Washington looks back menacingly at this poor decision.

Movies about covert CIA operatives make their own clichés, and in a violent and pointless waste of time and money called Safe House, they come in twos, like double vision. This movie wouldn’t be worth the effort even if it were about something, which it isn’t. Correction: It’s about how Denzel Washington is not above trashing his reputation when the salary works, even if the movie doesn’t.

Ryan Reynolds, who remains as critic-resistant as he is camera-ready, plays Matt Weston, a rookie CIA agent in Cape Town assigned to oversee a top-secret safe house where terrorists, mercenaries and guys with funny accents who haven’t shaved since the Berlin Wall collapsed are held for questioning and, presumably, protected by U.S. law. (In Cape Town? The St. Tropez of South Africa? Where the only people questioned are tourists who lose their room keys?) Anyway, that’s what it says in a screenplay by David Guggenheim that can be described only as what’s left after the dog ate the film-school Screenwriting 101 homework. Anyway, after smashing up half of the city with action-flick monotony, the preppie freshman spy finds himself under orders from headquarters in Langley, Va., to guard a master spy called Tobin Frost (Mr. Washington, in high dudgeon and deep doo-doo), who is suspected of betraying his government in heinous ways too vague to explain. Frost was once a great CIA hero who wrote the book on interrogation protocol before he turned rogue. Now everybody is after him. It takes the film’s entire 1-hour, 55-minute running time before you discover what they want him for and why. Meanwhile, the safe house is invaded by mass murderers Weston believes to be assassins, and he has to flee with his prisoner to save both their lives. Much more confusion lies ahead, when the killers turn out to be CIA agents themselves, but I’m getting one step ahead of a movie that is always one step behind.

With Weston trying to make sense of his orders via long-distance cell phones (they get better reception in Cape Town than in East Hampton) and Frost running, punching, machine-gunning, hand-grenading and destroying half the cars, trucks, buildings and innocent pedestrians on the streets, the movie collapses in a noisy farrago of dizzy editing. The woman at The New York Times raved about the sheer beauty of this film, which has left me stupefied. There is nothing beautiful in any single frame of the stomach-churning camerawork, grainy and shaking around in a series of ugly close-ups. Even the car chases, ratcheted up to an ear-splitting decibel level, are shot in close-ups, robbing the people who like this sort of chaos of the simple pleasure of getting off on the kind of cheap carnage that substitutes for narrative. All of which makes it doubly impossible to figure out what the hell is going on. You can write the plot on the flat side of a bobby pin.

Before the CIA can torture Frost into confessing to treason, his costar, in a dedicated effort to do his job, gain seniority and get a raise, drags his charge to a locker in a packed soccer stadium, where he fires into the crowd and causes a public riot, then escapes through a slum maze of collapsible shacks made of corrugated tin. After the CIA big shots (including Sam Shepard, Vera Farmiga and Brendan Gleeson in his first film in years in which you can understand his brogue) arrive in South Africa from Langley faster than it takes the red-eye to L.A., they start firing at each other. What is going on here? Suffice it to say that Frost is not the heel Weston thinks he is. Here comes the cliché about secret files proving criminal activity and corruption within the ranks of the CIA. One leak to the press and it could wreck the American people’s blind and unwavering trust in their own government! In the end, with almost every actor in the cast dead, blown to hamburger and six feet under, it’s up to the rookie to save the CIA from a black eye and change the course of history.

Are they kidding? We’ve seen the CIA vilified as a viper’s nest of felons, liars and mad-dog killers who all betray each other in dozens of other movies, all better and more gripping than Safe House. In fact, we’ve seen scores of other safe-house movies, all superior to Safe House. This time the suspect pool is so old it’s hairy. Directed with a maximum of overrehearsed brutality and a minimum of skill by young Swedish newcomer Daniel Espinosa, the movie is so predictable that you figure it out an hour before the actors do. This is a naive director with so little insight you wonder what comic books he’s been reading. Under his punishing camera lens, everyone looks sallow, anemic and terrible, including the usually alluring Vera Farmiga, who has never looked so haggard. Even GQ coverboy Ryan Reynolds has bags under his eyes as big as walnuts.

