In theaters

DOMESTIC DISTURBANCE, Directed by Harold Becker, written by Lewis Colick, 88 minutes, Rated PG-13.

Harold Becker’s “Domestic Disturbance” is like an old circus animal, one that’s performed its tricks so many times, it can barely muster the strength to perform them again.

The film, from a script by Lewis Colick, stars John Travolta as Frank Morrison, a divorced, recovering alcoholic who learns his family’s third-generation boat building business is about to go belly up just as his ex-wife, Susan (Teri Polo), is set to marry the local town stud, Rick Barnes (Vince Vaughn).

What’s remarkable about Frank is that neither of these events seems to phase him. He’s so complacent and emotionally removed, so absurdly mild-mannered and detached, he’s less like a man facing a turning point in his life than he is a pod person who just stepped off the mother ship.

Grounding him is his teen-age son, Danny (Matt O’Leary), whose compulsive lying and frequent entanglements with the law have become something of a problem. Indeed, when Danny claims he just witnessed his new step-dad kill a man named Ray (Steve Buscemi) before roasting him in a brick oven, nobody knows whether to believe him – or to send him to bed without dinner.

Frank certainly wants to believe – it would, after all, be irresistible if Susan had married a murderer. But even he isn’t sure. Is Danny just lying to get his parents back together? Or could it be that the boy really is telling the truth?

Anyone who’s seen the film’s trailer or its television ads knows the answer – it’s freely, stupidly given away. But for those who don’t know, it’ll likely come as a letdown that Becker and Colick spin no mystery surrounding Ray’s death.

“Domestic Disturbance” is too short to be awful and a few scenes do simmer, particularly when Vaughn and Buscemi share the screen, but it never escapes its movie-of-the-week feel and there isn’t one genuine surprise tucked within its lazy script.

Becker, who once had a career of note in the late ’70s and ’80s with such films as “The Onion Field,” “Taps” and his best movie, “Sea of Love,” has since hammered out a decade’s worth of disappointments with “Malice,” “Mercury Rising,” “The Black Marble” and now this, a movie that’s so generic and carefully formulaic, the best way to enjoy it is to not see it at all.

Grade: D+

On video and DVD

THE GOLDEN BOWL, directed by James Ivory, written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, based on Henry James’ novel, 130 minutes, rated R.

Toward the end of “The Golden Bowl,” the latest Merchant-Ivory collaboration based on a novel by Henry James, Charlotte Stant (Uma Thurman), a mincing American socialite living abroad in England and Italy, makes a throwaway comment that gets to the crack in the film’s foundation: “Ultimately, I found it rather contrived.”

The line, which is supposed to be Charlotte’s opinion of a novel she’s given as a gift, pops off the screen in ways that James Ivory, the film’s director, and Ismail Merchant, its producer, probably never intended.

Indeed, “The Golden Bowl” hinges on a plot contrivance that’s given such heavy-handed treatment – it involves the golden bowl of the title – it undermines what’s otherwise a gorgeous-looking period piece that gets the small details right.

In brief, the plot: When Charlotte and the Italian prince Amerigo (Jeremy Northam) realize they can’t wed due to financial considerations – both are broke – they slyly rekindle their romance after Amerigo marries the heiress Maggie Verver (Kate Beckinsale) and Charlotte marries Maggie’s billionaire father, Adam (Nick Nolte).

To say that complications ensue is an understatement. As Charlotte and Amerigo lose all sense and sensibility and fall hard into each other’s arms, Maggie and Adam join their swanky friends in becoming suspicious of the couple’s growing fondness for each other.

Filmed on location in Europe, “The Golden Bowl” is sublime in its locales and terrific in its bitchy social situations, but the performances are often too stagy and wooden to suit. Thurman and Nolte generate the best heat, but Beckinsale was better as the lipsticked nurse in “Pearl Harbor” (that’s not a compliment), Northam will probably never be allowed back into Italy after playing Amerigo as an Italian stereotype, and Angelica Huston, who appears as Maggie’s grimacing American friend, Fanny, vacillates between an accent that’s downright Texan – and outright British.

“The Golden Bowl” isn’t a wash, but those craving a cinematic dose of James would be better served renting two superior films – Iaian Softley’s “The Wings of the Dove” and Agnieszka Holland’s “Washington Square.”

Grade: C+

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Tuesdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5” and Thursdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5:30” on WLBZ-2 and WCSH-6. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.

THE VIDEO/DVD CORNER

Renting a video or a DVD? NEWS film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores.

Doctor Zhivago

(DVD debut) ?A-

The Golden Bowl ? C+

Legally Blonde ? B+

Shrek ? A-

Aimee & Jaguar ? A

The Animal ? B

Swordfish ? C

With a Friend Like Harry ? A-

Dr. Dolittle 2 ? C-

Dumbo (DVD debut) ? A

Final Fantasy:

The Spirits Within ? C+

Freddy Got Fingered ? BOMB

Monty Python and the Holy

Grail ? B+

Angel Eyes ? C+

Cats & Dogs ? B+

Star Wars: The Phantom

Menace (DVD debut)-B

Town & Country ? C+

Bridget Jones’s Diary ? A-

One Night at McCool’s ? C-

Snow White and the Seven

Dwarfs (DVD debut) ? A+

Heartbreakers ? B+

The Mummy Returns ? D

Along Came a Spider ? C-

Citizen Kane

(DVD debut) ? A+

A Knight’s Tale ? C

Amores Perros ? A

Crocodile Dundee in Los

Angeles ? C-

Driven ? D

The Luzhin Defense ? B+

Startup.com ? A-

The Widow of St. Pierre ? A-

Spy Kids ? A-

Blow ? D+

Someone Like You ? D

The Dish ? A-

Exit Wounds ? D

Memento ? A-