

Morgan is a school teacher with impulse control issues and committment problems with her “boring” significant other since high school (17 years ago), Max (Jack Innanen). Nicky has a lover (Jacob Gutierrez) and a congregation he won’t come out to no matter what century this is.

Divorced Mom (the indomitable Laurie Metcalf) inherited the family hardware store and is running for mayor against a cutthroat Jimmy Johns franchisee (Darren Goldstein), but not to worry — youngest, stablest and smartest daughter Natalie (Abby Quinn) is running her campaign.

The “Big Mistakes” begin when this stressed-but-maintaining-an-even-strain clan is tested by the death of Nonna (Judith Roberts), their matriarch. That’s what sends Mom over the edge ordering the kids to fetch granny’s “dying wish,” a necklace to be buried in.

And that’s what puts fearful, keeping-up-appearances figure of “some standing” in the community, Pastor Nicholas and loose cannon Morgan in a cheap gift shop where one shoplifted necklace later, a Turkish clerk (Boran Kuzum) is armed and on their case, kidnapping the siblings for a face-off with a murderous Russian mobster (Mark Ivanir).

Nicky and Morgan “owe” him a necklace, even though it’s been buried with grandma. They owe him “a favor” beyond that. As the favors pile up and the Brazilian and the Italian mob get involved, the hapless duo realizes they’re mixed up in the drug trade and cattle smuggling and in way over their heads.

“I just go where the powder blows, as they say” isn’t convincing anybody.

Mom’s campaign turns ugly and personal. Mom and Morgan’s partner’s mom (Elizabeth Perkins) try to intervene in a relationship he is the only one who wants to save — therapy, role-playing, the works.

And Nicky’s dreams of fleeing it all for a six month cruise with Tareq (Gutierrez) on a sabatical minister’s salary seem like dust — or powder — in the wind.

There are enough grace notes in this — Pastor Nicky’s homily-honed storyelling and mediation and lie-on-the-fly skills can be sweet and/or funny.

But Levy struggles to give nuances to his character as the only emotions that register are outrage, panic and desperation. Ortega (of some series called “Welcome to Flatch”) has even fewer notes to hit.

The brash and outrageous co-creator Sennott (:Shiva Baby”) is sorely missed on screen, not off.

And Metcalf lets us see the off-camera stage directions she must have been getting before EVERY SINGLE TAKE.

“Laurie, your EYES didn’t bug out enough last time. Can we go again?”

The first villain we meet, played by Kuzum, is the most interesting and frightening. The rest are a motley crew ranging from rarely amusing to utterly miscast.

“Weeds” alumna Perkins stands out, with Quinn and Ortega making strong impressions and Innanen annoying the hell out of us in ways only Giovanni Ribisi could match.

Completists will stick with “Big Mistakes” even through episodes where the mistakes get bigger, just less funny. But for viewers with less time on their hands, here’s a tip. Watch the first two and laugh, and the third to get a whiff of how it slacks off, and move on.

Rating: R, violence, drug abuse, profanity

Cast: Dan Levy, Taylor Ortega, Laurie Metcalf, Abby Quinn, Jack Innanen, Boran Kuzum, Jacob Gutierez, Mark Ivanir, Darren Goldstein and Elizabeth Perkins

Credits: Created by Dan Levy and Rachel Sennott. A Netflix release.

Running time: Eight episodes @ :31 minutes each

One of the most formative books from my movie fanatic youth was Theodore Gershuny’s “Soon to be a Major Motion Picture: The Anatomy of an All-Star, Big-Budget Multi-Million Dollar Disaster.”

Gershuny’s on-set/in-the-studio observation of the making of Otto Preminger’s greatest debacle, “Rosebud,” remains — I dare say — a definitive eye-opener and an insightful foray into how movies are made and how they can go as wrong as they often do.

