Channing Tatum, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Rooney Mara and Jude Law (Patrick McMullan)

“Tickets out!” they barked. “This area is not cleared for standing!” It was as if the AMC Lincoln Square had been converted into an international airport and Shindigger was preventing aircraft from landing.

The multiplex was bursting with the arrivals of Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jude Law, Rooney Mara and Channing Tatum for the premiere of Steven Soderbergh’s Side Effects, hosted by Open Road Films, The Cinema Society and designer Michael Kors.

Turns out no area was cleared for loitering, and Shindigger wound up in a circling pattern—up and down the escalators—trying to take it all in. When even Donna Karan was told to keep moving and make her way promptly to her seat, we finally surrendered to the cineplex goons and followed suit.

“I’m on a beta blocker right now and I feel fine,” joked Mr. Soderbergh before the movie began. “The less I say the better!”

His pharmaceutical humor was very apropos for a psychological thriller that tells the murderous tale of a seemingly depressed young woman (Ms. Mara), who struggles as her husband (Mr. Tatum) is released from prison following a white-collar banking crime. After an alleged suicide attempt, she begins to see a psychiatrist (Mr. Law) who prescribes Ablixa, a powerful, fictitious antidepressant, to combat her illness. The movie was The Cinema Society’s trippiest in recent memory, and we weren’t the only ones wandering about in a daze afterward.

“Are you on medicine? Are you having a vision?” Shindigger overheard Ms. Karan saying to her daughter Gabby Karan De Felice with a laugh. “Oh my God, I can’t believe how old I am!”

We dashed through the wintry chill to the Stone Rose Lounge in the Time Warner Center, wondering if we were still hallucinating when we spotted Liza Minnelli—face aglow—as she preened herself in the back of a black Lincoln Navigator SUV. Shindigger sidled up to knock on her window and say hello, but the driver shot us a look of “don’t you dare.” (My, how security people get crankier the farther north you travel.)

Ten minutes later, we had nestled into the warmth of Stone Rose with a medicinal glass of rouge.

“I love, love, loved it!” Ms. Karan screeched over the deejay’s music as Cinema Society founder Andrew Saffir escorted her behind Mr. Kors, who had designed the dress Ms. Zeta-Jones just happened to be wearing. We shuffled over to Ms Zeta-Jones and exchanged a few words, unbeknownst to her just-as-cranky-looking gatekeepers.

“The script was so well-written—it just jumped off the page,” the Oscar winner explained. “With Steven Soderbergh at the helm, it was just a dream.” Shindigger leaned in for a bisou-bisou, but she had already moved on.

We grabbed some fiery libation off a passing tray and darted toward Ms. Mara. The Vogue February cover girl was mum. Had she signed some exclusive with Anna Wintour not to talk to the press? Or was she simply too big for words these days? Shindigger played nice and tried to butter her up with a compliment. “Your couture is phenomenal,” we said.

“I’m wearing Alexander McQueen,” she replied sharply, then slunk away.

We surveyed the crowd and came up with what looked like a Baldwin. “Which one is that?” we asked a pair of friends. “It’s Stephen,” one ventured.

Unconvinced, we wound up chatting instead with Richard Kind, who plays screenwriter Max Klein in Argo. He went on for a bit about the upcoming Clifford Odets play he’s starring in at The Roundabout, but we had more pressing matters to discuss. “Will Argo win the Oscar for Best Picture?” we asked.

“If I say yes, I will put the kibosh on it. But I do believe—and this is the honest to God’s truth—and not just ’cuz I’m in it and not just ’cuz I know the producers ... I do believe that it should be Best Picture. I feel it fills every category that a Best Picture should.”

Shindigger nodded in agreemnt. “We have the SAG copy at our house,” we confessed.

“So you didn’t pay your 11 dollars? That’s money out of my kids’ mouths!” he yelled with a smile before we departed for a refill.

