Joe Morgenstern is the film critic of The Wall Street Journal, where he writes the Friday “Review/Film” column in the Weekend Journal and supervises the Leisure & Arts page’s coverage of the business of Hollywood. Mr. Morgenstern won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism “for his reviews that elucidated the strengths and weaknesses of film with rare insight, authority and wit.”
A good example of that insight appears in Mr. Morgenstern’s column in today’s WSJ ($), in which he pans the new Jennifer Lopez-Jane Fonda movie, Monster-in-Law, and observes the following about the current trend in Hollywood filmmaking:

Films like this — as well as two other clumsy features opening today — are emblematic of Hollywood’s relentless dumbing-down and defining-down of big-screen attractions. There’s an audience for such stuff, but little enthusiasm or loyalty. Adult moviegoers are being ignored almost completely during all but the last two or three months of each year, while even the kids who march off to the multiplexes each weekend know they’re getting moldy servings of same-old, rather than entertainments that feed their appetite for surprise and delight. “Life’s too short to live the same day twice,” Charlie says in “Monster-In-Law,” quoting her father. It’s also too short to keep living the same weekend, though that’s what the movie going experience is starting to feel like — an extended Groundhog Day of amateur nights.