Movie Nation

“Chickenhare and the Hamster of Darkness” is a straight-up “Raiders of the Lost Ark” send-up about “embracing” your unique self because “Our differences are what make us special.”

It’s a European production based on a comic book by Chris Grines, with lets of action — much of it derived from the Indiana Jones movies — some splendid design and a couple of very clever sight gags.

But dull? If you’re old enough to read reviews, you might want to leave this on for the kids and find something else to do elsewhere in the house. Or the yard.

The quest is for a magical idol, with sea journeys, a trek across “The Desert of Death,” an ancient temple, a “legend,” and a map activated by sunlight at a particular hour of the day,

“Where’s the ‘X?’ Don’t most treasure maps have an ‘X’ that marks the spot?”

There it is.

“Oops! Darn tropes!”

Chickenhare, voiced by Jordan Tatakow, is a foundling, discovered by his adventurer dad and uncle. They’re in line for the throne of the kingdom that they’re from, a place that holds Royal Adventurer’s Society Tryouts, which Chickenhare fails.

He’s already insecure about being half-chicken, half rabbit. He wears hats and fur-covered boots to seem “just like everybody else.”

His father the king’s advice about accepting himself, and the fact that he’s flunked his one shot at the Royal Society, is ignored. Chickenhare fetches a fedora, leather jacket and bullwhip and sets out to find the treasure that eluded his dad and his treacherous brother Lapin (Danny Fehsenfeld) failed to find many years before.

That’s how Lapin escapes from prison to go on his own quest, to acquire the magical idol and seize power for himself.

Chickenhare is accompanied by turtle-servant Abe, voiced by Joey Lotsko, doing Woody Allen kvetching and shtick.

“Why can’t I ever meet anyone who shares my skepticism?”

And the “muscle” of their group is Meg (Laila Berzins), a skunk who was once so embarrassed by being different that she “corked” herself…for years.

The one-liners are limp jokes about assorted earlier or later quests, for “The Holy Spork” or “The Fountain of Middle Age.” The fact that the voice cast is more competent than comical or charismatic works against the one-liners.

But the best sight gag is a winner. The trio run afoul of “pigmies,” Minion like volcanic island piglets whose groupthink solutions to problems involves using their uniform shape to create Lego-like walls, traps and the like, teeming around the three as they try to toss them into their sacred volcano.

Nothing else in “Chickenhare” really registers. It’s a message with a half-hearted harebrained movie painted around it.

Rating: TV-Y, kid-friendly

Cast: The voices of Jordan Tartakow, Laila Berzins, Danny Fehsenfeld and Joey Lotsko

Credits: Directed by Ben Stassen and Benjamin Mousquet, scripted by Dave Collard, based on a graphic novel by Chris Grine. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:31

Before “Top Gun: Maverick,” director Joseph Kosinski made “TRON: Legacy,” “Oblivion” and “Only the Brave.” It’s a filmography that is the epitome of “mixed-bag,” in terms of entertainment value, aesthetics and bottom line.

But count “Spiderhead,” his latest collaboration with his muse, Miles Teller (“Only the Brave,” “Maverick”), as a checkmark in his favor, even if it’s something of a slick quick-and-dirtyt for Netflix. It’s a mixed bag in itself, but squeezing Chris Hemsworth into an outside-the-box role in between “Thor” outings and having him face-off with Teller in a simple story with a high-end setting and “human choice” morality pays off.

Based on a short story that first appeared in The New Yorker, “Spiderhead” is “A Clockwork Orange” for the Age of Big Pharma. The premise — drugs can make the world a better place, modify feelings and behavior, improve society.

“The world needs our help, now more than ever,” Dr. Steve Agnesti (Hemsworth) preaches. And those in his “care” aren’t exactly in a position to disagree.

“Spiderhead” is a prison/”clinical trial facility” on a mountainous island paradise. The inmates, “selected” and incarcerated there by choice, have drug injection pump MobiPaks installed on their lower backs. And every so often, they’re brought in for a “test.”

“Drip on?” jocular Dr. Steve asks? “Acknowledge!” the guinea pigs reluctantly reply.

