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"Inkheart" (PG, 1 hr., 46 min.)

Kids 10 and older who have read the book "Inkheart" by German author Cornelia Funke (part of a trilogy) will have an easier time keeping up with this handsome new film than kids or adults who haven't. But that shouldn't discourage them from seeing it. The plot takes a loooong while to become clear, but it does become clear, and kids seem unfazed by the early lack of clarity. The greatest bonus embedded in "Inkheart" is that it makes the act of reading books seem like an incredibly exciting pastime that could lead to thrilling, if harrowing adventures.

In a prologue, we learn that some people who read stories aloud are "silvertongues." They can cause characters from books to materialize. Then we meet "Mo" Folchart (Brendan Fraser), his wife Resa (Sienna Guillory) and their baby daughter Meggie. As Mo reads "Little Red Riding Hood" to the baby, it becomes evident that he is a silvertongue, though he doesn't know it. Twelve years later, we find Mo and Meggie (Eliza Hope Bennett) traveling in Europe. Meggie's mother Resa long ago disappeared, but Mo refuses to explain how. A repairer of antique books, Mo enters a bookshop and discovers a rare copy of a book titled "Inkheart." Suddenly a character from the book, the fire-juggler Dustfinger (Paul Bettany), appears in the street with his pet weasel. Threatened with worse "Inkheart" villains on the loose, Mo and Meggie take refuge with their eccentric book-collecting Aunt Elinor (riotous Helen Mirren) at her villa. Mo finally tells Meggie that years earlier, as he read "Inkheart" aloud, his wife was pulled into the book while other characters popped out of it. The chief villain is Capricorn (Andy Serkis), who wants Mo to read the book's people-eating Shadow monster into reality. We eventually meet the craven author of "Inkheart," Mr. Fenoglio (Jim Broadbent). Mo, Meggie, Dustfinger, Aunt Elinor, Fenoglio and brave young Farid (Rafi Gavron), who pops out of a "1001 Arabian Nights" tale, team up to free Resa from Capricorn and rewrite the "Inkheart" ending.

Capricorn and his thuggish minions, tattooed all over with prose snippets, are pretty scary. Their gloomy dungeon, monsterish pets and threats to stab, shoot, or execute people make "Inkheart" more for kids 10 and older. There's also the Shadow -- a smoky monster that can eat people. There is occasional crude humor and mild sexual innuendo. The film has a great master-your-own-fate message: The author Fenoglio chides Dustfinger: "You don't have to be selfish just because that's how I wrote you!"

Beyond the Ratings Game: Movie Reviews for various ages

-- OK FOR KIDS 6 AND OLDER

"The Tale of Despereaux" G -- A big-eared mouse with dreams of valor saves the day in this charming and richly imagined bit of old-fashioned animated storytelling. It ought to charm kids 6 and up, but there are bits that could scare littler ones, such as rats cheering for a cat to eat Despereaux (voice of Matthew Broderick); he also falls into a dungeon and runs a gantlet of mousetraps. In the medieval Kingdom of Dor, where soup is an obsession, a hungry rat (Dustin Hoffman) falls into the queen's soup bowl and she dies of fright. To escape capture, the rat dives into a drain and lands in grim Rat World. Behind a wall in the palace kitchen, Despereaux is born in Mouse World. Drawn to ideals of bravery, he's banished to the dungeon for speaking to humans. Mouse and rat meet and vow to live heroically.

-- OK FOR KIDS 8 AND OLDER

"Hotel for Dogs" PG -- A sister and brother living in bad foster care fill the hole in their lives by sheltering stray dogs in this contrived, but cuddly fantasy. Sixteen-year-old Andi (Emma Roberts) and 11-year-old Bruce (Jake T. Austin) have adopted a stray Jack Russell terrier, hiding it from their awful rock musician foster parents (Lisa Kudrow and Kevin Dillon) and their kind social worker (Don Cheadle). They raise cash for dog food by scamming local merchants. One day, their dog leads them into an abandoned hotel where two more strays live. With the help of three new friends (Johnny Simmons, Kyla Pratt and Troy Gentile), Andi and Bruce soon shelter a wild array of dogs at the old hotel, and Bruce builds clever machines to feed, entertain and exercise them. But can they get away with it? Amid the poop and piddle jokes are themes about losing one's parents and a flawed foster care system. It is hinted that pound dogs are euthanized. A kid kicks an adult in the crotch, and there is a teen kiss.

