Now-a-Dollar Aug. 12

Big stars and big budgets can't add up to big entertainment this week at second-run theaters.

DC comics' Green Lantern comes to the screen with Ryan Reynolds as a test pilot recruited into an intergalactic police force. CGI costumes and giant monster space clouds -- plus a game Peter Sarsgaard as the scenery-chewing villain -- don't help make up for a story that feels like it was just churned off the superhero movie assembly line.

Tom Hanks goes low-tech as co-writer/director/star of Larry Crowne, the story of a downsized big-box-store employee who decides to go to college for the first time. From the wacky classmates to the wacky neighbors to Julia Roberts as Larry's unhappily married public-speaking instructor, the whole thing feels like second-rate sitcom, without a moment of genuine insight into people who feel they've been left behind by the economy or life in general.