"Post Grad" (PG-13, 1 hr., 29 min.)

A smart, motivated college grad named Ryden Malby (Alexis Bledel, who played "Lena" in "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants," PG, 2005, and in the 2008 sequel, rated PG-13; and Rory on TV's "Gilmore Girls") discovers it's not so easy to get a great job the day after you get your diploma. She's forced to move back with her oddball family -- Carol Burnett as her cranky grandma, Michael Keaton as her boyish, on-the-lookout-for-money-making-schemes dad, Jane Lynch as her understanding mom, and Bobby Coleman as her eccentric kid brother. Desperate to avoid selling luggage at her dad's store, Ryden goes to umpteen job interviews that don't pan out. Meanwhile, the snarky valedictorian (Catherine Reitman) of her class has bagged the great publishing house job Ryden had coveted. Her childhood pal Adam (charming Zach Gilford), who, of course, is in love with her, tires of waiting for Ryden to second that emotion. He may go to law school in New York, or just write and sing sad songs. Ryden's handsome Brazilian next- door neighbor (Rodrigo Santoro) offers a brief romantic fling which further alienates Adam.

Now, all this sounds utterly cliched, yet "Post Grad" is surprisingly amusing. The actors seem fully and drolly invested in their characters. The script (by Kelly Fremon) is sharp, and the direction (by Vicky Jenson) agile. The supporting characters are more interesting than Ryden and her troubles (though Bledel has a nice flair for comic acting) but luckily they're on-screen a lot. While watching the movie, The Family Filmgoer was often reminded of the wacky Depression-era comedy "You Can't Take It With You" (a 1938 film directed by Frank Capra and starring James Stewart, based on the beloved play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart). That's a compliment.

There are a couple of steamy but nonexplicit sexual situations, wine and beer-drinking, midrange profanity, crude humor, jokes about death, gratuitous Latino stereotypes, and a gag about Dad accidentally running over a cat that some will find unfunny. It is more for high-schoolers who like their humor and their characterizations just slightly off-center.

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Beyond the Ratings Game: Movie Reviews for various ages

-- OK FOR MOST (BUT NOT ALL) KIDS 6 AND OLDER:

"Ponyo" G -- This stunning, wildly imaginative fable by the Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki ("Howl's Moving Castle," PG, 2005; "Spirited Away," PG, 2002) has English dialogue voiced by American actors and offers rare delights for most kids 6 and older. Miyazaki tells a complex story, though, and the film's 5-year-old hero faces dangers that could scare some kids under 8. Based loosely on Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid," it begins with a goldfish who swims away from her father, Fujimoto (voice of Liam Neeson), an undersea wizard. She washes up near a seaside town and is rescued by a 5-year-old boy named Sosuke (Frankie Jonas, the Jonas Brothers' 8-year-old sib). He puts her in a pail of water, names her Ponyo, feeds her, and is shocked when she starts to talk (voice of Noah Cyrus, Miley Cyrus' 9-year-old sis). Terrified that Ponyo will turn human, Fujimoto sends an army of fish to snatch her. (Their eyes in the waves are truly creepy.) Ponyo uses magic to become a real girl and return to Sosuke. His puzzled mom (Tina Fey) takes the little girl in. Ponyo's wizard father and sea goddess mother (Cate Blanchett) arrange a happy ending. There are scary storms, but it all passes like a great watery dream. One angry phrase, "Bug off!" is used, and Sosuke's mom appears to grab a can of beer.

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-- OK FOR KIDS 8 AND OLDER:

"Shorts" PG -- "Shorts" offers raucous, chaotic fun for kids 8 and older, though inspiration and energy wane in the last act. It's told in chapters that jump around in time the way a kid might say, "Wait, wait, I forgot to tell you such-and-such happened first!" Comic-bookish special effects show rampaging crocodiles, swooping pterodactyls, and, for grossness, a giant booger with an eyeball in it. There's bullying, but for comic effect, not mental anguish. Director Robert Rodriguez lets kids take the lead, as in his "Spy Kids" trilogy (all PGs). In a town called Black Falls, everyone works for mean Mr. Black (James Spader). His snarky daughter Helvetica (Jolie Vanier) and her brothers torment Toe Thompson (Jimmy Bennett), nerdy son of workaholics Mom (Leslie Mann) and Dad (Jon Cryer) Thompson. Into all their lives drops a multicolored stone found by a kid named Loogie (Trevor Gagnon) at the end of a rainbow. It's a wishing rock. When Toe wishes for "friends," it produces tiny UFOs piloted by aliens who cook him a meal, clean his room, and then, unfortunately, destroy his science class. The rock creates more havoc than happiness. Some scenes could worry kids under 8. One kid is swallowed by a croc, then vomited back up, and the bullies pelt Toe with rocks. The film ends on a kinder note and reminds us to be careful what we wish for.