Over by the bar, we found Laila Robins and complimented her performance in the movie as one of Jude Law’s psychiatry associates. “He was so lovely to work with. He had seen me in a play. I showed up on set, and he was so nice to me,” the delightful Ms. Robins explained. “We had this nice little icebreaker about all the things he wants to do in the theater. I think he wants to do Henry V. It was a nice way to even the playing field!”

“I don’t know if he’s here tonight,” she continued, looking around.

She apparently missed Mr. Law lounging alongside co-star Ms. Zeta-Jones on a scarlet leather banquette. Unfortunately, Shindigger was not fortunate enough to grab a few words with the dashing star. Maybe we don’t do enough theater?

blehay@observer.com

Damon.

It is often predicted that the world will no longer end with the whimper of a long, boring war, but with the scream of a fatal, incurable and fast-moving plague. Addressing that theme in time to scare the living daylights out of everybody, Contagion is a star-studded, apocalyptic wake-up call to the horrors that await mankind in a test tube. We’ve made so much progress in terms of immunology, technology, scientific research and medical miracles that the planet considers itself immune to everything from small pox to swine flu. But there’s still no cure for cancer or AIDS, and the canvas of new viruses gets broader every year. So the topicality in Contagion is dark and unquestionable, if not creepy and off-putting. Tracking the global spread of an infectious virus that leads to deadly brain hemorrhages with no vaccine, writer Scott Burns and maverick director Steven Soderbergh have jump-started the serious fall movie season with an ambitious project that packs a wallop without much guarantee of commercial success. We have enough to worry about already; this movie says why bother, since we’re all doomed anyway.

Telling a complex story in a coherent narrative arc has never been one of Mr. Soderbergh’s strengths, and chronicling the day-by-day panic of a killer virus jumps all over the place. Melding elements from diverse sources, the film has a documentary quality that wastes the talents of an impressive A-list cast. The bubonic plague epidemic that wiped out half of Europe in the Middle Ages was finally traced to a contaminated well in a town square. To discover the origin of the mutating horror in Contagion you have to wait until  the very last scene. The trajectory actually begins with Day 2. Feeling ill, a jet-lagged Gwyneth Paltrow returns to Minneapolis from a business trip in Hong Kong with a strange cough that leads to a migraine headache. Before her husband (Matt Damon) has time to properly welcome her home, she goes into a seizure, foams at the mouth, and dies in the E.R. Their son is the next victim. Like wildfire, the sickness spreads to the people she met on her trip who begin to gag, sweat and faint from Tokyo to Texas. As the cases multiply, so do the guest stars. At the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, health official Laurence Fishburne puts Kate Winslet, a leading doctor in the field of communicable diseases, in harm’s way to investigate the outbreaks with mortally toxic results. Meanwhile, at World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva, researcher Marion Cotillard tries to trace the virus back to its origins in Asia, where she is kidnapped. Isolating people exposed to the virus is hard enough, but how do you quarantine 98 million people in China?

As the plague gains momentum, Homeland Security clocks in, suspecting bioterrorism and requesting sample vaccines to be injected into the drinking water like fluoride. Schools close. Naturally, as in all international crises, there are always the profiteers. After Laurence Fishburne is ordered by the Food and Drug Administration to keep research a secret, Elliot Gould shows up as a scientist who defies the shutdown of his research lab, growing the virus himself and taking credit for a medical breakthrough in print. Meanwhile, Jude Law enters the national radar as a sleazy journalist who makes millions by peddling a false cure in the form of a homeopathic treatment called forsythia. Mr. Soderbergh illumines every shadowy corner of this global pandemic with hypothetical examples of what to expect in an actual case of germ warfare. The Secret Service escorts the president out of Washington,  through an underground passage. Banks, gas stations and public transportation collapse. Nurses go on strike. Hospital generators expire. Pharmacies are looted for bogus serums. Evacuation routes are blocked. Cities are looted and left in trash piles. And while the volume of misinformation builds, here’s a contemporary anxiety to mull over: in the age of Twitter, Facebook and the Internet, it’s easier to reduce an entire civilization to hysterics than ever before. None of the fragmented subplots are followed to a satisfying conclusion. Even after Jennifer Ehle, as a dedicated and heroic lab researcher, ignores government approvals and permissions for human experiments and tests a trial vaccine on herself, inoculations are determined by national lottery depending on birth dates.

