| Jane Horwitz Editor's Note: We hope you will enjoy the new format of Family Film Reviews. You'll now find the reviews separated by age groups and a "bottom line" or summary segment with each movie.
-- 6 AND OLDER:
"ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS: THE SQUEAKQUEL" PG -- Kids 6 and older (but not much older) will likely have fun watching this "Squeakquel," which follows "Alvin and the Chipmunks" (PG, 2007). Again a mix of live-action and animation, it is, alas, nothing special -- just a lot of movie cliches about high school cobbled together to resemble a plot. Alvin's mischief during a Paris concert lands the Chipmunks' guardian, Dave (Jason Lee) in the hospital. He stops the boys' concert tour and sends them back to Los Angeles to enroll in high school. Dave's slacker cousin Toby (Zachary Levi of TV's "Chuck") is supposed to keep Alvin (voice of Justin Long), Simon (Matthew Gray Gubler) and Theodore (Jesse McCartney) safe. The nasty music promoter from the first film (David Cross) returns with a sister act, the Chipettes, to compete with the boys in a teen music contest.
THE BOTTOM LINE: There is toilet humor, very mild sexual innuendo and a few crude expressions. A Chipmunk is menaced by a bird of prey. A lady's wheelchair bumps down stairs, injuring her in a supposedly humorous way.
-- 8 AND OLDER:
"TOOTH FAIRY" PG -- In this family fantasy, the always amiable, if not comedically adept, Dwayne Johnson plays Derek, a professional hockey player known as the Tooth Fairy because he's knocked out so many opponents' pearly whites. He's bitter because his career is on a downward slope. His girlfriend (Ashley Judd) gets angry when he starts to tell her youngest (Destiny Grace Whitlock) there is no tooth fairy. That night, Derek sprouts wings and finds himself standing before the big boss (Julie Andrews) in the magical tooth fairy headquarters. He's sentenced to three weeks as a tooth fairy. His "caseworker" is a droll fairy bureaucrat (Stephen Merchant) and he gets his magical shrinking paste and other tools from a wisecracking senior fairy (Billy Crystal). Derek gets into trouble trying to hide his new identity. The special effects look cheesy and the earthbound part of the plot is corny, but the tooth fairy stuff is still fun.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Derek's loss of faith in his dreams sets the story in motion, which is why its mildly dramatic elements may be a little beyond kids under 8. There is ice hockey mayhem and very mild sexual innuendo. Many of this uneven movie's best moments are geared to adults in the ironic repartee between Derek and his fairy caseworker.
"THE SPY NEXT DOOR" PG -- Kids between 8 and 12 may glean a trace of enjoyment from this mix of slapstick and derring-do, but pay no more than matinee prices. With so much focus on them, it's too bad the film's youngest actors lack the skills to make their painfully arch lines sound more natural. A torturous plot and labored attempts at charm and humor make "The Spy Next Door" painful for adults. Jackie Chan plays Bob Ho, a secret agent on loan from China to the U.S. When he's not foiling Russian criminals, Bob lives next door to beautiful single mom Gillian (Amber Valletta), who thinks he's a quiet salesman. Gillian and Bob have been dating, but her kids (Madeline Carroll, Will Shadley and Alina Foley) think Bob's a dork. Bob watches them when Gillian goes to visit her dad, so naturally the Russian criminal he caught during the prologue escapes and Bob must drop his milquetoast disguise.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Child characters are put in brief danger. A pre-adolescent boy uses mild verbal sexual innuendo inappropriate to his age, there are numerous property-destroying martial-arts stunts and adult characters use rare mild profanity.