"Bride Wars" PG -- Tween girls may delight in the shop-till-you-drop ethos of "Bride Wars," but many a parent will cringe at the ugly stereotype of females who lust after all things expensive. How tone-deaf is that for 2009? If the movie were a hoot, it might be less offensive, but its wit is labored. Best friends Liv (Kate Hudson), a tough lawyer, and Emma (Anne Hathaway), a sweet-natured schoolteacher, start feuding after a wedding planner (Candice Bergen) schedules their nuptials opposite each other. It is gently implied that both women live with their fiances, and there is a bachelorette party with guy strippers in skimpy outfits doing suggestive dancing. There is much drinking and rare mild profanity.

"Marley & Me" PG -- SPOILER ALERT: This pleasant, if uninspired, adaptation has the same last act as John Grogan's book. We see a beloved pet grow old and ill, get kissed goodbye and euthanized. Parents of under-8s (and some older kids) might consider leaving after an aged Marley recovers miraculously from his first illness. The cuddly but comically untrainable yellow lab Marley wreaks havoc before and after newlywed newspaper reporters John and Jennifer Grogan (Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston) start a family. The film shows Jennifer sad after a failed first pregnancy (a doctor says the fetus has no heartbeat). There is drinking, mild profanity, gently implied marital sexual situations and skinny-dipping, and a stabbing victim who's not badly hurt.

-- FINE FOR KIDS 10 AND OLDER

"Inkheart" (NEW) PG -- Kids 10 and older who have read the book "Inkheart" by Cornelia Funke will have an easy time keeping up with this handsome but convoluted film. For others, the plot will eventually come clear. "Inkheart" is worth the trouble because it makes the act of reading books seem like an incredibly exciting thing. In a prologue, we learn that certain people who read stories aloud are "silvertongues" who can cause characters from books to materialize. As "Mo" Folchart (Brendan Fraser) reads "Little Red Riding Hood" to his baby daughter Meggie, we see that he's a silvertongue, but he doesn't know it yet. Twelve years later, Mo and Meggie (Eliza Hope Bennett) are traveling in Europe. Meggie's mother Resa disappeared long ago, but Mo won't say why. In a bookshop Mo discovers a rare copy of "Inkheart." Suddenly a character from the book, the fire-juggler Dustfinger (Paul Bettany), appears. Worried that worse "Inkheart" villains are loose, Mo and Meggie take refuge with their eccentric book-collecting Aunt Elinor (riotous Helen Mirren). Mo tells Meggie that years earlier, as he read "Inkheart" aloud, her mother Resa (Sienna Guillory) was pulled into the book. Capricorn (Andy Serkis) is the main baddie. He and his thuggish minions are scary for under-10s. They threaten to stab, shoot and execute Mo, Meggie, Dustfinger and others trying to rewrite the "Inkheart" ending and save Resa. There's also a Shadow monster that can eat people. The film includes rare crude humor and mild sexual innuendo.

"Paul Blart: Mall Cop" PG -- Comic Kevin James brings a lovely mix of heart and innocence to the title role in this surprisingly amusing family comedy about a buffoonish shopping-mall security guard who becomes a hero. Paul Blart scoots around on a Segway, trying to look serious and to impress the girl (Jayma Mays) at the hair weave kiosk, but he mostly looks silly. Divorced, he lives with his mom (Shirley Knight) and teen daughter Maya (charming Raini Rodriguez). When a gang of robbers takes hostages in the mall, Paul tries to foil them solo. The bad guys repeatedly talk of killing hostages. There is gunfire and an explosion. Paul's daughter is put in danger. It's implied that Paul's Segway hits a dog. We see the back of a shopper's bra as she beats Paul up. He gets drunk and we see a tattoo on his behind. There is mild sexual innuendo and swearing. The bad guys' threats are intense for under-10s.

-- PG-13s OF VARYING INTENSITY

"Last Chance Harvey" -- With their vulnerable, winning performances as two lonely people who learn that life may not have passed them by after all, Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson raise this sentimental trifle above cliche. Harvey Shine (Hoffman) is a 60-ish jingle-writer with a faltering career and a hint of a drinking problem. He comes to London to see his daughter get married and mingles awkwardly with his ex-wife's (Kathy Baker) new family. Kate (Thompson) lives in London, works at an airport, lives with her mother (Eileen Atkins) and has no life. It takes half-an-hour for them to meet, but it's worth the wait. There is crude language, mild sexual innuendo and drinking. The movie's clearly geared to an older crowd, but some teens may be moved by it.