Everything can seem funny after this dosage, sexual attraction is guaranteed and heightened by that one.

The drugs have names like LuvActin (an aphrodisiac) and Verbaluce. That one makes the recipient more articulate and forthcoming.

Jeff (Teller) is one of the patients there. Flashbacks give us an idea of why he’s in prison. But Dr. Agnesti — “Call me Steve!” — can help him escape, make him see a grimy industrial park as a Fijian beach.

Still, Jeff is giving up what, Film 101 class? “Free will.” And he’s the first to realize that this narcotized “cure” or whatever it is meant to accomplish isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Not when he feels “the most normal” when he’s sharing chores with his cute fellow convict Lizzy (Jurnee Smollett), but the drug tests are causing him to have sex with assorted partners in the one-way-mirror “lab.”

One thing that pops out of this is the stretch this part was for Hemsworth. Much of the dialogue has a creaky “better on the printed page than read aloud” quality.

“No other penal institution in the world boasts such a respectful relationship” between prisoners and those who imprison them.

But Hemsworth, taking extra hits of Red Bull between takes, rushes through them like a guy who finally gets to show-off his acquired American accent at top speed. Not every line sings, but he’s kind of a laugh tearing through them.

“Beautiful people get away with too much,” Agnesti gripes about the good-looking but always-tardy and testy inmate Heather (Wyomi Reed). “I say that having benefited from it myself, from time to time.”

You don’t say?

Teller is earnest and conflicted and carrying a sad burden, the memory of his “fateful night,” the one that put him in prison. What he really wants is a little “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”

“Is there a drug to make you forget s–t?” “Yeah, it’s called ‘old age.'”

As memory and guilt have a role in rehabilitation, we can see the logic in “not” wanting that in the pharmacopoeia here. But the script isn’t a deep dive into what constitutes rehabilitation (barely touched on), and only flirts with challenging the cynicism of allegedly “good” people who take jobs doing something their consciences should warn them are immoral.

“Deep” isn’t really Kosinski’s thing, after all.

The pleasures of this surface gloss are in the shocks, the moments things start going “too far,” and the mental, moral and physical sparring of Teller and Hemsworth, well-matched foes so long as Hunka-Hemsworth doesn’t have his hammer handy.

Rating: R for violent content, language and sexual content.

Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Miles Teller and Jurnee Smollett

Credits: Directed by Joseph Kosinski, scripted by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, based on a short story by George Saunders. A (June 17) Netflix release.

Running time: 1:47

 Well slap me sideways and call me Jolson. I’d plum forgotten Our Lord John Cleese‘s first appearance in “Life of Brian” was in Blackface.

The decision, this past week, for British cinemas to give up showing “The Lady of Heaven,” an Islamic history lesson that bent over backwards to not offend, because of protests at the theaters by British Muslims…who hadn’t seen the bloody film, had a local Archbishop having a bit of a laugh at Islam’s “‘Life of Brian’ Moment.” And it gave me a craving to see Monty Python’s big screen masterpiece again.

The idea that the Catholic man in the big funny hat is getting at is a valid one. That in a free society, examining, critiquing and even mocking of belief systems has to be fair game. Islam doesn’t tolerate criticism. And unlike Scientology, there is no call to “Lawyer Up” in the scriptures of that Middle Eastern/Global religion. So protests and the implicit threat of violence will have to do.

“Life of Brian” was protested so vehemently when it came out that members of Monty Python were called upon to debate Big Thinkers and Great Theologians of the Day in the UK on TV. And that, in turn, led to sketches mocking the idea of comedians having to debate allegedly serious people over a seriously silly film.

I don’t remember much in the way of protest in the U.S. when the film came out, unlike the picketing that greeted Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ,” some years later anyway.

Rewatching “Brian” now, one really does get the feeling that the oft-repeated phrase “They could NEVER film that today” absolutely applies here.

“Life of Brian” is a Life of Jesus send-up about a Jewish (possibly half-Roman) contemporary of Jesus named Brian Cohen (Graham Chapman) having many hapless run-ins with the Romans and mistaken for the Messiah by his fellow Hebrews. It intentionally or unintentionally sets out to offend almost everyone.

