Despite the fact that it's been slashed down from a six-hour British miniseries to a two-hour Hollywood suspense film, Peter Travers recommends moviegoers check out the "gripping" State of Play this week. The film stars Russell Crowe as a reporter investigating the suspicious death of his best friend's mistress (the pal is a politician played by Ben Affleck). "From this sex scandal unravels every kind of possible conniving horror that could go on in the world we all live in," Travers says. Directed by The Last King of Scotland helmer Kevin MacDonald, Travers also liked how the film is "a movie in love with the newspaper business."

And then there's the Scum Bucket: Peter Travers doesn't hate Zac Efron, it's movies starring Zac Efron that Travers can't stand, and that includes all three of the High School Musicals.

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Rock is alive and rolling like thunder in Next To Normal. It’s the best musical of the season by a mile (take that Billy Elliot), an emotional powerhouse with a fire in its soul and a wicked wit that burns just as fiercely. Composer Tom Kitt and writer-lyricist Brian Yorkey have broken the shackles of tired Broadway tradition, pushing it in new directions. OK, sometimes push comes to shove. But the effect is never less than mesmerizing.

Like Spring Awakening, Next To Normal shakes up old forms. It’s the ultimate dysfunctional family musical. The opening number, “Just Another Day,” is deceptively conventional. After quickie sex with her surprised husband Dan (J. Robert Spencer), mom Diana (Alice Ripley) sends her teen children, Gabe (Aaron Tveit) and Natalie (Jennifer Damiano), off to school. But there’s a jangle in the song, even a hint of threat. For good reason. Diana is a bipolar manic-depressive who has kept her family off balance for years. The reasons are revealed in time, and they won’t be given away here. Just know this:

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Photo: Mickshaw/FOX
Even with Quentin Tarantino acting as mentor — and the dude knows his music! — the American Idol Movie Song Night struck more sour notes than Britney singing live. Don't get me wrong, dawgs, I'm picking Adam Lambert for the Big Win on confetti night. But Adam was coasting on past triumphs with "Mad World" and "Tracks of My Tears" when he tore into Steppenwolf's "Born To Be Wild" like a show queen trying to pass as rough trade. It was fun, but unpersuasive. And, dammit to hell, it's not a song written for a movie. It's a song that got used in movie — Easy Rider to be specific. There's a difference.

(Check out photos from the current season of American Idol)

What happened to integrity of the concept? Only Kris Allen, singing "Falling Slowly" from the romantic musical Once, stayed true to the form and delivered — for me (if not for judge Randy Jackson) —the performance of the night. Judge Kara DioGuardi called the song "obscure," though it charted at No. 2 and won the Oscar as Best Original Song of 2007. Bette Midler's "The Rose" is a solid tune, but Lil Rounds sang it in the key of karaoke. The other contestants just showed bad song and/or bad movie taste.

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The ink-dark comedy Observe and Report is a movie designed to push buttons. But one scene in particular seems to be pushing too hard. The scene involves Seth Rogen's character, delusional mall cop Ronnie Barnhardt, in bed with the women on his dirty dreams, Brandi (Anna Faris), the blondie at the makeup counter on whom Ronnie has focused his freaky lust. At dinner, Ronni had plied his date with Valium washed down with tequila shots to the point where she pukes and passes out. But there's Ronnie on top of Brandi in bed, grunting away over her dead-to-the-world body.

(Watch Peter Travers' video review of Observe and Report)

Ew? You bet. Definite date rape. But wait. Brandi wakes up to slur the line, “Did I tell you to stop, motherfucker?"

Does that make the sex consensual and therefore OK? In interviews, Rogen has indicated that he thinks so. Others disagree."It's a date rape scene, no ifs, ands and buts," Jennifer Storm, a rape survivor and educator in Harrisburg, Pa., told ABCNews.com. "If you mumble an acknowledgment while blacked out, that is not informed consent."

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Photo: Walt Disney Pictures
I have already hammered Hannah Montana: The Movie in print, online, on video podcast and on Twitter. I now give up. I hereby accept that the Miley Cyrus exercise in tween star power pleased its audience.

Just who are those ticketbuyers? Variety reports that the audience on opening day was 79 percent female with 60 percent between the ages of 2 and 17. Two-year-old interest I can understand. But I have no respect for anyone past puberty who didn't pay for a ticket to Smiley Miley and then sneak into Seth Rogen's Observe and Report.

But, like I said, the fight is over. Hannah Montana: The Movie grossed a huge $34 million over the weekend even if it did drop a fat 40 percent from Friday to Saturday, suggesting the G-rated audience came out early. There's no arguing with money. Movies, up 12 percent over last year, are thriving in an economic recession. I only wish the public was turning out for the good ones. Instead, it's the crap that's selling. So here's my question: Is Hannah Montana: The Movie really the worst No. 1 movie to open so far in 2009?

