‘Life of Reilly’ does Charles Nelson well

Though best remembered for his irreverent 1970s and ‘80s TV game show appearances, funnyman Charles Nelson Reilly (who died of pneumonia last May) also had a colorful family and a lengthy, award-winning acting career. It’s all enjoyably recounted in “The Life of Reilly,” a filmed adaptation of his oft-staged one-man show, shot in 2004 during two final performances at North Hollywood’s El Portal Theatre.

Directors Barry Poltermann and Frank Anderson smartly trimmed Reilly’s infamously rambling, near-three-hour chatfest into a swift, 84-minute portrait. While the campy performer doesn’t hide being gay, he keeps that discussion at arms’ length -- Reilly was clearly more interested in dishing about his quirky Bronx-to-Connecticut upbringing, complete with racist mother, tortured father and lobotomized aunt, not to mention celebrity cohorts such as Hal Holbrook, Shirley Booth and Burt Reynolds, and his succession of Broadway roles.

Unfortunately, the jumpy, high-def photography here isn’t the greatest, which ultimately makes “The Life of Reilly” more suitable for DVD or cable than the big screen. Still, it’s an amiable reminder of a show-biz original.

-- Gary Goldstein

“The Life of Reilly.” MPAA rating: Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 24 minutes. At Landmark’s Nuart Theatre, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles (310) 281-8223

-- Ho hum, been there, done that

If the horror film “P2” sounds like a sequel even when it isn’t -- the title refers to where you might have left your car -- it still has the feeling of something done many times before. Granted, the notion of subterranean parking garage as a concrete, oil-stained Hell from which a homicidal psycho emerges is serviceable enough for geographic suspense. But this dull story of a bent underground security guard (Wes Bentley) obsessed with a beautiful executive (Rachel Nichols) many floors above quickly devolves to little more than a strained effort in trapping, terrorizing and -- because no modern chiller can seemingly do without it -- torture. The biggest drag is how enamored the filmmakers are with their insufferable hostage-taker-as-knight psychologizing, but that was probably the only way to make Bentley believe he wasn’t selling out his ambiguously creepy “American Beauty” persona even further down the movie food chain. Nichols, meanwhile, runs, limps, screams, pleads and fights back in a low-cut party dress, all more convincingly than she or director Franck Khalfoun can suggest a genuine high-powered businesswoman in the pre-peril scenes. But that’s the lot for females in these types of films: Their worth is only in what happens after the movie sends them down, down, down.

-- Robert Abele

“P2.” MPAA rating: R for strong violence/gore, terror and language. Running time: 1 hour, 38 minutes. In general release.

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Bollywood grace -- in a crazy way

The new Bollywood musical “Saawariya” from acclaimed Indian director Sanjay Leela Bhansali (“Devdas”) is another typically outsized extravaganza -- sure to drop your jaw with its ravishment or trigger a seizure, depending on your design temperament. But the tale of a dreamer (Ranbir Kapoor) pining for a beautiful, melancholic woman (Sonam Kapoor) comes not from some corner of Hindi folklore, but from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s story “White Nights.” Bhansali’s deliberate use of indoor soundstages to create his fanciful nighttime cityscape of canals, streets and neon signs -- even a gigantic Buddha -- lovingly recalls something MGM would have created in its tune-filled heyday. “Saawariya” is a decidedly more insular epic, though, tethered almost exclusively to the emotional dips and rushes of the protagonists, for whom love is something so close and yet so far away. By the end, Bhansali’s operatic style -- an ocean of close-ups, gliding camera moves and color saturation -- achieves its own kind of crazy grace.

-- R.A.

“Saawariya.” MPAA rating: PG. In Hindi with English subtitles. Running time: 2 hours, 23 minutes. In selected theaters.