Movie Nation

The new “Ghostbusters” is just different enough from the old “Ghost Busters” to be worth the trouble. Flipping the gender of the cast makes for an appreciably different take on the material, and the effects are 30 years bigger and better than most anything the 1084 film.

But watching it is a master class on screen comedy, what works and what just doesn’t. And the new film, whatever empowerment and role model virtues its creators talk up in going “Ghost Girls,” mainly doesn’t.

On paper, it’s a no-brainer. Bring in proven big screen comedy stars Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy and “Saturday Night Live” comics Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones to replace 1984’s “SNL” alumni Bill Murray and Dan Akroyd, and Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson. Easy laughs, right?

Beloved as it is, the original film was a scruffy goof that got by on swagger and cynicism. Those guys, playing academic frauds — some of them, anyway — were more surprised than anybody else when they started seeing real ghosts, catching them and removing them for profit. Insults flew, men flirted with women out of their league and profane catch-phrases were proferred.

The conflict is upended, here. Men are the ones doubting these women can get a dirty job done. The cynicism is gone, or conferred on those doubting males. The swagger is gone. The women hug and affirm each other and avoid stepping on each other’s toes.

But are there big laughs in victimhood?

The first thing McCarthy’s paranormal scientist says upon seeing a real female ghost for the first time is tell her how beautiful she is. Her best running gag is a Chinese restaurant that cheats her out of her wontons.

Well, OK.

The result is a “Men are from Venus, Women from Mars” disconnect at the film’s core. Throw in the two hour run time — almost no funny one-liners and limited appeal (special effect) sight gags — and this recycling is more wearying than surprising or amusing.

Wiig plays a put-upon and lovelorn Columbia physics professor angling for tenure. Working against her, aside from an incompetent command of Spanish? This book about the paranormal she wrote with a college pal years before. Her dean (Charles Dance) is not amused when the book, and that past, pop back up.

Because Dr. Gilbert has regretfully reconnected with that former colleague, Abbey Yates (McCarthy) and Abbey’s new partner, tech-nerd Jillian Holtzmann (McKinnon) at a fifth rate college where their research is “supported” across town.

Supported until their bird-flipping dean (Jimmy Fallon sidekick Steve Higgins, funny) realizes they’re still funded, and cuts them off.

Just when New York needs them, the city’s only “real” paranormal investigating academics are out of work. Somebody is summoning the undead back from “the other side.” So the ladies set up shop over a Chinese restaurant, hire a Himbo receptionist (a very ditzy Chris Hemsworth) and are joined by a subway employee (Jones) who has seen a ghost her own self.

If only they can figure out what to call themselves.

Director Paul Feig has found his niche making comedies starring women (“Bridesmaids”), and he puts effort into servicing every star here.

McKinnon does a variation of the quirky/flirty sexually ambiguous “SNL” characters she’s played and tries her hand at Dan Aykroyd/Harold Ramis style technical mumbo jumbo in describing the ghost grenades, ghost guns and “ghost chipper” her character invents at will. She’s no Aykroyd. She mugs during her close-ups but takes extra care to not upstage her castmates in group shots.

Wiig plays yet another shrinking violet who needs to find her confidence among her peers in A Man’s World. Her best go-to move is going all girly/giggly at the gorgeous dope they’ve hired as their receptionist.

Jones strains to deliver her share of “on up in here” or “down here” cliches.

“Man, it smells like burnt bologna and regret down here!”

That leaves McCarthy to play, well, the straight man. What a waste.

The script, by Feig and veteran “Madtv/The Heat” writer Kate Dippold, allows room for a sea of cameos with precious little that’s funny for any of the stars, or the “guest stars” to say.

It doesn’t give much away to say that Bill Murray has never been less funny in a comedy, and that the only real surprise here is that Andy Garcia, playing a “Let’s keep this ‘ghost’ business under wraps” mayor, lands maybe the film’s biggest laugh with a “Jaws” reference.

They weren’t going to make Murray, still playing a cynic/skeptic, the villain. But they needed to do better than “SNL’s” Neil Casey, playing the nerd who summons the afterlife to empower his bullied, disregarded hotel janitor existence.

There was an uproar when the first trailer for this movie dropped and the criticism turned sexist and nasty. But that doesn’t excuse what was pretty obvious, way back then. It wasn’t funny, promising a movie that wasn’t funny. The re-imagined “Ghostbusters” was never going to be anything more than a note-by-note remake, without enough laughs to sustain it.

