Thriller ‘The Forgotten’ appropriately named

In theaters

THE FORGOTTEN, directed by Joseph Ruben, written by Gerald Di Pego, 91 minutes, rated PG-13.

Choosing a title for a movie is crucial yet tricky business. For instance, should you decide to call your movie about a sweet-natured, bovine-loving girl “Cow Patty,” you certainly don’t want it to smell like one to audiences. I mean, imagine the headlines should “Cow Patty” be a stinker.

Such is the case with “The Forgotten,” a dumb movie about a handful of dead children who are mysteriously forgotten by most of their parents.

What nobody attached to this beauty likely wanted from audiences is the sort of negative word of mouth that found them saying “forget it” to their friends. But just try stopping them. “The Forgotten” is beyond forgettable – it’s amnesiac – standing tall as one of the lamest, most ill-conceived movies of the year.

In it, the fine actress Julianne Moore proves she can be rather abominable given the wrong part. Here, she’s Telly Paretta, a grieving mother of a dead son, Sam (Christopher Kovaleski), who is told by her psychiatrist, Dr. Munce (Gary Sinise), and her husband, Jim (Anthony Edwards), that she never had a child. In fact, Telly is informed that she’s a psychotic who miscarried. Her vivid memories of her son and her maternal bond with him are the stuff of fiction, manufactured by her warped psyche.

Tenacious Telly believes otherwise, which leads her to Ash (Dominic West), a former professional hockey player who turned to drink after the death of his daughter, which he somehow forgot.

After some rather embarrassing, emotional histrionics from Ash, he remembers his daughter and soon both he and Telly are on the case, which in this case means they’re on the run from a band of creepy, dark-suited evildoers out to undo them.

And, my, do they all run. In this movie, people do more running than anyone in “Chariots of Fire” and “Forrest Gump” combined. They run through the streets of Manhattan, they run over bridges, they run through fields, abandoned buildings and airplane hangars, and they even run through exploding glass windows without once getting cut by the flying debris.

More astonishing is what Telly and Ash are running toward – the truth – which won’t be revealed here, though the television ads and the film’s trailer freely suggest it’s steeped in some sort of weird science fiction. When the vague, murky conclusion hits, the letdown is as colossal as Alfre Woodard’s wig. Woodard plays a detective in “The Forgotten,” and while she’s the best part of the movie, my feeling is that she’ll probably want to join the rest of the cast in forgetting all of this.

Grade: D-

On video and DVD

MEAN GIRLS, directed by Mark Waters, written by Tina Fey, based on the book “Queen Bees and Wannabes” by Rosalind Wiseman, 93 minutes, rated PG-13.

Pop culture has taught us plenty about mean girls. Mean girls are controlling, crafty and insincere. They’re sexually promiscuous and duplicitous, vain kittens who use their feminine wiles to reach higher positions of social status while, in the process, striving toward some sort of empty notoriety.

It’s just that stereotype that is bolstered in Mark Waters’ “Mean Girls,” a funny satire peppered with a few savage insights into how cruel teen girls can be to one another. The movie isn’t as mean as it could have been – it’s no “Election,” for instance – but it does make its point that girl fighting can get downright dirty if the opportunities present themselves.

The movie stars Lindsay Lohan as 16-year-old Cady Heron, a nice girl who has been home-schooled her entire life until her family moves from Africa to Illinois.

There at her new high school, she is befriended first by Goth geeks Janis (Lizzy Kaplan) and Damian (Daniel Frazese) before her good looks attract the Plastics, a trio of mean girls led by the vicious Regina (Rachel McAdams).

When Janis and Damian convince Cady to infiltrate the group and get the goods on the girls, she does so blindly yet willingly – and thus unwittingly sets herself up for the seductive pull of popularity and finds out what it takes for some to achieve it and how ugly it can be to maintain it.

The movie was written by Tina Fey of “Saturday Night Live,” who also co-stars as Ms. Norbury, a math professor caught in the passive-aggressive cattiness that unfolds when Cady’s meddling interferes with the all-important high school hierarchy.

It’s Fey’s examination of that peculiar caste system that gives “Mean Girls” the layers a lesser film would have lacked. She knows the ridiculous importance placed on who sits where in the cafeteria, for instance, and she knows that social suicide in high school can be committed merely by acknowledging the wrong person. Fey sees the humor in that, but she also sees the danger, the absurdity and the pain it can cause.

As such, “Mean Girls,” in all its episodic parts, has the air of a memoir, and it likely will feel sufficiently familiar to some of those who watch.

Grade: B+

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, 5:30 p.m. Thursdays on WLBZ 2 Bangor and WCSH 6 Portland, and are archived at RottenTomatoes.com. He may be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.