★★ 1/2 out of four stars

Rated: PG for mild language and innuendo.

"Bonneville" is a sentimental, daffy and dawdling road picture about people who have some mileage on them. Well-cast, with a couple of Oscar winners and a nominee at its core, it's a "Thelma & Louise & Carol Makes Three" journey of self-discovery that takes place in a 1966 Pontiac convertible.

Jessica Lange stars as Arvilla, an Idaho woman who has just lost her husband. He was an adventurous sort, an academic who showed her the world. And he made her promise him that she would scatter his ashes in Borneo when he died.

Francine (Christine Baranski), his daughter from his first marriage, won't hear of that. She wants him buried next to her mom in Santa Barbara. If Arvilla doesn't surrender the ashes, Francine will use her father's outdated will to toss Arvilla out of her home.

That worries Arvilla's pal Carol (Joan Allen), a meek fussbudget naive to the ways of the world. And it annoys the heck out of their brassier friend, Margene (Kathy Bates, in full good ol' gal bluster). But reason prevails and they resolve to take the ashes from Idaho, to Santa Barbara, Calif. And as predictable as this journey is, at least it's not boring. They miss their flight and decide, instead, to drive that 1966 Bonneville to the memorial service.

Christopher N. Rowley's movie ambles over the Bonneville Salt Flats to Las Vegas, Lake Powell, Bryce Canyon and lots of the scenic West, picking up a handsome, helpful hitchhiker (Victor Rasuk in the Brad Pitt role) and a dashing, age-appropriate trucker (Tom Skerritt) along the way. The women have adventures, bicker and crack wise.

"Bonneville" is pleasant enough, in that undemanding "Bucket List" sort of way. It's a pity this odyssey is as preordained as an AAA TripTik. Still, the actors make us happy to be along for the ride.

★★ out of four stars

Rated: PG-13 for mature thematic elements, sexual content and some violent images.

The oversexed soap opera that history remembers as "The Tudors" migrates from Showtime to the big screen in "The Other Boleyn Girl."

It's a lovely period piece, but the major motion picture has the extreme misfortune of coming along hot on the heels of a more fleshed out and fleshy season of a cable series that covers almost exactly the same ground.

Anne (Natalie Portman) is the natural first choice as Henry bait. The king's Catholic Spaniard wife, Catherine of Aragon, can't give him a son. He will cast about for a mistress or some other solution to his "no male heir" problem. Anne is no shrinking violet. She's mercenary enough to relish the challenge.

But Henry is smitten with Mary (Scarlett Johansson), Anne's demure and newly married younger sister. She resists as he makes arrangements to bring her within his reach, but watch how Johansson plays Mary's moment of surrender when she realizes that the heel pursuing her is the man who actually "gets" her.

Despite many emotional moments supplied by the leads, especially by Portman, the better actress, "The Other Boleyn" sudses up into nothing more than historical soap opera. We're treated to the odd pretty location, stunning costumes and a tendency to truncate history, time and events to wrap up this complicated bloodletting in under two hours.