And if all you’ve got to brag about is how inclusive and empowering to little girls your comedy might be, you’ve totally missed the point.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for supernatural action and some crude humor

Cast: Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, Chris Hemsworth, Andy Garcia
Credits: Directed by Paul Feig, script by Katie Dippold and Paul Feig, based on the 1984 comedy “Ghost Busters”. A Sony/Columbia release.

Running time: 1:56

We know there’s this dust-up between George Takei, the original Sulu, and screenwriter/actor Simon Pegg, who outed the new Sulu in the new film. Zachary “Mr. Spock” Quinto, out and proud, has weighed in. 

We know that Justin Lin, whose directing credits don’t inspire awe — in anyone — was behind the camera.

But otherwise, “Star Trek: Beyond,” the finale in this “trilogy” of the franchise, is as silent as space itself.

It opens next week. And a quick poll of critic friends across the country reveals, no word yet on preview screenings. I’ve got previews of “Absolutely Fabulous” and “Lights Out,” “Cafe Society” and “Captain Fantastic” and the like.

And I’ve made direct inquiries of Paramount. Silence.

UPDATED: I am hearing now that the option that the studio is floating is seeing it at the end of the marathon Trekathon theaters are showing Wed., July 20. Which is better than no preview at all, but hardly a ringing endorsement of what they think they’re releasing. 

I sit in a theater, an audience of one for “Our Kind of Traitor,” and I ponder something producers Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald said about Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson when “The Island” came out back in 2005.

They aren’t “superstars,” they said. Movie stars? Maybe. But neither could open a picture, then, and that sci-fi thriller bombed. A decade later, Johansson can open a movie (“Lucy”) and is something of a superstar.

McGregor? As I said, I’m in the theater, all alone.

McGregor makes interesting choices and has the same boyish screen presence he’s always had. But he can’t make people show up for “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” or “Miles Ahead” or “Son of a Gun.” And they should. His movies are invariably smart, with “Our Kind of Traitor” fitting that description to a T.

If you’re making an espionage picture, you can’t go far wrong signing on to a John LeCarre adaptation. Even if you’re casting McGregor — as a leery but easily bullied college professor sucked into the role of passing a message from a Russian money-launderer about a corrupt British politician to British intelligence — a bit on-the-nose.

And even if the movie itself is a bit of a far-fetched tease, like its opening scene, a sex-interrupted idyll featuring nudity. McGregor and James Bond’s latest Miss Moneypenny, Naomie Harris, play a couple trying to mend a busted marriage in Marrakech, of all places. That’s where Perry, a “professor of poetics,” meets Dima, a gregarious Russian (Is there no other type?) who bullies, taunts and tempts Perry into lurid, sordid parties with his hard-drinking Russian pals and assorted strippers and hookers.

Perry tries to be a good boy. Gail (Harris) is off taking business calls. But the hooker says what people have always said about Ewan McGregor.

“You’re so pretty.” “So are you.”

It’s a trite melodramatic convention that husband and wife are insistently forced into the company of the Russian, but seeing as how he’s played by Stellan Skarsgard, we get it. We’re leery, as are Gail and Perry. He seems secretive, scary, maybe. But he’s so all-embracing, so full of cliched Russian love-of-life (and a sloppy drunk Russkie accent), how could they resist?

But he’s picked them for something sensitive, passing on a tip contained on a memory stick. It could implicate a British government minister, which would tickle this certain MI-6 agent (Damien Lewis), if not the politician (Jeremy Northam) himself. The struggling couple must make their way through Europe, past operatives from both sides who may mean them harm.

There’s a color palette to LeCarre’s world of spooks and “Whitehall Mandarins,” the higher-ups pulling the strings, and “Our Kind of Traitor” nails it, even in the sun-baked backroads of Morocco, or the garishly-lit evenings. Gun-metal blues and autumnal yellows I always associate with his books are more in evidence as the couple dashes across Europe.

And Skarsgard makes for an unforgettable character, a shambling, rich wreck covered in tattoos, loving the good life while it lasts, but a man with a photographic memory and a mission. Which McGregor and Harris, a most believable couple, must haplessly carry out as Lewis, all pursed-lips and clipped, Hugo Weaving in “V for Vendetta” cadences, urges them to do.

