Movie Nation

Sounds absurdly far-fetched, but even ol’Sundance could use a big payday, now and then.

Robert Redford, according to Deadline.com, is in talks to take a role in the “Captain America” stand-alone sequel, “Winter Soldier.”

He’d be “a senior leadership official” with S.H.I.E.L.D., where Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) is the face of the “company.”

The April 2014 film would be quite a departure for Redford, not least because it’s a guaranteed hit in a genre he’s never given a second thought to. Doesn’t sound too demanding, could be a nice payday and a way to stay relevant to the movie audience (younger moviegoers) a bit longer.

At long last, a sketch comedy film for those who found the later “Scary Movie” installments, and “Movie 43” to be entirely too highbrow for their tastes.

Is there an app for that?

A collection of racially insensitive and sexually off-color gags that don’t so much test comedy’s boundaries as make you wonder how bad the gags they threw out were, “InAPPropriate Comedy” is the one and only time in cinema history where you’ll see both Oscar winner Adrien Brody’s name in the credits alongside Lindsay Lohan’s.

The first joke that doesn’t work is the title, a play on cell phone applications. The connecting device here is a phone where you can punch up the “Flirty Harry” app – Brody, as a gay, pink Capri-pants wearing Dirty Harry — or “Blackass,” a black ensemble version of “Jackass,” or “The Porno Review,” which pairs up Rob Schneider (as in, “Whatever happened to…”) and Michelle Rodriguez as a critics passing judgment on an assortment of comically bad porn films.

A bit that works – the “Blackass” guys racing dumpsters downhill until they a sewage treatment plant. Another? “The Porno Review” passing judgment on a Japanese film – dubbed with ineptly mismatched dialogue.

Stereotypes are the source of much of the “fun” here, most of them in Ari Shaffir’s many segments under the app “The Amazing Racist.” He dons KKK robes, or dresses as a priest and tries to get shoppers at a Jewish grocery store to sign a petition “apologizing for killing Jesus.” He puts on slave-trader garb and dolls up an assistant as a Roman slave galley overseer and tries to convince black people to accept “a free, one-way boat ride back to Africa.”

Watermelon and fried chicken are the added enticements to that voyage. Come on, he says, things are great in Africa.

“Everybody shows up ten minutes late and talks all the way through the movie!”

Sacha Baron Cohen would have made that funny. He would have taken the risk to the next level – maybe staging fights with the offended, but also including footage of people he actually ambushed, in character, and getting their reactions.

Shaffir, who earns points for novelty, doesn’t have the guts to try it that way. Everyone he “confronts,” from “Mexicans” he wants to trick into surrendering to Border Patrol, to the Yarmulke wearers in the market to the people of color he annoys in front of his leaky boat, is an actor. And one who can’t improv his or her way out of this jam.

Nor can he.

The Brody bits haven’t a laugh in them and make you wonder what he found funny in all the broad gay sex innuendos, and Lindsay Lohan, dressed like Marilyn Monroe wearing a court-ordered ankle bracelet, looks sad and unhealthy.

Which fits “InAPPropriate Comedy” to a T. Surely, there’s a phone app that could text a funnier script than this.

MPAA Rating: R for strong crude and sexual content, graphic nudity, pervasive language and drug use

Cast: Adrien Brody, Ari Shaffir, Rob Schneider, Michelle Rodriguez, Lindsay Lohan

Credits: Directed by Vince Offer. A Square One release.

Running time: 1:22

This looks to be a pretty big weekend for theatrical box office, with Hollywood rolling out movies that will hit several corners of the audience squarely in their sweet spot.

“The Croods,” the first big kids’ cartoon of the new year, is riding good reviews into theaters, which will help it more than the feeble marketing and branding behind it. To borrow the resumes of the two directors, Fox has “Lilo & Stitch” on its hands (Chris Sanders) and is marketing it like “Space Chimps.”

Box Office Mojo figures the lack of an established brand franchise and middling marketing will work against “The Croods,” and that it will open under $40.

Same with Box Office Guru. This movie should open mid $40s, easily. I would have figured $50+. Pent up demand, kids on break from school, etc. But they’re commenting on the marketing and it isn’t a presold hit. Variety is figuring well into the $40s for this film, so we’ll see.

“Olympus Has Fallen” is “Die Hard in the White House,” with Gerard Butler in the Bruce Willis role. Reviews haven’t been fab, but Box Office Mojo sees “Olympus Has Fallen” doing a robust $19+. And Box Office Guru figures it could hit $22. Variety weighs in, saying it’s tracking into the low-mid $20s.

A Gerard Butler hit? That buys him another three years of bad rom-coms and bloody actioners. He hasn’t had a hit in ages, and hasn’t had a good movie since “Coriolanus,” which nobody saw.

“Admission” is the first misstep after a long run of hits and accolades for that Tina Fey, beloved funnylady of TV, film, award shows and Mark Twain prizes. It was a decent risk — a rom-com with parenting-childhood-college-admissions twists. But Paul Weitz keeps trying to remake “ABout a Boy,” and failing.

Box Office Mojo thinks Tina will pull in over $7. Which seems right. Box office guru thinks she could manage $9.

“Spring Breakers” is opening wide (over 1100 theaters) this weekend, riding some pretty good reviews into theaters.

Box Office Guru forgot it was opening wider. But Box Office Mojo predicts under $6 million for this movie, which isn’t opening on enough screens to blow up, but surely with the buzz it will flirt with $10.

It’s Friday, which means I’ll be chatting up up a long laundry list of new movies hitting theaters this weekend.

We’ll break down “The Croods,” “Olympus Has Fallen,” “Spring Breakers,” “Admission,” “Stoker,” “Murph: The Protector” and at The Enzian this weekend — “John Dies at the End.”

Yes, I’ll be giving the movies a hard sell to Mike Bianchi and Co. on the first weekend of March Madness. It’s an uphill fight.

I broke down this weekend’s mixed bag — good “Croods” and “Stoker,” intriguing and artfully made “Spring Breakers,” crude-and-heavy-handed “Olympus,” a pretty good War Hero doc (“Murph”) and an indifferent Tina Fey comedy (“Admission”) and how their reviews are breaking, overall, here.

Getting in your car? Tune in. It’s edifying.

Why, yes, says John Fithian of the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO).

When “Oz” is your first big family picture of the year, when “Jack and the Beanstalk” is a bust, when none of the Oscar contenders hanging around after the first of the year were truly family oriented (“Es Mis,” sort of), when the only kids’ cartoon was the laugh-free thing The Weinstein Co. threw out — so forgettable, I can’t recall the title, oh yeah, “Escape from Planet Earth” — business is going to be down.

It’s 12 % lower than it was last year at this time.

Plainly, there’s a lot more than Dreamworks Animation’s health on the line with “The Croods.” The whole industry could use an “Ice Age” sized hit.

It was nice to see Reese Witherspoon dress down and go “Britney Cheap” with her turn as a trailer park heartbreaker in “Mud,” the new film from the director of “Take Shelter” and starring Mattew McConaughey in the title role, a man who pines for his one true love — played by trashy Reese. “Mud” is due out late this spring.

Now comes word that Witherspoon may star in and produce “The Engagements,” based on a novel that tells the stories of all those who have had this one particular engagement ring in their grasp over the decades — 1930s onwards.