Adam Scott

CHICAGO – “Bachelorette,” now playing On Demand (and doing quite well on that format) and opening in theaters tomorrow, is a modestly successful comedy with some very talented stars stuck with an incredibly inconsistent script.

CHICAGO – The cover of “Friends with Kids” sells it as a fun ensemble comedy with three cast members from “Bridesmaids,” one of the stars of “Parks and Recreation,” and the super-talented Jon Hamm looking particularly cheery. It’s false advertising. In truth, the movie belongs to Adam Scott and co-star/writer/director Jennifer Westfeldt and even the small roles by the rest of the cast are often more dramatic than comedic. Even without the false bill of goods, “Friends with Kids” is a disappointing. It’s a strong vehicle for Scott and Hamm has a few good scenes but it’s ultimately less than the sum of its talented parts.

CHICAGO – Jennifer Westfeldt created a distinct movie persona in her debut in 2001 in “Kissing Jessica Stein,” but she has been generally off the radar since then. Her choice for a major film re-emergence is as a nebbish career woman with less memorable character traits. She also directs Jon Hamm, Kristen Wiig, Chris O’Dowd, Megan Fox and Maya Rudolph in “Friends with Kids.”

CHICAGO – Jennifer Westfeldt created a distinct movie character with her first film in 2001, writing and starring in “Kissing Jessica Stein.” She now makes her directorial debut, guiding an ensemble cast that includes Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Jon Hamm, Adam Scott and herself in “Friends with Kids.”

CHICAGO – “Our Idiot Brother,” recently released on Blu-ray and DVD, is a light, good-natured comedy with a stellar ensemble that doesn’t quite click into place as a truly stand-out entry in the genre but features such a positive tone and overall message that it’s a difficult movie for which to mount too much of an offense against. The cast is so incredibly likable and so is the overall theme of the movie that it’s easy to approach like its title character and just go with the flow.

CHICAGO – “Modern Family” may have just won the Emmy and “Louie” & “Curb Your Enthusiasm” both had very strong summer outings, but the fourth-season premiere of NBC’s “Parks and Recreation” (and the equally-hysterical episode that follows it) makes the case that the Amy Poehler vehicle is the best comedy on television right now. With incredibly smart writing and increasingly impressive performances from the entire ensemble, “Parks and Rec” just keeps getting funnier.

CHICAGO – There’s quite a race for the best comedy of the year and I suspect that “Modern Family” will take the Emmy at Sunday’s awards (which we’ll get into more in-depth with a predictions feature later in the week), but the winner by a nose for this critic is NBC’s “Parks and Recreation,” a show that just got better episode by episode as its brilliant third season progressed. See for yourself with the recently-released DVD from Universal.

CHICAGO – The midseason premiere of season three of “Parks & Recreation” starts by catching us up on what we’ve missed. It details the arrivals of auditors, the “black hats,” played by the non-descript Adam Scott and a goofily-exuberant Rob Lowe, and features a tongue-and-cheek detailing of the budget crisis facing the parks department.

CHICAGO – “Piranha” is ludicrous, offensive, disgusting, gratuitous, and stupid — just the way that it should be. Can you imagine the complete failure it would have been to try and take the concept of killer fish seriously? Director Alexandre Aja (“High Tension”) wisely went the other way and made a movie that falls completely flat in terms of character, dialogue, and logic but works where it needs to: T, A, and gore.

CHICAGO – Amy Poehler’s “Parks and Recreation” had the serious problem of trying to find an audience on NBC during the destruction of the network by “The Jay Leno Show.” Debuting in April of 2009, it struggled to find a following and then barely hung around through the disastrous times at NBC during the 2009-10 season. To everyone’s surprise, it was renewed and will return on a revamped Thursday night lineup in January. To try and ignite interest in the show one more time, Universal has released the second season of this better-than-average show.