All of which makes me sad about Denzel Washington’s disillusioning participation. I forgive him if the money was irresistible enough to pay off a mortgage or put his kids through Harvard, but Safe House is total junk, and he is one of the producers. I guess I respect him too much to call him a junk dealer, but when the shoe fits …

rreed@observer.com

SAFE HOUSE

Running Time 115 minutes

Written by David Guggenheim

Directed by Daniel Espinosa

Starring Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds and Robert Patrick

1/4

Bateman and Reynolds.

The charm, versatility and charisma of Jason Bateman and the camera-ready good looks of Ryan Reynolds should add up to more than a piece of crummy, amateurish junk called The Change-Up. But what else can a discerning filmgoer (I naively presume, perhaps foolishly, there are a few of those left) count on from bogus director David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers) and sub-mental screenwriters Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (The Hangover)? Expect an overwhelming surfeit of incompetence and filth.

In this one-joke frat house masturbatory fantasy about two guys who exchange bodies for no reason except to keep a DOA movie going for almost two hours, even the title makes no sense. There is no such thing as a “change-up.” I could understand “change-over” or “trade-off,” but the invasion of one person’s persona into another person’s frame is not a “change-up.” Never mind. Nothing else jells in this farrago of idiocy, either. Mr. Bateman is Dave, a battered but responsible lawyer, husband and father of three, including a pair of twins, who hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in months. Mr. Reynolds, his best friend since the third grade, is Mitch, a pot-smoking, womanizing, free-spirited bachelor-model-actor (a nice 21^st century way of saying “irresponsible, unemployed jerk”). He is a symbol of a former life Dave would like to re-live. Dave hasn’t had time to have sex with his own wife, while Mitch says things to trashy women like “I’d like to strap you to my face and say the alphabet.” One night, after a ball game and a few joints, they pee in a fountain and wish they could trade places. Miraculously, they wake up the next morning in each other’s bodies. Now it is gentle, responsible family man Dave who is talking like a drunken Marine and hangover king Mitch who is forced to attend law firm briefings and burp babies, covered with vomit and diapers filled with what looks like chocolate pudding but isn’t.

The conceit is they look like themselves but talk and act like each other. Dave arrives on a movie set looking like Mitch but to his conservative, button-down horror, it turns out to be a porno film with another man’s finger up his orifices. When the kinky Mitch’s sexy new squeeze shows up for wild, uninhibited sex with Dave, who looks like Mitch, she is nude and nine months pregnant. Meanwhile Mitch, in Dave’s body, tries to keep from sleeping with his best friend’s wife Jamie, played by Leslie Mann, wife of no-talent Judd Apatow and one of the worst actresses in B-movies. Remember her opposite pardon-the-expression Adam Sandler in the abominable Funny People? I couldn’t understand a word she said in that fiasco, and she hasn’t learned a thing since. She sounds like she’s got a mouth full of cotton swabs, stuffed in sideways.

The Change-Up drags on endlessly, held together with scatology, flatulence and masturbation. Everybody gets a chance on the toilet, with all the noise and disgust that graphic bathroom scenes entail. When Mitch tries to teach Dave how to be Mitch by shaving everything off below his Speedo line, and Dave feeds Mitch’s ego with more penis-envy jokes than a bunch of sailors in a locker room, the contrivances pile up like a tower of dominoes. Here is a minor idea with minimal possibilities for mistaken identity routines, plummeting into mind-numbing confusion.  Sooner than you can search the second hand on your watch to see how much more of this you can take, you forget if you are watching Dave in Mitch’s body, or vice versa. It’s worth a chuckle or two to see Mr. Bateman get a chance to be crazy and gregarious, but when will somebody give him a role with some stature? In this sorry waste of time, his energy gets all mixed up with Mr. Reynolds’ pecs and who cares? I finally threw in the towel when Dave, in the body of Mitch, and Sabrina, the sexy law intern in Dave’s office (played by Flavor of the Month Olivia Wilde), who thinks she’s on a date with Mitch, both get their genitals tattooed.

