Toward the end of Rebel Wilson’s “Girl Group,” a fizzy, gaudy clone of “Pitch Perfect” sculpted from the mentor formula of “Bad News Bears,” the movie spirals into an interminable sequence of pop music performances. The song-and-dance numbers are so awkwardly endless that they call to mind the denouement of a very different pop spectacle: Brady Corbet’s “Vox Lux,” in which Natalie Portman’s megastar becomes a tragic emblem of the emptiness of the celebrity industrial complex.

“Girl Group,” which follows a band of misfits competing to become signed music artists, could not be further removed from that type of cynicism if it were set on a different planet, and Wilson, starring as the group’s coach, seems hardly to know the meaning of the word. A comedy whiz who became famous for playing — as she wrote in her memoir — “the fat funny girl,” Wilson has little on her mind here beyond sparkly merriment, and “Girl Group” is an accordingly flamboyant extravaganza designed to have audiences humming and nodding along without thinking a single thought.

There are occasions that call for this sort of broadly comforting trifle, on airplanes or in late-night popcorn sessions. “Girl Group” seems even to nod to its position on the feel-good shelf when, after a trying day, a character suggests to her sister that they head home to snuggle and rent “Pitch Perfect.” This movie — despite performances from a veritable diva corps d’elite, including Nicole Scherzinger and Ashley Roberts of The Pussycat Dolls, the Spice Girls’ Mel C, and All Saints’ Shaznay Lewis — never reaches the emotional heights of that rewatch-ready franchise, nor does it really strive to. It’s instead at ease as a second-stringer, a congenial romp that exists only as it unspools before you, then dissipates like stage fog the moment it’s over.

The story opens in 1997, as five friends at a London girls’ school prepare to perform in their auditorium. Backstage, a member of the crew frets to her teacher (a brief but keen Sally Hawkins) about the pressure, before the pals — who perform under the name Gurlfriends — head onstage and bring the house down. The overture gives way to a whirlwind montage of the group’s ascent, culminating with a member named Tassie (played in the present day by Wilson) ditching the gang to try and make it as a solo act. The effort fails, and Tassie sinks into an alcoholic stupor from which she emerges, years later, to find that she’s been replaced for the reunion tour by a warbling prima donna.

This is where the real story starts, and where Wilson might have been better off centering the movie all along. Sentenced to community service at a youth center, Tassie meets a group of Gen Z-ers whom she’s assigned to mentor ahead of an upcoming competition. The washed-up star sees their talent as a chance to rehabilitate her own image, but the peppy, ambitious teens have aspirations of their own, and as Tassie sets about molding them into a glossy vision of millennial pop stardom, her narcissism increasingly becomes a liability to their success.

There are feeble gestures at a generational divide over female sexuality and pop-star image, as when one of the younger crew exclaims that Gurlfriends were “totally playing into the male gaze.” But such moments are so few and far between that it feels as if Wilson forgot about the theme halfway through, or, more likely, found it too thorny to properly unpack. Fair enough: prickly questions about how famous women can or should display themselves are unlikely to be settled by a broad comedy more interested in cramming in mile-a-minute jokes.

Much of the film’s humor consists of bawdy clowning, with a handful of contemporary reference-laden jokes thrown in for good measure. And despite Wilson’s frank discussions of weight and weight loss in her memoir, there’s a curious abundance of size-related gags. At one point, a child accuses Tassie of looking like she “ate” Sabrina Carpenter. Elsewhere, Jennifer Coolidge, gamely playing Gurlfriends’ manager, encourages Tassie to promote Splurt, a nutrition bar with a laxative effect. Its potential to induce sudden bowel urgency in front of a crowd does not go unnoticed.

Amid the slew of tired gags, the harmony among the younger cast is the film’s greatest asset, and their easy rapport and naturalism help cut against the run-of-the-mill story. The standouts are Chabely Ponce, as an acoustic guitar-slinging crooner, and Lilah Pate, who excels as the group’s leader, despite having to suffer through one ill-conceived scene involving an aggressive, nonconsensual kiss.

Their enthusiasm as an ensemble suggests a warmer movie, one in which the nonconformists take center stage as they blossom into more confident versions of themselves. But lost in the surrounding muddle and often eclipsed by Wilson’s relentless mugging, their stories wind up playing second fiddle. Their vivacity may be enough to break through Tassie’s vanity, but it can’t wholly elevate the movie around them.

Judy Judge is hanging up her robe.

Nearly 30 years after Judy Sheindlin launched a career that made her TV’s most widely recognized judge — first on the syndicated small claims series “Judge Judy,” which premiered in 1996 and ran for 25 seasons; then on Amazon Prime’s streaming show “Judy Justice” starting in 2021 — she’s passing her gavel to a fitting successor: her son, Judge Adam Levy.