Whole epochs in technology, the shape and demographics of the audience and the very business model of making movies have evolved and devolved since 1975. But Gershuny’s all-access account of what it’s like when money, locations, stars and crew are on board the Major Motion Picture train when a production leaves the station with a very bad but “We’ll fix it” script in hand remains a cautionary tale as informative as any investigation of the disaster that was “Heaven’s Gate” or the triumph against the odds that “Apocalypse Now” turned out to be.

Egos, agendas, one hard-drinking “action” star (Robert Mitchum) quits and another (Peter O’Toole) is cast in his place, contempuous sexism and Zionism and retrograde attitudes that play as stunningly tone-deaf today, it’s a “miracle” “Rosebud” ever got the green light. The film was already hard to get one’s hands on in 1980, when the book came out. And despite being a Peter O’Toole fanatic and a (director) Otto Preminger appreciator, I could never make myself watch it when “Rosebud” aired on cable or streamed. Until now.

The film, based on a novel by Joan Hemingway (Ernest’s granddaughter) and Paul Bonnecarrère, came out during a peak era of Middle East unrest, when Palestinians used terrorist acts such as hijackings and the Munich Olympics mass-kidnapping and massacre to call attention to their plight.

They were being displaced and “erased” from their homeland while the whole world looked away.

American foreign policy was very much bent to Israel’s will — even then (something addressed in the film). But there were countries and public figures (Vanessa Redgrave, for one) who had Palestinian sympathies, even then, something John Le Carre’s 1983 thriller “The Little Drummer Girl” touched on.

That’s the climate that Preminger — a directing legend who had given us “Laura,” “Anatomy of a Murder,” “Advise & Consent” and perhaps most tellingly, “Exodus” — made one of his most topical movies, “Rosebud” in.

The global elite would be the target of the film’s smiling, swaggering but generally colorless terrorists. We see them plan and prep their plot when they gather in Corsica. Meanwhile, the daughters of Greek, British, American and other super-rich are gathering on a yacht named after the sled in “Citizen Kane.”

Sabine (Brigitte Ariel) may have taken a leftist French school teacher lover who ruffles her superrich father’s (Claude Dauphin) feathers. But she’s blithely unaware that her money only insulates her from daddy’s fury. There are others watching, waiting and planning their undoing.

The very young Isabelle Huppert and Kim Cattrall are among Sabine’s Rolls Royce chauffeured quintet (Lalla Ward and Debra Berger also co-star), the daughters of an English lord (Peter Lawford) and American senator (ex-New York majoy John Lindsay) among them.

When they’re set-up and nabbed and the yacht’s crew are killed, everybody involved knows the worst has happened. That’s why the (secretly Jewish) shipping tycoon Fargeau (Dauphin) grasps for private help.

Larry Martin (O’Toole) is a Paris-based correspondent for Newsweek, a Brit who’s also a covert hired “fixer” for the CIA. He’s at home in this world, used to tracking down terrorists, dealing with Mossad and mitigating one bad outcome for another. He’s cocky, charming and competent, an expert in getting the answers and results he wants.

Meanwhile, the terrorists make films for The Media, and everybody around the world cooperates to “save these girls,” save for the U.S., which is most easily coerced into doing Israel’s bidding.

As the chase begins and the hunt for the terrorist mastermind (Richard Attenborough, in one of the great casting miscalculations ever) takes our louche anti-hero all over Europe and the Med.

What could go wrong with either side’s best-laid plans, or the movie? Gosh, where does one begin?

He can see it all more clearly in his mind, dissecting every detail, stopping the flow of past events to analyze what might have happened or what he might have done about it.

A tragedy of his youth, a covert meeting he didn’t attend, a body hanging from a light fixture, a brawl that might have distracted lesser minds and confused less magical memories all are subject to the total recall of one Sherlock Holmes, even before he settled in on Baker Street.

Amazon gets in on the extended Holmes family business with “Young Sherlock,” because why should “Enola Holmes” on Netflix or the Spielberg production of “Young Sherlock Holmes” back in the ’80s have all the glory? To say nothing of the British Benedict Cumberbatch TV series aired on PBS a few years back.

