Family Film Reviews

-- 8 AND OLDER:

"TOOTH FAIRY" PG -- In this family fantasy, the always amiable, if not comically 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 waning. His girlfriend (Ashley Judd) gets angry when he starts to tell her littlest (Destiny Grace Whitlock) there is no tooth fairy. That night, Derek sprouts wings and finds himself standing before the 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). Trying to hide his new identity gets Derek into trouble. 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 happen during the ironic repartee between Derek and his fairy caseworker -- humor aimed at adults.

-- A PG GEARED MORE TO TEENS:

"PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTNING THIEF" PG -- This neat mix of contemporary teen culture and Greek myth (based on the first in Rick Riordan's five-novel series) ought to entertain teens and pleasantly surprise adults, as it feels like the old special-effects films of the 1950s and '60s and does not come off as a "Harry Potter" rip-off. It might also inspire kids to read those myths. Zeus (Sean Bean) and Poseidon (Kevin McKidd) meet atop the Empire State Building. Zeus believes the son of Poseidon has stolen his lightning bolt, and he wants it back. Cut to Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman), a New York high-schooler who sees himself as a loser. During a museum visit, Percy learns he's a demigod -- the child of his mom's (Catherine Keener) long-ago liaison with Poseidon -- and that their low-income life has been a charade to hide him. Even Percy's pal Grover (Brandon T. Jackson) turns out to be a furry-legged satyr assigned to protect him. Percy is sent to a demigod training camp. When his mom is abducted by Hades, god of the Underworld, he goes on a quest to rescue her -- and prove to Zeus that he didn't take the bolt. Grover and a new friend, Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario), child of Athena, go with him.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Many preteens would like "Percy Jackson & the Olympians," but those in the 10-to-12 range should be able to handle mayhem that is intense, even if mostly bloodless. Young Percy and his cohorts fight a huge, horned Minotaur, the serpent-haired Medusa (Uma Thurman, in a fun turn that snake-phobics should avoid), a hydra-headed monster and other fire-breathers. There is the beheading of an immortal and the bandying about of the severed head, a monster impaled on its own horn, femur-cracking fights and gashes. Percy's stepfather (Joe Pantoliano) is an abusive drunk. There is frequent mild sexual innuendo.

-- PG-13s:

"VALENTINE'S DAY" (NEW) -- High-schoolers who like romantic-comedy will find (as box office receipts show) something to love in "Valentine's Day." They may be surprised to hear adults who say the movie looks like a crass, cobbled-together rip-off of the far classier (despite the R rating) British "Love Actually" (R, 2003). Like that film, "Valentine's Day" is an anthology in which many characters face romantic hurdles on the holiday and turn out to be connected to one another. They include a florist (Ashton Kutcher) who gets engaged to his career-oriented girlfriend (Jessica Alba); a teacher (Jennifer Garner) who pines for a doctor (Patrick Dempsey) who lies to her; her friend (Jessica Biel) who gives an annual I Hate Valentine's Day party; a secretary (Anne Hathaway) who can't tell a nice new guy (Topher Grace) that she moonlights as a phone sex "entertainer"; an 18-year-old (Emma Roberts) and her boyfriend (Carter Jenkins) who plan to lose their virginity; their pals ("Twilight" co-star Taylor Lautner and singer Taylor Swift), who decide to wait. (In the end, all the teens decide to wait.) Discerning high-schoolers may see it's the performers who rescue -- just barely -- this movie from the hackneyed writing and bad jokes.

THE BOTTOM LINE: "Valentine's Day" is a perfect example of the unhelpful vagueness of today's PG-13 rating. Compared to the relative innocence of, say, "When in Rome," another PG-13 that has nowhere near the same sexual content, "Valentine's Day" should be an R. Yet it is not really R-ish, either. Once again, The Family Filmgoer proposes a "PG-15" rating for films better geared to high-schoolers. "Valentine's Day" has many implied overnight trysts, with semi-steamy, scantily clad people on beds, though it never shows explicit sexual situations. There are the comical but steamy and innuendo-laden "phone sex" calls, the nude teen faced with his girlfriend's mom, his nakedness masked by a strategically placed guitar. There are themes about marital infidelity and sexual orientation, and some characters drink.

"DEAR JOHN" -- 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 via 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 by scenes between John and his distant dad (Richard Jenkins).

THE BOTTOM LINE: There are a couple of quick but intense battle scenes with nongraphic injuries but much blood. 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 with outer clothing removed and another scene with implied toplessness. A couple of characters become ill and die. There is also a child character with autism.

"WHEN IN ROME" -- 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 nice eye candy, but the story is wafer thin. Bell plays a Guggenheim curator -- an unlucky-in-love careerist who fears she'll never find a soul mate. She goes to her sister's wedding in Rome and meets her new brother-in-law's one-time roommate, 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 originally 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 -- that his love is not real.

THE BOTTOM LINE: "When in Rome" is a mild PG-13 by that rating's ever-loosening standards (which is why the rating is 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.

-- R's:

"Shutter Island" (NEW) -- Lugubrious and more than a bit of a mess in terms of story flow, "Shutter Island" (based on the novel by Dennis Lehane) may still grab moviegoers 17 and older and not let go. Yet they, too, may be frustrated by the film's disjointedness and its overheated mix of themes, ranging from mental illness to Nazi atrocities to Cold War commie-baiting. And they may giggle now and then at the atmospherics, which are laid on awfully thick by director Martin Scorsese and his team. High-school and college kids could debate whether the film's depiction of concentration camp atrocities is exploitative in such a film. It is the early 1950s. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Teddy Daniels, a troubled U.S. Marshal and World War II vet. He and his new partner (Mark Ruffalo) are sent to Shutter Island, a federal facility for the criminally insane off the coast of Boston, where a patient has disappeared. After meetings with the chief psychiatrist (Ben Kingsley), his associate (Max von Sydow), other patients and guards, Teddy comes to suspect a conspiracy.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Not for most high-schoolers under 17, the movie has repeated graphic flashbacks of corpses and starving, dead-eyed survivors at the liberation of a Nazi concentration camp. There are images (unrelated to the war) of drowned children, murdered by a parent. There are graphic gun wounds and intense fights. Characters smoke, drink, use strong profanity and crude sexual language. The gray, gothic atmosphere could give more chills to over-17s than a garden-variety horror film -- gaunt, shackled patients, dark crumbling structures, flickering lights, rocky cliffs, heavy storms. Some of the "treatment" the patients receive seems akin to torture. There are hallucinatory scenes and drug injections.

"The Wolfman" (NEW) -- High-schoolers of 15 or 16 and older, if they've learned to appreciate the artful, character-driven horror films of a bygone era, ought to bond with "The Wolfman," as long as they can handle the gory bits, which are modern in their explicitness despite the Victorian setting. Darkly moody and gorgeously designed and scored, the film is a remake of the 1941 film that starred Lon Chaney Jr. Benicio Del Toro plays Lawrence Talbot, a Shakespearean actor who returns to England after his brother goes missing. His father, Sir John (Anthony Hopkins), who sent Lawrence to America as a child (which explains Del Toro's accent), seems distant and unmoved after the ravaged body is found. Lawrence is determined to learn what beast killed his sibling. His brother's beautiful, grieving fiancee (Emily Blunt) also attracts him. While visiting a fortuneteller (Geraldine Chaplin), Lawrence is bitten by the beast that's been at large. A Scotland Yard inspector (Hugo Weaving) arrives just as Lawrence faces his first post-bite full moon and his family's dark secret.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Characters attacked by the Wolfman are slashed and gashed, de-limbed, even beheaded, and the blood flies. There are decomposing corpses. When Del Toro morphs into a werewolf the changes in his bone structure look agonizing. Treatment in a Victorian insane asylum plays as torture -- electric shock, dunking in ice water. Lawrence hallucinates. There is a suicide theme related to loss of a parent, crude references to prostitutes, and other milder sexual innuendo. Characters drink and smoke, and occasionally swear.

"FROM PARIS WITH LOVE" -- High-schoolers 17 and up who like irreverent action flicks could find plenty of diversion here, particularly in 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. Upon closer inspection, however, older teens will notice the film makes little earthly sense. It's a get-the-terrorists bloodfest that plays more like a cops-versus-drug-dealers tale than a spy drama with a credible plot. 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 performs small tasks for a nameless covert agency and hopes he'll soon be promoted to full-fledged spy. Travolta plays Charlie Wax, who comes to partner with James to avert disaster as an American delegation arrives 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. Even so, his screen acting remains first rate in this 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 something. Film buffs 17 and up may savor the sharp byplay between Craven and a sardonic "fixer" (Ray Winstone) who specializes in cleaning up secret messes for the Feds is the element .

THE BOTTOM LINE: There are bloody, point-blank gun battles and graphic wounds, frequent strong profanity, as well as mild sexual innuendo. The film's emotional and narrative arcs are very dark.