Juggling multiple plotlines proved successful in Mr. Soderberg’s Traffic (and even more so in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s vastly superior Babel). Here, the conceit just seems jagged and annoying, without achieving the desired synchronicity. The film often looks like a lengthy public health announcement on the requirements for travel vaccinations. A lot of the medical technology in the dialogue is too technical for the lay mind to grasp.  Who knows from “viral protein cells”? Do stick around for the epilogue—a clever re-enactment of how the virus started, and an explanation of Day 1. The ensemble cast is excellent, if underused. And some of it is downright gasp-inducing, especially when the characters see Gwyneth Paltrow’s lovely head open and the scalp pulled down over her eyes on the operating table. I found Contagion both flawed and fascinating, but it’s not an entertainment.

rreed@observer.com

CONTAGION

Running Time 105 minutes

Written by Scott Z. Burns

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Starring Matt Damon, Kate Winslet and Jude Law

2.5/4

The veracity of this claim aside — you might need a shovel for the grains of salt you'd need to believe this — let's just play out this scenario: Day-Lewis would immediately make Sherlock Holmes 2 about ten-times more intriguing; the interactions between the Oscar winner and Robert Downey Jr.'s Sherlock would have all-time potential; and it would be an opportunity to see Day-Lewis do something entirely new — in this case, play the heavy in a big-budget studio affair. There is no downside here, other than this being a crappy movie.

But face it: As much as we all like to hold Daniel Day-Lewis up on a pedestal because of his talent, care of craft and commitment, it's not like he only makes good movies. Would Sherlock Holmes 2 really be worse than Nine? If it includes any scenes of Moriarty singing and dancing or Fergie in any capacity, then yes.

On a Tuesday night last summer-July 14, Bastille Day-I saw my first play as The Observer's new theater reviewer. It was Vanities, an awful Off Broadway musical at the Second Stage, and the evening was memorable only because it was also the night the Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing, the trade groups that together produce the Tony Awards, announced they were kicking out the theater press from among the ranks of Tony voters.

It must have been something I said (and I hadn't yet said anything).

In March, finally, a deal was reached. Members of the New York Drama Critics Circle (a small and shrinking group of fewer than 20) will be allowed to vote, rather than, as before, the full roster of the so-called First Night Press List (the 100 or so reviewers, reporters, editors and, according to a version of the list I saw once, a certain aged Sulzberger, all of whom are invited to all press previews). But that deal doesn't kick in till next season.

So, for this year, we have only our columns. Here, then, are my picks for the 64th annual Tony Awards, to be presented Sunday night at 8 p.m. and televised on CBS.

BEST PLAY

Nominees: In the Next Room or the vibrator play, Next Fall, Red, Time Stands Still

Will Win: Red

Should Win: Time Stands Still

Alfred Molina gives a ferocious performance as the Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko in Michael Grandage's impressive staging of Red, by John Logan. And I forgave the play's didacticism on the grounds that Rothko was, by all accounts, a didact. The great celebrity performance, the play's snob appeal, its excellent reviews and the fact it's still running should give it the edge. But Donald Margulies' Time Stands Still, an MTC production from earlier this season, was insightful, subtle and moving, and with Laura Linney, Brian D'Arcy James, Eric Bogosian and Alicia Silverstone, it had perhaps the most perfect cast of the season.

BEST MUSICAL

Nominees: American Idiot, Fela!, Memphis, Million Dollar Quartet

Will Win: Memphis

Should Win: Fela!

