Simon Birch

While it's true that interesting books rarely make interesting movies, they can, in the right hands, be dumbed down into perfectly good family entertainment. Writer-director Mark Steven Johnson has just those hands: He's taken John Irving's beloved and deeply religious novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and turned it into a nicely played but wholly unadventurous film that's as spiritually edifying as Touched by an Angel. In the kind of idyllic New England town that only Pepperidge Farm remembers -- pristine clapboard houses, gleaming church steeples, autumn leaves year-round -- an adult Joe Wenteworth (Jim Carrey) recalls the events of his 12th year and ...