The intrigues are rather routine in ways that point out that perhaps the director of a “Nanny McPhee” movie wasn’t the best choice for this. But McGregor, Harris, Skarsgard and Lewis give fair value and give this the lived-in feel of even the most far-fetched LeCarre plots.

Even if there isn’t a “superstar” in the lot.

MPAA Rating:R for violence, language throughout, some sexuality, nudity and brief drug use.

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Naomie Harris, Stellan Skarsgard, Damien Lewis, Jeremy Northam
Credits: Directed by Susanna White, script by Hossein Amini, based on the John LeCarre novel. A Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions release.

Running time: 1:47

Fame came late, and after some rather severe life-tests, for Bryan Cranston. So one can’t blame him for trying to make up for lost time in terms of figuring out what star vehicles to attempt on the big screen.

But he’s at least a dozen years too old to star in “The Infiltrator,” a film that has the 60ish “Breaking Bad” boy playing a deep cover Federal marshal trying to bring down the Escobar drug cartel in 1980s Florida.

And casting him as a guy whose career path and age would have put him in a desk job over a decade earlier paints the somewhat malnourished picture into a corner. His brash, adrenaline junkie partner is played by 40ish John Leguizamo, who played variations of this character 20 years ago.

His grey bearded nemesis (Benjamin Bratt) would have similarly kicked back and been enjoying his ill-gotten millions as the testosterone of youth faded away.

His junior high sweetheart wife (Juliet Aubrey) would have given birth to kids now in college, and not in need of bedtime stories.

All this gives the lurid, violent, overlong and over-familiar tale the feel of a late-period John Wayne cop picture — all bad dye-jobs, wrong-era cars and stylish splashes of dated violence sexed-up for modern audiences.

Cranston plays Robert Mazur, an undercover agent during the “Just Say No” era who realizes that “We’ve been following the drugs to get to the bad buys. What if we followed the money?”

He’ll go deep playing a New York mobster to get at the sleazy international bankers who give murderous drug lords and their cartels safe places to put their money.

That’s the pitch, anyway. The movie, through cut-rate casting (Cranston isn’t the only “Seinfeld” bit player in the ensemble) and a general loss of focus, doesn’t dwell on those targets. Instead, there are all these murderous underlings from the cartel to meet and survive meeting.

There are all these strip clubs. Roger’s Rule — the flashier the strip clubs, the worse the thriller. Strip club scenes are tossed into limp movies to help producers get dates.

And there’s a not-quite-Mr. Big (Bratt) to befriend and charm, with the aid of our mob boss’s “fiance”, another agent played by Diane Kruger (“Troy”).

“It’s the little things that get you whacked,” Mazur keeps cautioning everyone, in another line heard in a dozen earlier and better versions of this story.

Only nobody really sweats those small details. Like the pop songs on the soundtrack fitting the ’60s or very early ’70s more than the ’80s, like the cop cars that are more “Andy Griffith Show” vintage than “Miami Vice.”

Director Brad “Lincoln Lawyer” Furman handles the odd bursts of violence with skill, if not originality. He gets the ugly clothes, ugly furniture and bare-chested chain-flashing nature of the ’80s underworld right. He just puts those chains on old men who would be dead, behind a desk or retired from “the life.”

Over-the-top moments stop the picture in its tracks, here and there. Mazur must pass muster with a chicken-killing santeria priest to meet the higher-up Colombians. He has to flip out in a fancy restaurant in front of his wife when his cover might be blown, a scene so ridiculous it took me right out of the movie.

Kruger gets one lovely scene and speech, Bratt classes up the joint and Cranston, who would have been cast in the Amy Ryan (Fed boss) role if cable TV’s “Breaking Bad” had never come along, isn’t bad in the lead. Yul Vasquez, memorable as a swishy bully on “Seinfeld,” overdresses and overplays a flamboyant drug cartel accountant role. Olympia Dukakis and Michael Pare have bit roles that add nothing and stop the picture cold. Joseph Gilgun is wasted in a small role as an actual convict released from prison to help Mazur seem more legit. 

When all that’s taken into account, “The Infiltrator” feels like a cable TV mini series squished into two hours, with the budget, supporting cast and period piece compromises to match.

Cranston deserves better than bit parts in “Argo” or “Godzilla” at this stage of his career. But if cable is where the “LBJs” are, he should at least have the sense to know that’s who he should be playing.

