Snap Judgement: Movies

Stuck on You

Directed by Bobby and Peter Farrelly

Further exploring their obsession with physical and mental extremities, the Farrelly brothers cast Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear as conjoined twins Bob and Walt Tenor, who give up their comfy lives as hamburger-joint chefs on Martha's Vineyard to pursue Walt's dream of acting. What first feels like thin skit material gets funnier and sweeter. Damon and Kinnear make a terrific team. But don't expect knee-slapping gross-out humor. Behind the hit-or-miss gags, this is really a love story about two people who can't live without each other.

Bad Santa

Directed by Terry Zwigoff

An antidote to forced holiday cheer, this scabrously funny misanthropic comedy is not for the whole family. A magnificently debauched Billy Bob Thornton stars as the world's most inappropriate department-store Santa-and thief. "Bad Santa" never goes soft, even when a pudgy kid (Brett Kelly) becomes Thornton's tag-along admirer. Zwigoff doesn't hype up the gags, and his deliberately deadpan style gives even far-fetched jokes an edge of reality.

The Triplets of Belleville

Directed by Sylvain Chomet

The tone of this droll, thrillingly odd animated film isn't easy to describe; neither is its loopy plot about a melancholy French cyclist named Champion who's being trained for the Tour de France by his clubfooted grandma. Midrace, he's kidnapped by French mafiosi (shaped like black rectangles)--and Granny and his dog Bruno take off in hot pursuit. Chomet's delightful hand-drawn images evoke the '50s Paris of Jacques Tati. A tad dark for little kids, this one-of-a-kind movie delivers 80 minutes of idiosyncratic inspiration.