There are gay jokes, Blackface gags, and every Jewish (and Italian) “nose” insult and slur is trotted out for one and all. Gender dysphoria wasn’t discussed openly back then, except by the Pythons.

“I want to be a woman. I want you to call me ‘Loretta’ from now on.”

Eric Idle was the only Python so convincing in drag I was sure he was “the gay one” well into the 1980s, British boarding school “experiences” and all that. Nope. That was Chapman.

Speech impediments mocked by Michael Palin? “Biggus Dickus” and his bride, “Incontinentia Buttocks” wouldn’t have it.

Brian’s father was ROMAN?

“You mean you were RAPED?”

“Well, at first, yes,” Mum (Terry Jones) sheepishly confesses.

But in a movie in which there was a Jerusalem Colosseum in which they slaughtered loin-clothed prisoners with gladiators for “entertainment” — but only at “Children’s Matinees” — everything and anything is on the table for laughs.

What stands out about this Terry Jones/Terry Gilliam film — Jones did the directing, Gilliam co-wrote it and gave it the “authentic but goofy” look that sold the conceit her, and in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” — all these years later is the texture, the pacing and the glorious pedantry of a bunch of Ox-Bridge wits, having a go at comedy.

Watch it with the closed captioning on or read the screenplay. Arcane words and usages decorate a script already riddled with Britishisms of the day.

“And the bezan shall be huge and black…”

And then there’s the hilarious schoolboy prank of having a pedantic British-bobby-as-school-teacher Roman centurion (Cleese) chew out, correct and TEACH Brian the proper way to write “Romans Go Home!” in Latin, as graffiti.

” What’s this, then? ‘Romanes Eunt Domus’? ‘People called Romanes they go the house’?”

“Imperative” and “Vocative plural of ‘annus'” and “dative” and “accusative” and “locative” are questioned and drilled, and we’re left to wonder how this lot ever learned to write and communicate at all, much less conquer the world.

 “Now, write it out a hundred times.”

Chapman was wonderfully befuddled in every scene. Cleese, Palin, Jones, Idle and even Gilliam lad laughs in any number of guises. Python idol Spike “The Goon Show” Milligan showed up and was put to good use.

The way this picture still skips along, sketch to sketch, its a wonder it ever had the chance to offend. But it did. And the fact that you don’t see it — edited or not — on most classic film or even rerun film channels to this day suggests it still does.

Did it end Christianity, or do as much damage to the Catholic Church as a single one of the thousands of sex abuse scandals that dog it? Was Protestantism brought to heel by its withering wit? No.

But the reaction to “The Lady of Heaven” or for that matter, to assorted Muhammad-mocking cartoons in “Charlie Hebdo” and elsewhere remind us that there’s never been a big screen comedy that poked fun at Islam’s origins, even if there have been movies ridiculing Islamic fanaticism (“Four Lions”) and the alleged humorlessness of the culture attached to the religion (“Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World”).

As daring as some comedy is these days, there’s not a comic nor a troupe to match Monty Python’s 1970s audacity or for that matter bravery in tackling ticklish subjects like religion.

Then again, they already knew “The Spanish Inquisition” and “Church Police” sketches hadn’t gotten anyone killed when they went down this road. Yet.

Rating: R, violence, nudity and lots of profanity

Cast: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Carol Cleveland, Sue Davies-Jones, Kenneth Colley and Spike Milligan.

Credits: Directed by Terry Jones, scripted by Graham Chapman, John Cleese and Terry Gilliam. A Warner Bros./Orion Pictures Handmade Films release on Amazon, Netflix, other streamers

Running time: 1:34

A British widow of a certain age raids her savings and screws up her courage to hire a sex worker in “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande,” a dramedy that goes down easy thanks to the sexy-droll presence of Oscar winner Emma Thompson.

And let’s see if we finish this review with no further obvious innuendoes, shall we?

In dramatic terms, it’s a classic “two-hander,” just two strangers in an upscale but non-descript hotel room making a journey from prim and pitiful to pelvic pinochle, with pain and unflattering personal revelations getting in the way of mutual understanding, on or off the clock, over a series of “meetings.”

