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 Enlarge Collection of Murray Langston Who’s that scarecrow?: Comedian Murray Langston emerged as the Unknown Comic more than 30 years ago. The Dark Knight“> EnlargeWarner Bros.The Dark KnightThe Strangers“> EnlargeBy Glenn Watson, Rogue PicturesThe Strangers By William Keck, USA TODAY Paper or plastic? Or burlap, perhaps? Donning a bag and going on a psychopathic killing spree has become all the rage at the cineplex, with bag-headed bad guys showing up in a handful of films. More than 30 years past, Canadian comedian Murray Langston became a national phenomenon with a bagged head — telling bad gags for example the Unknown Comic. Today, Langston, 64, is still getting laughs (sans bag) performing on the road and is shopping his film Dirty Jokes: The Movie, with 130 comics telling “the globe’s best dirty jokes of all time.” So what does he think of his shtick turning up now with a sinister side? USA TODAY found out:

The Dark Knight

(now playing)

Bag’s role: The burlapped Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy) returns briefly to spook Batman — as he did in 2005’s Batman Begins.

Unknown Comic says: ”I saw Batman Begins in the theater, and this Scarecrow guy scared me so much that not only did I wet my pants, I also wet the pants of the guy in front of me. … And then I ran straight for the ‘bat’ room. Ha!”

Baghead

(in limited release)

wallet’s role: A mysterious man wearing a paper bag frightens and entertains four friends in woods.

Unknown Comic says: ”Pretty freaky. … When I was popular 25 years ago, this was a big Halloween outfit because it was so cheap to pull off.”

The Strangers

(opened in May)

Bag’s role: A white cloth sack masks a psychotic suited killer, who with two young women in clownish masks, terrorizes Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman.

Unknown Comic says: ”This guy’s obviously got an ego with that big head of his. … When I first started out, I tried a plastic bag upward of my head, but I kept put on blacking out after the first joke. Then I tried a vacuum cleaner bag, but that sucked.”

The Orphanage (El Orfanato)

(2007)

Bag’s role: A puppet-like cloth bag covers the ghost of a dead chit, terrifying a home’s new occupants.

Unknown Comic says: ”He’s a little dirt bag, not a bad way to start out. Maybe person day he’ll grow up, get noted and get to wear a Gucci bag.”

To report corrections and clarifications, contact Reader Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification.

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 Enlarge By Larry Armstrong for USA TODAY Informant transformation: Matt Damon lightens the hair and adds pounds, below, as a company exec who exposes price fixing.  EnlargeBy Lisa Morrison, AP CELEBRITY HEAT INDEX through Donna Freydkin, USA TODAY For Matt Damon, this summer has been one of gains and losses.

He’s preparing for the line of his second daughter, helping launch a charity and hoping for some major reductions around his waistline.

Damon, 37, is working overtime to drop the 30 pounds he packed on to play a whistle-blower in Steven Soderbergh’s 2009 drama The Informant. He has to shed the weight by early September to be svelte for re-shoots of the Paul Greengrass drama Green Zone, in which he plays a soldier looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

“on the supposition that you state it on, it’s easier to get it back done,” he says.

His weight-loss strategy: “I’m just boxing. I figure if you get hit plenty times, it will fall off.”

The former Sexiest Man Alive jokes that People magazine took back the title. “Now I’m the Sexiest Man Alive’s chunky cousin.”

Speaking from his Miami home, Damon says that, except for the Green Zone reshoots, he’s “taking the rest of the year off, and I’m just hanging to the end with my family.”

Wife Luciana is “due soon,” and the baby will join Isabella, 2, and Damon’s stepdaughter, Alexia, 9. “I’m so outnumbered down here, it’s crazy,” jokes Damon of his girl-powered household.

The connect haven’t at the same time picked out a name. “We decided to wait till she’s born, and then we’re going to acquire a look at her and we’ll probably keep debating it,” he says.

His other “baby” he’s prepping for is the launching of One X One Foundation’s U.S. operations, by a San Francisco gala on Oct. 23. The charity, started in Canada, helps children worldwide.

