"Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" (PG, 1 hr., 21 min.)

Funny -- really funny -- and enormously clever in its use of 3-D, this animated comedy (loosely based on the 1978 children's book written by Judi Barrett and illustrated by Ron Barrett) will tickle kids 6 and up as well as older kids and all adults. It's that much fun. There are a few moments that could scare the littlest ones: The protagonists and their island town are threatened by a spaghetti tornado and an avalanche of leftovers, and there is a harrowing midair struggle with an out-of-control food-flinging machine. There is mild toilet humor and one character swells up after eating peanuts, but is quickly cured. For the most part, though, "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" is a carefree 81 minutes with dialogue and situations that are unfailingly witty for all ages.

In a little island town off the Atlantic Coast is a wild-haired wannabe inventor named Flint Lockwood (voice of Bill Hader). The town has fallen on hard times since its sardine industry has petered out. Flint's gruff but kind dad (James Caan), who rarely unknits his unibrow, urges Flint to work with him at the bait shop, but Flint only wants to invent. His "ratbirds" have not been a hit, but he keeps trying. Wouldn't it be great if he could make a machine that converts water into food? With the help of his drolly mischievous monkey, Steve (Neil Patrick Harris), Flint does it at last, but he can't control the results. The machine shoots into the sky (spoiling the opening ceremony of Sardine Land amusement park) and rains cheeseburgers onto the town. From his workshop, Flint expands the menu to steak, ice cream, pancakes and more. People love it, especially the mayor (Bruce Campbell) who senses a tourism bonanza even as he gets too fat to walk. A TV weather reporter, Sam Sparks (Anna Faris), covers the food phenomenon and becomes a star. Sam, who is a closet nerd, actually "gets" the eccentric Flint, but their romance hits a snag. The machine goes haywire and Flint's ego won't let him admit mistakes. Then the pasta twister and leftovers avalanche hit. With some help, Flint must get into the sky and stop his crazy machine.

Beyond the Ratings Game: Movie Reviews for various ages

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

"Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" PG (NEW) -- Funny -- really funny -- and enormously clever in its use of 3-D, this animated comedy (loosely based on the 1978 children's book) will tickle kids 6 and older, right up to grandparents with dialogue and situations that are unfailingly witty for all ages. A few things could scare the littlest ones: The protagonists and their island town are threatened by a spaghetti tornado and an avalanche of leftovers, and there is a harrowing midair struggle with an out-of-control food-making machine. There is mild toilet humor and one character swells up after eating peanuts, but is quickly cured. In a little Atlantic Coast island town lives inventor Flint Lockwood (voice of Bill Hader). The town has fallen on hard times since its sardine industry folded. Flint's gruff but kind dad (James Caan) wants him to work at the bait shop, but Flint wants only to invent. His "ratbirds" are not a hit, but he keeps trying. He builds a machine that converts water into food, but he can't control it. It shoots into the sky and rains cheeseburgers onto the town. People love it, especially the mayor (Bruce Campbell) who senses a tourism bonanza. A TV weather reporter, Sam Sparks (Anna Faris), a closet nerd who actually "gets" the eccentric Flint, covers the phenomenon as it expands to steak, ice cream and more. But then the pasta tornado hits, the leftover landfill bursts and Flint must stop the machine!

-- OK FOR KIDS 8 AND OLDER:

"Shorts" PG -- "Shorts" is raucous, chaotic fun for kids 8 and older, though inspiration and energy weaken in its last act. It's told in out-of-order chapters and with comic-bookish special effects that show rampaging crocodiles, swooping pterodactyls, and, for grossness, a giant booger with an eyeball in it. There's bullying, but for comedy, not anguish. In a town called Black Falls, everyone works for mean Mr. Black (James Spader). His snarky daughter Helvetica (Jolie Vanier) torments Toe Thompson (Jimmy Bennett). Into their lives drops a multicolored "wishing rock." Toe wishes for "friends" and it produces tiny UFOs piloted by aliens who clean his room, but also wreck 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 bullies pelt Toe with rocks. The film ends kindly and tells us to be careful what we wish for.

