Capsule reviews of films currently playing at area theaters by Elkhart Truth movie columnist Ben Ford (BF), the Associated Press (AP) and the Los Angeles Times (LAT).

Capitalism: A Love Story: How do you make a movie about the country's current economic crisis and actually get people to see it? Two obstacles most obviously arise: illustrating such a potentially dry subject in a compelling way, and persuading audiences to pay money for information they can get at home -- and feel depressed about -- for free. Having Michael Moore as our guide certainly helps. Twenty years after he took on General Motors with his powerful debut "Roger & Me," the proud provocateur is taking aim at the same sorts of targets with his latest documentary. It's vintage Moore, reflecting both the filmmaker's fondness for manipulation and his strengths as a showman. As he did with "Sicko" and "Fahrenheit 9/11," he typically oversimplifies a complicated topic to make it accessible for the broadest possible audience, but he also tells moving stories of specific families who've lost their homes to foreclosure. (AP) ***

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: A scientist tries to solve world hunger only to see things go awry as food falls from the sky in abundance. Transferring the popular children's book to the big screen, first-time writer-directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller conjure up a veritable blizzard of ways of channeling chow, carrying it off with enough brio to send audiences into a food coma. Really, between the animated rainstorms of Flintstones-sized steaks and the creation of a translucent Jell-O palace, the movie's loopy use of food puts it in the hall of fame between "Big Night" and "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory." The movie's humor targets both kids and grown-ups with equal success, but, even with the presence of a mustache-fixated monkey, the main attraction here is the movie's vibrant 3-D animation and its perfect storm of foodie-friendly sight gags. (LAT)

Couples Retreat: This is what life might have been like if the guys from "Swingers" had grown up, moved to the suburbs and turned into lame, sitcommy cliches. Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn team up again, on screen and on the script (along with Dana Fox), for this broad comedy about four couples who go on a tropical vacation together. In theory, they're all there to support their friends Jason (Jason Bateman) and Cynthia (Kristen Bell) as they try to save their marriage through the couples' counseling the resort offers. Little do they know they'll get sucked into agonizing therapy sessions that reveal their own rifts. Under the direction of Peter Billingsley, another longtime Vaughn friend and collaborator making his first feature, "Couples Retreat" veers back and forth in a jarring way between crude sexual humor and supposedly poignant moments. A few funny lines emerge here and there, but "Couples Retreat" mostly feels repetitive and overlong at nearly two hours. You wouldn't mind getting voted off this island. (AP) * 1/2

District 9: Extraterrestrials become refugees in South Africa. The movie, directed by Neill Blomkamp, at first plays like a completely believable documentary that's looking back on the phenomenon, shows us how the alien settlement devolved into an outright shantytown requiring the refugees' relocation. It eventually drops its mock-doc format and disappointingly becoming more of a standard chase picture. But even so, it's exciting all the way and better-executed than most, with much-needed doses of dark humor sprinkled throughout and an action sequence involving a big robot that's twice as good as anything "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" had to offer. And for once in the larger universe of alien invasion movies, the aliens have reason to fear us. (BF) *** 1/2

Fame: This "reinvention" of the 1980 high school musical -- please, people, don't call it a remake -- stays faithful to the spirit and structure of Alan Parker's original while sucking out all the raciness. There's no nudity in the new "Fame," no one gets an abortion. No one even lights a single cigarette. But at the same time, dancer and choreographer Kevin Tancharoen, making his feature directing debut, doesn't turn "Fame" into the kind of slick, overly edited eye candy you might expect. It's stylized, yes, and it moves really fluidly while still maintaining some urban grittiness. And in a world where people aspire for instant recognition by making idiots of themselves on reality TV, there's something sort of quaint about the idea of working hard for artistic glory. Starting with Debbie Allen's famous "You got big dreams, you want fame" speech over the opening titles, "Fame" follows a group of aspiring singers, dancers, actors and musicians from their auditions for New York's High School of Performing Arts until their graduation four years later. (AP) ** 1/2