This is a depressing category: There was nothing on Broadway this season that properly deserves to be called a Best Musical. But Fela! is the only show that comes close. It's enjoyable, entertaining, interesting and exciting-so what if it doesn't really have a book. Memphis, the only other serious contender, is terrible; it's entirely cynically constructed, with derivative music, banal lyrics, an irritating male lead and an ersatz civil-rights message that leaves one hungering for the nuanced depiction of 1960s race relations found in Hairspray. Still, inexplicably, people seem to like Memphis. And it'll tour much better than Fela!-remember, the press isn't voting this year, but all those out-of-town producer still are-so it'll win. 

BEST BOOK OF A MUSICAL

Nominees: Fela!, Memphis, Million Dollar Quartet, Everyday Rapture

Will Win: Everyday Rapture

Should Win: Everyday Rapture

Sherie Rene Scott's adorable biographic cabaret has the only nominated book that isn't terrible. Even better, it's actually quite good: deftly constructed and very, very funny.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

Nominees: The Addams Family,
Enron, Fences, Memphis

Will Win: Memphis

Should Win: None

It was such a bad season for musicals that half of the Best Score nominations are plays. And while Branford Marsalis' interstitial jazz for Fences was probably the best of the nominated music, you just can't give Best Score to a non-musical. (Yikes, or can you?)

BEST REVIVIAL OF A PLAY

Nominees: Fences, Lend Me a
Tenor, The Royal Family, A View From the Bridge

Will Win: Fences

Should Win: Fences or View From the Bridge

It's a toss-up between Fences and View From the Bridge-both tremendous productions of classic works with blockbuster leading men. But Fences is a slightly better play, and, though I think Liev Schreiber's Bridge performance was stronger than Denzel Washington's in Fences, Fences is still playing, which will give it the edge.

BEST REVIVAL OF A MUSICAL

Nominees: Finian's Rainbow,
La Cage Aux Folles, A Little Night Music, Ragtime

Will win: La Cage

Should win: La Cage

You could make a decent argument for three of the four nominees to win. (The less said about Finian's, the fourth, the better.) But Ragtime was a commercial failure and Night Music, while excellent, never quite caught fire. So the sweet, scruffy La Cage it is.

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTOR IN A PLAY

Nominees: Jude Law (Hamlet), Alfred Molina (Red), Liev Schreiber (A View From the Bridge), Christopher Walken (A Behanding in Spokane), Denzel Washington (Fences)

Will Win: Denzel Washington

Should Win: Liev Schreiber

Mr. Schreiber is arguably the best stage actor working today. But Mr. Washington is a huge movie star. He'll get the award, partially because he deserves it and partially as a thank-you note from a Broadway desperate to keep the Hollywood stars coming east.

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTRESS IN PLAY

Nominees: Viola Davis (Fences), Valerie Harper (Looped), Linda Lavin (Collected Stories), Laura Linney (Time Stands Still), Jan Maxwell (The Royal Family)

Will Win: Viola Davis

Should Win: Linda Lavin

In truth, any of these five women deserves the award.

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTOR IN A MUSICAL

Nominees: Kelsey Grammar (La Cage), Sean Hayes (Promises, Promises), Douglas Hodge (La Cage), Chad Kimball (Memphis), Sahr Ngaujah (Fela!)

Will Win: Sahr Ngaujah

Should Win: Sahr Ngaujah

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL

Nominees: Kate Baldwin (Finian's Rainbow), Montego Glover (Memphis), Christiane Noll (Ragtime), Sherie Rene Scott (Everyday Rapture), Catherine Zeta-Jones (A Little Night Music)

Will Win: Montego Glover

Should Win: Montego Glover

All of these actresses were wonderful, but Ms. Glover managed to shine in an otherwise dreadful show. That's impressive.

BEST DIRECTION OF A PLAY

Nominees: Michael Gandage (Red), Sheryl Kaller (Next Fall), Kenny Leon (Fences), Gregory Mosher (A View From the Bridge)

Will Win: Kenny Leon

Should Win: Kenny Leon

BEST DIRECTION OF A MUSICAL

Nominees: Christopher Ashley (Memphis), Marcia Milgrom Dodge (Ragtime), Terry Johnson (La Cage), Bill T. Jones (Fela!)