MPAA Rating:R for strong violence, language throughout, some sexual content and drug material

Cast: Bryan Cranston, John Leguizamo, Diane Kruger, Benjamin Bratt
Credits: Directed by Brad Furman, script by Ellen Sue Brown. A Broadgreen release.

Running time: 2:07

The telling take on “The Secret Life of Pets” will be what it does its second weekend.

But as for openers? It’s a big hit — $95 million plus. “Finding Dory” is finally displaced as the top draw, but it will have cleared $422 million by weekend’s end. Will “Pets” stick around as long and as lucratively?

“Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates” points Zac Efron in the wrong direction, as in, everybody’s over the shirtless comedy bit. Either find another Nicolas Sparks pic or look for a TV series. It’s opening at a paltry $16 million, poor for a heavily hyped R-rated comedy. It won’t come anywhere near “Neighbors 2.” Which was a bomb.

“Independence Day” is finally nearing $100 million, “Tarzan” could get there next weekend. Neither will be anywhere near the break even point in just the US market alone.

“Central Intelligence” for example, is well over $100 million and still ensconced in the top ten.

“Tarzan” is holding onto more of an audience than either “The Purge” or “The BFG,” which looks to be summer’s biggest bomb.  Depending on how much “Warcraft” cost, that is.

I defy anybody over the age of 8 to get much of anything out of “The Secret Life of Pets.” But perhaps the fact that we’re two generations past the many TV iterations of “Looney Tunes” and Saturday morning kid-watching rituals explains the passing grade the movie gets from a majority of reviewers.

Not a HUGE majority, mind you. It’s time like this when you go to Metacritic for a more discriminating and nuanced take on a movie that seems to out of whack with what seems obvious on the screen (few jokes, Looney Tunes variations for characters, famous voices straining to find something amusing to say). So, 76 on the tomato “fresh or rotten” scale, 61 on Metacritic’s ascending/descending fluid scale.

Not awful, just not all that.

I found more laughs than most in “Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates.” OK, maybe I was crushing on Aubrey Plaza, the living embodiment an ancient libidinous Jewess stereotype. She owns it. This movie earns higher ratings on Metacritic than it does on Rotten Tomatoes. I gave it 2.5/4 stars, which is just a smidge above the mean.

Alex Gibney is the hardest working guy in documentaries, and sooner or later, he’s going to spread himself too thin — TV shows, band docs, ESPN sports films, feature film investigations. But he hasn’t gotten there yet. “Zero Days,” his dissection of the Stuxnet virus which attacked Iran’s nuclear weapons program (and spread worldwide) is a fascinating cyber mystery. Not dazzling in style or its conclusions, but solid film journalism with a cautionary bent. Mostly good reviews for this one. 

With Daniel Craig’s years-in-the-making exit from playing James Bond, all the speculation has been about “Who will replace him?”

It’s focused, mainly, on Idris Elba (cool enough, an interesting choice in these inclusive times, but a bit old — 44 in Sept. — to be taking on this franchise) and Tom Hiddleston, who is auditioning for the part by holding his own in a marvelous John LeCarre adaptation on the BBC, and “dating” America’s newest 40 year old virgin, Taylor Swift, to stay in the headlines.

Really.

Jamie Bell, Damian Lewis, Aidan Turner, James Norton and a couple of even more obscure Brit-hunks have turned up in the list of candidates. They’re steering clear of more testosterony choices like Tom Hardy or Joel Edgerton. The fools.

Whoever gets the job, the first Post-Brexit Bond will waltz into a shifting political landscape that could be less welcoming to this most iconic British hero of them all. Depending on whether Europe holds a grudge.

But there are other nuts to crack in that evergreen series. And the Craig Bonds got these supporting roles right, fleshing out the “good guy” side of the cast even when they cast weak villains (three out of four films). So we might as well start mulling those over as well, as a new Bond is as inevitable as another season of “Top Gear.”

The retirement of Judi Dench, a smart holdover from the Pierce Brosnan Bonds, put Ralph Fiennes in the Big Chair as the spy chief “M.” Might they keep him? I’m totally down with that. He’s aging into the part nicely, and properly grumpy when called for.