"The Unborn" -- An arresting visual style and strong cast cannot mask the nonsensical story at the center of "The Unborn." Writer-director David S. Goyer tries to bring gravitas to this tale of a college girl (Odette Yustman) haunted by the spirit of an unborn child, by tying it to Jewish mysticism and -- even worse -- Nazi experiments on twins. Similarly, the talents of Gary Oldman as a rabbi and Jane Alexander as an old woman with a secret, are wasted. There are nightmare images of human embryos, people and dogs turned into demons, swarming bugs and worms, a needle aimed at a child's eye, lethal stabbings and fights, and a suicide theme. It is gently implied that the heroine and her boyfriend (Cam Gigandet) sleep together. There is midrange profanity and rare crude sexual slang. Too intense for some middle-schoolers.

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" -- This magically spun saga never loses its wonder. In a New Orleans hospital, the daughter (Julia Ormond) of a dying old woman reads aloud from an old diary -- that of Benjamin Button (played mostly by Brad Pitt). The film flashes back to his birth in 1918 as an infant who looks freakishly like an old man. Raised by a housekeeper (Taraji P. Henson) at the old folks home where his father abandons him, Benjamin looks ever younger as he grows. He goes to sea, discovers sex (in a brothel), and learns how fleeting happiness is, as his life only coincides briefly with his true love, Daisy (Cate Blanchett). There are strongly implied nonexplicit sexual situations, partial nudity, a bad car accident, war deaths, rare profanity, drinking and smoking. All in all, a great movie for teens.

-- R's

"Defiance" (NEW) -- Filmmaker Edward Zwick dramatizes a little-known World War II-era true story about a band of Jews who took to the forest and evaded Nazi capture, while also killing German troops and local collaborators. The script and direction are workmanlike, but the acting is vibrant and the story astonishing. In 1941, the Bielski brothers from German-invaded Belarus, then a part of the Soviet Union, evade Gestapo raids and flee into the forest. Others soon join them. Uneducated and with criminal backgrounds, Tuvia (Daniel Craig), Zus (Liev Schreiber) and Asael (Jamie Bell) Bielski use their skills to help the growing contingent survive. Thoughtful Tuvia and angry Zus argue over using violence for survival or for revenge. A one point the forest refugees beat a captured German soldier to death. The film contains bloody, point-blank shootings, but other violence is less graphic. We see a mass grave of Jewish villagers, but the view is blurred. There is sexual innuendo, a gently implied sexual situation, a reference to rape, rare profanity and drinking. For high-schoolers into history and its moral quandaries.

"Waltz with Bashir" (NEW; LIMITED RELEASE) -- This extraordinary animated Israeli docudrama looks like a graphic novel. Its subject is nothing less than repressed memories of wartime atrocities, so the audience should be 16 or older. Writer/director Ari Folman recounts how hearing of an old army friend's recurring nightmares reminds him that his own memories of serving in the Israeli Defense Forces during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon is full of holes. He visits former army pals and gradually recalls he was near the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in West Beirut when Lebanon's Christian Phalangist militia, furious over the assassination of their leader, massacred some 3,000 people in the camps while the nearby Israeli military failed to intervene. The film contains violent and upsetting images, sexual innuendo, female nudity, profanity, drinking and smoking. As with "Defiance," for high-schoolers into history and its moral quandaries.

"Gran Torino" -- Clint Eastwood, who directed and stars, lets himself ham it up in "Gran Torino" as Walt Kowalski, a growling retired autoworker and Korean War vet. Newly widowed, he vents grief, anger and racist grudges, especially at his new Asian neighbors. Yet he becomes their vigilante protector after a gang starts harassing them. A formulaic plot, shaky acting in some roles and old racial stereotypes diminish the film, yet it still has punch. There are brief bursts of violence, threats, and the sight of a bloodied young woman who has been raped. There is a graphic description of killing in war, profanity, racial slurs, sexual innuendo, drinking and smoking. For high-schoolers who enjoy character studies.

(c) 2009, Washington Post Writers Group.

This news arrived on: 01/22/2009

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