In both of these films Scott played Astaire's lunkheaded but likable pal.

These jubilant portrayals of the loathsome and the lunkheaded have earned Boyle a reputation as a satirist, but the truth is more complicated.

Trouserpress was contrastingly dismissive, called the album a "soggy hodgepodge of lunkheaded rock, would-be hip-hop, blues, soulful backing vocals and chants" and advised readers to "flush it".

The soldiers in the ISA are a bunch of lunkheaded grunts who spout so many macho clichés they make the Gears Of War Cog soldiers sound like erudite statesmen.

He may look tame, but has demonstrated a sly versatility as the lunkheaded coach jilted by Julia Roberts in "Runaway Bride" and as one of the most vicious, Machiavellian prisoners in "Oz."

Mr. Torra will twist up a thought as tight as it can go - "Few mechanics masters Lenny Barns no master," he writes of a lunkheaded employee - or let it skid halfway down the page before slapping some punctuation on it.

For seven years he has played the sensitive suburbanite Eric Forman on the Fox hit "That 70's Show" opposite Ashton Kutcher, also 26, the lunkheaded heartthrob more famous for dating Demi Moore and for playing pranks on other celebrities than for his craft.

If William R. Forstchen is the one responsible for the lunkheaded plot and comic-book dialogue of this infantile novel or the more recent "Gettysburg" ("He thought of Elizabeth, sweet Elizabeth, wondering what she would say of him if he ever confessed his terror"), that is one thing.