-- TWO PG's MORE FOR TEENS:
"EXTRAORDINARY MEASURES" PG -- This docudrama tackles serious issues about children with a life-threatening disease. It is earnest, but still a lumbering, artless entertainment. Yet teens interested in science and/or medicine may be intrigued. "Extraordinary Measures" dramatizes the real-life efforts of John Crowley (Brendan Fraser) to fund research that could save the lives of two of his three children who suffer from a rare genetic disorder, Pompe Disease -- a "cousin" of muscular dystrophy that could prove fatal by age 9. John and Aileen's (Keri Russell) afflicted kids, Megan (Meredith Droeger) and Patrick (Diego Velazquez), need wheelchairs and breathing assistance. Desperate for the pharmaceutical industry to do more, John quits his executive job to partner with a cantankerous academic researcher (Harrison Ford as a composite character). They join, not always comfortably, with a big pharmaceutical company. The ending is hopeful and happy.
THE BOTTOM LINE: The story is probably too complex, disjointed and sad for preteens. There are scenes showing sick children struggling to breathe or going into cardiac arrest. While not graphic, such moments could make "Extraordinary Measures" heavy going for some teens, too. There is a lot of barnyard profanity and other epithets, plus a nongraphic, but strongly implied marital sexual situation and beer-drinking.
-- PG-13s:
"THE LOVELY BONES" -- In his film adaptation, director Peter Jackson only implies the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl, depicted graphically in Alice Sebold's novel. But that happy directorial choice isn't enough to save the film, which is wildly uneven in tone, veering between a moving tale of parental love and a crime thriller. Jackson never finds a way to make those tonal shifts in an artful way. Even worse, the film is repeatedly thrown off-balance by a special-effects depiction of heaven (or heaven's waiting room) as a sentimental storybook landscape. Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan), the murdered teenager, narrates her story from that place. She observes her stricken father (Mark Wahlberg), defeated mother (Rachel Weisz), angry sister (Rose McIver), and the undetected killer (a terrifically creepy Stanley Tucci), who is actually a neighbor. Susan Sarandon drinks and smokes as Susie's good-time grandma, still partying like it was 1966.
THE BOTTOM LINE: The way in which the killer lures Susie to his lair, recaptures her when she tries to escape, then disposes of the bloody evidence is chilling enough to upset many middle-schoolers. despite the PG-13 rating and lack of gory detail. There is a beating unrelated to the murder and some profanity.
"SHERLOCK HOLMES" -- British director Guy Ritchie's kicky take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's beloved Victorian detective tales incorporates wildly exaggerated mayhem in a modern way that will draw in high-school action-movie buffs, but could be too much for middle-schoolers. Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes and Jude Law as his loyal partner, Dr. Watson, handle witty repartee and emotional nuance with panache, though the movie threatens now and then to drown in its own drollery and set decoration. Even so, it is consistently fun. The original story pits Holmes against a satanic aristocrat (Mark Strong). Holmes is not happy with Watson's plans to marry (their relationship remains subtly ambiguous), and is distracted when his own ex-love (Rachel McAdams) reappears.
THE BOTTOM LINE: This new "Sherlock Holmes" could be too much for some middle-schoolers. There are head-banging fights, gun and knife play, electrocution, a hanging, explosions, abductions, sexual innuendo, implied nudity, dissected animals, and a maggoty corpse. Downey's Holmes mutes his sometimes overpowering mental gifts with drugs and liquor -- and tests sedatives on his bulldog.
"AVATAR" -- Teens may find the premise in James Cameron's "Avatar" eye-opening and debate-worthy. He proposes that Western exploitation of indigenous peoples will continue even with alien creatures beyond Earth. Try to see it in 3-D, because this futuristic sci-fi epic mixes live-action with digital animation in wondrous ways, though the characterizations and dialogue are pretty leaden. "Avatar" is set in the year 2154 on Pandora, a mineral-rich moon in the Alpha Centauri star system. Its humanoid inhabitants, the Na'vi, are tall and blue, with tails. They can bond physically and spiritually with all of nature. Jake (Sam Worthington), a former Marine whose legs are paralyzed, comes to Pandora to work for Grace (Sigourney Weaver), a scientist. Whenever Grace transfers Jake's consciousness into a manufactured Na'vi body -- his avatar -- he can walk again. While in his avatar body, Jake meets a Na'vi warrior, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and a romance sparks, but a security officer (Stephen Lang) for a mining firm can't wait to start mowing down Na'vi for profit.
