Opens today at the Broadway Centre Cinemas; rated PG-13 for sexual content, thematic material and brief strong language; 92 minutes.

If there were such a thing as a Lifetime movie for men, this British tear-jerker based on poet Blake Morrison's memoir would qualify. Morrison (played as an adult by Colin Firth) comes home to see his dying father, Arthur (Jim Broadbent), in hopes of talking through the issues that have always stood between them - which we relive through flashbacks of teenage Blake (Matthew Beard) dealing with Dad's duplicities. Though richly photographed by director Anand Tucker ("Shopgirl") and well-acted by Firth, Broadbent and Juliet Stevenson (as Arthur's long-suffering wife), the slow pacing makes it feel as if everyone is walking through a waist-deep bog of emotional reserve.

The Promotion

Opens today at the Broadway Centre Cinemas; rated R for language including sexual references, and some drug use; 85 minutes.

Two things are missing in this debut directing effort from writer Steve Conrad ("The Pursuit of Happyness") - a sufficient number of jokes and anybody worth rooting for. Watching Doug (Seann William Scott), the milquetoast assistant manager of a Chicago-area supermarket, go after a manager's position against Richard (John C. Reilly), a buffoon who transfers from the chain's Canadian sister company, you may not root for either one. What could have been a sly satire fizzles into degrading (but not entirely unwatchable) performances with nowhere to go.

Meet Dave

Opens today at theaters everywhere; rated PG for bawdy and suggestive humor, action and some language; 92 minutes.

If you were Eddie Murphy, after "Norbit" hit with universal derision and possibly sabotaged your Oscar chances, would you reteam with the same director? Lucky that you're not Eddie Murphy, because you're not stuck in director Brian Robbins' crude comedy. Murphy is the captain of a Lilliputian crew in a Murphy-shaped starship on Earth to steal our oceans, until he befriends a kid (Austin Lynn Myers) and his single mom (Elizabeth Banks). Dumb jokes, cheap special effects and Murphy's mugging add up to an eternity in 92 minutes.