Q: 1. A kind of Meet the Fockers-lite, with bitchy scheming substituted for flushing toilets.
2. What do socio-economic differences, career discrepancies, basic incompatibilities and a teenage wardrobe on a thirtysomething matter when there are movie tickets to sell?
3. Lopez is treacly sweet to Fonda and finally attempts some tepid revenge about two-thirds of the way through. But too late: We've lost interest.
4. Another generic concept-driven romantic comedy that is high on concept, low on comedy and about as romantic as a prenuptial agreement.
5. An unappealing comedy with a terminal case of bad choices
6. This Monster is ultimately one flat-footed beast.
7. Roaring through the film like a California wildfire, Fonda gives a powerhouse comic performance...
8. Jane Fonda makes it out alive, but the movie never drew a breath to begin with.
9. Monster-in-Law proves that the once intense Ms. Fonda is capable of laughing at the world in general and herself in particular.
10. It repeatedly falls to Fonda to sell the movie's wheezy concept of the mother-in-law as battle-ax. And like any trouper attempting go-for-broke comedy for the first time at her age, she holds nothing back.
Based on these individual reviews, what is the critic consensus?

A: Consensus: While Jane Fonda steals the movie in her return to the screen, a tired script and flimsy performances make this borderline comedy fall flat.
1. Guest goes for the cheap laugh, and for the most part, most of the characters are dislikeable idiots.
2. style only gets in the way of what could have been one of the year's funniest comedies
3. A laugh-riot and will be especially appealing to those who cherish the way animals seem to be very patient with the foibles of humans.
4. Barking funny.
5. The rather unoriginal satiric flaw becomes obvious, in most cases, within 30 seconds, the film has little to do but repeat the same giant bull's eye gags over and over again.
6. You keep waiting for the movie to start. It never does, though.
7. It works because it is a very funny laugh out loud satire, with my two favorite nutsy characters being Parker Posey and Eugene Levy.
8. What a pity that with such funny material, Guest and company found it necessary to rely so heavily on sex as a supplementary source of comedy.
9. If it doesn't sustain the high level of lunacy "Guffman" did, it's still a delight. Like the best comedies, it plants its jokes deep in your brain and you find yourself laughing at them again hours after the film has ended.
10. Willard's delivery is so earnest and so pitch-perfect that he had me howling with laughter for the entire last half of the movie.
Consensus: A fine example of writer-director-star Christopher Guest's gift for improv comedy, Best in Show boasts an appealingly quirky premise and a brilliantly talented cast.
Q: 1. Please let's pull the plug on this insanely over-promoted, over-rated horror brand.
2. Despite some nifty Japanese style tricks and ghostly illusions this isn't scary. It's muddled, same-old mayhem, just with a more international cast going crazy.
3. The Grudge 2, Takashi Shimizu's wildly uneven but ambitious new film -- his second American remake -- is one of the best entries in the Japanese director's Ju-On/Grudge series.
4. We're treated to almost every ghosting and gruesome dispatch from the first film, just in a different order.
5. Even my pathological love of Japan and its beauties, glories and eccentricities is sorely tested by The Grudge 2, from Takashi Shimizu, a movie so bewildering and impenetrable that I believe it siphoned off a good 40 IQ points.
6. This particular Grudge proves too pointless to bear.
7. The Grudge 2 doesn't even try to make sense ... the grudge just starts going after anyone it darn well wants to, and people are getting all grudged for no reason.
8. If you have your unholy and unstoppable spirits crawling out of photo developing solution to chill the crowd, maybe this series should've quit while it was ahead.
9. Like The Grudge before it, there are multiple plots here, but this time they are more tenuously related.
10. If the Hollywood remake of The Ring spawned a short-lived interest in so-called "J-horror," The Grudge 2 ought to finally end it.
Based on these individual reviews, what is the critic consensus?

A: Consensus: A diminished sequel that makes even less sense than The Grudge 1.
1. Mildly entertaining, thanks to Cage's fine work, some romance and humor.
2. Sure, [it's] pop pabulum -- but isn't that what people want? No one wants to think too hard at the movies, anyway.
3. It's contrived schmaltz, but it's well-oiled contrived schmaltz...
4. At times, I wish I had fallen asleep and woke up elsewhere.
5. Leoni absolutely sparkles.
6. While the film fails in many ways to reach a memorable conclusion, it just might carry enough soft-hearted cheer to make a tired old married couple smile on Christmas eve.
7. Too much of the movie is pure formula nonsense.
8. The outsize ticky tackiness of Jack's new life has been stitched together out of the broadest possible series of middle American clichés.
9. The absolute choices it forces on its hapless hero are far too mutually exclusive to be credible.
10. It's the sort of steamroller seasonal entertainment calculated to make us average folks out here feel temporarily warm and happy about our averageness.
Consensus: Despite good performances by Cage and especially by Leoni, The Family Man is too predictable and derivative to add anything new to the Christmas genre. Also, it sinks under its sentimentality.
Q: 1. An aesthetically appealing anatomy of loneliness and aloneness by a Japanese filmmaker with a keen eye for the nuances of human nature.
2. Jun Ichikawa's quiet film has a power that resonates. It gives loneliness a cinematic canvas.
3. Tony Takitani conveys a powerfully tangible sense of loss and loneliness. In both concrete and existential terms, it's a film that dwells on what the dead leave behind and how the living carry on.
4. A haunting and exquisitely composed ode to the cellblocks that people build for themselves: prisons of loneliness and dependency, routine and material substitutes.
5. Whether you view it as a metaphor for a country or a singular study of the human condition, Tony Takitani explores the borders between solitude and loneliness, hunger and consumption, memory and loss.
6. Tony Takitani, fablelike and beautiful, requires a certain amount of patience, but its small, peculiar charms work their way into your soul.
7. Tony Takitani is an exquisite film, as elegant and precise as an impeccably cut diamond.
8. The movie's underlying theme is the complex relationship between objects and memories, worked out through a taut, compelling story and superbly understated acting.
9. It's a marvelously moody meditation, beautiful to look at and beautiful to ponder as the camera slowly pans from one scene to the next, framing life as still life.
10. The film gestures toward our understanding of deep matters -- grief, solitude, and the process by which people build and express their very selves -- and it does so with a commendably steady, gentle hand.
Based on these individual reviews, what is the critic consensus?

A:
Consensus: Despite its deceptive wispiness, this delicately lovely and melancholy film about loneliness has a haunting power.