Watching the Detectives - Paul Soter's directorial debut takes him partially away from his Broken Lizard roots but not so far that Steve Lemme can't make a brief cameo. It's as much or more of a departure for Cillian Murphy, who plays hapless video store owner Neil, a diehard movie buff who's trying to keep his store Gumshoe Video alive while the local Media Giant steals all his customers. Otherwise, Neil has a pretty boring life until a weird chick named Violet (Lucy Liu) walks into his store and starts to turn his life upside-down with all sorts of cruel jokes. Although her jokes are aggravating, Neil becomes quite smitten with this precocious danger junkie, as she takes him on all sorts of adventures, bringing out his dormant wild side.

"Watching the Detectives" is mostly about this odd relationship, and it really wouldn't work if not for the chemistry of its two leads, who create a similar dynamic as Jonathan Demme's "Something Wild." It's certainly a nice stretch for Murphy to be doing this kind of comedy and he's really likeable in a similar way as John Cusack or Steve Carell in "40-Year-Old Virgin", and Lucy Liu somehow manages to make the bratty 6-year-old demeanor of Violet adorable and even endearing. The Cusack comparisons even extends to Neil's video store setting and the patter among Neil's nerdy coworkers, which is similar to that of "High Fidelity."

Still, this is a very light comedy with very little drama or darkness, the only real places where you're taken out of the tone of the story being oddly, when Neil and Violet hook up in a steamy love scene, and later, when Neil tries to cater to Violet's attraction towards musicians in a silly musical scene. Both scenes make it seem like Soter doesn't always have a clear idea where this story is going, but fortunately, things are pulled together by the end, and other than those two moments, Soter shows promise as a filmmaker with what ends up being a sweet, hip and fun indie comedy. Rating: 8/10

Suburban Girl - Marc Klein took two stories from Melissa Bank's book "The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing" and smooshed them into this modern May-to-September romantic comedy. It starts out well enough, every bit as strong as any mainstream chick flick with Sarah Michelle Gellar as associate editor Brett Eisenberg, trying to make it in the pretentious world of New York publishing. It's a good set-up for a movie like "Devil Wears Prada" or "Sex in the City" but then it gets hijacked by the real story, which is more about the awkward and unbelievable relationship between Gellar and Alec Baldwin's Archie Knox, the much older editor-in-chief at a competing publisher.

This is where the movie starts to get aggravating since despite their age difference, Gellar and Baldwin don't really seem like a good match, and predictably, the movie spends a lot of time dealing with the problems of dating someone significantly older or younger as the people around Brett and Archie react to their relationship. Obviously, things can't possibly work out and they fight, then break-up and it doesn't take too much to realize that eventually they'll get back together again. (In the meantime, there's plenty of other meaningless subplots like one involving Brett's supportive father and his health problems.)

Very little about the movie is particularly original, but it already loses some credibility from the moment Brett and Archie meet. Going by his past conquests, Archie would be far more likely to be attracted to Brett's fashion designer friend, played by Maggie Grace, then the gawky intellectual. The movie does have a few nice moments, but mostly, the movie coasts long with flat and dry dialogue, more like a TV drama than a comedy with the two best laughs coming so late in the movie that most people will have already tuned out.

Who knows why someone would want to make the type of romantic comedy that would normally appeal to teen girls, but telling it more from the viewpoint of the kind and loving middle-aged man taking advantage of this younger woman's naivety. Basically, it winds up being no better or worse than Steve Martin's Shop Girl, except it doesn't even have Jason Schwartzman to bring some laughs to the table. Then again, it's already unfortunate timing that the movie includes a moment where Baldwin's character talks about what a bad father he is to his daughter, who is Brett's age. Considering Baldwin's recent problems, it just sets the movie up for way too many awkward laughs as things progress. Rating: 6/10