Will Win: Terry Johnson

Should Win: Marcia Milgrom Dodge

I really liked the two revivals. But I was more impressed with Ms. Milgrom Dodge's minimalist Ragtime, as compared to the over-the-top original, than I was with Mr. Johnson's delightful seedy La Cage. But Mr. Johnson's show is running and Ms. Milgrom Dodge's failed, and that is what will make the difference.

BEST CHOREOGRAPHY

Nominees: Rob Ashford (Promises, Promises), Bill T. Jones (Fela!), Lynne Page (La Cage), Twyla Tharp (Come Fly Away)

Will Win: Twyla Tharp

Should Win: Rob Ashford

Mr. Ashford (and a very game cast) accomplished the impressive feat of making a terrible show look fantastic.

editorial@observer.com

Sherlock Holmes

What's the story: Frankly, we're kind of surprised it took Hollywood this long to reboot Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's pulp fiction classic for modern audiences. And while Guy Ritchie might be the last person you'd ever expect to find behind the camera of a big-budget potential franchise, who better than Robert Downey Jr. to bring the good detective to life on-screen. Reviews for Holmes have been unpleasant—our Rex Reed found it so awful that he envisioned Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "turning over in his grave"—but everyone we know seems pretty excited to see what looks like a cross between Iron Man, Batman Begins and the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. One quibble: RDJ already has one massive franchise, does he really need another?

Who should see it: The ghost of Basil Rathbone

It's Complicated

What's the story: Admit it: you want to see It's Complicated even more than your 60-something mother does. Or maybe that's just us. Regardless, the lifestyles of the rich and richer romantic comedy from director Nancy Meyers gives audiences at least two reasons to be excited: Alec Baldwin and Meryl Streep. Sure, this thing looks completely paint-by-numbers (something even the good reviews confirm), but funny is funny and watching Mr. Baldwin and Ms. Streep battle each other seems like it should be pretty darn funny. Oh, and did we mention Steve Martin shows up as well? Terrible title aside, It's Complicated feels like a massive hit waiting to happen.

Who should see it: Jack Donaghy.

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel

What's the story: When those creepy aliens from the end of A.I. are walking around the earth in a thousand years and they stumble across a copy of Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, we have a strange feeling they'll find all the answers they need as to why humanity ended. Note to all the parents who will be forced to sit through this over the holiday: we're sorry.

Who should see it: Garfield.

Also opening this weekend: a lost Tennessee Williams script finds its way to the big screen in The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond; Nine expands nationwide; and there's also this little indie film called Avatar that we've heard so much about.

Sherlock Holmes is a James Bond movie with mutton chops. The last thing anybody needs is another cardboard set of Baker Street, or another weird take on Victorian England by a bad director who specializes in “gangsta” flicks, goth freaks and Madonna movies. Guy Ritchie depicts Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and Dr. Watson (Jude Law) as part East End tough guys, chewing corks out of wine bottles, fracturing ribs and smashing skulls, and part prissy-mouthed quarreling lovers, arguing about playing the violin at 3 a.m. Experimenting on their dog to test chemical poisons, joking with Scotland Yard, leaping from a burning slaughterhouse out of a garish old Hammer Films horror movie starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, they’re the Abbott and Costello of Whitechapel. The moronic screenplay (something about a secret religious society controlled by a fiend right out of Harry Potter and located under the sewers of Parliament!) is an incomprehensible Rubik’s cube by three pretenders weaned on the literary values of video games. Because I’m in a charitable mood, they will remain nameless. Mr. Downey is good at babbling gibberish in a corny British accent, but nobody could bring a script this bad to life, and Mr. Law doesn’t even try. 