“It’s about helping kids,” Damon says. “It’s not like before I was a father I was like, ‘The hell with those kids.’ But something does shift when you have a child of your own. It’s hard not to look at every child as somehow connected to you.”

Damon was inspired by Bono and his ONE campaign to fight poverty. Part of Damon’s duties: recruiting talent for events.

“I have to make calls. Sheryl Crow is going to play at one of our events. It’s the easiest call in the world to execute,” Damon says. “I just tell what the charity is in regard to, and everyone wants to do anything they can.”

To report corrections and clarifications, contact Reader Editor Brent Jones. For publication deliberation in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification.

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By Scott Bowles, USA TODAY The Dark Knight’s box office records continue to fall faster than Batman’s foes.

Knight took in $75.6 million this weekend, according to studio estimates from Nielsen EDI.

The haul gives the Batman sequel $314 million in 10 days, easily making it the fastest film to earn $300 million. The previous record was held by Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, which did it in 16 days.

Next up: $400 million. Shrek II holds the record as the film to reach that mark fastest, in 43 days; Warner Bros. predicts Knight will do that in 18.

“Four hundred million is yesterday’s news,” says the studio’s Dan Fellman. “I don’t know how far beyond that we can go, but certainly $500 million seems within reach.”

If it is, Knight would become the second highest-grossing film of every part of time, surpassing Star Wars‘ $461 million. Titanic remains the all-time champ with $601 million, and more forecasters are beginning to wonder whether that’s in reach.

“I don’t think there was ever a time when a movie would be seriously compared to Titanic,” says Paul Dergarabedian of Media by Numbers. “But when you’re out of the gate this quickly, and maintain going this strongly, you have to consider whether the impracticable is suddenly possible.”

What’s probable is a third Batman installment, though Warner Bros. has announced no date.

“We’re all still in awe of (monitor) Christopher Nolan and what he has done,” says Fellman. “We’re certainly hoping he has a few more ideas up his sleeve, because we’re just waiting for him to call.”

If he does, one question that will loom over the franchise: How to move forward without Heath Ledger, who plays the Joker and died of a prescription drug overdose in January.

“You have to believe that Heath — and his death — is the engine that’s taking the franchise as far for example it has gotten,” says Glen Whippet, film reviewer and columnist for the Los Angeles Daily News. “And that raises the question of how far it can go without him.”

In previous Batman installments, villains are one-shot appearances. The Joker, Two Face, the Riddler and Catwoman all made single-film appearances. Whippet says that should be the case for Ledger, as well.

It would be a mistake to have someone replenish Ledger’s shoes as the demented Joker, he says. Unlike Batman, who has been populated by the likes of Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney and now Christian Bale, Ledger has made an indelible mark with his villainous turn.

“I’m not sure anyone would accept any other actor,” Whippett says. “The most judicious plan would probably be to put the Joker to rest instead of now. You’d need about a 20-year moratorium near the front of you could reboot that character for the franchise.”

The franchise appears impervious to bad news. Last week, Bale was taken into London police custody for an alleged assail on his mother and sister. But ticket sales have been unaffected.

“If anything,” says Dergarabedian, “it just raised more awareness about the movie. People don’t care about that. They care about the movie.”

Moviegoers also cared about Step Brothers, the Will Ferrell comedy, what one. enjoyed a stronger-than-expected debut with $30 million and second place despite tepid reviews. The story of two stepbrothers who begin as mortal enemies earned recommendations from 52% of the nation’s critics, according to survey seat RottenTomatoes.com.

The debut was the second hale showing for the team of Ferrell and John C. Reilly, who opened Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby to $47 million in 2006.

slip on’t expect a re-teaming anytime soon during the term of the agents behind the X-Files. X-Files: I Want to Believe. The only other major newcomer this weekend made its debut at No. 4 with an anemic $10.2 million, about $7 million below most analysts’ expectations. The reuniting of David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson lost target audience to Dark Knight after not exactly wowing critics, less than a third of whom gave the film a positive retrace.

Mamma Mia! held well, dropping just 36% from its debut to take third place with $17.8 million. The ABBA-inspired musical with Meryl Streep has effected $62.7 million in 10 days.