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-- OK FOR KIDS 10 AND OLDER:

"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" PG -- The saga of boy wizard Harry Potter remains compelling in this handsome, if sunless film, based on the sixth book in J.K. Rowling's series. A kind of place-holder for the two-part finale, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," scheduled for 2010 and 2011, the movie has fewer action sequences, a lot of ruminative dialogue, and assumes an audience's near-total knowledge of the books. The PG rating means the action sequences are less violent but the movie is iffy for children under 10. It has frightening images, as when the Death Eaters collapse a crowded London footbridge, and when skeletal beings swarm out of an underground lake to attack Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon). One character is cursed and dangerously flung about. Another appears to die of poisoning, but revives. There are broken noses and other wounds. As Harry and his friends are in their later teens, there is romantic longing and more sexual innuendo. Harry meets Professor Slughorn (Jim Broadbent), who knows secrets about the Hogwarts years of Tom Riddle, who grew up to be Lord Voldemort.

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-- PG-13s OF VARYING INTENSITY, PLUS A PG MORE FOR TEENS:

"Post Grad" (NEW) -- A smart college grad named Ryden Malby (Alexis Bledel, who played "Lena" in "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" films, the first a PG in 2005, the sequel a PG-13 in 2008; and Rory on TV's "Gilmore Girls") discovers it's not so easy to get a great job the day after you get your diploma. She has to move back with her oddball family (Carol Burnett as her cranky grandmother, Michael Keaton as her boyish dad, Jane Lynch as her understanding mom, Bobby Coleman as her eccentric kid brother). Ryden is desperate to avoid selling luggage at her dad's store, but her job interviews don't pan out. Her childhood pal Adam (charming Zach Gilford), who, of course, is in love with her, tires of waiting. He may go to law school or just write and perform sad songs. Ryden's handsome next-door neighbor (Rodrigo Santoro) offers a brief romantic fling. All this sounds totally cliched, yet the entire cast is so drolly invested in their characters and the script and direction so sharp, that the movie is truly amusing. There are a couple of steamy but nonexplicit sexual situations, wine and beer-drinking, midrange profanity and crude humor, jokes about death, gratuitous Latino stereotypes, and a gag about Dad accidentally running over a cat that some will find unfunny. More for high-schoolers who like their humor and their characterizations just a little offbeat.

"G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" (NEW) -- Fueled by impressive digital effects, this futuristic war flick will likely entertain action-loving teens. It is largely mindless, but it has style. The violence is nongraphic, but there is much loud and explosive destruction, as well as several laboratory scenes in which people's heads are probed by long needles. In the prologue, a glowing hot metal mask is placed on someone's face as punishment. The script uses midrange profanity. In the near future, an arms manufacturer named McCullen (Christopher Eccleston) is descended from a 17th-century Scottish clansman who sold weapons to both sides in a war (in the prologue). McCullen has a new nanotechnology that can attack tanks, planes and guns by "eating" the metal they're made of (cool special effects show this). Of course, McCullen is a villain bent on world domination. An American general (Dennis Quaid) is wise to McCullen and sics his supersecret G.I. Joe unit on the problem. He also recruits ace soldiers Duke (Channing Tatum) and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans) for the unit. Duke learns that his estranged wife (Sienna Miller) now works for the evil McCullen. There are cool battles around the Eiffel Tower and under the polar ice cap.