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle must be turning over in his grave. This Sherlock Holmes has a confused Rachel McAdams as a double agent, ox rings, ginger midgets, four murdered girls and panic in the streets, but it doesn’t make one lick of sense, and I was bored unconscious. Although I had high hopes, I should not have been surprised. Mr. Ritchie is one of the worst bogus “directors” in film history. I just hoped he might have grown up enough to enlighten the world about the secret lives of two of my favorite mystery characters. Alas, they’re both as cardboard as a Madonna lobby card. Bring back Basil Rathbone.

rreed@observer.com

Jude Law headlines the Donmar Warehouse production that played to raves in London this summer, had a quick layover in Elsinore, Denmark—really!—for six performances at Kronberg Castle, and arrived at the Broadhurst last night.

Mr. Law sulks, broods, charms, plots, brays, dances, wrestles, wheedles, fences and, at one point, pelvic-thrusts his way through a brisk three-hour-and-10-minute production. He’s an energetic, kinetic, athletic Hamlet for an energetic, kinetic, amped-up Hamlet. Its energy—and our interest—flag only in its second half, when Hamlet is absent, sent off to England.

Beyond that, though, what is there to say? Hamlet is Hamlet, and either you’re going to see it or you’re not.

It’s a stylish production: Director Michael Grandage, artistic director of the Donmar, sets the action in a relatively simple set of high stone walls with an enormous wooden door, a forbidding Elsinore. It’s dark, shadowy and foggy, with stark white light streaming in from small slits of windows high on those walls.

(The sets and modern-creative-professional costumes of dark jeans, blazers and scarfs in a palette of blacks, browns and dark grays are by Christopher Oram. Neil Austin designed the lights.) This is also a funny production: Mr. Grandage and his cast milk Shakespeare’s humor.

But for all of that, it is not a re-imagined production, a modernized production, an avante-garde production (the last Hamlet I saw was performed by Eastern European marionette puppeteers on an antique carousel in Dumbo), or one of those counterrevolutionary Elizabethan period-piece productions.

It is Hamlet, and Mr. Law is good in it, and that’s that.

WHEN YOU SIT down to watch Carrie Fisher’s staged memoir, called Wishful Drinking, it is not unreasonable to expect that you’ll learn something new about the star’s troubles with drink. But this exercise in self-hagiography, which opened at Studio 54 Sunday night and is as masturbatory as anything to have transpired in a Times Square theater, doesn’t deliver on that implicit promise, or really with anything at all in the way of self-reflection. It is a collection of talk-show anecdotes.

They’re anecdotes ably crafted and by snappy writer—not everyone has Academy Awards patter among their credits—who’s full of charm and charisma and knows how to deliver a one-liner. She’s deadpan, she’s funny and she’s forthright about needing the audience’s affections. But her material consists of mere recollections, not reflections, with no depth, no real structure, and carrying the distinct impression of well-honed bits she’s said plenty of times before.

Tony Taccone, the artistic director of the Berkeley Rep, one of the several theaters at which Wishful Drinking has been developed over the past three years, directs this play in two acts running more than two hours, which is 30 minutes and one intermission too long.

Of course, Ms. Fisher has lots of material. Her parents are Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher; her father left her mother for Elizabeth Taylor, who’d been one of her mother’s closest friends; she’s an alcoholic; she’s a manic-depressive; she’s been married to and divorced from Paul Simon, who wrote songs about her, and the CAA superagent Bryan Lourd, who fathered her daughter, Billie, and then left her for a man; she’s a best-selling author; a gay Republican political operative, Greg Stevens, died in her bed on the night before the 2005 Oscars; and—oh yeah—she was Princess Leia.

Wandering a stylized living room of a set in pajamas and a flowing robe and covered with glitter (the production design and excellent projections are by Alexander V. Nichols), Ms. Fisher seems afraid to leave any part of that history untouched, opting to hit on everything but not engage with anything.

What was it like to be a child of those revolving Hollywood marriages? Ms. Fisher offers no real insight but instead a initially funny but then interminable shtick on “Hollywood Inbreeding 101,” which uses a flow chart and head shots to consider whether Billie and Elizabeth Taylor’s grandson, Rhys, are in fact related. What was it like to discover your husband is gay? “I turn them bald, I make them gay, and my work is done,” she says. Rimshot!