“Nancy” is a nervous wreck whose “May I kiss your cheek?” tells us this is her “first time” better than making that direct admission to young, hunky sex worker “Leo” (Daryl McCormack of “Peaky Blinders” and “Pixie”). Thankfully, Leo’s a pro and has some experience slow-walking a 50-60something with limited sexual experience into this situation she’s arranged and paid for. Still, this is going to take some work.

“What would you most desire?”

“Am I a disappointment, so to speak?” And “I won’t be ‘faking it.’ I’m not in the mood.”

She’s a quietly neurotic “Get it over with” bucket lister, of a sort. He’s the patient, even-more-guarded one, and in the manner of such theatrical constructions, something of a sexual psychotherapist. And a wit.

“It’s an orgasm, not a Faberge egg. People have them every day.”

Their banter ranges from lightly biting to sadly confessional, with a liberal dusting of wildly inappropriate — “When did you last see your mother?”

And the relationship, such as it is, evolves. Each gives up a little piece of the Venmo-enforced facade at a time and wounds and flaws are exposed, empathy is earned and/or dashed to bits. The characters have enough layers to seem human, fully-formed and in equal measure loveable and contemptible.

Of course its two person cast and limited set make “Good Luck” feel like a play. And as such, some of the obstacles and conflicts brought into the relationship at regular, clockwork intervals have an air of arbitrary, preordained “dramatic requirement” about them.

And the finale has a grasping quality that plays like a shock value afterthought…or the film’s cynical selling point.

Like most critics, I just adore that Emma. But this “Isn’t she brave?” movie gave me a serious case of the “likes,” a tad too contrived to embrace. Not without protection, anyway.

Rating: R for sexual content, graphic nudity and some language

Cast: Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack

Credits: Directed by Sophie Hyde, scripted by Katy Brand. A Searchlight release.

Running time: 1:37

This is how it’s done. “Dirty Daddy: The Bob Saget Tribute” is exactly the sort of send-off beloved comics deserve and have earned from us.

“Dirty Daddy” was thrown together shortly after the guy Chris Rock labeled “‘America’s Dad’… that’s not a convicted rapist” passed away, on tour in Orlando. Part tribute, part roast, with a moving eulogy and a goofy sing-along at the finish, this gathering of comics — and Jackson Browne and John Mayer — is off the cuff, unrehearsed, under-produced, raw and real.

A string of comics, mostly from Saget’s generation and almost to a one “his best friend,” remember their colleague, tell off-color stories about the comic who gained fame from “Full House” and “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” and pay their loving respects to Saget’s family, including his widow Kelly Rizzo-Saget, who takes the stage at The Comedy Store at one point.

“Keep it short,” Jim Carrey stage hisses at her as she steps to the mike.

“Full House” co-star and longtime Saget pal John Stamos may be the MC, show a lovely video in tribute and give Saget a warm eulogy to open the winter evening’s honors. But Jeff Ross, comedy’s “Roast the Most” king, is here, so you know it’s going to be that sort of night.

Carrey, bedecked in a coat from the Cruella DeVil Collection, soberly recall’s Saget’s death, looks around the room and muses “what everybody here’s thinking, Who’s NEXT?'”

His best guess? Ross.

“You think I LIKE looking like Bruce Willis if he ‘Died Hard?'”

Ross and Carrey slow-jam/riff off each other to the slow blues of an onstage band that includes Mayer and Darren Criss, Rock joins them onstage just long enough to find a couple of lines, and cross those lines, and Browne and Mayer perform songs dedicated to Saget.

Michael Keaton, Tim Allen and Jon Lovitz appear in videos. Fun fact. Saget’s Florida tour coincided with Lovitz and Allen performing at a lot of the same venues as Saget at the same time he was. Winter is Vintage Comic Season in the Sunshine State.

Allen got the news that his friend and colleague had died, and fretted about how Saget got the better Orlando hotel suite. Lovitz expresses heartfelt guilt at not making it to either Saget’s funeral (clips of that earlier non-public event are shown) or this Comedy Store tribute.

“Well, it’s not like he’s COMING to MINE!”

