There's an extremely unusual phenomena occurring at your local Cineplex this week: Warner Bros. and Paramount are going head to head, both launching adult comedies on the same weekend. Studios generally try to avoid genre wars, as they will next week when Disney/Pixar offer up the children's animated feature Wall-E, against Universal's adult action thriller Wanted. This weekend, however, viewers will have to chose between laughing at a bumbling secret agent updated from the 60's, or a bumbling self-help guru who is a throwback to the 60's.

If theater counts and critics are any indication, Get Smart should win the box office wars. Not only is it playing in more theaters - 3,911 vs. Guru's 3,012 - but the critics are being substantially kinder to the film adaptation of the much-loved spy sitcom. Guru, on the other hand seems to be getting no love whatsoever from critics, and even from those who have seen what many describe as "That really lame trailer." It will be a miracle if writer-director-producer-star Mike Meyers, riding on his own Austin Powers coattails, can pull off a decent opening.

There are some terrific choices in the land of independent films this week, however. They're only opening in a handful of theaters, but look for them to expand soon to a theater near you. The one that will probably arrive first is Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, set during the Great Depresson an starring child actress du jour Abigail Breslin, as well as a fun supporting cast including Joan Cusack, Jane Krakowski, Chris O’Donnell, Julia Ormond, Wallace Shawn and Stanly Tucci. This will be the first in what will likely be a series of films based on the historical adventures of the popular American Doll line, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. Young girls can use more well-made, uplifting film fare to cancel out the influences of Bratz.

Sundance '07 favorite Expired, for which Jason Patric won a best actor festival award, is finally hitting theaters this week, and what an impact it makes! It's a sad little tale of meter readers in love...or something like it, and begs the question, "Is a bad boyfriend better than no boyfriend at all?" Samantha Morton, who brilliantly portrays the unlikely heroine, will surprise you.

Also tapping into universal relationship themes is Brick Lane, a British film about a beautiful girl from Bangladesh being sent to grimy London immigrant projects for a prearranged marriage with an older, and substantially larger, man. Based on the best selling novel of the same name, it's being touted as one of the best foreign films or the year so far. Some of the film is subtitled, but there is enough English in it to disqualify it from Foreign Language Oscar contention. It does, however, qualify as one of the finest films opening this week.

-LJM