The new series is based on Andrew Lanes’ novels about the teen years of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s dapper, dogged detective in the making. And as the director of the Robert Downey Jr. bi screen “Sherlocks” Guy Ritchie developed this project and directed a bit of it, the series has its share of Guy Ritchie sizzle and flash.

They spent their period piece money on actors, costumes, rented Victorian settings, editing and effects. Their narrative diverges just enough from the Holmes of lore and other adaptations to at least appear new and novel, with Hero Fiennes Tiffin taking us through the troubled late teens of our detective in a tale that’s dark, but often jaunty.

Natasha McElhone (“Ronin”), Hero’s uncle Joseph Fiennes (“Shakespeare in Love”), Max Irons (son of Jeremy) and Oscar winner Colin Firth co-star.

The big twist? There’ll be no fated meeting with a future “Doctor Watson” here. This “disgraced” Holmes is fresh out of prison and willing to befriend any Oxford swell who takes an interest, even the brilliant, profane Jewish outsider in the student ranks, James Moriarty. Dónal Finn of TV’s “The Wheel of Time” gives our “Ashkenazi” anti-hero an Irish brogue and swagger, making him Holmes’ intellectual equal — “I’m no sidekick!” — and a young man far better at the bareknuckle brawling and fights to the death they face together.

Because someone is killing Oxford dons. Someone has tried to kidnap a Chinese princess (Zine Tseng), whose martial arts and horsewomanship skills wouldn’t allow that. And somehow, that might tie into Holmes’ family history — his absentee scientist father (Joseph Fiennes) and his mentally institutionalized mother (McElhone).

“The game’s afoot” over eight episodes of chases, shootouts, beatings and bodies, with Holmes trotting out that magical Eidetic memory and walking through scenes and events, picking at details from half-glimpsed, half-burned notes in a fireplace, clues from the work brother Mycroft (Irons) is doing for a rich, vain and ruthless industrialist (Firth), always one step ahead of the not-wholly-hapless Constable Lestrade (Scott Reid).

Holmes speaks fluent Mandarin, which comes in handy as events back in China that entangle our student princess tie into all this.

The 19th century settings are a tad pristine and unlived in for my taste. Digital cityscapes — Oxford, London, Paris and Constantinople — were worth investing in. Gadgets (Mr. Edison’s phonograph) are unveiled and turned to evil purpose. But no money or screen time is wasted on trains to the Orient or steamship passages across the Channel.

The eight episodes clip along, with somewitty banter, some repetition and the odd clever shot or editing touch and more and more pondering of the childhood tragedy that shaped Holmes. The back-engineering of this prequel is merely adequate. The fictive 1880s “present day” story is muddled and turns muddier the deeper we get into it.

And I’d swear I heard a character talk about “King and country,” which is a curious blunder for a Victorian Era story filmed in the UK to make.

Label this one a streaming page-turner, not quite up to a cliff-hanger, episode by episode, just engrossing enough to keep us engaged.

Rating: TV-14, violence, profanity

Cast: Hero Fiennes Tiffin, Dónal Finn, Natasha McElhone, Zine Tseng, Max Irons, Holly Cattle, Numan Acar, Ravi Aujla, Scott Reid, Joseph Fiennes and Colin Firth.

Credits: Created and developed by Peter Harness, Matthew Parkhill and Guy Ritchie, inspired by Andrew Lanes’ “Young Sherlock Holmes” novels. An Amazon Prime release.

Running time: 8 episodes :52-55 minutes each

Perhaps the reason Keanu Reeves doesn’t quite grasp the tone in Jonah Hill’s Hollywood star in crisis over a scandal “comedy” “Outcome” is that director, co-writer and co-star Hill didn’t make what he was going for clear.

