By Debbie Schlussel
This weekend, do your self a favor and stay home from the theater. Or go see the re-released “The Departed.” This week’s new “offerings” are hours of wasted time you’ll never get back:
* “Smokin’ Aces“–Billed as a mob movie, it isn’t one. This bloody, sickening, unfunny, unentertaining trash is likely the worst movie of 2007 (though the upcoming “Reno 911!: Miami” movie is a very close contender). Long, boring, stupid, pointless, disgusting, dismemberment-filled. And very misleading for producers to bill this as “a mob movie,” since it’s more like a rip-off–and even worse than–Madonna hubby Guy Ritchie’s horrid “Snatch” (this one makes “Snatch” look like a masterpiece). Blecch.

FBI agents rush to save a drug-addicted mob snitch (Jeremy Piven) from a series of hitmen crews who try to “rub him out.” FBI Assistant Director Andy Garcia’s bizarre accent is very fake and stupid-sounding. While I’m down on the FBI a lot on this site, believe me, most of the real FBI agents are much smarter and more competent than the idiots in this movie. Everyone in this movie’s career is going down the tube–and that means you, too, Ben Affleck. “Smokin’ Aces”? Nope. More like a Smokin’ Bomb.
* “Catch and Release“–No, this one isn’t about the Border Patrol and Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s (ICE) policy of allowing illegal aliens back into the great abyss. Almost as painful, it’s a two hour cry-fest melodrama chick flick with no plot and no characters we should care about in any way. And it has a slur against the Irish that would never be tolerated had it been about, say, Blacks.
Jennifer Garner, crying, pouting, and acting dumb, plays a woman whose fiance dies just before her wedding. She learns he cheated on her and had a kid out of wedlock. She and his loser friends live like a pseudo family while they build a peace garden, she sleeps with one of them, and has occasional rude interludes with her once-future mother-in-law. Yes, I gave away some spoilers, but trust me–and thank me in advance of not going to see this.
If you don’t find Garner annoying and a bad actress now, you will if you endure this waste of time. Pointless, and with a ridiculously absurd and unbelievable “resolution” ending.

* “Blood and Chocolate“–Normally, this bad, boring, very low-budget werewolf “thriller” (which wasn’t thrilling) would be the worst of the bunch at the box office. But since they’re all so bad, this one is actually the best of the worst. An American werewolf woman in Bucharest meets a mortal American graphic artist and tries to break free from the werewolf life and family legacy to be with him. I’m not opposed to werewolf movies, but this one was just awful.