I was nervous when I sat down to watch this movie last night. As an aging white male, was I ready to see a small band of young, sexy, bad-ass chicks fighting monsters and saving people while the men folk lie around looking weak and scared and confused? Could I handle an action packed adventure epic where tough, competent women pull off what the men folk can't?

But fear not! These chicks are not competent, let alone overpowering. They have no clear-cut mission, they don't work together as a team, and nothing is clearly resolved one way or the other. There's a lot of fuzzy talk as they lazily paddle their canoes, about "we're all searching for something," and "she's a lost child," and "she drinks," and "she's confused about her sexuality," but you'll find you can barely tell the five women apart, anyway.

Then the monsters attack, and it's like, instead of feeling terror you just sit there thinking, "okay, what's next? How about . . . a kangaroo covered with porcupine quills! A raccoon with the wings of a bat? Just how much COOLER can this story get?" And then our super sexy, brave chicks just put their M-16's on full automatic and blast forty or fifty rounds into the creature till it groans and falls over dead. Because women, you know, are more creative and sensitive than men. A male team wouldn't even think to shoot at the beasts, they'd just, I don't know, kill them with their bare hands. Or something. Don't imagine any of this has a point, because it doesn't!

Oh, because the jungle scenes aren't monotonous enough, every fifteen minutes or so we cut away to random scenes of Natalie Portman having sex with different guys. You can actually count every button in Natalie's spine! That's the kind of thing you notice when you're bored, and you'll notice it a lot. If you know what I mean.

So at the end, what did we learn, Charlie Brown? Girl power doesn't save the day. The girls are petulant, whiny, back-stabbing hoes, and they turn on each other within hours. They accomplish nothing, nothing is resolved, and at the end we're right back where we started.

On the plus side, those flower arrangements were really pretty. And there were some amazing glowing lights at the end!