SPIDERMAN villain James Franco leads the cast of this dull, Boy's Own-style World War One adventure drama.

It's about the first fighter pilots . . . the Lafayette Escadrille, a ragtag squadron of American pioneers under French command. But after 140 minutes of episodic story, it is still waiting to take off.

It's a novices-to-veterans war staple: a petty criminal, a black boxer and a couple of well-to-do chaps must learn to fly, crash-land and enjoy the short time they have left on earth, while Franco's young pilot taxis after a young mademoiselle.

The pilots, sans parachutes, then fly against the German tri-planes with handguns in their pockets in case they go up in flames: "you could jump several thousand feet or you can take the quick and painless way out."

But it's inauthentic stuff: the sets, the uniforms and the cinematography have the shiny patina of an MGM musical. The buzz of first flight and whiteknuckle aerial combat is rendered lifeless by blue screen graphics: when the pilots should be gurning from G-force turns and dives, they instead have the bored expression of a person sitting on a chair in a studio having to imagine being inside a cockpit with wind blowing in their face. Donegal actor Keith McErlean plays a luckless pilot.

Wedding Daze
(Michael Ian Black) Jason Biggs, Isla Fisher, Joanna Gleason
Running time: 90 minutes

ONE of the joys of movie watching is that it affords us a vast spectrum of behaviour, emotions and situations to experience without having to live it for ourselves. For example: after sitting through 90 minutes of Wedding Daze, I now know what it is like to die a slow, painful death from myxomatosis.

This coma-inducing comedy stars Jason Biggs as a maudlin no-hoper whose previous girlfriend drops dead in a restaurant when he proposes to her smeared in baby oil, wearing woman's knickers and cupid's wings. She was lucky.

One year later, and still depressed, he pops the question to a stranger on a whim . . . a waitress played by Isla Fisher.

The film spends the remaining time trying to convince us that they should be together, when really, they should just split up and let us all go home an hour early.

It's written and directed by US comedian Michael Ian Black and is as light and sparkly as a bag of rainsodden coal.

Paradise Lost (John Stockwell) Melissa George, Josh Duhamel, Olivia Wilde, Beau Garrett, Desmond Askew
Running time: 93 minutes
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THIS borderline exploitation horror film follows in the tradition of Eli Roth's Hostel: an international cocktail of bikinis and brutality. It concerns a band of backpackers left stranded in rural Brazil after their bus takes a dive off a cliff.

They stumble upon a paradise beach with a bar and some lascivious locals.

As always, it's too good to be true: they wake up the next morning having been drugged with all their possessions robbed. Worse, they then find themselves the target of a nasty cartel headed by a doctor schooled in the medicine of Josef Mengele.

A pre-credit sequence, which shows obliquely a woman pleading for mercy while a doctor prepares to disembowel her, should give you an idea of what's involved.

Highlights include a man having an eyeball skewered with a kebab stick, limbs whacked off with machetes, and then there's the work of the doctor himself.

Mellisa George of Home and Away fame stars as a clearheaded backpacker.