Midway through the first act, Ms. Fisher recalls playing the London Palladium in her mother’s nightclub act when she was a 17. After getting good notices, she reports, she rebuffed a choreographer’s offer to create a solo show for her, because if she’d done so she’d have turned into Liza Minnelli.

So much for that. Thirty-six years later, a devoted audience of largely gay men is watching an addict and noted survivor with a history of health problems and a homosexual ex-husband perform a camped-up greatest-hits montage on a Broadway stage. And just like Liza last year at the Palace—or Dr. Johnson’s bipedal pooch—everyone seems very much impressed, not because it’s done well, but because it is being done at all.

I'VE EATEN GLAZED doughnuts and devil’s-food doughnuts, jelly-filled and Boston crèmes, doughnuts topped with coconut and frosting and sprinkles, both chocolate and rainbow, but I had never—until I visited the Music Box last week—experienced doughnuts topped with rendered chicken fat. Superior Donuts, the new drama that opened there Oct. 1 after a well-reviewed run at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater last year, is a rare creation: These Donuts are coated with schmaltz.

That’s a surprise, coming from Tracy Letts, the Chicago playwright who won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize, among many other accolades, for his previous Broadway effort, August: Osage County, a pitch-black comic portrait of a sprawling, scabrously feuding Oklahoma family, and earlier in his career wrote the lurid and vicious Killer Joe and Bug.

Superior Donuts, instead, is a fairly straightforward heartwarmer—a pleasant, entertaining, funny one—peopled by stock characters. Arthur Przybyszewski is an aging hippy stoner, played with withdrawn resignation by a very appealing Michael McKean, who runs a doughnut shop in the struggling Uptown neighborhood of Chicago. He’s so beaten down by life—expects so little from it—that he can’t even muster much interest when he arrives at work at the play’s beginning to find the shop has been broken into and vandalized. There’s a pair of friendly neighborhood cops who are regulars at the shop—the Irish-Catholic female half is sweet on Arthur, though he’s too downtrodden to notice—and more concerned about the break-in than he is. The Russian immigrant who owns the video store next door is drunken and blustery and filled with “Vaht a country!” entrepreneurial plans (he represents change, of course), and the neighborhood drunk is good-humored and hard of hearing and gives whimsically wise counsel. And then there’s Franco Wicks, the charming, fast-talking young black dreamer Arthur hires to help out at Superior Donuts.

It goes almost without saying that the on-the-make Franco—Jon Michael Hill, a three-year Steppenwolf vet who’s making his Broadway debut, plays the role with infectious enthusiasm and a wide smile, bringing the same jolt of electricity to Superior Donuts he brings to Arthur’s weary life—will bring Arthur out of his shell. It goes equally without saying that Franco will have a secret in his past, and an artistic ambition, and that Arthur will at first resist taking a fatherly role but then embrace it.

These are not faults, necessarily. As directed by Tina Landau, on the carefully realistic set of an weathered corner store (scenic design is by James Schuette), Superior Donuts is sweet, but it’s not mawkish. It’s predictable, but it’s not boring. The only objectionable bits are the periodic moments when a spotlight catches Arthur and he tells the audience his life story of draft evasion, halfhearted marriage and absentee fatherhood—expository soliloquies that feel like theatrical equivalents of lazy movie voice-overs, stopping the story and disrupting the play’s naturalism and momentum.

Oh, and it’s not as funny as August. But, then, little is.

editorial@observer.com

OMFG you guys! It’s the Gossip Girl season-two finale! And sheesh, what a long and crazy ride it has been … hmmm, we can’t really remember a single continuing plot point! But tonight the you-know-what will really hit the fan when Gossip Girl sends out a “scandalous” email as the kids graduate from high school. Will Chuck Bass be that guy not wearing any clothes under his gown? Will Jenny try to take the throne of Queen Bee? Tune in! [CW, 8 p.m.]

