Going to the movies should be fun. Sometimes that fun is just a byproduct of a great film, expertly made, that blows you away with a deep understanding of human interaction and dramatic arcs. Other times the fun comes from sitting down in a darkened theatre, shutting off your higher brain functions, eating some popcorn and letting a movie sweep you away with action and adrenaline-fueled fun. One is not better than the other. They serve different functions. TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON is the latter and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Pixar Animation Studios has a knack for dreaming up wildly inventive story ideas and then seeing them through to finished film with a consistency of quality that no other studio has been able to match. Movies like WALL-E, UP and the TOY STORY series have critics drooling over themselves like Anton Ego over a plate of RATATOUILLE. Then in 2006 Pixar released the first CARS to middling reviews. It was deemed an acceptable movie, good by some standards but not great like we have come to expect from Pixar.

Then something strange happened. Children latched on to CARS. More so than any other Pixar film CARS spoke to the youth market. Toy sales went crazy. Sure parents weren’t as sucked into the story as they might perhaps like – the movie being equivalent of watching cars race in circles around a track – but they didn’t argue when their children wanted to watch it again and again. CARS was a hit with the audience Pixar was created to please. That has to be a win in anyone’s book.

GOOD NEIGHBOURS is now playing in Toronto and Vancouver

A few days ago I was walking through a bookstore with a female friend of mine. Like myself she is an avid reader and spent some time perusing the shelves in the fiction, fantasy and science fiction sections. She even took a quick gander at the erotic section to see if humour-erotica had been invented yet (it hasn’t). The only section she wouldn’t give any time to was what she referred to as chick-lit. This got me thinking about women as a target audience. It seems like everything marketed towards women has Sandra Bullock or Nicholas Sparks attached. Wouldn’t it be great if a movie came out that was for women but didn’t cater to the rom-com mold?

That vacancy in the marketplace is where the new movie BRIDESMAIDS fits in. It’s being billed as THE HANGOVER with women, but I saw it as the x chromosomal answer to KNOCKED UP, instead. Where THE HANGOVER was filled with unexpected occurrences and mystery KNOCKED UP was about friendship, relationships and how people relate and deal with those around them. This is the realm in which BRIDESMAIDS shines. The characters are all women (save turns by Jon Hamm and Chris O’Dowd as the Bellamy and the gentleman) and the conversations that occur are what film has been missing.

"Repeaters" opens in Toronto and Montreal on April 22.

PAUL is a funny movie with the heart that Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are quickly coming to be known for.