There was and is but one “Q,” and that was the wizened, out-of-quips-to-give Desmond Llewelyn from the original films. I was watching his turn in “Goldfinger” the other night and figuring out why the sexually ambiguous waif/tech-nerd version of “Q” in the Daniel Craig films never quite did it for me. If we’re going “inclusive,” Ben Whishaw may come back in the part.

But Llewelyn’s “Q” played on the English tinkerer stereotype, and did so delightfully. The character’s comic relief nature is built on Old School pluck and can-do invention, a relic of “their Finest Hour” Britain. Recast “Q” with that in mind, and I’d suggest Hugh Laurie for that part. He’s droll, world-weary and a perfect foil.

Gillian Anderson jokingly pitched herself as the first female Bond. She’d make a helluva “Q.” Or “M.” Sexy, too.

I’d love to see Naomie Harris return as Moneypenny. She was a delight in the part — sexy, tempting, as cool as Bond himself.

And any red-blooded American-born Bond fan has to lament the potential loss of Jeffrey Wright as Bond’s CIA alter ego, Felix Leiter.

It’s a key role, not as important as “M” or “Q” or Moneypenny. But when you get it right, the movie sings. When you don’t bother to try, you feel the lack of weight in the part.

Jack Lord was Felix in “Dr. No,” and frankly, Connery’s lucky he chose not to return (or wasn’t invited back) to the part and found his future on American TV. Lord had just as much simmering screen presence as Connery and took just the right “Who IS this Brit interloper?” tone in their scenes. Lord was the best Leiter, and it took half a century for Cubby Broccoli and his heirs to find one with even a hint of his charisma.

Wright has that, and I could see him returning, bringing a seen-it-all weariness to scenes with the younger Bond (Hiddleston, et al). Not sure they’ll go for a black Bond and black Leiter in the same movie, but he’d almost certainly click with Elba, too.

But he’ll be 51 this year, a bit long in the tooth for a field agent (he looks about…49).

Best of all possible worlds? Cast Elba as the first Bond villain with weight since Javier Bardem.  He was the Craig films’ only bad guy worth fearing.

Bring back Harris as Moneypenny and Fiennes as M for continuity’s sake.

And give us a Felix Leiter at least as famous and charismatic as Jeffrey Wright. Big stars like Chris Pine, Ryan Gosling or Chadwick Boseman might not opt for a bit-part lark in the role. But John Cho is fresh out of “Star Treks,” as is Zachary Quinto. Oscar Isaac?

In a world of documentary gadflies, navel gazers and agenda-pushers, Alex Gibney has earned a “teller of hard truths” reputation.

If you’re in the know, or simply want to be, he is documentary cinema’s E.F. Hutton. When Gibney talks, about the rapacious nitwits of Enron, bout Lance Armstrong’s fall from grace or the excesses of Hunter S. Thompson, Steve Jobs, Wikileaks and Julian Assange or the United States government, people listen. Or should.

With “Zero Days,” the Oscar winner turns his camera, his attention and ours towards the Stuxnet virus and its implications for the future of cyber warfare. He’s made a “genie out of the bottle” investigative mystery about that online attack on Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

And if he never quite makes the case that we’ve paved the way for an online apocalypse, he’s still able to chill us over what has happened, what could happen and what we might want to think about doing to prevent a worst case scenario cyber war.

Because, you know, we’ve all seen “The Terminator.”

Gibney spends over an hour of “Zero Days” retracing the online security community’s search for the origins of this virus, discovered in 2010, that to a one they describe as “sophisticated” and dangerously capable of something beyond slowing down your computer. Stuxnet– an amalgam of a couple of random word-like letter combination discovered in the virus’s code — could create actual “physical destruction” of any gadget run or monitored by computers.

That could be pipelines or power grids or, in the case of Iran, centrifuges used in the processing/isolation of uranium to make nuclear bombs. Stuxnet could sneak in with “zero days” warning, hide itself within a system, absorb the normal operating parameters of that system and mask its activities as it caused say, the water pump in a nuclear reaction to break, triggering something awful. It requires no human intervention to spread, no blunders at the keyboard to infect the unwitting.

Two early “heroes” of this tale work for the well-known cyber-security company Symanetc, which is probably running the anti-virus on the device on which you’re reading this review. Two code-crunchers named Eric Chien and Liam O’Murchu dove into the vast array of code in the virus and started turning up clues.