Here are the other assaults on intelligence that rode the box-office to glory. I'd like to hear what you think is the absolute worst. The only qualification? Your movie choice must have raked in big bucks (Push and the Jonas Brothers 3D Concert actually tanked) and sucked like a retro rocket. Below are a dozen on my personal target list to get you started:

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Photo: Walt Disney Pictures

Look, the studio didn't show me the movie. Why would they? So the trailer is all I have. The darned thing lasts only two minutes and 17 seconds, but it still sent me spiraling into sugar shock. The funny thing is that Miley Cyrus, chatting on TV, comes off as an appealingly tough cookie. On screen, at least in this trailer, she looks so Disneyfied she's practically a cartoon character. The target audience of tweens willingly believes that no one can tell the difference between Miley and her pop star alter ego, Hannah Montana. Miley's blonde wig works like Clark Kent's glasses. Got that?

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There are two films At the Movies this weekend, Observe & Report and Hannah Montana: The Movie. Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers tells us that one of these films is worth seeing; the other is instant Scum Bucket material. Guess which one is which.

Let's kick things off with Observe & Report, starring the Judd Apatow All-Stars' starting power forward Seth Rogen. Described by Travers as both a "comedy version of Taxi Driver" and "Seth Rogen: Mall Cop," the film tells the story of a mall security guard in Albuquerque who is in pursuit of a flasher that has startled the department store's make-up counter girl, played by Anna Faris.

While this sounds conventional, there will definitely be many audience members out there who will leave disappointed after not getting the kind of humor they've come to expect from Rogen's turns in Knocked Up and Pineapple Express. It's not for everyone, but, "this is the kind of twisted critic I am, these are the kind of things I like," Travers says. The film was written and directed by Jody Hill, a "certifiable lunatic" who along with actor Danny McBride helped create The Foot Fist Way and the hilarious HBO series Eastbound & Down (which just got re-upped for Season Two, holla.)

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Photo: Eshelman/FilmMagic

I came to standup comedian and actor Russell Brand late, through movies. One movie in particular, 2008's Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Brand radiates star quality and ace comic timing as rocker and recovering addict Aldous Snow, the sexually insatiable lead singer of Infant Sorrow. Brand is priceless when a pushy waiter (Jonah Hill) asks if Aldous has listened to his audition CD. "I was going to," says Brand in an accent that blends Keith Richards with Monty Python, "but then I just carried on livin' my life." Me? I don't know how I carried on livin' my life without Brand. Luckily he'll play Aldous again in Get Him To the Greek, which will film soon.

The hot news now is that Brand has written a memoir—an odd name for a book (just published in the U.S.) that explodes off its pages like verbal dynamite. It's called My Booky Wook (a phrase right out of A Clockwork Orange) and details a life both hilarious and harrowing. Brand's addictions, encompassing alcohol, sex and heroin, are no laughing matter. Neither was his childhood. But his brilliant, brutally honest book hits you right in the gutty-wuts. Brand doesn't just use language, he breathes it. For him, humor is a form of healing expression. It's hard to put My Booky Wook down. And even if you do, you want to pick it right up again. It's that addictive. I talked to Brand recently on Popcorn, the interview show I host on ABC News NOW. I felt a bit of trepidation at first, as you can see here:

But talk to Brand for just a few minutes—or read his tweets (he's a mad witty Twitter user)—and you know you're in the presence of someone uniquely crazy and crazily human. His response to my question about a typical day in his life brought forth a burst of twisted comic poetry that hit me like, well how does it hit you?

Fast and Furious collided with critics and emerged without a scratch on its box-office fenders. As I predicted, the fourth chapter in a dying franchise got a fresh fuel injection thanks to the return of Vin Diesel to the role that made him a star and grossed a musclebound $72.5 million to become the biggest movie opening so far this year. My condolences to Vin D if his success traps him in a role that requires only that he stay in shape and show up. In a broken economy audiences are hungry for escapist fare that requires pure sensation with no strain on the brain. Fast and Furious more than fills the bill. All those wheelies and powerslides are designed to obliterate thought. Talk about a movie for its time. And talk about those cars! Despite the movie's failure as coherent drama or coherent anything, it delivers the goods once pedal hits the metal. Which makes me think of other car movies. Here are my best and worst. Feel free to add yours.

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At The Movies this week is Fast and Furious, which — as Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers points out — should not be confused with 2001's The Fast and the Furious. One film had two The's in the title, the other one does not. Sadly, that's where the differences end as both Paul Walker and Vin Diesel rejoin the franchise after neither appeared (in a non-cameo role, at least) in the third installment, Tokyo Drift. Regardless of the title — call it Slow and Stupid if you want — this film is Scum Bucket-bound, as the muscle cars and babes aren't enough to cancel out the flick's ill-conceived plot points. Example: Diesel is a fugitive from the law, the police can't catch him, yet he's living at his sister's house in Los Angeles. Guess they didn't think to look there.

Also, Travers checks out the new comedy Adventureland, starring Twilight's Kristen Stewart and directed by that guy who made Superbad.

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