"The Time Traveler's Wife" -- This film adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger's novel feels turgid and shallow. Since a traumatic event in his childhood, Henry (Eric Bana) has abruptly and uncontrollably time-traveled. He arrives naked wherever he's transported, steals clothes and copes until he's just as suddenly zapped back to a more familiar period of his life. He meets Clare (Rachel McAdams) when he's in his 20s. She knows him, but he doesn't know her because they first met when Clare was a child and Henry was older. They marry and try to make a life, despite his sudden departures, returns and fluctuating ages. Yes, it defies all logic. One can see how a tale like this -- the book uses interior monologues -- could be a metaphor for the way relationships fluctuate. But the film never achieves such insight. More suited to high-schoolers, it opens with a harrowing (nongraphic) fatal car crash in which little Henry loses his mother. There is brief gun violence, frequent back-view nudity, steamy implied sexual situations, implied miscarriages with hemorrhaging, talk of a vasectomy, midrange profanity and drinking. Henry uses his time-traveling ability to cheat at the lottery.

"Bandslam" PG -- Director/co-writer Todd Graff gives this pretty traditional high-school flick a not-too-jagged edge that turns cliches inside out. There is a subtle but unmistakable portrayal of teenage depression and mild sexual innuendo, including mild kissing. There's an amusing scene in which the protagonist, Will Burton (Gaelan Connell), is showering while his mom (Lisa Kudrow) sits on a closed toilet seat to talk to him. He yells "inappropriate!" from behind the shower curtain until she leaves. One character loses a parent. Students viciously tease Will about his absent father's long-ago drunk driving accident. A smart loner trying to survive as the new guy at a big high school, Will has a scholar's deep knowledge of rock 'n' roll. He's recruited by cheerleader Charlotte (pop singer/actress Aly Michalka) to help improve her band before the big bandslam contest. He's also drawn to the uncheerleaderish Sa5m (the 5 is silent), played by Vanessa Hudgens of the G-rated "High School Musical" films.

"Julie & Julia" -- A sizable minority of high-schoolers may appreciate the colorful characters, smart dialogue and glorious food in this adult-oriented fable. "Julie & Julia" tells parallel stories based on Julie Powell's book and blog about how, in 2002, she challenged herself to make all 524 recipes in Julia Child's cookbook "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," and on Child's autobiographical "My Life in France." The modern scenes tell a genial fable with Amy Adams as Julie, but the truly savory treats are the scenes about Child's life in Paris as a diplomat's wife after World War II, when she indeed mastered French cooking. Meryl Streep is wondrous as an idealized, funny Julia Child. Writer/director Nora Ephron's celebratory film floats between mid-20th century Europe and 21st-century Queens. The movie has a few strongly implied but nongraphic marital sexual situations and mild sexual innuendo. There is heavy smoking, drinking, tipsiness, rare but occasionally strong profanity, and a reference to suicide.

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-- AN R:

"Inglourious Basterds" (NEW) -- High-schoolers 16 and older who delight in Quentin Tarantino's flamboyant, mayhem-rich filmmaking will glom onto this odd, engrossing, outrageous film, even if they don't catch his constant allusions to other war pictures and filmmaking styles. As a Tarantino movie, of course, "Inglourious Basterds" has graphic violence -- scalpings, stabbings, throat-slitting, skull-bashing, bloody shootouts. There is a brief graphic sexual situation, strong profanity, and much drinking and smoking. Taking his title, but not his plot, from an R-rated 1978 Italian-made war picture called "The Inglorious Bastards" in English, Tarantino has misspelled the title, then spun a wildly implausible yarn. Brad Pitt, with a peanut-butter-thick southern accent as Lt. Aldo Raine, leads a squad of Jewish-American soldiers into occupied France on a mission of bloody revenge. They ambush German soldiers, kill them cruelly, then collect their scalps. (This film is Tarantino's homage to war movies, not to history. He does trivialize the Holocaust to tell a tale.) In a prologue we see an oily SS man, Col. Landa (terrific Austrian actor Christoph Waltz), scare a French dairy farmer into admitting he's hiding a Jewish family. Only one young woman, Shosanna (Melanie Laurent), escapes Landa's machine guns. Later in Paris, she lives under an alias and runs a cinema. Raine and his men, along with a German movie star/spy (Diane Kruger) and a British intelligence officer (Michael Fassbender), plot to assassinate the entire German high command during a premiere at Shosanna's cinema. Shosanna, on her own, has the same idea.