Your move.

rreed@observer.com

THE CHANGE-UP

Running time 112 minutes

Written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore

Directed by David Dobkin

Starring Jason Bateman, Ryan Reynolds, Leslie Mann

1/4

Reynolds proves it's not easy being green.

As summer garbage goes, The Green Lantern can’t go fast enough. Even in the brainless world of cinematic comic books gone bad, it’s as bad as it gets—a dumb, pointless, ugly, moronic and incomprehensible jumble of botched effects, technical blunders, and cluttered chaos. Oh yes. It is also—did I forget to mention?—boring.

I retain a certain fondness for Superman, Batman, Spider Man, and my favorite DC Comics superhero, Captain Marvel, who has mysteriously never been transposed to the screen. But of them all, the never-fail cure for insomnia, even for 10-year-olds who still buy Cracker Jack boxes searching for secret decoder rings, is the Green Lantern, deadlier and dopier than even the Green Hornet. Even to a hyperthyroidal, prepubescent geek, any attempt to relate something as simple as the premise for a plot must be downright defeating. Billions of years ago, a power race divided the universe into 3,000 sectors ruled by intergalactic peace keepers known as the Green Lantern Corps, who live on the planet Oa. The worst threat to the world was imprisoned on the Planet Ryut. This fiend is the Parallax, sort of an intergalactic Osama bin Laden who looks like a praying mantis with rabies. Parallax is now loose and declaring war on the planets, one sector at a time. Wouldn’t you know, this unspeakable enemy of mankind is headed for Earth, where the only person he can’t beat is supersonic F-35 Sabre jet pilot and gym-pumped Esquire cover boy Ryan Reynolds. It gets worse.

The dying Green Lantern warrior who comes to warn us hands over his green Buck Rogers ring to a goof-off with Coke bottle abs named Hal who points the ring at a target and—shazam!—there goes Afghanistan. Hal has competition (Peter Sarsgaard, trashing his career as a creepy wacko scientist, and Angela Bassett, whose specialty is examining purple aliens). He also has a sexy girlfriend (Blake Lively), the daughter of the demented aviation corporation owner (Tim Robbins) Hal works for. The Lanterns seek peace, order and justice. To join them is a big responsibility.  Mr. Reynolds, as Hal, scarcely has the time to pull himself away from his bench presses long enough to bother. The dialogue consists mostly of lectures about brain-eating bacteria, and the locations are identified as stuff like “The Edge of the Milky Way Galaxy.” It took four writers who shall remain nameless to think up lines like “We must harness the power of our enemies and fight fear with fear!” Or this favorite exchange: “Why are you glowing?” “Why is your skin green?” “What in the hell is with that mask?” At the screening I attended, the critics were laughing so loud I missed a few bon mots, but you get the picture. The director is Martin Campbell, who doesn’t.

Humans aren’t the strongest species, or the smartest, but we’re worth saving. As a Lantern, Hal is a hit when he rubs the ring and turns the film’s primary color of lime Jell-O, but he’s also a flop because he has the one thing no Lantern is allowed to have: human terror! If you care, this seemingly interminable rubble of bad technology and computerized escapades is devoted to Hal’s dilemma. Can he overcome fear and save the film industry from bloated budgets and fiscal apocalypse?  Surely it is time to save Ryan Reynolds from himself. Money says it all, but after he went to so much trouble a year ago to prove his acting prowess in Buried, the loafing and posing he does in The Green Lantern just seems like a lot of talent gone to seed.  Even as a prime example of rotten summer silliness, this is a paralyzing experience.

rreed@observer.com

THE GREEN LANTERN

Running time 105 minutes

Written by Greg Berlanti, Michael Green, Marc Guggenheim, Michael Goldenberg

Directed by Martin Campbell

Starring Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard

1/4

Cue the crashing glass ceiling sound effect, because it is too perfect. TMZ is reporting that the couple has separated. As of now, there are no news of how the divorce will play out. Messy probably!

People, which has it from a source that the pair split six months ago, has given us the boilerplate no-hard-feelings joint statement.

"After long and careful consideration on both our parts, we've decided to end our marriage," it reads. "We entered our relationship with love and it's with love and kindness we leave it. While privacy isn't expected, it's certainly appreciated."

Good luck with that whole privacy thing, guys!

