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# Film Reviews: Miracle, Barbershop 2, The Company and Other Openings
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/whats-playing-20040213/
- Published: 2004-02-13T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T03:47:23.000Z
- Author: Dan Dunn
- Tags: Entertainment, Santa Monica, #archive-import

MIRACLE Twenty-four years after broadcaster Al Michaels famously posed the question, this film elicits another emphatic answer from a nation that finds itself in crisis once again: Yes, we still believe in miracles.

BARBERSHOP 2: BACK IN BUSINESS A sequel that in many ways outshines the original. Ice Cube and Cedric the Entertainer lead a winning ensemble cast.

THE COMPANY Robert Altman, the regnant maestro of the ensemble film, orchestrates this rhythmic stunner about a ballet troupe with delicate precision.

THE BIG BOUNCE Owen Wilson does what he can to drag this crap-py comedy along, but he’s held back by an inert narrative and a stagnant supporting cast.

THE PERFECT SCORE A morality play that doesn’t play very well at all, due to bad pacing, lame dialogue and a half-baked plot held loosely together by a series of preposterously opportune circumstances.

WIN A DATE WITH TAD HAMILTON! Forty years ago, this film would have been a hit. Today, it misses.

THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT A no-thrills thriller that gets sillier as it lists toward a wholly preposterous finale.

ALONG CAME POLLY Ultimately sags due to an absence of chemistry between the leads and a surprising shortage of crisp comedy.

TORQUE An eye-popping, all-out assault on the senses that makes very little sense. A big-budget shill for designer motorcycles, Budweiser and Mountain Dew, set to a kinetic soundtrack.

CHASING LIBERTY Despite an arrant disregard for verisimilitude, this is an undeniably pleasant fairy tale about an 18-year-old girl coming of age under highly unusual circumstances.

MONSTER Serves as a grim reminder of humanity’s very real and limitless capacity for evil. Charlize Theron delivers a career-defining performance.

BIG FISH If you’re willing to lose yourself for a few hours in a surrealist fish story, well, it’s hard to imagine anything better than what Burton has conceived here.

THE COOLER Wayne Kramer’s lowdown on the desperate lives of lost souls in Las Vegas is easily one of the best bets this year.

SOMETHING’S GOTTA GIVE If you enjoy lots of jokes about May-December romances and erectile dysfunction, this is the film for you.

IN AMERICA An inescapably moving elegy about pain and loss and hope and renewal that unabashedly wears its broken heart on its tattered sleeve.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 13, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/021304.pdf?ref=smdp.com)