Hungering for more teenage post-apocalyptic games? The Maze Runner is one of the best of that crop, while still visibly suffering from the core problems plaguing all the others: undercooked narrative, overelongated time and an overall feeling of genericness and déjà vu. Directed by newcomer Wes Ball, the blockbuster is based on James Dashner’s novel — the first in a series, of course!

Our protagonist (Dylan O’Brien, The Internship) is … well, he doesn’t even remember his name at the film’s start, when he awakens in an industrial elevator racing up from an underground who-knows-what and into a primitive village of several dozen boys who once were in his position. Once a month, out pop fresh supplies and new blood. Deep into the second act, the makeshift community gets its first and only female (Kaya Scodelario, Moon) and the movie doesn’t even broach the subject of what really would happen to the poor girl.

They live in harmony — or at least compared to Lord of the Flies — captive and surrounded on all four sides by insurmountable walls that, on clockwork occasion, widen to a gap to reveal a labyrinth. At great risk to their lives, those tasked with entering have one goal: Find an exit.

See, this towering, ever-changing maze is populated with grievers. No, not widows sobbing over the death of their spouse, but giant robot spiders. (And that brings up a pet peeve I have with these kind of movies: What’s with all the needless vocabulary changes, invented lingo and only-us language? Why can’t it suffice for giant robot spiders to be called that? It’d cut down on the movie’s need to explain things.) Watching Thomas — that’s our hero’s name, once he hits his head hard enough to recall it — and his fellow runners maneuver the maze’s dangers is like watching a live-action adaptation of the board game Mouse Trap, or at least a YA variant on 1997’s Cube, but less fulfilling. —Rod Lott

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Man, oh, man — the balls of Mark Polonia to place a copyright notice right on the title screen of Empire of the Apes. This is the $1.98 version of 20th Century Fox’s venerated Planet of the Apes franchise, still going strong after nearly five decades in existence. How a rip-off this brazen, this transparent could exist in an industry environment so litigious that the word “butler” ignites a legal firestorm, I’ll never know. Perhaps it’s flown so far under the Hollywood radar as to render itself stealth. It sure doesn’t fall under the First Amendment protection of parody, because Empire is too fan-fictiony to resemble a spoof, even by honest error.

Three barely dressed women (the credits don’t bother to give them names, so I won’t, either) imprisoned on a spaceship make their way to an escape pod, which promptly crash-lands on a (but not the) planet of apes. Clearly just men behind masks, these primates wear denim jeans and trench coats and footwear from Cabela’s. They also talk! Despite being so advanced on the evolutionary scale, they are confused by the women and their weapons; one ape accidentally shoots his own head off, to the delight of his poo-flinging brethren. At least I think they’re laughing; it’s tough to tell since their mandibles move to approximate speech patterns, yet their voices echo inside the masks rather than emanate from within.

When it comes to dialogue, the ladies — or “the primitives,” as the script by director Polonia (Amityville Death House) calls them — get all the USDA-choice lines, from “‘Behave’ rhymes with ‘slave’” to “What are you gonna do, put us in a cage and feed us bananas?” (Ba-dum-bum.) As if commenting on the females’ collective performance, one ape warns, “It is best if you do not speak.” I agree.

Empire is not a better movie than the most recent “real” Planet of the Apes chapter, 2014’s Dawn of the, but if — and only if — you have just 60.77 percent of the time to watch … —Rod Lott

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