Others, from Germany (Ralph Langer), Israel and disguised insiders from the U.S. and Israeli intelligence community, talk on camera about what they can and cannot talk about, the “national security” implications of what happened leading up to 2010, and what the blowback from that was and could be in the future.

It’s fascinating in the unraveling, as Gibney the narrator announces he’s progressively more and more irked at the runaround he’s getting, making him ever more determined to get to the bottom of this “crime” or “intelligence coup” that no one will own up to.

His profane NSA insider curses the blunders that put this virus “out there” for friends and enemies to see and study.

“Because they were in a hurry, they opened Pandora’s Box.”

A former member of Israel’s Mossad secret police talks about the context of world events and Israeli politics that fed into all this.

And the ever-outspoken former counter-terrorism chief Richard C. Clarke shows up in the third act to talk about implications and provides the “actions to be taken” step in this rhetorical exercise in cinematic persuasion.

It’s quite hard to jazz up a story about computers, code, viruses and the people who make them and foil them. Gibney doesn’t totally crack that anti-cinematic nut at the heart of “Zero Days.”

But as with every other film in his fast-growing canon, Gibney wields his authoritative research and storytelling skills like a scalpel, getting at a subject we aren’t talking about with blunt facts and informed, cautionary speculation.

And if you weren’t concerned about this latest threat to privacy, security and our increasingly interconnected world before seeing “Zero Days,” you will be by the closing credits.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for some strong language

Cast: Richard C. Clarke, Eric Chien, Ralph Langer, General Michael Hayden, Liam O’Murchu, David Sanger, Gary Samore
Credits: Written and directed by Alex Gibney.. A Magnolia release.

Running time: 1:55

That’s quite the big screen image that Aubrey Plaza has created for herself.

She lowers her gaze, opens her inviting mouth and the filthiest, unfiltered thoughts pour out. A red blooded male finds himself wondering what pick-up line might work, if he ever gets the chance to deliver one.

Plaza strides through “Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates” like she owns it, the very definition of post-Kardashian feminism, taking stock of everything in the Hawaiian resort hotel room she’s managed to tease her way into.

“I can make a bong outta this,” she opines, picking up an apple, “I can make a bong outta this,” grabbing another piece of fruit.

She makes you think the dirtiest thoughts, like, “Did her mama teach her to sit like that, all spread-eagled and what not?”

Plaza dominates “Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates,” playing another version of the vamp that’s been her comfort zone in films since, oh, “The To Do List.” It might have been more of a surprise to make sweet little Anna Kendrick the streetwise man-eater and Plaza the damaged drunk who never got over being stood-up at the altar by a groom who realized he was gay in mid-ceremony (LONG after we’ve figured that out). But Plaza’s on-the-nose casting as tarty Tatiana pays off, and how.

It might be called “Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates,” but the “out of control” siblings and liquor distributors played by Zac Efron and Adam Devine take a back seat whenever Plaza prances on camera. They’re putty in her hands, as are we.

Mike and Dave are infamous in their family for getting hammered, getting hold of any handy female and wrecking family parties, gatherings and weddings. Dad (Steven Root, properly profane and pissed-off) has had enough. Their baby sister, Jeannie, played with a daffy sweetness and Tweety Bird voice by Sugar Lyn Beard, is getting married.

And in the interest of keeping the boys from “screwing up” this pricey fly-to-Hawaii wedding, they have to bring wedding dates, “nice girls.” Which is why the idiots post their search online. Talk show troublemaker Wendy Williams puts them on her show. Which is how Tatiana and her wounded, fellow-waitress pal Alice (Kendrick) pass themselves off as “nice” and entice the guys into making the invitation. “Girls About to Go Wild” is closer to the mark.

Just enough mayhem ensues to make this scruffy, hard-R rated comedy pay off pretty much the minute the quartet land in the islands. Because Mike is smitten with Alice, Alice keeps having flashbacks to her own disastrous wedding (it’s recorded on her phone) and drunkenly tries to ensure that Jeannie has the wedding Alice never did.

And the dorky Dave, whom Devine plays in a naked imitation of Jack Black’s voice, posture and shtick, is INTO Tatiana. And Tatiana isn’t having it. Not that she’s letting Dave know, because she and Alice NEED this vacation.

The movie reaches beyond “Wedding Crashers” in raw dog terms. But director Jake Szymanski, an “SNL” vet making his feature comedy debut, only occasionally lets things achieve “Hangover” level out-of-control.