It’s all loose and unfiltered and full of Betty White and Louis Anderson jokes, and even a jab at Saget’s good-sport widow delivered by sometime funnyman and film director Mike Binder (“The Upside of Anger,” “The Comedy Store” TV documentary).

“You know when I think it’s too soon, it’s F—-D up,” Ross bellows across the stage.

Indeed. Just the way Bob Saget would’ve wanted it.

Rating: TV-MA, profanity and lots of it

Cast: Chris Rock, Jim Carrey, Jeff Ross, John Stamos, John Mayer, Kelly Rizzo-Saget, Dave Chapelle, Tim Allen, Jackson Browne, Paul Rodriguez, Byron Allen, Seth Green and Bob Saget.

Credits: Directed by Mike Binder. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:24

Clara takes in the world with all her senses, peering into the minutia of life, feeling the sun and the breeze, smelling the ground and listening to the wind and everything it brushes past.

She’s may be mentally still a child in her 30s, but she is the only one who can comfort the family mare when she’s needed for “the tourists” at a nearby waterfall and Yuca is reluctant to go.

When anybody in her village is sick, they come to Clara and her mother, Doña Frescia. Clara has “cured cancer, healed knees and hearts,” her mother tells those who visit to see the simple — perhaps “on the spectrum” — daughter “God has gifted” her, and everyone else, with.

But Clara was born with a crooked spine. The local doctor recommends an operation. No no, her mother insists.

“I don’t want her operated on,” she declares, in Spanish with English subtitles. “God gave her to me like this. She stays like this.

Clara’s young niece, Maria, who helps care for her, can protest all she likes. Doña Frescia won’t listen. Clara’s pain and her “gift” will remain. This is the totality of Clara’s life, socially and romantically alone, living largely in her head, “Clara Sola.”

Costa-Rican/Swedish director and co-writer Nathalie Álvarez Mesén immerses us in this world, and Wendy Chinchilla Araya, as Clara, is our fascinating tour guide, an introverted innocent living an isolated life, seemingly under the thumb of a tyrannical religious fanatic mother, played by Flor María Vargas Chavez.

But we’ve seen the way Clara drinks in the handsome young neighbor, Santiago (Daniel Castañeda Rincón). Her 15 year-old niece Maria (Ana Julia Porras Espinoza) may have to dress her, wash her hair and even shower with Clara to bathe her. That doesn’t mean her “special” aunt hasn’t developed urges. Clara’s mother turns the TV off any time a telenovela turns too steamy. Clara can’t help touching herself.

Clara is starting to go through some things. And since Maria has her eye on “Santi” too, so is everyone else.

Mesén’s film, a Swedish TV co-production, plays down the “healer” part of Clara’s life and story, focusing instead on her innocence and her eccentricities. She “counts houses” when she walks or travels, feels the Earth move and assumes it’s her doing (“Earthquakes,” Maria assures her.).

Whatever this “feeling” is that she’s tumbling into, she isn’t sophisticated or mature enough to process, not in any healthy, socially acceptable way.

In Araya’s largely-internalized performance, we sense Clara’s confusion, anguish and frustration at a world and a family circle that won’t let her experience what she craves and that gives her little agency in her own life. It’s just “get dressed” (with Maria doing the dressing) for this party or that Virgin Mary ceremony, talk the horse into the trailer and accept every decision Doña Frescia hands down, including her constant dipping the daughter’s fingers in chilis to keep her from this “disgusting” new habit she’s embraced and can’t control — touching herself.

The script, by Maria Camila Arias and Mesén, floats a lot of intriguing ideas and possible subtexts and story threads that aren’t developed. Their primary focus is on Clara’s sexual awakening, her family’s reaction to it and Santiago’s dilemma. Can he be kind, responsible and gentlemanly to her without things turning carnal? Will she allow it?

And how might someone in her circumstances with her “gifts” respond to a primal desire that’s dismissed, opposed or rejected?

It makes for an engrossing character study, a Latin film with lots of local color, a hint of magical realism and an air of hopelessness tinged with menace — a unique cinematic experience.

