Running time: 101 minutes . . .

BACK in the day, nerds were bullied by jocks. The premise of School For Scoundrels (itself a remake of the 1960 comedy . . . and last film by the ill-fated British director Robert Hamer) is that the nerds are now bullied by a lifestyle coach who despises their reliance on self-help. "You can't help yourself, because yourself sucks."

Billy Bob Thornton reprises his Bad Santa nastiness as Doctor P, a confidence-building guru who is so competitive he steals the girlfriend of his top student, Ralph (Napoleon Dynamite's Jon Heder).

Director Todd (Old School) Phillips brings little comic freshness to School For Scoundrels, but it sustains an hilarious, nasty glee in the way it assaults self-help thinking and evolutionary competitive theory while serving up lashings of mandatory nerd abuse in the process.

The Number 23 (Joe Schumacher): Jim Carrey, Virginia Madsen, Danny Huston, Logan Lerman.

Running time: 95 minutes .

THE only enigma surrounding The Number 23 . . . a psychological thriller about a man driven nuts by number theory . . . is why it was greenlighted by a studio. It's a laborious, tortuous affair, 95 minutes too long with a twist that has all the joy of a bad sprain. Jim Carrey plays Walter Sparrow, a dog catcher who is given a copy of a noirish novel by his wife Agatha (Virginia Madsen).

Fingleton, the detective in the story (also played by Carrey in a horribly over-stylised set) is obsessed with the number 23 which leads him to commit murder. Sparrow, meanwhile, finds the book begins to mirror his own life and worries that he too might be about to put a knife in someone's chest.

The half-baked script looks like it was written by a film student after a long, stoned night watching Fight Club and Pi. Director Joel Schumacher plods through the twin storyline as if he were hiking through quicksand in lead boots and a suit of armour. Jim Carrey is up to his neck in it too, terribly miscast with an Iron Maiden mullet. He plays it like he is in on the joke; Virginia Madsen just looks like she needs the cheque.

Paul Lynch

Because I Said So (Michael Lehmann): Diane Keaton, Mandy Moore, Piper Parebo.

Running time: 102 mins .

I'M biased in favour of Diane Keaton ever since we met at a preOscars party in LA in 1976. She went on to captivate audiences everywhere in Annie Hall and Manhattan. Some found her endearingly kooky mannerisms tiresome as she aged, but I didn't find so in Something's Gotta Give.

So it's with genuine regret that I admit I wanted to strangle her after Because I Said So, a romcom that might have worked with almost any other actress in her place. She plays an interfering divorcee mother who's never had an orgasm and takes it out on her youngest unmarried daughter, whose self-esteem she unthinkingly undermines at every opportunity.

We're supposed to warm to her once we realise her behaviour is a reflection of her own inner insecurity, but in truth it's just the self-parodying indulgence of an actress who has never been told she's not funny.

Sorry, Diane, grow up before we forget how good you once were.

Ciaran Carty