The Final Destination: It doesn't take 3-D trickery to see everything coming at you from a mile away in the silly and predictable fourth installment in the lucrative thriller series about pretty young people attempting to cheat death. Director David R. Ellis and writer Eric Bress, who previously collaborated on "Final Destination 2," unimaginatively rehash the earlier films' basic premise: Someone foresees a gruesome group death that may or may not play out in reality if the order of the originally envisioned victims can be disrupted. Though this latest entry has an OK sense of humor, moves swiftly enough and sports an effective opening sequence of racetrack destruction that puts its Fusion 3-D technology to good use, it mostly comes off as a particularly flimsy excuse to string together a bunch of gory killings. (LAT)

G-Force: Highly trained guinea pigs working in covert operations and armed with the latest high-tech spy equipment discover that the fate of the world is in their paws. (LAT)

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra: The G.I. Joe team uses the latest in spy and military equipment to fight the corrupt arms dealer Destro. Everybody, good and bad guys alike, has a back story and the movie frequently digresses into long disquisitions of same, which seriously slows it down just when you are wishing it would speed up. The action, on the other hand, is mostly brisk and bracing and the battleground, particularly Cobra's headquarters -- a vast network of tunnels under the polar ice cap -- are wonderfully imagined, as are the futuristic machines at the Joes' disposal. Basically, the Joes are not bad, it's just that they could have been much better with a little less conversation, a little more action. (LAT)

The Hangover: Three groomsmen must find the groom after a hangover-inducing bachelor party in Las Vegas and get him back to L.A. in time for his wedding. Amid all the debris of "The Hangover," and it is considerable -- the tooth, the Taser, the tiger, the puke, the police, the stripper, the shots and so very much more -- there is a sort of perverse brilliance or brilliant perverseness to be found in this story of a bachelor party gone terribly wrong. Director Todd Phillips and the screenwriting team of Jon Lucas and Scott Moore have created a heart-of-darkness comedy running naked and wild through the streets. A comedy that is hysterically and embarrassingly black, "The Hangover" nevertheless is filled with moments as softhearted as they are crude, as forgiving as unforgivable. (LAT)

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Romance blooms at Hogwarts while Voldemort strengthens his hold on both the Muggle and the wizard worlds. With the end in sight for the "Potter" franchise -- the final two movies will be released over the next couple of years -- it's worth applauding how comfortable these movies have become to watch and how much care has been put into adapting J.K. Rowling's novels, even if the films will never make everyone happy. the young actors who play the most crucial roles have developed into confident performers, though they all, have much to learn from the outstanding cast of veteran British actors who are the real magic behind the "Potter" movies. (BF) ***

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell: This hilarious yet stinging comedy is not the usual collegiate-males-on-a-wild-spree movie. First of all, its three law students, while immature, are also intelligent and highly articulate. Inspired by the real-life adventures of Tucker Max, who first wrote a bestseller of the same name and has now adapted it to the screen with Nils Parker, "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell" has an edge to it sharper than a Ginsu knife. When it comes to rowdiness and raunch, it's right up there with "Animal House" and "Porky's" -- and beyond -- but the writers and director Bob Gosse know how to turn excess, self-indulgence, selfishness and chauvinism back on itself with blowtorch impact. (LAT)

The Informant!: Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), a rising star at an agri-industry giant, turns whistleblower but his efforts mislead the FBI as much as they help. Director Steven Soderbergh isn't that interested in telling the serious side of what was actually a pretty big case of greed and corruption in the business world. Instead, he and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns, who adapted Kurt Eichenwald's book "The Informant: A True Story," are more transfixed by Whitacre, the strange guy in the middle of it all, and their off-center take on the material turns what might have been a straightforward, forgettable thriller into something far more appealing. (BF) *** 1/2

The Invention of Lying: It would be such a joy to bend the truth and say that "The Invention of Lying" lives up to the potential of its inspired premise. The conceit -- that an alternate universe exists where everyone tells the truth all the time -- sets up an uproarious beginning, but then the movie plummets precipitously. It's not just that the high-concept gag wears thin, which it does. The bigger problem is that Ricky Gervais, in his directorial debut (alongside co-director and co-writer Matthew Robinson), zig-zags awkwardly between dark humor and heavy melodrama. Gervais deserves credit for approaching the idea that God and heaven are part of an elaborate lie meant to assuage the masses -- a bold move for a big-studio comedy with lots of stars -- but then backs off, as if he and Robinson hadn't thought it through all the way. (AP) * 1/2