The 83-year-old Sheindlin told People magazine that when “Judy Justice” wraps in October, she’s moving away from on-camera work to focus on other endeavors, including afternoon naps and developing the animated series “Judyverse” based on the “Baby Judge Judy” videos circulating social media.

Created with AI, the videos feature a toddler version of Judge Judy overseeing cases with her signature New York accent and no-nonsense barbs.

“I don’t want to do hair and makeup anymore, but I still want my message to get out there,” she told the outlet.

Sheindlin will also produce her son’s syndicated court TV show, “Adam’s Law,” which debuts Monday.

“There aren’t a lot of people who can carry a half-hour on their own, unscripted,” Sheindlin continued, adding that Levy has what it takes.

The 58-year-old earned his law degree from Hofstra Law School in 1992. This isn’t his first foray into TV, as he joined a panel of judges on Prime’s “Tribunal Justice” in 2023. After three seasons, Sheindlin said he’s ready for his close-up.

On Sept. 22, CBS will air a 30th anniversary special looking back on Sheindlin’s career, “Judge Judy: Unfiltered, Unforgettable.”

“I don’t think that I’ve ever been this content before,” she told People of entering the next era of her life. “I don’t have to prove anything else. I did it.”

Roshan Sethi has a résumé that could make the most accomplished among us feel like underachievers. His three previous features include the thoroughly charming 2024 rom-com A Nice Indian Boy. Two months ago his novel, The Simp, a funny Hollywood satire, was published. He was the co-creator of the Fox series The Resident. And as if that’s not enough, for a couple of months a year he still works as a radiation oncologist at a Boston hospital.

He puts all those experiences to good use in The Surgeon, a genre-bending swirl that is part The Pitt (but gorier), part tense crime thriller, part action movie and part midnight movie, all infused with witty touches. It is wildly entertaining.

As clever as Sethi’s screenplay is, the film’s greatest asset is Michelle Yeoh as Eliza Lim, a recently retired surgeon who is kidnapped by criminals and forced at gunpoint to operate on one of their colleagues. No one else could have brought the same serene presence, quiet intelligence and flair for action, a combination that is ideally suited to the character. Sethi’s film is perfectly in sync with Yeoh’s strengths.

The film swiftly establishes Dr. Lim’s character in a few brief scenes that chart her single-minded dedication to her job and the boring, empty retirement she has reluctantly entered. The Surgeon isn’t a character study, but we instantly know who that character is.

Out of nowhere, it seems — but actually for reasons revealed much later — she is abducted and finds herself in an abandoned hospital, surrounded by men with guns. An operating room is ready for her, and the patient’s face is covered. The operating scenes are not for the squeamish, but it’s worth covering your eyes to get to the real action. Lim realizes the kidnappers have no reason to keep her alive after the surgery, so she has to outwit them using her mind, medical knowledge and a few hidden scalpels.

Sethi often holds the camera on Yeoh’s face, expressive even at its most passive. Lim speaks softly as she proves the thugs are no match for her. “You can stop pointing that gun at me,” she tells one of her minders after the surgery. “I’m an old woman, half your age, half your weight. There’s nothing I can do to you.” Part of the fun of watching is that we can guess that line is a ruse, but we don’t know what she’s planning.  

Yeoh, of course, started out in martial arts films, but that is not the kind of action displayed here. Lim knows just where on the body to attack her kidnappers and goes for their most vulnerable spots with swift jabs and great precision. As in the best action films, we never lose sight of how the hero’s personality drives it. “You’ll never shoot a gun again,” she calmly tells one of her captors after severing some cartilage in his wrists. “That’s not snot, that’s your brain fluid dripping out,” she says to another after ramming an instrument up his nose. One of the weirdest, wittiest touches is that whenever she attacks, we see the body beneath the skin, viewing the bones she’s breaking or tendons she’s cutting as if a medical textbook had come to life.

Sethi loads the film with noir tropes, including a ticking clock that counts down how much time the patient has to live after Lim threatens to kill him. What has she got to lose? But even at its most noirish, visually the film is filled with light and color. A major action scene takes place in the former hospital’s chapel, full of bright stained glass. And she lives in a spacious, light-filled house with a large garden, which we see before and after the kidnapping. The Surgeon is taut and suspenseful, but never claustrophobic. The editing smoothly keeps the momentum going and the genre touches blend easily.

Martin Freeman enters the film fairly late in a supporting role as the crime boss who masterminded the scheme. As always, he is expert at looking meek while sounding deadly. And Joseph Mydell adds a welcome, sweet touch as a man who brings warmth and emotion to Lim’s life.

With a nod to genre conventions, the final shot leaves room for a sequel. But wherever Sethi’s varied career takes him, he has already established himself as one of the most exciting filmmakers around.