Journey to the Center of the Earth was fifth with $9.4 million, pushing the movie to $60.2 million.

Ticket sales were virtually even with the same weekend last year.

Final figures are due Monday.

To report corrections and clarifications, contact Reader Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification.

Shia LaBeouf has been arrested on suspicion of drink-driving after each early morning car accident in Hollywood.

The Indiana Jones actor was driving a vehicle that was involved in an accident at on every side of 02:30 local time (10:30 BST), according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Officers at the scene reported that the 22-year-old was clearly intoxicated and arrested him on suspicion of driving under the control (DUI).

He has not yet been charged and was released to begone to the Cedars Sinai Medical Centre, to which his passenger and the woman driving the other vehicle involved in the crash have also been admitted.

Their injuries are believed to be minor.

The young actor, who is due to reprise his role as Sam Witwicky in Transformers 2, was arrested in November 2007 after refusing to leave a pharmacy in Chicago at the end of a night out.

"That was complete and utter insanity," LaBeouf told Empire magazine earlier this year.

"I was an ***hole, and it was a mistake I’m still completely embarrassed about it."

 

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Will Smith is the best paid actor in Hollywood, according to a new study by US business magazine Forbes.

The Hancock star earned $US80 million ($82.4 million) betwixt June 1st 2007 and June 1st this year to head the poll, with Johnny Depp in second with a $72 million (£36 million) haul.

Smith’s recent science-fiction film I Am Legend took $76.5 million (£37.9 million) in its opening weekend, recording the biggest December opening of all time, supreme the $72.6 million (£36 million) start recorded by The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

And after the chart-topping success of Smith’s current hit Hancock, he has become the first actor ever to have eight consecutive films earn more than $100 million (£50 million) at the box office.

Shrek co-stars Eddie Murphy and Mike Myers were ranked in third, through $55 million (£27.5 million) each, despite the relative commercial failures of their recent films Meet Dave and The Love Guru.

Their peer voice actor in the Shrek movies, Cameron Diaz, was judged to be the best paid actress, having earned $50 the great body of the people (£25 million) in the 12-month period.

The What Happens in Vegas star… was followed by Leonardo DiCaprio with $US45 million (£22.6 the masses), Bruce Willis with $US41 million (£20.6 million), Ben Stiller by $US40 million (£20.1 million) and Nicolas Cage with $US38 million (£19.1 million).

Keira Knightley was the highest-ranking Briton, with $32 million (£16 million) in earnings.

 

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 Enlarge The Criterion Collection Pay up: Toshiro Mifune faces off with kidnappers.  TOP RENTED MOVIES

1. The Bank Job
2. College Road Trip
3. Step Up 2: The Streets
4. Shutter
5. Drillbit Taylor
6. Vantage Point
7.  The Bucket List
8.  Fool’s Gold
9. 10,000 B.C.
10. The Ruins
Source: Home Video Essentials, Rentrak Corp.

By Mike Clark, USA TODAY Top picks this week include a kidnapping drama from Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, the Boston Celtics championship season and Jack Webb as a Dixieland musician.

High and Low

**** out of four, 1963, Criterion, unrated, $40

An all-time great gets a DVD upgrade with very large new bonuses.

Back story: Liberally adapted from Ed McBain’s novel King’s Ransom, Akira Kurosawa’s punchiest urban drama finds heavily mortgaged shoe magnate Toshiro Mifune faced with remunerative up at the time that his chauffeur’s son is mistakenly kidnapped instead of his own. After a long, skillfully directed indoor hall piece opens the film, all hell breaks loose. A huge hit at home, it led to tougher kidnapping laws in Japan.

Extras, extras: A new transfer replaces the old mono with four-track stereo; commentary by Kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince; a making-of documentary about Kurosawa’s slave-driver methodology; Mifune on a Japanese talk show with minimal puff; Tsutomo Yamazaki (the movie’s villain) interview; 38-page booket.