Rating: unrated, sex, nudity, profanity, some violence

Cast: Wendy Chinchilla Araya, Ana Julia Porras Espinoza, Daniel Castañeda Rincón and Flor María Vargas Chavez

Credits: Directed by Nathalie Álvarez Mesén, scripted by Maria Camila Arias and Nathalie Álvarez Mesén. An Oscilloscope Labs release.

Running time: 1:

A fourteen year-old German girl experiences her first crush and her sexual awakening in “Cocoon.” But to shy, observant Nora’s surprise, that crush and first love is an older teen girl.

Writer-director Leonie Krippendorff — who created the lesbian romance “Loving Her” for German TV — serves up a lived-in world and relatable, many-layered teenaged characters who delight just as easily as they disappoint. And she gives Nora a Big Fat Metaphor as a hobby. She raises caterpillars to release as butterflies, thus our metamorphosis metaphoric title — “Cocoon,” “Kokon” in German.

Nora, played with a kind of guarded guilelessness by Lena Urzendowsky, is the shrinking violet in older sister Jule’s (Lena Klenke) circle. Jule and Aylin (Elina Vildanova) are loud, exuberant BFFs, but they have little problem including mousy Nora in their travels and conversations about boys, music and weight, of all things.

Jule seems obsessed with being thin, and at one point we see the three of them attempting a “model’s trick,” eating orange juice-soaked cotton balls to lose weight.

Both older girls can be mean, or touchingly supportive. When we meet Jules and Nora’s barfly mom (Anja Schneider), we understand that. In the end, the sisters have to lean on each other, and Nora seems to be the one who recognized this first.

But frolicking in the pool with beautiful Aylin gives Nora tingles that she’s never felt before. She doesn’t have the words to describe what she’s going through, what she feels, or even how to bring it up. Jules and Aylin are super-tight. Why, she asks her sister, do they “need” or even want boys?

One touchingly tender moment has Nora talking to a sympathetic, non-judgmental teacher who gives her exactly what a good teacher should — the “you’re going to ‘feel’ a lot of things at your age, and it’s OK,” speech.

The fact that everybody speaks German isn’t the only way we realize the setting is Europe and not Florida.

Nora’s awkward naivete gets her hand-broken at a party with loud, loutish boys whom Jule and Nora are sweet on. Jule gets her to the hospital for that, but is no help in PE class that day Nora has her first menstruation while walking the balance beam.

An absentee, advice-free mom, a teacher who doesn’t see it, a sister who picks today to find her kid sister “embarrassing” all combine for a young girl’s worst nightmare.

But in the toilet, there’s salvation. It’s bob-haired blonde Romy (Jella Haase) to the rescue. It’s no wonder Nora falls instantly in love with her.

Krippendorff invites us into a latch-key kid world of parties, late night over-the-fence dips in the community pool, teen drinking and casual pot use centered around two sisters who pretty much have to fend for themselves.

The kids run through a wide range of emotions and issues — crushes, requited and unrequited, sexual experimentation, love, humiliation and heartbreak.

Nora narrates this climate-changed (insanely hot) summer story from some point in the future, letting us see and hear what she felt and endured and obviously survived.

What’s striking about this milieu is the limited drama or lack of strife in all this. Human sexuality class invites a vigorous teen debate about teen parenting vs. abortion between outspoken Muslim girls and traditional Turkish boys, who seem sheepish at parroting their parents’ bullet points.

Even the German kids have taken to blurting “I swear on the Koran” to comically emphasize a point, and Aylin is using a translator app to teach herself Turkish. She has a new boyfriend.

And nobody — even the immature and sometimes obnoxious boys — is judging anybody’s sexuality or sexual spectrum “experimenting.”

The performers are, to a one, unaffected. And once I got past Urzendowsky’s eerie resemblance to the surviving photos of Anne Frank, I was amazed at her understated immersion in this questioning kid too shy to ask for answers, unless there’s a Youtube tutorial on tampons.

Krippendorff squeezes a lot of layers of the urban teen experience into “Cocoon’s” slim 93 or so minutes, and gives a lot of shades to her characters, who are never simple “types” the way most Hollywood films about high schoolers are.

What “Cocoon” encourages Nora with isn’t the American message of “It gets better,” it’s something much more universal. Everybody goes through a version of this. And when everybody’s cool about it, it’s no big deal.