Law Abiding Citizen: The real mystery here isn't how Gerard Butler's character manages to wreak explosive, bloody havoc on Philadelphia while confined behind the walls of his jail cell. What's truly baffling is how the star of the hugely successful "300" has managed to make yet another questionable movie choice since then, following "P.S. I Love You," "The Ugly Truth" and "Gamer." (To be fair, "RocknRolla" was a good fit for him and it was a lot of fun.) This time, Butler serves as a producer and stars as Clyde Shelton, whose wife and young daughter were murdered during a home invasion. Ten years later, he's out for revenge -- not just against the killer who went free after testifying against his accomplice, but against the entire judicial system. His ultimate target is Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx, looking bored), the slick prosecutor who cut that deal a decade ago to maintain his high conviction rate. (AP) *

Love Happens: Love supposedly happens here. We'll have to take their word for it. Aaron Eckhart and Jennifer Aniston are so utterly lacking in chemistry with each other (and they're both pretty bland individually) that it's hard to discern any genuine emotion. What first-time director Brandon Camp gives us instead is a cliché-addled romantic drama that's short on both romance and drama, one that's filled with soggy platitudes and contrived catharsis. Camp also wrote the script with Mike Thompson, which contains such unimaginative, heavy-handed metaphors as walking across hot coals, shopping at Home Depot as a means of rebuilding a life and setting a bird free in the woods. It's a painfully earnest slog reminiscent of such gooey fare as "Pay It Forward," one that belongs on cable, if anywhere, and probably wouldn't even have seen the light of day theatrically if not for the involvement of its two main stars. (AP) Zero stars

Pandorum: Stranded on a spacecraft, two astronauts awaken from a hyper-sleep and realize they are not alone. This sci-fi-horror hybrid keeps its audience in the dark -- literally and figuratively -- far too long to be of much use besides as a patience-trying exercise in reference spotting. The movie owns a few interesting ideas, as well as an obvious devotion to the "Alien" franchise, but director Christian Alvart dishes out the dystopia in such bite-sized increments that you'll experience the titular cabin-fever sensation long before the film's characters do. (LAT)

The Proposal: A high-powered book editor (Sandra Bullock) facing deportation hastily decides to marry her tormented assistant (Ryan Reynolds). It's a recycled plot, but that doesn't mean Bullock and Reynolds haven't been given a lot to work with -- they have, and the film plays to their strengths. Bullock's deft physical comedy, one of her most endearing qualities, is given a full run. And Reynolds' ability to deliver a line, or a look, with withering, surgical precision is there at every turn. There are mistakes, especially when the alpha-male bully in Reynolds' character is allowed to surface but not enough to ruin the party. In the end, "The Proposal" is just a good old-fashioned romance, one in which people actually bring out the best in one another rather than the worst. How novel is that? (LAT)

Sorority Row: Sorority girls try to cover up the inadvertent death of one of their sisters in a prank gone wrong, until a mysterious killer goes after them. It's hard not to think that this movie is just an excuse to release "Sorority Row -- the Unrated Version," which will feature more gratuitous nudity and gore, and "Sorority Row 2," the straight-to-DVD release that's all gratuitous nudity and gore. The movie that's in theaters now -- loosely based on the 1983 thriller "The House on Sorority Row" -- has a little more than that going for it, mainly its malicious, "Heathers"-like sense of humor and some imaginative killings that aren't overly heavy on the gore. Actual moments of terror are few and far between in "Sorority Row," but you have to at least begrudgingly admire a film that sets a chase scene in a backyard filled with soap bubbles. For every missed opportunity in the fright department, though, there's a moment of camp to savor. (BF) **