-- PG-13s OF VARYING INTENSITY:

"Love Happens" (NEW) -- Stars Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart deserve better than this sentimental, incoherent mess of a movie. The shapeless narrative goes off in a dozen different directions, all of them cliched. Teens who like a good romantic tearjerker may enjoy it, anyway. Eckhart plays Burke, a self-help guru who has made his name with a best-seller about handling grief, even though he has never dealt with the loss of his own wife three years earlier. Burke drinks juice in public and vodka in private. At a weeklong book tour and seminar in Seattle (where his wife is buried), he has an encounter with his father-in-law (Martin Sheen), who calls him a hypocrite. Emotionally fragile, he (literally) bumps into the lovely Eloise (Aniston), who supplies the hotel with flower arrangements from her shop. Their hesitant courtship alternates with Burke's work at the seminar, especially with Walter (John Carroll Lynch), who has lost a son. In addition to drinking and smoking a hookah (with no drugs implied) at a coffeehouse, there is semi-crude comic sexual innuendo, midrange profanity, a joke about baking a dead husband's ashes into cookies, and the re-enactment of a fatal car accident.

"Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself" (NEW) -- This latest comedy-laced morality tale from Tyler Perry feels even more formulaic than its (all PG-13) predecessors. It is so predictable that the emotional punches land with a sermonizing thud. April (Taraji P. Henson -- "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," PG-13, 2008) sings in a club, drinks a lot, and has a good-for-nothing married boyfriend, Andy (Brian J. White). When her teenage niece Jennifer (Hope Olaide Wilson) and younger nephews (Kwesi Boakye and Frederick Siglar) try to rob battle-ax Madea's (Tyler Perry in drag) house because they're hungry, Madea takes them to their aunt's door. They've been living with their grandmother (April's mother), who has disappeared. Wilma (Gladys Knight) and Pastor Brian (Marvin Winans) from the church urge April to take in her kin, then they send over the handsome Sandino (Adam Rodriguez) to fix up her house. Sandino has an instant rapport with the kids, but Andy is trouble. The film shows his threats and attempted rape of Jennifer (not graphic). Both Knight and Mary J. Blige, as April's work friend, get big solo numbers. There is grief at a parent's death, and a recurring theme about teen girls being molested. Not for middle-schoolers.

"9" -- Dazzling computer animation and art direction wedded to an intriguing idea don't save "9" from its own humorless preachiness, which makes it seem long at 79 minutes. Filmmaker Shane Acker's post-apocalyptic fable is geared to adults. It's OK for most teens, but might bore them. There are huge machines that attack the little puppet-like heroes and the mood is fear-laden and dark. "Our world is ending, but life must go on," a voice intones at the start. It is a scientist. The war machines he invented have killed off humanity. As his final act, he built tiny electrically sparked creatures made from odds and ends and imbued with thought and conscience. Creature No. 9 (voice of Elijah Wood) awakens and goes out exploring in the ruined city. He meets elderly No. 2 (Martin Landau), who is abducted by a huge mechanical "beast," then finds more beings like himself, led by the dictatorial No. 1 (Christopher Plummer). In trying to rescue No. 2, poor No. 9 inadvertently restarts the horrific old war machinery. The creatures must use their wits to stop the machines.

"All About Steve" -- It's good that Sandra Bullock wants to take artistic risks, but they don't pay off in "All About Steve," a laborious attempt at offbeat character comedy that begins rather well, but quickly goes south. It is unlikely to appeal to teens. The movie has a semiexplicit sexual situation that's truly not for middle-schoolers and Bullock's character thanks a truck driver who gives her a lift for "not raping me." There is other more muted sexual innuendo, midrange profanity and gratuitous ethnic and racial stereotyping. There are exploitative cable TV-style stories about deaf children falling into a mine, a hostage situation, and storms, though no one is badly hurt. Bullock plays an eccentric crossword puzzle designer who lives with her parents, wears red patent leather boots, talks compulsively, and becomes obsessed with dishy cable news cameraman Steve (Bradley Cooper) after their brief blind date. Steve's boneheaded colleague (Thomas Haden Church) urges her to stalk him.