The money scene? Poor Jeannie needs a massage after assorted mishaps leading up to the nuptials. Alice bribes the masseuse, aptly named Keanu (Kumail Nanjiani) to give her a happy ending. And how.

The picture flails about in predictable-debacle land with Efron doing another version of his shirtless frat boy bit as Mike. Devine (“Modern Family”) just takes money under Jack Black pretenses, which is all he needs to do.

But the girls go wild and they make “Mike and Dave” as nasty as they wanna be, and a pleasantly pervy surprise of a summer comedy.

MPAA Rating:R for crude sexual content, language throughout, drug use and some graphic nudity

Cast: Zac Efron, Aubrey Plaza, Anna Kendrick, Devine, Steven Root, Sugar Lyn Beard
Credits: Directed by Jake Szymanski, script by Andrew Jay Cohen, Brendan O’Brien. A 20th Century Fox release.

Running time: 1:38

The voices are mostly bland, the animation detailed but generic and the gags are all variations of low-hanging-fruit in “The Secret Life of Pets,” a comedy built around what our non-speaking companions do when we leave them alone all day.

You’ve gotten a full dose of the jokes from the commercials and trailers — the fat cat raiding a fridge, a poodle banging his head to a little Death Metal, a parakeet breaking out of her cage to play video games and a dachshund scratching his back with a kitchen mixer.

That sequence is literally the opening of the movie, so hand it to Illumination, the folks who make the Minions movies for Universal. It takes guts to give away the first two minutes of your film, two minutes without a decent laugh in them, BTW. 

But behavior any pet owner will recognize — the cat who bares her fangs and takes a bite if you pick her up wrong, the puppy who pees with excitement every time you come home — makes this a tolerable 90 minutes for kids, if perhaps a little less than that for their parents.

Louis C.K. voices Max, a Jack Russell terrier whose Manhattan apartment world is upended when owner Katie shows up with a huge, new Wolfhound-looking mop she’s fetched from the Pound. Duke, colorlessly voiced by Eric Stonestreet of “Modern Family,” proceeds to impose himself on his new “brother.” The scheming and counter-scheming gets them both lost in the wilds of Manhattan, where the “flushed animal underground,” led by a deranged but adorable bunny (Kevin Hart) could be their salvation, or their doom.

The flushed critters — gators, pigs, snakes, etc. — live in the sewers plotting their revenge on humanity. And the “domesticated” are not their favorites, either.

Hart throws a lot of personality into the voice, which is good, because like the neutered Louis C.K. and others, there’s nothing funny in the script for him to say. “Long live the Revolution, suckers!” and such.

A cute bit — the tour of the underworld of abandoned animals includes those staples of comic book ads, Sea Monkeys.

“Hey, it’s not OUR fault we don’t look like the ad!”

Another novel sequence, Max and Duke tumbling into every dog’s fantasy — a Brooklyn weiner-works and sausage factory.

Only the Pomerainian Gidget (Jenny Slate of “The Lorax” and “Obvious Child”) is hunting for Max, whom she crushes on. She enlists the falcon Tiberius (Albert Brooks) and later the aged, paralyzed Basset Hound, Pops, whom “Saturday Night Live” vet Dana Carvey gives his best geezer voice.

The rivers and sewers are almost photo realistic, the critters comical in that broad, Nickelodeon or vintage Looney Tunes way.

Speaking of Looney, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how violent this pre-tween farce is. Slapfights, brawls, violent death and near-death experiences abound. Along with butt-sniffing and toilet-sipping (at a party) gags.

“Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug!”

“Finding Dory” may be giving Disney stockholders $20 bills to light their cigars with, but truth be told, all-star-voice-casts never ensure laughs, and branded goop like “Angry Birds” feels like filler in between Disney and/or Pixar outings.

Illumination slapped a four minute Minions short in front of “Secret Life of Pets,” just to ensure that there’d be a bare minimum number of laughs to make this worth 2D (don’t waste your money on 3D) admission prices. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s no real help, either.

MPAA Rating:PG for action and some rude humor

Cast: The voices of Louis C.K., Kevin Hart, Jenny Slate, Dana Carvey, Lake Bell
Credits: Directed by Chris Renaud, Yarrow Cheney, script by Ken Daurio, Brian Lynch and Cinco Paul. A Universal release.
Running time: 1:30.