| Jane Horwitz -- 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.
-- TWO PGs MORE GEARED TO TEENS:
"EXTRAORDINARY MEASURES" PG -- This docudrama tackles serious issues about children with a life-threatening disease. It is earnest, but still lumbering 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, rather uncomfortably, with a big biomedical firm. The ending is hopeful.
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:
"DEAR JOHN" (NEW) -- Teens who like a good cry at the movies can shed salty tears over "Dear John," a sentimental and sometimes laughably predictable love story, based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks. A key subplot about an adult character with autism is actually more interesting and imaginatively done than the central romance. Channing Tatum plays John, a stoic Special Forces soldier who falls in love -- via endless music montages -- with the lovely Savannah (Amanda Seyfried) while he's home in South Carolina on leave. After the 9/11 terror attacks, John re-ups with the military, and though they correspond with many love letters, Savannah finds the distance and her worry over John's safety too much. Teens who may have studied acting will be impressed and moved by scenes between John and his seemingly distant dad (Richard Jenkins), who, John comes to learn, is actually autistic.
THE BOTTOM LINE: There are a couple of quick but intense battle scenes in which we see lots of blood, though the injuries are not graphic. The film shows brief images of a World Trade Center tower collapsing. Characters drink, there is occasional mild profanity, and at least one steamy love scene in which Savannah and John remove outer clothing. There is briefly implied toplessness. In addition to the autism theme (which also features a child), there a couple of characters who become ill and die, so grief and loss are also themes.
"WHEN IN ROME" (NEW) -- Teen girls may gravitate toward this fantastical romantic comedy, poorly (and cheaply) executed though it is, because of its likable stars -- Kristen Bell and Josh Duhamel. Along with them, the footage of Rome and the Guggenheim Museum in New York make for excellent eye candy, but even teen fans of Bell and Duhamel may find the story pretty thin. Bell plays a Guggenheim curator -- an unlucky-in-love careerist (with Anjelica Huston as her gorgon boss) who fears she'll never find a soul mate. She goes to Rome for her sister's wedding and meets her new brother-in-law's one-time roomate, Nick (Duhamel). They spark instantly, but Beth is afraid to fall. She gets drunk, wades into a fountain and retrieves a few coins. The men who tossed the coins fall magically in love with Beth and follow her back to New York -- a sausage manufacturer (Danny De Vito), a male model (Dax Shepard), a magician (Jon Heder), and an artist (Will Arnett). Beth fears Nick is under the same spell and that his love is not real.
THE BOTTOM LINE: "When in Rome" is a mild PG-13 by that rating's ever-expanding standards (making the rating ever more useless). Characters drink and kiss and flirt, but there are really no sexual situations and only mild sexual innuendo. There is rare mild profanity and brief gross-out humor. Nick has gentlemanly instincts, which is refreshing.
"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 inartfully between a moving tale of parental love and a crime thriller. A weird, special-effects depiction of heaven (or heaven's waiting room) as a sentimental storybook landscape throws the film further off-balance. 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 milder 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. Meanwhile the security chief (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:
"FROM PARIS WITH LOVE" (NEW) -- High-schoolers 17 and up who like irreverent action flicks could find plenty of diversion here. The best thing about "From Paris With Love" is John Travolta's wild performance, complete with shaved head and hoop earring, as an American agent with nearly supernatural gifts of marksmanship and hand-to-hand combat. The film, older teens will find upon closer inspection, makes little earthly sense as a get-the-terrorists bloodfest that plays more like a cops-versus-drug-dealers tale than a spy drama with a credible plot. Ah, well. Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays James, a buttoned-down assistant to the U.S. ambassador in Paris, with a great apartment and a French girlfriend (Kasia Smutniak). He also performs small tasks for a nameless covert agency and hopes he'll soon be promoted to full-fledged spy. Travolta plays Charlie Wax, a violence-loving agent who comes to partner with James to avert disaster as an American delegation arrives in Paris for a summit.
THE BOTTOM LINE: The simplistic way the terrorist threat is portrayed and the casual use of South Asian and Middle Eastern stereotypes should bother thoughtful teens over 17. The gun battles spatter gallons of blood and the fights are bone-crushers. The language is highly profane, and there is drug use and drinking, as well as strong sexual innuendo and steamily implied but nongraphic sexual situations.
"EDGE OF DARKNESS" -- The 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) is ill -- vomiting, nosebleeds -- and can't tell him much about her work at a nuclear research facility. As he prepares to take Emma to the hospital, she's shot by a gunman in a passing SUV. Nearly catatonic with grief, Craven comes to suspect that his daughter's boss (Danny Huston) and a few smarmy public officials are hiding a big secret. The sharp byplay between Craven and a sardonic "fixer" (Ray Winstone) who specializes in cleaning up secret messes for the Feds is the element film buffs 17 and up may like.
THE BOTTOM LINE: There are bloody, point-blank gun battles and graphic wounds, frequent use of the F-word and other profanity, as well as mild sexual innuendo. The film's emotional and narrative arcs are very dark.
"LEGION" -- High-schoolers 16 and older with strong stomachs for screen mayhem may be willing to go along with "Legion," especially if they like thrillers that mix blood-and-guts with religious or occult themes. This film does that in a mishmash of horror and pseudo-biblical movie cliches that pile up 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. A sweet old lady (Jeannette Miller) arrives and morphs into a profanity-spewing demon. Next, a tall, mysterious man named Michael (Paul Bettany) tells them that a disillusioned God intends to destroy humankind, and the zombie-like creatures bearing down on the cafe are avenging angels in human form. Michael, an angel defying God's orders, wants to save humanity. He also fires 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 with 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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