Tuesday: The Talented Mr. Ripley

Remember when Jude Law was really hot? We can tell you: in 1999’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. Directed by Anthony Minghella, this super-creepy thriller is about a social-climbing psychopath played by Matt Damon (the first performance when we were all like, huh, this guy can really act!) who goes all sort of single white male over Jude Law and his girlfriend, played by Gwyneth Paltrow. Everyone had a part in this thing—don’t miss the awesome turns by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Cate Blanchett. [TMC, 8 p.m.]

Wednesday: American Idol

This is it, fellow American Idol lovers! On Tuesday, the two finalists, cutie-pie Kris Allen and the awesome space alien from planet Velvet Goldmine (a.k.a. Adam Lambert) sang it out for your votes. Tonight we’ll learn who will get a ton of confetti dumped on them and trotted out to various press engagements till next year. We’re actually really excited! And, with the creepy widower out of the running, we truly believe that there’s no bad outcome this year. [Fox, 8 p.m.]

Thursday: Chasing Amy

If one really wants to party like it’s 1997, we must suggest tuning in to Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy. Could this movie about a man (Ben Affleck) falling in love with a lesbian (Joey Lauren Adams) and having an odd-yet-very-familiar-feeling relationship with his best friend (Jason Lee) be made today? If so, it would be executive-produced by Judd Apatow and star Seth Rogen and James Franco ... in a perfect world they would totally end up together, fingercuffs be damned (after a bloody shooting spree). Where is Joey Lauren Adams these days, anyway? [IFC, 8 p.m.]

Friday: Teen Wolf

Before there was a Buffy the Vampire Slayer and waaaaay before we had Twilight, 1985 gave us Teen Wolf.  Imagine, Michael J. Fox is just an ordinary high-school basketball player … till it turns out he is a werewolf.  It helps him shoot baskets but it seriously messes up his dating life! It’s nice to know the classics are always there for us, but we are unhappy with whoever decided not to make this a back-to-back feature with Jason Bateman in 1987’s Teen Wolf Too (he’s a teen wolf too, get it?).[Cimenax, 1:15 p.m.] 

The Lower East Side's Chloe may be the new Beatrice Inn--plus, they're considering serving a full menu until 2 a.m. [Grub Street] 

At the New Yorker Festival, Clint Eastwood compared Angelina Jolie's talent to Meryl Streep's but added that she is "hampered by her gorgeous face." Meanwhile, Ms. Jolie told reporters that her secret to looking good after giving birth is "a great dress." [US Weekly]

Paris Hilton intends to have "three or four" children. [People] 

Semi-secret Spring St. lounge Upstairs has been shut down due to liquor license issues. [Full Disclosure] 

Responding to a Page Six item indicating that he was interested in steering Ali Lohan's career, music manager Johnny Wright said: "Johnny Wright has never met with Ali Lohan, has never been introduced to Ali Lohan, nor has he had a meeting with Ali or Dina Lohan regarding Ali's music career...Mr. Wright has never had any intention of speaking with Ali Lohan regarding her career. Any story that has surfaced about such a meeting holds no merit and is completely false." Got it! [P6] 

After being spurned by Mr. Crowe for the part of Dr. Watson opposite Robert Downey Jr.'s titular detective in Sherlock Holmes, Warner Brothers is close to finalizing a deal with Mr. Law to co-star in the film.

While Mr. Law isn't a box office cancer as lethal as Mr. Farrell (though we do love him in Miami Vice!), we can't say his casting inspires thoughts of nine-figure ticket returns. But maybe the sidekick role of Dr. Watson is just what Mr. Law needs to get his mojo back. With his sharp jaw line and lilting accent, Mr. Law has normally been cast as a leading man, and it hasn't really worked. Most of the time, he just looks bored-we're thinking of Cold Mountain, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and Alfie. But when given a good supporting role, the opposite happens. He's invigorated and invested. When you watch him in The Talented Mr. Ripley and even Closer, he's great!

And come to think of it, at this point in his career, Mr. Law might be a more stable box office draw than Tom Cruise. Maybe this won't turn out so badly after all.