Congratulations, 21st century: With Thunderstruck, you now have your very own Kazaam!

By that, I mean a family-oriented fantasy comedy featuring a current NBA superstar imbued with supernatural powers, playing second fiddle to an annoying kid, and saddled with a lazy script. (I’d expect nothing less from John Whitesell, director of such laff vacuums as Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son, Deck the Halls, Malibu’s Most Wanted and See Spot Run.)

Oklahoma City Thunder’s Kevin Durant plays himself, while Nickelodeon kidcom vet Taylor Gray essays the role of Brian, a 16-year-old high school student who loves shooting hoops, but has the aim of a postcoital penis. Through a crushingly stupid idea that the screenwriters make no attempt to unexplain, the Durantula’s mad b-ball skillz are switched with Brian’s lack of when the two simultaneously touch a basketball during their meet-cute off the court.

Therefore, Brian becomes a cocky and popular athlete, while his well-paid hero suffers “a slump.” Oh, if only the curse could be reversed! It can, of course, but how that comes to pass is an insult to viewers’ intelligence, making one long for the relative concrete logic of 18 Again! and Vice Versa.

Potentially more insulting is not that it perpetuates the myth that African-American youth are interested in World of Warcraft, but that Whitesell allows Durant to shill his Nike shoes with a commercial in the middle … and again at the end. Lord knows how talk-show host Conan O’Brien was corralled into a credibility-shattering cameo, but the casting of Jim Belushi is no mystery. He plays Brian’s coach, who screams to his team — or perhaps craft services? — “Put some jelly in that doughnut!”

Yes, Durant is perfectly affable, because he’s not really acting. And yes, Thunderstruck is wholesome and inoffensive, but if that’s all you ask of a family film, you’re settling, because they can be smart and funny, too. This one’s woefully wretched — the cinematic equivalent of an air ball. —Rod Lott

Spun off from the ever-popular humor website of fake news, The Onion Movie isn’t as bad as its five-year sit on the shelf would suggest. It’s just that with a couple of producers behind Airplane! and The Naked Gun series involved, you’d expect something funnier. Although unceremoniously dumped to DVD, it has its moments — enough to warrant a watch.

Using the Onion News Network as a loose wraparound, the sketch-filled satire has old-guard anchor Norm Archer (Len Cariou, 1408) deliver quick headlines and introduce on-the-scene reports. Some are so stupid in concept, you wonder how they survived the first draft, like neck belts in cars. Others are so dead-on, you wonder if they might not be seen as humor by half the viewing audience, such as a child’s accidental fatal shooting of himself being dubbed as an exercise of the Second Amendment, “hailed by gun-rights activists as a victory for America and the Constitution.”

Popping in here and there are a few repeat characters, most notably Melissa Cherry (sexy Sarah McElligott), a Britney Spears-esque pop tart who denies any sexual content in her songs, even when the videos for them feature such acts as her being taken doggy-style by a giant blue teddy bear. Steven Seagal plays himself in a faux trailer for the actioner Cockpuncher — his catchphrase: “I don’t think you have the balls” — and other cameos include Michael Bolton, Rodney Dangerfield and Meredith Baxter Birney, the latter cooking cats.

As with granddaddy Kentucky Fried Movie, the scattershot Onion Movie zooms through bits so fast, at least you can’t get bored: a terrorist training video, an ad for a celebrity roast, a film-review TV show that critiques The Onion Movie in progress, a commercial for a gay cruise, a show called Little-Known Racial Stereotypes (“Did you know blacks love taffy?”) and a group of friends who tire of playing a murder-mystery game, so they instead host a role-playing rape. Hey, I never said they were in good taste.

Something truly tasteless would open with … oh, say, a nun drinking from a jar labeled “APE CUM.” That’s saved until the end. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

In the 1980s, we as a nation did some crazy things. We grooved to Toto. We bought “Baby on Board” signs. And we allowed the phrase “a Topps Chewing Gum Production” to appear on theater screens. I blame all the cocaine.

Until Tim Burton unleashed Mars Attacks!, The Garbage Pail Kids Movie was the only film in cinema history based on trading cards. Rather than use a slew of the Cabbage Patch Kids parodic and puerile characters, this PG-rated adaptation hand-picked seven: Valerie Vomit, Windy Winston, Foul Phil, Nat Nerd, Messy Tessy, Ali Gator and Greaser Greg — respectively known for barfing, farting, pants-pooping, pants-peeing, snotting, eating toes and possessing a switchblade. They’re all played by little-people actors in bizarre costumes with minimal facial movement, rendering them more nightmarish than intended.