Rating: unrated, teen drug and alcohol abuse, sexual subject matter

Cast: Lena Urzendowsky, Lena Klenke, Elina Vildanova,
Anja Schneider and Jella Haase

Credits: Scripted and directed by Leonie Krippendorff. A Film Movement release.

Running time: 1:33

“Don” is one of those Bollywood musicals that reminds us that too much Indian cinema puts the “in” in “inane.”

A self-congratulatory story of a writer-director — Cibi Chakravarthi — bullied into attending engineering school instead of “art school” (film school) as he wanted, it stars Sivakarthikeyan as his singing, dancing, romancing and pranking alter ego.

S.J. Suryah plays the Best Engineering University “discipline” counselor, Boominathan, a martinet who keeps the sea of kids cowed and intimidated, until Chakravarthi and his pals scheme of a way to get rid of him — applying for a bigger, better job for him, online, behind his back.

“Chaka” gets nicknamed “Don” of the school for this stunt. And while he’s not having much luck impressing the beautiful and full of herself Angaiyarkanni (Priyanka Arulmoha) for this, and can only fool his stern, slap-him-silly dad (Samuthirakani) for so long with an elaborate prank that involves hiring somebody to play him for a meeting with school officials, and getting another chap to play his dad for the real meeting, he expects to get by.

Of course, he’s not done with Boominathan, not done dreaming of film school and he’s remembering all this as he drives his “I’m a big success” Range Rover to the college through a pouring rain, dodging elephants because the entire film’s a flashback.

I’ve seen a lot more Indian cinema in recent years, thanks to the rise of Netflix and its eagerness to share Bollywood (and non-Bollywood) films and take us “Around the World with Netflix.” The movies are often patience-testing, but most are perfectly watchable thanks to the camp value of the dancing, that turns up even in some action films. But the 2:45 of “Don” takes the biscuit.

Strip away the production numbers, which are always fun — although often more fun than the tunes performed here — and a cute courtship musical montage that has our prospective lovers dancing/flirting around the Taj Mahal — and there is nothing worth giving a minute’s attention to here.

Those kid-boxed-about-the-ears scenes showing us how his father abused, put down and generally held-back Chakravarthi set us up for a better movie.

But once the film hits college, its “School Daze” plot struggles to get on its feet even if the production numbers passed muster. Our “hero” isn’t interesting, in even a smug pranking jerk sort of way. There’s little chemistry with his leading lady, and scene after scene has this insufferable and unfunny disciplinarian scheming, being foiled and never one drawing a laugh for any of it.

And on and on and on and on this drivel goes. Looking at his credits, I can see that I have not seen Sivakarthikeyan’s other films, although his music has turned up in titles I recognize. He seems a better singer/dancer than actor, a reminder that not every handsome swain can seduce the camera and make a character relatable, likable or even tolerable.

Some of this, of course, is a cultural difference in cinematic priorities. Indian cinema, as a rule, is long and repetitive, as if they expect the audience to half pay attention, maybe leave the theater or walk away from the TV for long stretches. So nothing much of interest happens a very substantial portion of the time.

My Florida film-fanatic patience was utterly out the door by the one hour mark and nothing that followed improved my mood.

This is awful. I didn’t hate every minute of it, but those tolerable stretches were few and far between.

Rating: TV-14, violence,

Cast: Sivakarthikeyan, S.J. Suryah,
Priyanka Arulmohan and Samuthirakani

Written and directed by Cibi Chakravarthi. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:45

Americans are conditioned to wait for that moment when an onscreen brawl crosses over into “to the death” territory. Some gangster or cop will pull out a firearm.

You’ll have a long wait for that in “Paid in Blood,” a Korean gang war thriller that spills all its blood the old-fashioned way — with fists, sticks and knives.

The latest film from Yoon Youngbin reminds us just how much damage a sharp blade can do, how long it can take to “bleed out” from the wounds, and how much guts it takes the fight with this corner of gangland’s weapon of choice.

Titles “Tomb of the River” is Korea, it’s a movie of elderly gangsters and their hobbies — pen and ink drawings, growing and drying one’s own chili peppers — and the hotblooded young men who might not let anybody’s retirement pass peacefully, if they even let a mob boss reach retirement age.