Boston Celtics: 2007-2008

NBA Champions

***½, 2008, Warner, unrated, $25

As with most yearly report DVD overviews, the result is only as good as the season itself. This one was a whopper.

Back story: After just 27 wins the previous season atop the death in 2006 of decades-long franchise deity Red Auerbach, the long-dormant Celtics acquired All-Stars Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen (co-starred as Denzel Washington’s son in Spike Lee’s He Got Game) to bolster team leader Paul Pierce. Before the conclusive standoff against the Los Angeles Lakers, we see the Celtics turn perceived prelim victories into cliffhangers. But in the ultimate arena’s Game 4, they unforgettably erased the Lakers’ 24-point lead.

Extras, extras: Ten of various girth, including the prelim fourth shelter of Game 7 against Cleveland and Game 6 against Detroit.

Pete Kelly’s Blues

***, 1955, Warner, unrated, $20

Dixieland musician Jack Webb battles Mob slob Edmond O’Brien in 1927 Kansas City while romancing flapper Janet Leigh. But Pete’s minor worship status has always been assured from its remarkable supporting cast (Martin Scorsese has counted himself a fan).

Back story: Webb never convinced as an amorous protagonist, except dig his WWI Army threads in the prologue. Shot in early CinemaScope and with a brazen soundtrack, the film got Peggy Lee a supporting-Oscar nomination, featured young Lee Marvin as a bandie and cast usually comical Andy Devine as a cop. And in a roadhouse, there’s Ella Fitzgerald singing the title tune and a wow-ish Hard-Hearted Hannah.

Extras, extras: Remastered soundtrack; cartoon; Oscar-nominated short Gadgets Galore.

Also out this week on DVD: 

Money From Home

** out of four, 1954, Paramount/Legend,

unrated, $15

First and weakest of the Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis color features was, like the same year’s 3 Ring Circus, left off last year’s magnificent second volume of the team’s output. Money is a Damon Runyon race-track comedy shot but rarely shown in 3-D. Co-star Marjie Millar died in 1966 at 34 after years of leg surgeries for injuries in a 1958 auto accident.

21

**, 2008, Sony, PG-13, $35

A perfect example of how new Hollywood takes a workable fact-based premise — MIT students count cards well enough to bilk Vegas casinos — then dumbs it down so much for today’s youth audience that the result will never abide. Organizer Kevin Spacey’s smarm helps a little.

On Blu-ray

•Because the Oscar-nominated cinematography for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975, Warner, R, $35) is appropriately low-key for its mental-institution subject matter, it’ll never be the top choice to evince off high-definition capabilities to friends. But the best-picture winner is still the classiest theatrical feature released on Blu-ray in the past month, and the Jack Nicholson-Louise Fletcher drama will never look better at fireside. The extras are good, though it puzzles me that DVD always gives us the short reading of its great making-of documentary, not the long one from the old laserdisc.

•The Blu-ray of Martin Scorsese’s blatantly uneven but still underrated Gangs of New York (2002, Miramax, R, $35) is getting widely drubbed; exterior long shots fuzz out, and darker shots sometimes look incoherent. The regular DVD flubs the same scenes, and the improvement in going high-def isn’t what you’d expect.

•For a real looker, check out Sony’s In the Line of Fire (1993, R, $29), the Secret Service melodrama that came immediately after Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven. Fire helped to launch out just DVD and was regarded then as a standout from the format’s initial crop.

•Batman Begins (2005, Warner, PG-13, $29 and $50 editions), which director Christopher Nolan got less right than he did The Dark Knight, gets a spectacular presentation. The details of gloom and doom aren’t easy to render in home viewing forums, but this one works — though the movie itself I find only middling.

On Blu-ray Tuesday:TheLost Boys (1987, Warner, R, $29), which under-delivered in its day. And Top Gun (1986, Paramount, PG, $30), which seems so dated that you almost expect it to star John Wilkes Booth instead of a juvenile Tom Cruise.

To report corrections and clarifications, contact Reader Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification.