The Garbage Pail Kids live in a trash can carelessly contained within the detritus of Manzini’s Antiques, owned by the flamboyant, suspiciously single Cap’n Manzini (Anthony Newley, Doctor Dolittle). His lone employee is the 14-year-old apparently homeless orphan named Dodger (Mackenzie Astin, TV’s The Facts of Life), whose in-store scuffle with bullies accidentally lets the brats out of the can. Although Windy Winston greets Dodger by farting in his face, the boy becomes fast friends with the lot, yet pines for a frizzy-haired skank named Tangerine (telenovela actress Katie Barberi).

While helping Dodger nail Tangerine’s attention and affection through the power of trashy fashion, the Garbage Pail Kids are more interested in making mayhem. To wit, they steal a soda truck (“We’re the Pepsi generation!” exclaims Valerie), sneak into a movie theater to see Stoogemania (shown in clips to pad the running time and grant comparative sophistication), crash The Toughest Bar in the World (where Winston lets loose a toot so noxious, it removes the mustache from the bartender’s face), and watch Dodger bathe (but let’s not get into that).

Director/co-writer Rod Amateau (you can’t spell “amateur” without him!) made a legendarily bad film here, but it’s watchable in group jaw-dropping sections of mockery. For a movie made for children, it possesses several scenes of questionable taste, like having the Garbage Pail Kids rip off models’ dresses at Tangerine’s climactic fashion show. What’s worse: That the movie has its titular things sing an original song about teamwork or that Astin spends the third act in a little Chippendale’s bow tie? —Rod Lott

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From 1975, the original film adaptation of The Stepford Wives was a feminist horror film, with an intriguing story, palatable suspense and a jolt of an ending. The 2004 remake by Frank Oz (Little Shop of Horrors), however, is allegedly a comedy — a broad, Broadway-camp goof shot with the same color palette as a bag of Skittles, just as disposable and with about as much nutritional value.

Katherine Ross’ sympathetic photographer Joanna has morphed into Nicole Kidman’s bitchy and cutthroat TV network executive, whose five-year reign at the top comes to an immediate end when an embittered participant from one of her reality shows tries to kill her. Fearing bad press, the net lets her go. One nervous breakdown later, Joanna and husband (Matthew Broderick, about as convincing as Kidman’s significant other as Tom Cruise was) uproot their two rarely seen kids and move to the gated town of Stepford, Conn.

The suburb is quiet, the homes are magnificent and the wives are robotic, subservient hotties in floral dresses from the ‘50s. A snooping Joanna — along with her nosy pal Bette Midler and, because In & Out‘s Paul Rudnick wrote the script, a gay man (Roger Bart, Hostel: Part II) — discovers that the Stepford Men’s Club, headed by Christopher Walken, is behind the transformation of the city’s women into large-breasted, no-questions-asked automatons.

The movie itself is about as brainless. There are a few good one-liners, but the tone is all wrong, the editing awkward and the whole production looks cheap and rushed. I felt not like I was watching a Stepford remake, but rather a MADtv parody. And, MADtv being what it is, not a particularly good one. Script problems aside, much of the blame has to fall on Kidman. She’s no comedienne. Hell, she’s hardly even a “she,” looking like death in a dress. She’s not supposed to be pretty early in the film, but even following her Stepford makeover, the woman looks unhealthy, emaciated and decidedly un-Stepford-sexy.

All in all, this glorified sitcom is a miscast failure. It’s not quite a train wreck, although it is an insult to Ira Levin’s still-great 1972 novel. Stepford Wives, I want a divorce — no, wait: an annulment. —Rod Lott

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Yes, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed may be better than its predecessor, but that’s like saying leukemia is better than cancer. It’s still wretched, painful viewing.

The whole Mystery Inc. gang is back — Fred (Freddie Prinze Jr.) Daphne (Sarah Michelle Gellar), Velma (Linda Cardellini), Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) and Scooby (millions of dollars worth of CGI). At the film’s open, they’re attending a grand opening of a Coolsville Museum exhibit of monster costumes of villains they’ve unmasked in the past. Then a bad guy steals the costumes and makes real monsters out of them. Then the real monsters attack the city. Then the Mystery Inc. gang stops them. And then tubby American Idol winner Ruben Studdard shows up to sing an Earth, Wind & Fire song while the cast does an embarrassingly choreographed, career-killing dance number.

Oh, you can add Seth Green as a museum curator, Alicia Silverstone as a nosy reporter and Peter Boyle as a senile old man, but you’re not fooling me: This is the same movie. Granted, there are two big fart gags rather than just one this time around, but still, it’s the same crap all over again: zero story, zero laughs and all special effects. Lord, why did I have kids?

The only thing that makes this marginally cooler — and you should read “marginally” as if it were bold, underlined and in red — is that the monsters are the same from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon series, so there’s a slight kick of nostalgia. It wears off pretty quickly, however, making way for that migraine. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.