Maybe Hill didn’t quite know himself what notes to hit in a not-quite-funny romp through extortion, taking stock and making amends for the selfish lives stars must live to become movie stars. It doesn’t help that Reeves is a frustratingly awkward actor in any film that doesn’t have fight choreography, comedies and sensitive dramas or dramedies especially.

There are a couple of laughs in this picture, and a few poignant, almost “honest” moments provided by Martin Scorsese, who plays the talent manager who “discovered” the former child star Reef Hawk (Reeves), abandoned as Reef ascended to the pinnacle of Hollywood success,by Susan Lucci, as Reef’s estranged “Real Housewives” mother and Cameron Diaz as one of two high school friends (Matt Bomer is the other) who stuck with their 56 year old pal and got a posh free ride for their trouble.

But the picture doesn’t play, doesn’t send much of a message and most certainly never “lands.”

The title “Outcome” is a sophmoric pun, and in Hill’s antic “crisis lawyer” co-starring performance there are traces of every over-the-top comedy of his foul-mouthed cherub youth. As a bald, bearded David Cross-on-uppers lawyer who decorates his office with “client” photos of Kanye, the Clintons and Kevin Spacey, Hill’s Ira is forever trying misread-the-room “jokes” that he freely admits don’t “land.”

“I gotta go. Adam Driver bought a pet chimp and it ate some lady’s face off at the mall!”

Even the ones Ira doesn’t apologize for play as strained, with only Hill’s toothy, tasteless/tactless energy to put them over.

Reef, a former addict and all-around Hollywood “nice guy” is just about to end a five year hiatus from acting, kicking his heroin addiction and keeping much of that and a legion of people who apparently “hate” him — with cause — out of the public eye and unattached to his pristine image.

But the new landscape for celebrity has made him paranoid. “You’re always being watched, observed,” he fearfully grouses to Kyle (Diaz) and Xander (Bomer).

And now somebody has a video they’re threatening to release, something that could ruin Reef and his image. He compulsively Googles “Is Reef Hawk an ass—e,” “Reef Hawk scandal” and “Reef Hawk video,” waiting for a shoe to drop — which shoe, he has no idea.

Which is why fast-talking Ira sends him on an apology tour through his past — that first manager, his mother — who only meets with him in an interview for her “Housewives” show. Mom’s sense of victimhood, living through her wildly popular son’s rise having “sacrificed” and groomed him for stardom since childhood, is genuine and almost touching if not genuinely funny.

“Just because it’s performative doesn’t mean it’s not the TRUTH!”

Hill can’t find laughs in a meeting Ira stages with his crisis-management “team” — an Allred-ish abused women lawyer, a Rev. Al-ish civil rights pastor, an Asian rights advocate.

What? No Jewish anti-semitism minimizer?

“We ran the numbers. It turns out hating Jews doesn’t negatively impact a person’s career.”

David Spade pops up as a new Malibu neighbor whose very young, very pregnant wife (Kaia Gerber) lands the movie’s funniest line.

“I know you. You used to date my grandmother!”

Van Jones plays himself, an interviewer willing to be arm-twisted by the star insisting he be introduced as a (two time) “Oscar winner.” Drew Barrymore plays herself as an interviewer you maybe don’t want to screw with.

Soaking up the one-liners and Hill’s antic but comically winded patter makes one wonder if even recasting the lead would have helped.

But watching Reeves struggle with his alternately serious or faux dismayed reactions, a damaged soul with remorse for those he’s wronged but a human void that potential laughs spiral into to die is a burden this lightweight goof on the devolving nature of “fame” never overcomes.

Rating: R, profanity, a sexual situation

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Cameron Diaz, Jonah Hill, Susan Lucci, Matt Bomer, Ivy Wolf, David Spade, Martin Scorsese and Drew Barrymore

Credits: Directed by Jonah Hill, scripted by Jonah Hill and Exra Woods. An Apple TV+ release.