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

Check out Scandal Report: The Tao of Ryan and Scarlett, Homecoming King and Queen.>>

USER-FRIENDLINESS
Any idiot can use an iPhone—and we know, because we’ve seen it happen. BlackBerry gets a few points for most models’ physical QWERTY keyboards, which are less prone to typos than iPhone’s virtual keys; but Apple controls for this problem with text-correction software, and its completely intuitive touch-screen operation wins the category.
Advantage: iPhone

DURABILITY
iPhones crack when they’re dropped, unless you invest in bulky shells and cases; by contrast, as Wired’s GeekDad blog has pointed out, BlackBerrys still work after being run over by a full-size pickup truck.
Advantage: BlackBerry

BELLS AND WHISTLES
iPhone wins for both built-in features and apps. In addition to the 3GS’s built-in video camera, GPS, Wi-Fi, music and video player, YouTube connectivity and quick Internet browsing, the iTunes App store offers tens of thousands of applications. BlackBerry App World pales in comparison.
Advantage: iPhone

OPTIONS
BlackBerry’s online store currently offers 21 models, with a range of prices and features; iPhone buyers can pick only between 3G and 3GS. BlackBerry is also supported by 45 carriers in the U.S.—iPhone is currently only available on drop-heavy AT&T.
Advantage: BlackBerry

CELEBRITY USERS
As we know all too well, Tiger Woods’ iPhone has gotten him into trouble; but Uma Thurman, Ryan Reynolds, Nicole Kidman, Emma Watson and Michelle Williams have fared better with theirs. There doesn’t seem to be much family loyalty: Miley Cyrus is a devoted BlackBerry user, while brother Trace carries an iPhone; Jake Gyllenhaal uses an iPhone, while Maggie sports the BlackBerry; Beyoncé is a BlackBerry devotee, while sister Solange is an iPhone girl. Many celebs also prefer not to choose: Cameron Diaz, Taylor Swift, Lindsay Lohan, Adriana Lima and Vanessa Hudgens have all been spotted with both devices.
Advantage: Draw (If it seems like everyone in Hollywood, from Amanda Seyfried to Zac Efron, is glued to a BlackBerry, that’s because BlackBerrys are frequently given gratis to celebs; in the past five years, the phone has been on offer in gift bags at the Oscars, the AMAs, the Golden Globes and the Grammys. Apple’s sole spokesmodel is Justin Long.)

What’s Austrian for “not as good as we thought?” It was a tale of two weekends for Sacha Baron Cohen’s Brüno. On the one hand, the guerrilla comedy pulled down an estimated $30.4 million in ticket sales to pace the field; on the other, the total gross came in well below the high expectations that were set after Brüno opened with $14.4 million on Friday. There was no splitting the baby with the weekend’s other wide release: I Love You, Beth Cooper was a humongous bomb, landing in seventh place with just $5 million. As we do each Monday, here’s a breakdown of the top five at the box office.

1. Brüno: $30.4 million ($30.4 million total)

Obviously, Brüno wasn’t a sequel to Borat, but it sure performed like one: Almost half of Brüno’s ticket sales came on Friday. The alarming 39 percent drop from Friday to Saturday shows that those who wanted to see this film, saw it immediately, while everyone else just kind of shrugged and went to other comedies available to them; notice the slim drops lower down the chart for The Hangover (11 percent) and The Proposal (18 percent). Things won’t get much better in the weekends ahead: Viewers gave Brüno a C grade, according to Cinemascore, meaning word of mouth will be tenuous at best and flat-out crippling at worst. Borat, this is not.

2. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs: $28.5 million ($120.5 million total)

After failing to top Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen over July 4, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs rebounded from a less-than-stellar opening salvo to hold off the giant robots in weekend two, easing just 31 percent in the process. With $120 million already in the coffers, the 3-D kiddie flick is on a similar pace to its predecessor, Ice Age: Meltdown, which hit $195 million domestically. However with Harry Potter looming large, reaching numbers that high might be a tad difficult. Don’t hold a collection for Fox, though: With an additional $191.9 million from foreign markets, Ice Age has already grossed enough worldwide to be considered a success.

3. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: $24.2 million ($339.2 million total)

Despite a 43 percent drop from last weekend, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen still passed the total gross of the first Transformers and has now banked $339 million domestically to date. That it’s also up to nearly $675 million worldwide speaks to the popularity of this brand name. If you don’t think a third film is happening, think again.

4. Public Enemies: $14.1 million ($66.5 million total)

Never underestimate the drawing power of Johnny Depp. In just 11 days of release, Public Enemies has already become Michael Mann’s fourth-highest-grossing movie ever, and should eventually wind up with a total in the $90 million–to–$100 million range. Now that doesn’t mean the people at Universal are doing cartwheels—after all, Enemies cost north of $100 million to make and had a huge promotional campaign—but this isn’t the blood bath that we had expected after the tepid opening. Something tells us that if Public Enemies had starred someone other than Mr. Depp, this second weekend would have been much worse.

5. The Proposal: $10.5 million ($113.7 million total)

The Proposal held off The Hangover (Todd Phillips’s film has become the highest-grossing R-rated comedy ever with $222.1 million) to finish in fifth place over the weekend, pushing its total grosses past $113 million. As it turns out, we were dead wrong about Ryan Reynolds. He is a movie star. And coming in 2010, he’ll have The Green Lantern to further prove that fact.

But then Mr. Efron abruptly ditched the picture. He didn’t want to be typecast as the guy who does musicals, he said. The suits at Paramount barely flinched. There were no threats of delaying the filming, set for next spring. They simply found a quick but suitable replacement—another swoopy-haired, pretty-faced actor, named Chace Crawford.

Mr. Crawford, 23, bears a remarkable resemblance to Mr. Efron, 21. In fact, these men are perhaps the youngest incarnation of something eerie that’s been happening in Hollywood. Male actors have become increasingly indistinguishable. And not only are they all starting to look alike; but they also sort of act alike, too.

Here’s a fun experiment. Turn on the TV, flip through the most recent issue of Entertainment Weekly, take a trip to the Union Square Cinema and try telling the young men apart. Having trouble? Don’t feel bad. Even that typically pop-culture-savvy friend of yours has been referring to them as “that guy” from Twilight or Gossip Girl or Star Trek for months. Not only do Mr. Efron and Mr. Crawford resemble each another, but they both look a lot like Ian Somerhalder (Lost), who sort of looks like Chris Pine (Star Trek), who sort of looks like James Marsden (Hairspray, 27 Dresses), who sort of looks like Ryan Reynolds (The Proposal and the guy who married Scarlett Johansson), who sort of looks like Chris Evans (Fantastic Four), who sort of looks like Robert Buckley (Lipstick Jungle), who is a downright doppelgänger for Scott Speedman (Felicity). (Slideshow here--it might help.)

Let’s call it the New Male Beauty: those wide-set eyes, the narrow nose that flares up at the tip just so, the childish puffy cheeks and the not-too-rugged jaw lines, topped with carefully placed strands of layered hair. It’s a face that used to be found in Tiger Beat, fold-out pages to be tacked onto a petal-pink wall. Now it dominates the weekend box office.

“We talk about this all the time!” said Randi Hiller of the Randi Hiller casting agency in Los Angeles. “If you go back to these iconic movies, everybody wasn’t super-beautiful, but a lot of them were sexy. But there’s also something about young women today being more comfortable with a boy-man; they’re less threatening sexually than a man-man.”

Ms. Hiller, who has worked on films like Iron Man, Pride & Glory and Fast & Furious and has auditioned a lot of these actors, said that a few years ago, audiences were complaining about not being able to distinguish between Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Eric Bana and Hugh Dancy, who all shared the tall, swarthy look in the ensemble piece Black Hawk Down. But the New Male Beauty is different. In fact, it has a precise science.

“They all have a nose with a slight hump and then a minor depression and then a prominent tip—not big, but just a gentle S-curve, and the tips are slightly broad,” said Dr. Steven Pearlman, former president of the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. “If we had this conversation a couple of years ago, we’d be talking about Orlando Bloom, Justin Timberlake and Leonardo DiCaprio.”

