Underworld (2003)

At heart, this is an old-fashioned monster flick decked out with Hollywood's full battery of high-tech visual effects. It's as goofy as it is gory -- stay away if you don't like in-your-face mayhem.

Visually it's wild fun, since fledgling feature director Len Wiseman started off in production design, and creature designer Patrick Tatopoulos's diverse credits span from "Godzilla" to "Stuart Little." Yet with Underworld's guilty pleasures come copious clinkers, from its nuts-and-bolts narrative foundation to Wiseman's inability to direct actors beyond cartoonish interaction.

The funny thing about all this is that a half-hour into Underworld I couldn't wait for it to be over. When it really was over, I couldn't wait for the next installment. Go figure.

Takes itself so seriously that it never has fun with its shopworn genre elements.

Alas, as is often the case with lower-end genre movies, the story cooked up by Wiseman and his friends, actor Kevin Grevioux and the film's screenwriter, Danny McBride, is decidedly less important than the look of the film and its influences.