The power dynamic at play is brutal Lee Min-suk (Jang Hyuk), a gangster born in Seoul, is now a “debt collector” for one of the two main gangs in coastal Gangneung. No, he’s not content with that long-time arrangement, which includes the occasional hired killing. He breaks his deal with the Gyeongdo Gang with a blade.

Kim Gil-suk (YOO O-Seong) is a loyal lieutenant with the rival Taekji gang, the sort of insider who has an in with the cops. He’s always warning his boss when this meeting or that bar is about to be raided.

Even though the patriarch of this underworld counsels “not fighting” because “when you fight, you both get hurt,” Lee Min-suk is about to slice up the peace and anybody planning to keep it.

His MO? He finds saps who owe him big debts to take the fall. The ineffectual and corrupt cops can’t get to him.

The plot can be hard to follow, as MANY character names and loyalties have to be sorted out, and the pacing between action sequences seems even more ponderous because of that.

But the fights are intimate or epic in scale, and buckets of blood are always spilled. Same with the film’s assorted assassinations.

And the acting is sharp, with many a blade handled with skill, many a cigarette lit with flair, many a death gruesome and in-your-face personal.

The tough-guy trash talk — in Korean, with English subtitles — is flinty and properly bad-ass

“If you use pens, you get ink. But if you use knives, you get blood.”

“Not anymore. Nowadays, pens get you blood. Knives just get you jail.“

“You’re soft when it matters most.” And “Don’t waste your breath like this. You won’t have enough when you actually need it.”

Yoon Youngbin is no John Woo (Who is?). But he’s whipped up a solid and just-exciting-enough gangster movie with grimly conflicted characters and violence that can only be this visceral and personal when the debt collecting is done with a knife, not the coward’s cannon of choice, an AR-15.

Rating: unrated, graphic, bloody violence

Cast: Jang Hyuk, YOO O-Seong, Park Seong-geun, Oh Dae-hwan, Lee Hyun-kyun  and Shin Seung-hwan

Credits: Scripted and directed by Yoon Youngbin. A Well Go USA release, also streaming on Hi-YAH!,

Running time: 1:59

Reviews don’t help or hurt Giant Dinosaur movies. So the fans are filling theaters this opening weekend, widespread pans be damned.

“Jurassic World Dominion” is on course to chew up $142-144 million worth of North American tickets on this, its opening weekend.

Globally, it’s over $389 million already.

That shoves “Top Gun: Maverick” into the second spot on its third weekend of release. Deadline.com is projecting a $50 million take, based on Friday’s numbers, pre-sales for Sat./Sun etc.

Fans love to see actors menaced by digital dinosaurs, and bringing back the original “Jurassic” Trio for this sequel gives the picture a sentimental edge — and makes you wish they’d found actors as fun to watch as Goldblum, Dern and Neill when they started this second trilogy.

As Pixar’s “Lightyear” opens next weekend, “Jurassic” starts down the road to extinction then. That’s a one week reign at the top. Parents are DYING for cartoons to take the kids to.

I’m still wondering when “Top Gun” will pass “Doctor Strange/Multiverse,” as that Marvel marvel is collecting another $5 million this weekend, and the gap between them is closing FAST — $398 for “Strange,” $393 for “Maverick.” The newer release should jet by Marvel’s man of the Month by Tuesday, maybe Wed.

“The Bad Guys” adds another $2.4 million and looks as if it’ll fall short of $100 million before Pixar takes all those screens, and the thunder, from Universal’s cute caper comedy. (Psssst. “Bad Guys” is uh, more fun than “Lightyear”).

Another $2 million for “Bob’s Burgers” won’t do much for that one, which has run out of gas and probably won’t do much over $30, if it even clears that benchmark.

“Everything Everywhere All At Once,” the late spring multiverse movie that’s still the best picture of the summer, is finally losing screens and winding down, with another $1.2 million or so pushing it over the $63 million mark.

“The Lost City” and “Sonic 2” are done, well under $1 million and out of here by next weekend or the weekend afterward.