In the steamy fight movie Never Back Down, hot TV studs Cam Gigandet (from The OC) and Sean Faris (from Life as We Know It) strip down to their shorts to reveal beautifully sculpted bodies. And though the movie is obviously targeted at straight boys, gay boys would certainly enjoy the stunning physiques on display as Sean and Cam get physical with each other.

Meanwhile, Shaolin Girl is a great movie for lesbians because it combines two of the lesbian community's favourite things — sports and sexy girls. Super-kawaii Japanese actress Kou Shibasaki plays a kung fu student who employs her shaolin moves in the game of lacrosse.

Sexy Chinese actress Kitty Zhang is also on hand to supply some Sapphic subtext to the film.

Meanwhile, all the movies touted to be good like The Happening, Get Smart and Don't Mess with the Zohan have turned out to be either bad or average. So you might as well go with our recommendations of Shaolin Girl and Never Back Down, if you're thinking of catching something now.

Till next week, enjoy!

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Lesbian viewers might wish to catch this for the cute actresses, as well as the Sapphic subtext provided by sexpuss Kitty Zhang.

The idea for the movie began in 2002 when Hong Kong's king of comedy Stephen Chow released Shaolin Soccer to great acclaim and box-office success. Chihiro Kameyama, Japan's biggest producer, immediately struck up a friendship with Stephen and the men agreed to collaborate on a project together. The result — ta da! — is Shaolin Girl, a martial arts-meet-sports movie that hopes to repeat the success of Shaolin Soccer.

So, does it? Weeeelll, not really...

Lovely Kou Shibasaki (Crying Out in the Centre of the World) plays a Japanese girl who learns shaolin kung fu with hopes of reviving her grandfather's dojo. She accepts an invitation to join a college lacrosse team and immediately starts to display astounding feats of agility with the ball and racket. Some hilarity ensues.

Directed by Katsuyuki Motohiro (of Bayside Shakedown fame), Shaolin Girl is short on laughs and action. The comedy is somewhat limp, while the action is not nearly enough. Kou Shibasaki, who is both sexy and good with the action sequences, doesn't have the comic charms of veteran Stephen Chow.

Even the lesbian undertones fail to ignite much spark.

No, this Karate Kid wannabe is not that great a martial-arts movie. But which hot-blooded gay man can resist the beautiful bodies of TV hunks Sean Faris (from Life as We Know It) and Cam Gigandet (from The OC)?

Both have bulked up and stripped down for this martial movie, and it would be a crying shame not to see their gorgeous arms, pecs and abs on the big screen. Indeed, if we didn't know any better, we would have thought that a gay man directed this movie.

What with the ample display of sweaty male bodies wrestling in steamy rooms, there's probably more homoeroticism here than any episode of Will & Grace. Just YouTube their fight sequences to see what we mean.

Sean Faris plays good-hearted football star who is beaten up by a punk kid (Cam Gigandet) in front of the whole school. With revenge on his mind, he turns to martial-arts trainer Djimon Hounsou who teaches him the art of fighting. Now you don't need to be a genius to figure out that Sean whups Cam's ass in the final confrontation...

The film is very predictable but the fight scenes are beautifully-staged. There are plenty of rib-cracking punches and contusion-inducing kicks that would make a gay man feel queasy. But those chiseled arms, pecs, abs and masculine grunting make the fight scenes bearable. Very bearable.

Thank God for comedian Steve Carrell! Hollywood's new Mr Nice Guy is a refreshing change from the fraternity of loudmouthed gasbags like Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler, Owen Wilson and Rob Schneider who trade on gross-out humour and pure rudeness.

Funny and talented as he is though, he still can't save Get Smart from being a fairly generic and ultimately forgettable comedy. He plays the dumb intelligence agent Maxwell Smart (made popular by the 1960s TV series) who has to stop the evil agency CHAOS from wrecking the world.

His field partner is the beautiful Agent 99, played by Anne Hathaway who seems to be everywhere these days. (Anne, incidentally, is touted by Entertainment Weekly as the next Julia Roberts — but we beg to differ.) Somewhere between the slips and pratfalls, the two succeed in saving the world...

Directed by Peter Segal, who's made okay comedies like 50 First Dates and Nutty Professor II, Get Smart sticks to the tried-and-true in getting people to laugh. But it lacks the zing and sparkle that made the TV series such a gem.

Indeed, if the movie's humour level had been lower, it might just have drawn accusations of being another bad remake, like 2006's The Pink Panther with Steve Martin. Remember that?

Exactly what has happened to M Night Shyamalan? His movies are getting progressively worse. And perhaps, as an admission of his own creative downfall, The Happening is the first film in which Night does not make a cameo. (All his other films, including The Sixth Sense, Signs and The Lady in the Water, had him appear briefly.)

The Happening stars Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel as a married couple who are running away from an airborne toxin spreading across the country. The toxin induces people to kill themselves, causing massive deaths in towns and cities. But it appears that the toxin is not just some accident man-made by-product, but the seed of something else, something more natural...

Laudable in concept but lousy in execution, The Happening is by far the worst film in Night's oeuvre. Much of the dialogue is stiff, the acting inferior and the direction pure haphazard. It's the biggest disappointment of the summer movie season, along with Speed Racer and The Incredible Hulk.

Avoid this like an airborne toxin...

Don't Mess with the Zohan? More like A Mess with the Zohan. We know, we know, the trailer was hilarious. But the actual movie is not. (That argument must sound familiar to seasoned moviegoers by now.)

Adam Sandler plays Zohan, an Israeli soldier who secretly dreams of being a hairdresser in New York. He fakes his own death during a clash between Israeli and Palestinian forces, and stows away to Manhattan to fulfill his ambition.

Ironically, the only salon that would hire a greenhorn like him happens to be run by a beautiful Palestinian girl (comely Emmanuelle Chriqui). Zohan is an immediate hit with her salon's older female clientele because he flirts with them and screws them after every haircut. Happy as Zohan is, his idyll is about to be destroyed when his nemesis from the Middle East finds him in the US...

Now the premise sounds promising — as promising as the trailer made the movie look — but the actual full-length feature is remarkably disappointing. The direction is sloppy, the jokes are gross or limp, and cynical stereotypes abound.

And yes, let's not forget to mention the mean, homophobic jokes that by now have become standard fare in Adam Sandler's movies. Remember I Pronounce You Chuck and Larry? We pronounce Adam a plain old bigot.

READ full review in Fridae Lifestyle Movie Review

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