Reviewed in brief: "The Extra Man," "The Wildest Dream."

THE EXTRA MAN

★★ 1/2 out of four stars

Rating: R for sexual content.

Where: Lagoon.

Kevin Kline's prissy, stentorian-voiced Henry Harrison, a playwright manqué who lives in a seedy Manhattan brownstone, explains to his new roommate, Louis (Paul Dano), that he is an "extra man" who has cultivated the city's richest widowed grande dames and won a place at their tables and sometimes their Palm Beach guest rooms. What lifts him above a mere "walker," he says, is his "wit, intelligence and uncommon joie de vivre."

The deft ways in which Kline mines the comic valor in this enigmatic eccentric anchors this wry comedy by writers/directors Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman ("American Spendor"). Adapted from a Jonathan Ames novel, the film is too precious around the edges, but it gets somewhere. Henry may be its dominating presence, but the film is Louis' story -- of how a shy, troubled young man, thrown into the company of oddballs and strong personalities who capture his imagination, at last works out his identity.

There's splendid support from Katie Holmes, playing a sweet-natured, dedicatedly vegan secretary at an environmental magazine where Louis has found a low-level job, and John C. Reilly as a brilliant, falsetto-voiced subway mechanic.

KEVIN THOMAS, LOS ANGELES TIMES

THE WILDEST DREAM

★ 1/2 out of four stars

Rating: PG.

Where: Uptown.

You may not believe it's possible to bore people to death with a film about risking your life, but "The Wildest Dream" comes shockingly close. Positing that George Mallory, the renowned British climber who vanished on Mount Everest in 1924, might have actually reached the summit, this stodgy documentary feels as antiquated as Mallory's hobnailed boots.

Introduced by a professorial Conrad Anker, the American mountaineer who discovered Mallory's frozen body in 1999, the film follows Anker's 2007 attempt to replicate Mallory's ascent. Accompanied by pounding musical cues and the young British climber Leo Houlding, Anker suits up in period gear, while the director, Anthony Geffen, provides disappointing images of the Himalayas that -- notwithstanding Liam Neeson's awed narration -- fail to make our spines tingle.

Archival footage of Mallory is eerily fascinating, but its historical frisson is diluted by corny re-enactments that pale beside the edge-of-your-seat rush of films like Kevin Macdonald's stunning 2003 documentary "Touching the Void." There is, however, one amazing shot of Houlding free-climbing that will catapult your heart into your mouth.

JEANNETTE CATSOULIS, NEW YORK TIMES