The Stepfather: A student returns home from military school to find his mother in love with a suspicious man that seems to be hiding a dark side. "The Stepfather" is that rarity, an effective remake of a screen classic that can stand alone on its own considerable merits. Director Nelson McCormick and writer J.S. Cardone deftly reworked the 1987 original (written by Donald E. Westlake and directed by Joseph Ruben) while wisely adhering to the essence of the chilling original. The film is all of a piece, a handsome, thoughtfully crafted production that generates a mounting terror securely anchored by assured performances, consistent psychological persuasiveness and believable dialogue. What's most chilling about "The Stepfather" is that it was inspired by an actual incident in New Jersey in 1971. (LAT)

Surrogates: Itself a kind of surrogate, "Surrogates" is a stand-in for many of the sci-fi movies of the recent past: In it, you'll recognize the ideas of "Blade Runner," "Minority Report" and even "WALL*E." In a quasi-present day Boston, nearly everyone has a surrogate -- a younger, thinner, cosmetically perfect robotic version of themselves. They're controlled while you're reclining at home and plugged into a machine. This means, most importantly, that we have a blond Bruce Willis on our hands. Willis is an FBI agent who, along with his partner (Radha Mitchell), is trying to solve two murders which, though committed on surrogates, also "liquefied" the brains of their human operators. "Surrogates," directed by Jonathan Mostow, is adapted from a graphic novel by Robert Venditti. Graphic novels are -- for better or worse -- the new pulp fiction. Like those hard-boiled novels of the '40s that Hollywood couldn't get enough of, graphic novels are fueling what once would have been called B-movies. At its best, that's what "Surrogates" is: a quality B-movie, pulpy and reflective of its times. (AP) **

Up: A 78-year-old balloon salesman named Carl fulfills his lifelong dream of a great adventure when he ties thousands of balloons to his house and flies away to the wilds of South America -- unbeknownst to the 8-year-old on his porch. The most recent masterpiece from Pixar is exciting without being exhausting, remarkably funny and simply a joy to look at. (You can watch it through black, plastic 3-D glasses that look a lot like the ones Carl wears, or not. It doesn't make much difference.) But the really amazing thing about "Up" is just how deeply it resonates on the emotional scale, whether it's watching Carl page through the scrapbook of his life with his wife, groaning with sadness, or seeing him finally come to terms with her death. Of course, if all that's just too much for you, there's still the wondrous sight of an entire house held aloft by balloons. (BF) ****

Whip It: Director Drew Barrymore's crowd-pleasing roller derby comedy is dedicated to "all the girls who believe you can," but the girl-power message is far from the only thing the movie has going for it. A pretty good family story and a convincing romance are also found in "Whip It," which thankfully resists the temptation to be condescending or smart-alecky toward its audience. "Enjoyable" doesn't always equal "great" when it comes to the movies, though, and "Whip It" is a good example of this. Anyone who's seen a sports movie or a coming-of-age story can anticipate every moment in this film, and there's nothing here that will make you forget the corresponding scene from other, better movies. Barrymore, meanwhile, has an undeniable talent for directing actors, but she has plenty to learn about the visual side of her new profession. Still, "Whip It" is a sweet, extremely entertaining movie, and that goes a long way. It also boasts the best performance yet by Ellen Page, who's given the freedom to act more naturally and speak more realistically than she did in "Juno" and "Smart People." (BF) ** 1/2

Zombieland: You'd be justified in thinking you've visited "Zombieland" before. There's been no shortage of zombies at the movies in recent years, just as there's been no shortage of vampires. And within that genre, a crop of zombie comedies has arisen, from "Shaun of the Dead" to "Zombie Strippers" to "Dead Snow." Like "Shaun" before it, though, "Zombieland" mostly finds that tricky balance of the laugh-out-loud funny and the make-you-jump scary, of deadpan laughs and intense energy. It's a total blast even if the story is a bit thin, and it does run out of steam toward the end, but thankfully our trip to "Zombieland" is appropriately quick. First-time director Ruben Fleischer grabs you from the get-go with stylized visuals, and the script from Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick is hilariously bizarre while still remaining rooted in contemporary reality. (AP) ***