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 Enlarge by dint of. Nicola Dove, Miramax Films Lady of the house: Marchmain matriarch Emma Thompson.  ABOUT THE MOVIE

Brideshead Revisited
*** (out of four)
Stars: Matthew Goode, Ben Whishaw, Emma Thompson, Michael Gambon, Hayley Atwell
Director: Julian Jarrold
Distributor: Miramax Films
Rating: PG-13 for some sexual content
Running time: 1 sixty minutes, 40 minutes
Opens Friday in select cities

 SUMMER MOVIE GUIDE by dint of. Claudia Puig, USA TODAY Those who are weary of summer’s bawdy comedies and superheroes will be heartened by Brideshead Revisited, which is grandly revisited as a feature film.

The adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s 1945 novel is not as nuanced as the lavish 12-hour British television sequence, shown on PBS in 1981. But the pre-World War II story of lost innocence is intelligently written by Andrew Davies (Bridget Jones’s Diary) and Jeremy Brock (The Last King of Scotland) and handsomely mounted by director Julian Jarrold (Becoming Jane).

Matthew Goode (Match Point) is superb as Charles Ryder, a middle-class Oxford student who is swept up by the aristocratic Marchmain family and their glorious ancestral home. He becomes infatuated with their way of life and with the young Marchmains, Sebastian (Ben Whishaw) and Julia (Hayley Atwell).

Sebastian adopts Charles at Oxford and falls in love with him, but their friendship is jeopardized by Charles’ growing attraction to Julia. And their highly religious mother, Lady Marchmain (Emma Thompson), can’t help but meddle.

Charles becomes more and more entwined with the family, but the depth to which each suffers over the course of the story is strangely muted. And the progressive emaciation of the aristocracy, a major theme in the novel and TV series, is not as well developed here.

The saga ultimately lacks the emotional wallop of the TV version. But its clever writing, strong performances and sumptuous production design make for a plentiful experience nonetheless.

To report corrections and clarifications, contact Reader Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification.

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 Enlarge By Diyah Pera, 20th Century Fox Out there: David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson reprise their roles taken in the character of Mulder and Scully for the boastful fence.  ABOUT THE MOVIE

The X-Files: I Want to Believe
* * (out of four)
Stars: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson
Director: Chris Carter
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Rating: PG-13 for violent and disturbing content and thematic material
Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes
Opens Friday nationwide

 SUMMER MOVIE GUIDE By Claudia Puig, USA TODAY There may be no going back, as much as we might want to believe otherwise.

Maybe the X-Files— the TV phenomenon of 1993-2002 that influenced such popular shows as Lost and Heroes— was a product of its time. Or maybe it’s just too difficult to re-create such an engrossing series on the big screen. The X Files: I Want to Believe just have power to’t capture the magic.

For one thing, the Mulder-Scully chemistry seems to have evaporated. David Duchovny is still engagingly low-key as the truth-seeking Fox Mulder, while Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully seems to have come to be even more dour. Grounded in body of knowledge, her doctor character was always serious, but she has lost some of what made her more man’s: passionate emotions and flashes of vapid humor. There’s a discernible be without of sparks during a bedroom scene. Sure, it’s meant to be cozy rather than sexy, but it feels forced.

When the film opens, Mulder and Scully have left their top-secret work uncovering paranormal forces. But they are drawn back in when an FBI agent (Amanda Peet) necessarily help determining the veracity of a priest claiming to know the whereabouts of a missing fellow agent.

The concept of belief, in its many facets, is critical to the cabal. The film poses intriguing moral and spiritual questions. The psychic priest (Billy Connolly) is central to many of them; he divides not just Mulder and Scully onward the question of ESP, but also many FBI operatives.

To his credit, director and co-screenwriter Chris Carter doesn’t easily resolve manifold of these complex questions. The audience is left trying to draw connections between ethical dilemmas and plot points, and often none resolution materializes.

While Carter has engaged the audience on an ethical level, he has thrown a wedge between his protagonists and their fans. On the show, the viewer would solve the mystery along with Mulder and Scully. In the movie, the clues are revealed to the audience, while others remain in the cabalistic. As a result, the sense of suspense key to a supernatural thriller is diminished.