Running time: 1:24

“You, Me & Tuscany” is a featherweight romance with a pretty cast, lovely scenery, fabulous food and just a hint of charm under all the cliches.

It’s a Hallmark Lite rom-com built around live-action “Little Mermaid” star Halle Bailey, who struggles to sparkle in a drab script and a role that demands screen presence and vulnerability more than singing.

She is turned-out, made-up and perfectly coiffed in every shot “Under the Tuscan Sun.” And damned if everybody else in the cast doesn’t upstage her in scene after sunny scene.

Director Kat Coiro’s barely PG (It’s rated PG-13) romance concludes with outtakes of bit players cast as tourists scoring the movie’s only laughs. They riff lines about the fine hunk (“Bridgerton’s” Regé-Jean Page) our heroine has gotten soaked with in an irrigated vineyard.

“You can Diane Lane ME ‘Under the Tuscan Sun,’ if you get my drift.'” “You can ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ me anytime, Baby!”

Cute. And not exactly a vote of confidence in your star.

Bailey stars as Brianna, an aspiring chef who gets by house-sitting in New York, “borrowing” the clothes, jewelry, designer pets and lifestyle of her clients. Nia Vardalos of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” plays the one client who blows up when she catches her in the act.

Brianna’s obligagory sassy-mouthed bestie Claire (Aziza Scott, funny) orders her to “Stop borrowing other people’s lives and start living your own.” She underscores every bit of life advice with “Bitch!” Because of course she does.

Broke, still mourning her late mother — a chef — but into high living, Brianna treats herself to a drink and burger at the bar in the hotel where Claire is concierge. That’s where the handsome globetroter Matteo (Lorenzo de Moor) meets her, charms her and invites her up to his room.

Him dozing off pre coitus isn’t a complete waste, she figures, as she reasons that he “Pretty much invited me to stay” in his empty villa in his hometown of San Conessa. A flat-broke fish out of water, naturally she tries on a wedding ring she finds in a dresser once she gets there. That’s how Matteo’s family, estranged from him since he took off to make his fortune in real estate, decides she’s his fiance and that he’s coming home for a wedding.

“Anna” lies just enough to encourage this.

Mama (Isabella Ferrari), cranky granny (Stefania Cassini) and ribald cousin Francesca (Stella Pecollo) spring into wedding planning, gushing over and bowling over the bride-to-be, who speaks Italian and knows Italian cuisine, which could come in handy at the family ristorante. You think?

And then the “other” son in the famiglia, vineyard owner Michael (Page) has his “meet cute” with the American, and things get complicated in the most trite and predictable ways.

The film’s setting is the Italy and the Tuscany of Italian cliche — vineyards and postcard-perfect villages and fine food and laughing, friendly locals, a place where a romantic gal .awakens each day to the groundskeeper’s perfectly passable rendition of “Libiamo ne’ lieti calici.”

Its script is packed with lazy devices, worn-out plot contrivances and dialogue crutches. “In EEEEtaly, we have a saying…Those who know food, know life.” and “In vino veritas.” And so on.

Bailey struggles to give “Anna” in Italy a personality to go along with the lovely wardrobe, Rapunzel-length braids, lush settings and spritely co-stars. But when even her taxi-driver/confidante Lorenzo (Marco Calvani) has more personality, you start to grasp the film’s central failing.

Our star is content to be the pretty ornament whom all the funny and often more fleshed-out characters spin around. And she doesn’t have the screen presence for that.

Films fail for a lot of reasons, almost all of them behind the camera — weak script, lackluster direction, poor pacing, etc. But every now and then, miscasting or an out-of-her-depth lead performance also takes some of the blame. I hate to say this, given the nonsense she went through when she was cast as “The Little Mermaid,” but Bailey isn’t up to carrying this off.

When she finally breaks into song near this bland tale’s bland finale, you can sense her relief and ponder the muttering her director must have done behind the camera.

“Why didn’t we have her sing from the start?”

Rating: PG-13, profanity

Cast: Halle Bailey, Regé-Jean Page, Lorenzo de Moor, Marco Calvani, Isabella Ferrari, Stella Pecollo, and Aziza Scott

Credits: Directed by Kat Coiro, scripted by Ryan Engle and Kristen Engle. A Universal release.

Running time: 1:4

The hard-luck brawler of the Aussie mixed-martial arts thriller “Beast” finds himself working for next to nothing on a Sydney harbor trawler at his low point in the movie.

He’s a “Jonah,” his jerk skipper insists. Bad luck. No “fish” in their traps.

And I couldn’t wait to get home to see what “fish” those Aussies catch in what look like your average crab trap. Hey, I did a year in Kodiak, Alaska. That makes me an expert.

But yes, they do catch “fish” in such traps down under. So much for making fun of the screenwriters not doing their homework.

Ah, but not so fast. Russell Crowe and David Frigerio co-wrote this generic to the point of tears “fight picture.” And for the life of me, I can’t find much that passes for “homework” in it.

Crowe plays the bulky, crutches-using old trainer who teaches his charges one credo.

“If I am breathing, I can think. If I can think, I can WIN.”

The “Cinderella Man” veteran wrote himself (I’m guessing) a couple of pithy lines. Time is “moments and memories,” his grizled trainer Sammy philosophizes. “If you don’t take the moment, you don’t get the memory.”

That doesn’t compensate for a movie whose Big Third Act Fight sees the Oscar winner watching the brawl on a TV set, muttering “He’s GOT him!” at the screen several times, earning his writing and acting credits the easiest way possible.

It’s difficult to do much new with a fight picture — be it boxing, wrestling, kung fu or MMA — as the genre grinds through its third century on the screen. And the Australian MMA milieu of “Beast” is about all that sets it apart from the hundreds of fight films that preceded it.

There’s a pregnant wife (Kelly Gale) who cries “You PROMISED” when her long-in-the-tooth and retired fighter Patton (Daniel MacPherson) elects to take off his shoes and put on the tiny gloves and strut into the octagon again.

There’s the kid brother (Mojean Aria) who followed Patton into the sport, and pays a high price. An unscrupulous promoter (Luke Hemsworth) sleazes our broke trawler deck hand into fighting aagin.

The foe, the Warrior Xavier Grau (Bren Foster) is a dirty eye-gouger/late hit thug seemingly two weight classes above our hero, and several classes more above his skinnier kid brother.

And Crowe plays the old trainer whom Patton once let down, the guy who won’t train him because “He’s not no engine. He’s got no urgency. You can’t coach heart.”

Which is why the trainer’s scrappy, tattooed ex-fighter daughter (Amy Shark) takes the job.

The fights are savage enough. But if you’ve ever seen one or two ring or octagon movies, there’s nothing at all new here. I don’t know how to be more blunt than director Tyler Atkins and crew don’t show us anything that might hold ones’ intellectual or empathetic interest.

You can count the roundhouse swings-and-misses in the fight choreography, because that’s what the brawlers do — “One, two, three, four, NOW I hit YOU, right?”

MacPherson, Crowe’s co-star in “Poker Face” and “Land of Bad,” has the right look and sound, but lacks the presence to carry a movie, at least the way this one is plotted and characterized.

I thought I was settling in for something fresh, but the working class poverty is well-furnished and familial and entirely too tidy compared to “Rocky,” the underdog reaching for revenge and/or glory underwhelms and the darkest moments don’t move or touch the viewer in any meaningful way.

But Crowe’s here, and he got the film made. Frankly, he’s more interesting as an epicurean exorcist on a Vespa than he is lurching into and out of scenes here.

Rating: R, graphic, bloody violence

Cast: Daniel MacPherson, Bren Foster, Kelly Gale, Mojean Aria, Luke Hemsworth and Russell Crowe.

Credits: Directed by Tyler Atkins, scripted by David Frigerio and Russell Crowe. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:53