THE BOTTOM LINE: "Avatar" includes loud, intense, but fairly bloodless mayhem, using futuristic military weapons and ancient ones. There is an implied sexual tryst, remarks about the Na'vi that recall racial slurs, and some profanity. The Na'vi are semi-naked, but with no "naughty bits" visible. There are huge, mythic dragonlike creatures on Pandora.
-- R's:
"EDGE OF DARKNESS" (NEW) -- The deliberately convoluted narrative in this grim, rather thankless police thriller (based on a 1980s British miniseries) may put off high-schoolers, even those 17 and older. The violence is too realistically graphic for under-17s, and Mel Gibson's grizzled hero-of-few-words may not appeal to them either. His screen acting remains first rate, though, in his tortured turn as Craven, a Boston homicide detective whose daughter Emma (Bojana Novakovic) comes home to visit. She's ill -- vomiting, nosebleeds -- and can't tell him much about her work at a nuclear research facility. As he opens his front door to take Emma to the hospital, she's shot by a gunman in a passing SUV. Nearly catatonic with grief, Craven thinks the bullet was meant for him, then comes to suspect that his daughter's boss (Danny Huston) and a few smarmy public officials are hiding a big secret. The best element in this depressing, violent film is the sharp byplay between Craven and a sardonic "fixer" (Ray Winstone) who specializes in cleaning up secret messes for the Feds.
THE BOTTOM LINE: There are bloody, point-blank gun battles and graphic wounds, frequent use of the F-word and other nonsexual profanity, as well as mild sexual innuendo. The film's emotional and narrative arcs are very dark.
"LEGION" (NEW) -- High-schoolers 16 and older with strong stomachs for screen mayhem may be willing to go along with "Legion" -- especially if they like thrillers and horror films that mix blood-and-guts with religious or occult themes. The film is, in truth, a mishmash of horror and pseudo-biblical film cliches that come home to roost in the silly, special-effects-laden third act. A group of people are stranded in a Mojave Desert cafe when the power and phones go out: Co-owner Bob (Dennis Quaid), his business partner (Charles S. Dutton), Bob's mechanic son (Lucas Black), the unwed and pregnant waitress (Adrianne Palicki), a tourist couple (Kate Walsh and Jon Tenney), their daughter (Willa Holland), and a loner (Tyrese Gibson). A sweet old lady (Jeannette Miller) arrives and morphs into a profanity-spewing demon who is still killable with bullets. Next, a tall, mysterious man named Michael (Paul Bettany) drives up and tells them that a disillusioned God wants to destroy humankind, and the zombie-like creatures bearing down on the cafe are avenging angels in human form. Michael can also fire rocket-propelled grenades, which is handy.
THE BOTTOM LINE: The violence is intense and occasionally very bloody, with impalements, a man tied upside down on a cross, his skin bubbling with boils and exploding entrails. There are gun battles, the implication that a possessed child is killed off-camera, very strong profanity, smoking and drinking. The script deals the nature of faith and obliquely with the abortion debate. Not for under-16s.
"THE BOOK OF ELI" -- Co-directors/siblings Albert and Allen Hughes undermine their intended spiritual message here with ultraviolence, making "The Book of Eli" only intermittently arresting as a parable. Still, Denzel Washington is a powerful, mysterious presence as Eli, a hero/prophet in a blasted post-apocalyptic world. He carries on his westward trek a holy book (it is left unnamed until near the end, but we can guess), which he salvaged after "the last war." In a ruined city, he meets a power player, Carnegie (Gary Oldman), who rules the masses with his thugs. Carnegie wants Eli's book. He thinks it will increase his own power. His mistress (Jennifer Beals) and her daughter (Mila Kunis) try to help Eli.
THE BOTTOM LINE: The mayhem earns the R rating, as do scenes that imply threats of sexual assault (which are stopped before they happen or are not shown), other milder sexual innuendo, and some strong profanity. The film is an iffy proposition for high-schoolers under 16.
(c) 2010, Washington Post Writers Group.
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