Horton Hears a Who! 2 1/2—Horton may hear a Who, but the rest of us may hear a lot of hoopla, and it’s not all the charming sort you expect from a benign Seussian world. This animated family flick succeeds to a point in putting the Hollywood spin on Theodor S. Geisel’s beloved children’s book about an elephant defending a microscopic civilization. Very young children will find plenty to giggle over in the movie’s manic slapstick as Horton (voiced by Jim Carrey) incurs the wrath and ridicule of his jungle pals, who refuse to believe he’s discovered a tiny land called Who-Ville that exists in a speck resting on a clover. The lyrical nonsense of Seuss’ rhymes generally give way to loud pratfall nonsense, though, as the filmmakers stretch a thin, thin story to fit a feature-length movie. Steve Carell provides the voice of the mayor of Who-Ville, while Carol Burnett is the mouthpiece for a self-righteous kangaroo leading the attack on Horton. G. 86 min.—David Germain



10,000 BC 1 1/2—A mix of vast CGI spectacle and small, silly moments, this prehistoric saga is an epic in name only. The latest mind-numbing extravaganza from director Roland Emmerich (“Independence Day,” “The Day After Tomorrow”) feels more like a video game in film form. Our dreadlocked, dirt-smudged hero, D’Leh (Steven Strait), must protect his Yagahl people from a variety of foes, including woolly mammoths, marauders on horseback, angry ostrich-looking things and an enormous saber-toothed tiger. He also must rescue the love of his life, the mystical Evolet (Camilla Belle, looking weirdly like Lindsay Lohan being hounded by paparazzi), from slave raiders. The script from Emmerich and Harald Kloser (who also wrote the overbearing score) takes D’Leh and his fellow tribesmen (Cliff Curtis, Nathanael Baring, Mo Zainal) from one level to the next without building much momentum; the whole endeavor is actually quite a bore, leading up to the overblown, climactic showdown in the midst of some half-built pyramids. Some of the wide shots are dazzling (the film was shot in New Zealand, South Africa and Namibia) and there are a couple of thrilling moments here and there (the mammoth stampede, for example). But this is otherwise a slice of history you’re likely to forget. PG-13 for sequences of intense action and violence. 109 min.—Christy Lemire

The Bank Job 2 1/2—This is a solid, no-nonsense heist thriller, yet one that ultimately fails to distinguish itself from the many others of the genre. It has none of the cinematic pyrotechnics of a Guy Ritchie picture, but it also lacks the stylish cool of a “Sexy Beast,” for example. Australian director Roger Donaldson (“The Recruit,” “Thirteen Days”), working from a script by British veterans Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, has crafted a respectable mix of fact and fiction inspired by the 1971 robbery of a Lloyds Bank in London. Force-of-nature Jason Statham, star of the “Transporter” movies, plays the vividly named Terry Leather, a used-car dealer with a criminal past. He and some of his amateur thug pals get roped into robbing the bank’s vault by seductive ex-model Martine Love (the stunning Saffron Burrows), a friend of theirs from the neighborhood and a former flame of Terry’s before he settled down with a wife and a couple of kids. Martine herself has been roped into organizing the heist by her married lover (Richard Lintern), a member of MI5 who wants to retrieve some potentially scandalous photos of someone in the royal family, which are stashed inside a safe deposit box in the vault. The requisite collection of colorful characters includes a smut peddler, a part-time porn star, a black-power con man and some seriously hypocritical aristocrats. R for sexual content, nudity, violence and language. 115 min.—Christy Lemire

RATINGS: 4 stars: Excellent; 3 stars: Good; 2 stars: Fair; 1 star: Poor