Capsule reviews of new movie releases

"Identity Thief" _ It seems ironic that the title is "Identity Thief" when its co-stars have such a firm grasp on their well-established screen personae. Melissa McCarthy is the brash wild card with an off-kilter sense of humor and an underlying, slightly dangerous streak. Jason Bateman is the initially bemused but increasingly frustrated straight man whose deadpan quips seem to be the only things that keep him sane. These two opposites are stuck on a cross-country road trip together but no one's really going anywhere. Optimally, with a better script, that wouldn't be such a bad thing. Instead, "Identity Thief" strands these two ordinarily enjoyable comics in the middle of nowhere with no help for miles. "Midnight Run," it is not. It's actually not even "Due Date," which felt similarly strained. It's not just that director Seth Gordon ("Horrible Bosses") and screenwriter Craig Mazin (the reheated "Hangover Part II") confuse meanness for hilarity. There's that, including a weirdly uncomfortable thread of homophobia and/or emasculation. More fundamentally, though, the premise is just flawed. Bateman's mild-mannered accounts processor, Sandy Patterson, discovers that a con artist (McCarthy) has stolen his identity and racked up thousands of dollars in charges. They all come from the same place _ Winter Park, Fla. _ and they started weeks ago. But Sandy lives in Denver. Isn't this suspicious? R for sexual content and language. 107 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.

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Actor Cromwell arrested at Wis. regents meeting

Actor James Cromwell has been arrested for allegedly disrupting a University of Wisconsin Board of Regents meeting where he was protesting animal testing.

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Afghan boys from nominated film to walk red carpet

Fawad Mohammadi has spent half his life peddling maps and dictionaries to foreigners on a street of trinket shops in Kabul. Now the 14-year-old Afghan boy with bright green eyes is getting ready for a trip down the red carpet at the Oscars.

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