Indeed there seems to have been a slow but steady evolution of the New Male Beauty. In 2001, the cover of People magazine’s Hottest Bachelors issue featured Matthew McConaughey; in ’03, it was Ashton Kutcher, arguably the forefather of the look; in 2005, it was Orlando Bloom; in ’07, Adrian Grenier and Justin Timberlake topped the list. But even Messrs. Grenier and Timberlake had a certain distinctive, grizzled appeal. The same can’t be said of the purported Hottest Bachelors of ’09: the bland, smooth Mr. Crawford, Mr. Pine and Shia Lebouf.

“Everyone has a little bit of facial asymmetry, but these faces barely have any, which is very unusual,” said Dr. Minas Constantinides, the director of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at N.Y.U. Medical Center, Google Image–searching while on the phone with The Observer. “They don’t have features that can be distracting, like a strong jaw line, so we spend a lot more time around their eyes and mouths when we’re looking at them.

“There is a trend towards a softer look with younger guys,” Dr. Constantinides continued. “Chace Crawford, Shane West, Ryan Reynolds and Zac Efron all share an interesting set of features: heavy upper eyelash and eyebrows, not super-strong cheekbones and very soft jaw lines, which is what really distinguishes them from someone like Brad Pitt or George Clooney. Scott Speedman and Chris Pine have stronger jaw lines, but neither have particularly strong cheekbones.”

Historically, male sex appeal used to be about just the opposite.

“High testosterone is about prominent chins, deep-set eyes, heavy brows, full head of hair and strong features,” Dr. Pearlman said. “That’s the caveman that could inseminate you and procreate.”

But according to Leonard Lee, a Columbia University professor who has written about physical attractiveness, recent research has indicated that women are now finding common features of the New Male Face—like big smiles, smaller chins and a wider distance between the two eyes—more compelling.

“Large eyes, for example, are a ‘neotenous’ cue, one people associate with babies and that elicits female nurturance,” Dr. Lee said.

In other words, perhaps in parallel to their own filler frenzy (see Jonathan Van Meter’s 2008 cover story on the New New Face in New York magazine), women have literally become attracted to men who look like babies. Is this what feminism has wrought?

“Maybe the guys in their 20s are now the first children of children of divorce, and so maybe that is when fathers started getting more involved, and does that make them softer and more thoughtful?” theorized Ms. Hiller, the casting director. “Or maybe the lines of men and women are getting very blurred. Guys have just started becoming increasingly more approachable.”

According to Ms. Oliveri, it’s not evolutionary biology but the Hollywood factory that’s responsible for cranking out, Stepford-like New Male Beauties. The projects engender these stars, not the other way around. “High School Musical was successful not because Zac Efron was in it, but Zac became famous as a result of the huge phenomenon that is High School Musical,” she said. “I mean you didn’t know who Rob Pattinson was a year ago—you never even heard his name! And now he’s this phenomenon as a result of Twilight.”

What if the studios, growing tired of the whopping salaries, conflicting schedules and odd caprices of actors with “character,” decided to resurrect the trusty old system of interchangeable parts: an army of look-alike, antiseptically handsome boys to be inserted into this action flick or that romantic comedy? (One wonders, also, if this is a look with legs; will we be left with a troupe of out-of-work baby-faced actors in their 40s?)

“The Brad Pitts and the Clive Owens aren’t necessarily the ones bringing people into theaters,” Ms. Oliveri said. “You look at the Star Treks and the Twilights, and I think Hollywood has realized that it’s the formula that works, not necessarily the individual in it.”

A prime example is The Hangover, which doesn’t have a single star actor, and at press time had grossed nearly $153 million. Meanwhile, Sony Pictures’ adaptation of Michael Lewis’ Moneyball, with Mr. Pitt set to star and Steven Soderbergh to direct, was scrapped this week due to an unsatisfactory script.

Ms. Oliveri traced the whole thing back to Spider-Man, when Tobey Maguire threatened to pull out of the franchise and the studio cavalierly prepared to replace him with Jake Gyllenhaal. Mr. Maguire eventually came to his senses, but …

“I think people realized that at the end of the day, if it’s written well, and directed well, and marketed right, then it’s going to work,” Ms. Oliveri said.