The film also skimps on plot; don’t expect the clever, intricate twists of the series. It feels like a wan version of the show — one that has lost its otherworldly edge.

To report corrections and clarifications, contact Reader Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification.

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 Enlarge Larsen&Talbert Mitch Reinholt, Meghan Krizmanich, Jake Tusing, Colin Clemens and Hannah Bailey star in American Teen.  ABOUT THE MOVIE

American Teen
*** (at a loss of four)
Director: Nanette Burstein
Distributor: Paramount Vantage
Rating: PG-13 for more strong language, sexual material, some drinking and brief smoking, all involving teens
Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes
Opens Friday in select cities

 SUMMER MOVIE GUIDE By Claudia Puig, USA TODAY Oh, the heartaches and exhilarations of high school.

American Teen, a documentary set in small-town Indiana, effectively captures the highs, lows and in-betweens in a way that feels authentic, despite occasional obvious staging. Though it could work as effectively as a television vehicle, American Teen is revealing, funny and involving.

STORY: ‘American Teen’ captures a year in the life

Filmmaker Nanette Burstein (The Kid Stays in the Picture) selected students who represented certain identifiable high school “types” — the jock, the popular girl, the geek, the heartthrob and the artsy girl — and filmed them during a pivotal time: senior year.

Though she intentionally chose students who would fall into reductive stereotypes, what we learn about them defies attempts at categorizing. Some may seem more likable than others, but we are invested in all of their sagas as we see them interact with their peers and families and cope through emotionally fraught moments.

A hit at the Sundance Film Festival, the movie inventively represents each student’s hopes and fears in animation sequences.

We get a window into the 17-year-old mind-set, as well as a slice of contemporary Americana. But mainly we are caught up in these ordinary teens’ lives — cringing for their disappointments and cheering their triumphs.

To report corrections and clarifications, contact Reader Editor Brent Jones. with regard to publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification.

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 Enlarge By Mark Seliger, Columbia Pictures Amigos in argyle: But Will Ferrell, left, and John C. Reilly hate each other at first then their parents get married.  ABOUT THE MOVIE

Step Brothers
** (out of four)
Stars: Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Richard Jenkins, Mary Steenburgen
Director: Adam McKay
Distributor: Columbia Pictures
Rating: R for crude and sexual content and pervasive language
Running era: 1 hour, 35 minutes
Opens Friday nationwide

 SUMMER MOVIE GUIDE By Claudia Puig, USA TODAY America loves dysfunctional families, but haven’t we seen enough middle-aged losers who shelter’t grown up?

We know Will Ferrell can carry a mirthful movie (Anchorman), as can John C. Reilly (the underrated Walk Hard). And Ferrell and Reilly do have considerable comic chemistry together, as we saw in Talladega Nights.

So that raises our hopes for this helper joint effort.

Adding to high expectations: an eclectic supporting cast, with Richard Jenkins (The Visitor) as Reilly’s father (and Ferrell’s stepfather) and Mary Steenburgen as Ferrell’s mom (and Reilly’s stepmother). Adam Scott has more minutely humorous moments as Ferrell’s brother, though his character gets old fast.

The concept is inherently funny: Each is a self-absorbed brat living at home, sponging off his parent and generally acting like an overgrown 13-year-old. When their single parents fall in love and marry, they are catachrestic to share a room. They brawl, bond, job-hunt and cause problems with their parents.

But the plot grows thin and the laughs grow fewer once the premise is established. One problem: the stepbrothers’ similarity. They come off as almost the same person, so generating conflict becomes nearly impossible.

Certifiably funny bits are interspersed with juvenile jokes centering on bathroom habits, flatulence and vomiting. It seems Ferrell and Reilly are having lots of fun, but that’s not always communicated to the audience. Some gags go on too long or are simply too forced. A scene at the dinner table featuring all the family has some funny moments, but it doesn’t come cessation to the hilarity of the extended dinner in Talladega (through the infamous discussion of baby Jesus and grace).

Like a few other comedies in recent memory, this feels it should have been a Saturday Night Live skit rather than a full-length film.

To report corrections and clarifications, contact Reader Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, authorize comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification.