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"The House Bunny" (PG-13, 1 hr., 40 min.)

Mothers of teenage girls may cringe at the very idea of "House Bunny." True, this comic tale of a newly unemployed Playboy Bunny who becomes a sorority housemother and transforms a group of socially inept girls into campus dollies has all the ingredients for setting women back 50 years. Yet the souffle that results, despite the requisite college-comedy cliches, is too good-natured, evenhanded and funny to be offensive. "The House Bunny" lets the undereducated Bunny teach the college girls about self-confidence and sexiness. The college girls in turn give the Bunny (who thinks being called "vapid" is a compliment) book-learning. Everyone gains sense of identity and learns that beauty is only skin-deep.

As Shelley, the Bunny of the title, Anna Faris is a comic delight. Her delivery and slapstick moves are flawless and the yearning for friendship, love and belonging rings true. After a conniving Bunny gets her tossed out of the Playboy Mansion, the newly homeless Shelley follows a clique of girls into a fancy sorority house. Dissed by their haughty housemother (Beverly D'Angelo), she leaves and makes her way to the self-esteem-challenged Zeta house, where the body-pierced, bespectacled, pathologically shy young women are played by excellent actresses, including Emma Stone and Kat Dennings. They're about to lose their charter for want of 30 new pledges. Desperate, they hire Shelley and she teaches them how to dress and flirt. But when Shelley meets a nice guy (Colin Hanks), her own advice fails her.

A PG-13 that is perhaps a tad too risque for some middle-schoolers, the movie contains a lot of sexual innuendo and mildly bawdy phrases (a joke about "penis cookies") and words such as "slut," "whore" and "brothel." There is discussion of virginity and the need to lose it, and, of course, the skimpy clothes. There is a comic seminude scene that implies (but doesn't actually show) frontal nudity with a visual joke. One of the sorority girls is pregnant and single. There is rare profanity, toilet humor and brief drinking by an adult.

Beyond the Ratings Game: Movie Reviews for various ages

-- OK FOR KIDS 6 AND OLDER:

"Fly Me to the Moon" G -- Three young flies stow away on the Apollo 11 spacecraft in 1969 and go to the moon and back in this marginally entertaining computer-animated 3-D feature. The eye-popping visuals put the moviegoer in the thick of things, but the jumbled story lacks humor and poignancy. Kids won't get the Cold War references, either. Nat (voice of Trevor Gagnon) is the fly who bugs two pals into buzzing onboard with him. Seeing her little one on TV, Nat's mom (Kelly Ripa) panics, but his grandpa (Christopher Lloyd) thinks it's great. Science-savvy kids will enjoy the vivid re-creation of the moon landing. Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin has a live-action cameo at the end. The film contains mildly crude language ("crap"), and we see an ashtray full of cigarette butts. Russian and American flies do battle in the finale.

-- BETTER FOR KIDS 8 AND OLDER:

"The Longshots" PG -- "The Longshots" is a late-summer treat -- humane, humorous, inspiring and well acted. It's based in part on the story of a gifted girl quarterback, Jasmine Plummer, from small-town Illinois, who played in the Pop Warner youth football league. Wonderful teen actress Keke Palmer ("Akeelah and the Bee," PG, 2006) plays Jasmine, and Ice Cube is terrific as her cranky uncle, an unemployed factory worker and former teen football star. While watching his sad, bookish niece after school because her mom has to work late, he notes that Jasmine has a mean throwing arm. He starts to train her and the local Pop Warner coach (Matt Craven) puts her on the team. As Jasmine overcomes her boy teammates' gender bias and wins games, she, her uncle, and their depressed little town all start to blossom. Despite a few cliches in the narrative, "The Longshots" remains fresh. The film shows an adult drinking beer and uses rare mild profanity and mild sexual innuendo. An adult seems to have a heart attack.

"Star Wars: The Clone Wars" PG -- This computer-animated feature is technically impressive, yet a pale, antiseptic imitation. The Family Filmgoer was bored silly at a recent showing, but kids seemed rapt. Set between "Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones" (PG, 2002) and "Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith" (PG-13, 2005), it still portrays hotheaded Jedi knight Anakin Skywalker (voice of Matt Lanter) as a good guy. His mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi (James Arnold Taylor), assigns him a teenage apprentice, Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein). The evil Count Dooku (Christopher Lee) has the baby son of Jabba the Hutt (Kevin Michael Richardson) kidnapped and frames the Jedi. Creatures at the intergalactic cantina sip possibly alcoholic drinks and do mildly suggestive dance moves. Jabba's uncle smokes a hookah. Bloodless battles show androids beheaded. Some creatures are monsterish. The Huttlet gets sick.

-- PG-13s OF VARYING INTENSITY:

"The House Bunny" (NEW) -- Mothers of teenage girls may cringe at the very idea of "House Bunny" and its story of an unemployed Playboy Bunny who becomes a sorority housemother and transforms a group of socially inept girls into campus dollies. It has the ingredients for setting women back 50 years, yet the resulting souffle, despite the usual college-comedy cliches, is too good-natured, evenhanded and funny to fall flat. Anna Faris is a comic delight as Shelley, a Bunny who is forced out of the Playboy Mansion by a rival. She follows a clique of mean sorority girls onto a campus and, after being dissed by them, leaves and finds her niche at the Zeta house, where the bespectacled, pathologically shy young women (played by excellent actresses, including Emma Stone and Kat Dennings) are about to lose their charter for want of pledges. She teaches them how to dress sexily and flirt. But when Shelley meets a nice guy (Colin Hanks), her own advice fails her. The college girls teach the undereducated Bunny (who thinks being called "vapid" is a compliment) some book-learning and they all gain a sense of identity and learn that beauty is skin-deep and brains are key. A tad too risque for middle-schoolers, the movie contains a lot of sexual innuendo and bawdy phrases. There is discussion of virginity and the need to lose it, and, of course there are those skimpy clothes. There is a comic nearly-nude scene. One of the sorority girls is pregnant and single. There is rare profanity, toilet humor and brief drinking by an adult.

"Traitor" (NEW) -- Don Cheadle plays an intriguingly opaque character in this flawed but often gripping thriller. As Samir Horn, an American with Middle Eastern roots, Cheadle portrays a man who may be a terrorist, a double-agent, or a rogue operator nursing a huge grudge that justifies in his mind the bombings he engineers. He lands in a Yemeni prison after selling explosive detonators and is recruited by jihadi terrorists. The movie tells a deliberately disjointed narrative that jumps amid locales and delivers information in tiny bits. It's clear that writer/director Jeffrey Nachmanoff is using this style as a metaphor -- all intelligence is incomplete. Guy Pearce is fascinating as the FBI agent on Horn's trail. The film is too violent for middle-schoolers, though it is relatively nongraphic in terms of blood or wounds from bombings (both suicide attacks and larger bombings), which are intense, and shoot-outs. There is some profanity and smoking. High-schoolers may find "Traitor" uniquely engaging despite its flaws.

"The Rocker" -- This comedy about a 40-something guy who can't let go of a past failure is also a deft send-up of the rock music world. It doesn't quite add up to the sum of its best parts, but "The Rocker" has fine, weird moments. Rainn Wilson plays Robert "Fish" Fishman, who banged the drums for a 1980s band and was dropped before the group made it big. Now Fish lives a miserable life in Cleveland. Fired from his office job, he moves in with his sister's family. His nephew (Josh Gad) has a garage band slated to play the prom and the teen begs Uncle Fish to fill in on drums. Fish decides he'll take the little band to the top and redeem himself. The movie shows adults drinking and driving, and includes mild comic violence, jokes about drugs, midrange profanity and sexual slang, and back-view nudity. More for high-schoolers.

"Vicky Cristina Barcelona" -- There's no explicit sexuality beyond passionate kisses in this sophisticated romantic comedy by Woody Allen, but the movie is very European-casual in its approach to menages a trois (sexual threesomes), which are strongly implied, but not graphically depicted. So it is more for college-age filmgoers than for high-schoolers. Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) are best friends spending a post-college summer in Barcelona. Vicky is engaged and rather prim. Cristina is a romantic adventurer. They meet a charming artist (Javier Bardem) who invites them on a weekend. His volatile estranged wife (Penelope Cruz) turns up, too. Everyone's life is changed. The rating reflects rare profanity, implied sexual situations, a suicide theme, drinking and smoking.

"The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2" -- The four brainy gal pals have separate summer adventures after they start college in this sequel (the 2005 original was rated PG). Better written and directed than the first film, it can be predictable and sentimental, but also has smarts and humor. Teen girls may like the way the heroines pursue challenging careers, though there's romance, too. Would-be filmmaker Tibby (Amber Tamblyn) has a pregnancy scare. Artist Lena (Alexis Bledel) has a fling. Archaeologist Bridget (Blake Lively) learns about her mother's long-ago suicide. Carmen (America Ferrera) goes to be a stagehand at a theater festival and is cast in a lead role. The film includes a muted but strongly implied sexual situation, semi-frank talk about a torn condom, and nonsexual seminudity.

-- R's:

"Hamlet 2" (LIMITED RELEASE) -- A muddle-headed high-school drama teacher (Steve Coogan) tries to save his job by putting on a musical sequel to "Hamlet" in which Hamlet meets Jesus in this savagely satiric portrait of a man devoted to an art for which he has no talent. The movie veers rather awkwardly between offbeat humor and conventional uplift (follow your dreams). Some moments feel improvised and shapeless, yet "Hamlet 2" is more funny than not. There is strong profanity, crude sexual slang and milder ethnic slurs, as well as teen and adult drinking and a practical joke involving LSD. Some may find the lyrics in a song about Jesus offensive. This humor is more for college kids.

"Death Race" -- This 105 minutes of mayhem has a certain fascination -- like gawking at an accident -- but it is problematic fare for under-17s, however much they like action flicks. In a prison full of convicted murderers, the warden (Joan Allen) lets the inmates soup up old clunkers and race them, adding heavy weaponry to make it lethal, and letting people pay to see the action live on the Internet. Enter Jensen Ames (Jason Statham), a laid-off steelworker and former racer who was framed for the murder of his wife. "Death Race" is garbage, but Statham's macho act is fun and his pit crew, featuring Ian McShane, adds a bit of wit and humanity. The movie includes a decapitation, beatings, strong profanity, racial and homophobic slurs, awful stereotypes, crude sexual slang and innuendo, a brief nongraphic sexual situation, and smoking.

"Tropic Thunder" -- This bull's-eye spoof of Hollywood, directed and co-written by star Ben Stiller, is wildly funny, but not for under-17s without a parental OK. The dialogue is profane and sexually crude. The film-within-a-film shows grossly bloody fake war wounds. The politically incorrect jokes hit African-Americans, Southeast Asians, Jews, gays and people with cognitive disabilities -- sending up how they're stereotyped in movies. A film company is shooting a war saga, "Tropic Thunder," in Vietnam. The stars are a fading action hero (Stiller), a comic with a drug habit (Jack Black), and a white Method actor (Robert Downey Jr.) playing an African-American. The director (Steve Coogan) decides to shoot deeper in the jungle for realism, but the armed, heroin-growing thugs out there are not extras.

(c) 2008, Washington Post Writers Group.

This news arrived on: 08/28/2008

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