Dr. Lee, the Columbia professor, further suggested that the rise of (what else) the Internet, which allows big studios to better track the audiences’ likes and dislikes, may be in part responsible for this army of light-eyed, interchangeable drones. 

“New media helps measure how successful a company’s marketing actions are, so the studios might say, ‘Who are the most popular people now?’” said Dr. Lee. “‘And let’s try to replicate it versus building up the new Robert De Niro.’”

And the New Male Beauty is spreading, inevitably, beyond Hollywood. Dr. Pearlman’s nonfamous patients have begun to refer to Mr. Efron’s face as their ideal; Dr. Constantinides’ clients have begun requesting noses and chins that make them look less manly.

“Fifteen years ago, when men came in, they absolutely wanted to maintain that rugged look, which meant that higher bridge and stronger features, but now they want a softer look,” he said. “Our culture is leaning towards a more empathetic man who can understand a woman’s feelings, and that comes out in new facial features.”

ialeksander@observer.com

Since the weekend's weather forecast is looking all The Day After Tomorrow-y, you'd be forgiven for not realizing that Sunday marks the official start of summer. (It’s also Father’s Day; go buy a card already!) Three movies hit theaters today all bent on making you laugh. As we do every Friday, here’s a handy guide to the new releases.

The Proposal

What’s the story: Lost in this summer movie season of Vulcan’s, Terminator’s and Zack Galifianakis is the fact that it’s June 19th and not a single romantic comedy has been released. (Like the ticket buyers, we’ll pretend that Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and My Life in Ruins don’t exist.) Thank goodness, then, for Sandra Bullock! America’s Almost Sweetheart (we still love Julia more) returns to her genre of choice in The Proposal. The cutesy-looking rom-com finds Ms. Bullock playing a successful Canadian executive living in the U.S. illegally and facing deportation back to her home country unless she can marry an American. Enter Ryan Reynolds as her younger and very put-upon assistant. The Proposal has gotten some solid reviews and we’re always interested in seeing what Ms. Bullock is up to, but the most interesting part of this film happens to be the back story: With Hollywood in love with female screenwriters (The Fempire!), writer Peter Chiarelli pretended he was actually a woman named Jennifer Kirby to get the film noticed by studios. Michael Dorsey would certainly be proud.

Who should see it: Lou Dobbs.

Year One

What’s the story: Call it Judd Apatow’s Life of Brian. Jack Black and Michael Cera star as two lazy hunter-gatherers banned from their prehistoric village and left to wander the earth in search of the meaning of life, only stopping to make the occasional dick joke. Since this is a Judd Apatow production (Harold Ramis directs), expect to see the familiar faces of Paul Rudd, Bill Hader and McLovin’. All that sounds well and good, but don’t get your hopes up: The reviews have been of the scorched-earth variety. It might be best to see The Hangover for a third time this weekend instead.

Who should see it: John Cleese.

Whatever Works

What’s the story: As consistent as the change of seasons, here comes the yearly Woody Allen film. And for the first time since Melinda and Melinda in 2004, he’s moved the milieu back to New York. (Hooray!) Whatever Works is based on a script Mr. Allen wrote all the way back in his Annie Hall days, and, at the time, he had intended for Zero Mostel to star. Now, some 30 years later, it’s Larry David who gets the honors, playing Boris, a middle-aged misanthrope brought back from the brink by a young pixie in the form of Evan Rachel Wood. The reviews for Whatever Works have been mixed—our Rex Reed calls the film a “zit” on the face of Woody’s canon—but we’re still holding out hope this winds up being a keeper.

Who should see it: Laurie David.

Ryan Reynolds is not a movie star. Oh sure, he’s famous—or, at least famous enough to get himself on the cover of Entertainment Weekly to show off his ridiculously chiseled abs—but, no matter how much we’d like to see this likable actor take the next step, it just seems like he’ll be forever stuck in the shadows of the B- and C-list. Think about it this way: Bradley Cooper wasn’t a movie star either, but now that The Hangover has exploded into a pop culture litmus test (“You haven’t seen it yet?”), that dude is a bona fide name. Ryan Reynolds? He might still be best known as Van Wilder.