-- R's:

"Jennifer's Body" (NEW) -- Jennifer (Megan Fox of the PG-13-rated "Transformer" films) is a tough-talking, promiscuous high-school cheerleader. After she's ill-used by several guys in a rock band (rape is implied, but it proves more complicated than that), she becomes a vampire and gets her revenge by killing high-school boys, eating their innards and drinking their blood. Despite the horror plot, "Jennifer's Body" (written by Diablo Cody, who penned the PG-13-rated "Juno" in 2007) is a razor-sharp satire of high-school social angst. There's a beating heart amid all the blood and snark, even though the movie is too grossly violent and sexually explicit to recommend for under-17s. Its real star is Amanda Seyfried as Needy, Jennifer's best friend and our narrator. The film opens with Needy in psychiatric detention, looking back: She and Jennifer go to hear an indie rock band. The roadhouse burns down and people die, but Jennifer goes off with the lead singer (Adam Brody) and his crew anyway. She returns bloodied and vomiting gore. Needy, who has always worshipped Jennifer, slowly comes to suspect her friend. One day she's pale and sullen, the next flushed and happy after she's killed and "fed." Besides horror-style violence, the film has explicit sexual situations (including the already famous Jennifer-Needy kiss), graphic sexual slang, strong profanity, and brief drug use.

"Sorority Row" (NEW) -- Perhaps it's a sign of our ill-mannered times that a slasher film about the murder of sorority girls elicits no sympathy for them whatsoever. That's because the girls portrayed are examples of said ill manners -- snarky, mean, looks-obsessed, promiscuous and shallower than a puddle. A crass and heartless entertainment, the film contains strong profanity, crude sexual language, toplessness, semiexplicit sexual situations, drinking and drug references. It begins when the girls of Theta Pi play a prank on a guy who has angered them. They let him think the sex-enhancing drug he gives to one of their sisters has killed her (she foams at the mouth, fakes death). His panicked reaction soon turns her fake death real. They drop her body down a mine shaft and pledge secrecy. The sorority leader Jessica (Leah Pipes) is ambitious and amoral. The sort-of heroine, Cassidy (Briana Evigan), feels badly, but does nothing. The shrinking violet, Ellie (Rumer Willis), just screams and cowers. On graduation weekend, a slasher starts killing the Theta Pi girls and anyone who gets in the way. So not for under-17s.

"The Final Destination" -- The huge popularity of death-fests such as the "Final Destination" films (all four rated R) seems pathological, but perhaps it's a form of the at-least-it's-not-me syndrome. The formula is always the same: Protagonists miraculously survive some disaster, only to be picked off later by the invisible, inexorable spirit of Death. The films foreshadow each demise -- showing bolts loosening, gasoline spilling -- so we know what the "freak accidents" will be. Then they unfold in gory detail. There's always one character who has premonitions and tries to stop. In "The Final Destination" the accidents happen in 3-D and Nick (Bobby Campo) has the visions. He alerts spectators of impending catastrophe at a NASCAR-type raceway. The survivors start dying one by one. There are many impalements. The film has strong profanity and one graphic sexual situation with seminudity. Not for under-17s.

"Gamer" -- Though it seems to critique the accelerating decline of taste, public behavior, ethics and morality, the futuristic "Gamer" spends an awful lot of time exploiting those very issues for thrills. The trippy look and computer-generated effects are impressive and the cast is strong, but a movie cannot live on sci-fi and sarcasm alone. Not for under-17s, it has strongly implied, sometimes explicit, sexual situations involving virtual-reality prostitution (with female toplessness and near-nudity). There is bloody violence and strong profanity. Gerard Butler plays Kable, a death row inmate (he was framed, of course) forced to fight in lethal battles as part of a hybrid live-action/virtual-reality video game. A smart-aleck rich kid (Logan Lerman) is the gamer who steers Kable through the firefights. Kable needs to break free so he can find his wife (Amber Valletta) and child (Brighid Fleming).

"Inglourious Basterds" -- Cinema buffs 16 and older who delight in Quentin Tarantino's flamboyant, mayhem-laced filmmaking will latch right onto this wildly implausible but arresting, often stunning, yarn. There is very graphic violence, a brief explicit sexual situation, strong profanity and much drinking and smoking. Brad Pitt, with a thick Southern accent as Lt. Aldo Raine, leads a squad of Jewish-American soldiers into occupied France to ambush German soldiers and collect their scalps. (This is Tarantino's riff on war flicks, not history. He loots the Holocaust to tell a tale of vengeance.) One young Jewish woman (Melanie Laurent) escapes an SS man (Christoph Waltz) whose machine gunners kill her family. In Paris under an alias, she runs a cinema and plots to kill the German high command during a film premiere. She's unaware that Raine and others intend the same thing.