Sadly, this should have been the Year of the Reynolds. In March, he co-starred in Adventureland, playing against the normal expectations of a “Ryan Reynolds character” as a charming-womanizer-who-really-isn’t-all-that-charming-but-is-kind-of-a-loser. (P.S., is it too early to call Adventureland the most underrated movie of 2009? We didn’t think so.) Then in May he was the only supporting actor who managed to survive X-Men Origins: Wolverine with his reputation intact (we hope Liev Schreiber cashed a big check for his so-called “work” in that disaster); that film got him top billing in Deadpool, a spinoff film from Wolverine. And out this Friday is the surprisingly not-terrible-looking romantic comedy, The Proposal, where Mr. Reynolds gets to co-star with America's Speed-heart, Sandra Bullock. While we have no doubt that this is another solid performance—The Observer’s own Sara Vilkomerson confirms our suspicions in her review—the sheer fact that he’s even in The Proposal helps prove our point. Despite the matinee idol good looks and wonderfully quick comedic timing, Mr. Reynolds has never carried anything on his very formidable shoulders. And while that’s fine for a young actor, Mr. Reynolds has been knocking around for the better part of a decade. Worse, it seems like he always winds up playing second fiddle in these oddly second-rate enterprises: As much as we love Sandra Bullock, in the last decade are so, she's no Reese Witherspoon when it comes to box office.

(To be fair, the aforementioned Mr. Cooper has never carried a movie, either, but he’s also been part of two mammoth successes in the last five years: Wedding Crashers, and now, The Hangover.)

Earlier this week, Movieline wondered if Mr. Reynolds was too good-looking to play comedy; the assumption being that people don’t want to see him making jokes because he’s so dreamy. We don’t buy that premise for one second—this is Hollywood we’re talking about, where being good-looking is the coin of the realm—but it shows the lengths that people will go to cut Mr. Reynolds some slack: He’s not more famous because he’s too hot! We all want him to succeed, but eventually, reality has to be faced; this is a “walks like a duck” situation: Ryan Reynolds is not a movie star, and, chances are, he never will be. Don’t feel too badly for him though … he is still married to Scarlett Johansson.

Ms. Bullock is one of those actresses that help prove that, when done right, a romantic comedy can be a wonderfully satisfying thing. She’s always had a slight edge of nuttiness to her girl-next-door appeal, which is how films like 28 Days or Two Weeks Notice escape being pure drivel. When we first see Margaret stride into her office, cubicle-dwellers diving to alert others via IM à la The Devil Wears Prada, she’s a walking exclamation point in slicked-back ponytail, sleek tailored suit and mind-blowingly high Christian Louboutin heels. Andrew is teeth-grittingly ambitious; he puts up with his boss so that he might advance within the company. When Margaret announces to her superiors that, in fact, she and Andrew are in love and getting married, she winks hey-who-hasn’t-fallen-for-one-of-our-secretaries, with pointed hilarity. Why are we so conditioned to accept a decade-plus age difference between our leading men and women? Pretty Woman’s Richard Gere and Julia Roberts? Eighteen years apart. When Harry met Sally? Billy Crystal was 41 and Meg Ryan was 28. Director Anne Fletcher (27 Dresses) does an admirable job in allowing Ms. Bullock—who’s in fabulous shape, just wait till you see her almost naked!—to actually look older than Mr. Reynolds. Her edges are sharper than his, a tight, forced smile under panicky eyes. Mr. Reynolds, for whom we’ve been cheering since Definitely, Maybe, holds his own and then some. They are mismatched not just because of their age and professional stations, but because Margaret is kind of a tightly controlled mess with a soft hidden underbelly; Andrew a seemingly laid-back man with daddy issues. The two have an easy and sweet chemistry that is believable, even with Andrew’s ex-girlfriend, played by the much younger Malin Akerman, lurking around. Also, one must take a moment to marvel at how awesome both Mary Steenburgen and Betty White (playing Andrew’s mother and grandmother, respectively) are appearing these days. And for the simple fact that there is not one single cougar joke to be found within the screenplay, let us be eternally grateful.

svilkomerson@observer.com