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"Land of the Lost" (PG-13, 1 hr., 46 min.)

Though full of clever, if obvious, visual jokes and cast with comedically gifted stars, "Land of the Lost" still manages to be a bit of a bore between the funny bits. Teenaged fans of Will Ferrell may be tickled by it, but only intermittently, as the film lacks a good storytelling rhythm. Based (with many changes) on the 1970s Saturday-morning live-action TV series created by puppeteers Sid and Marty Krofft, it follows the misadventures of a crackpot scientist named Rick Marshall (Ferrell) who studies "quantum paleontology." Rick is a joke among his peers and is shamed by Matt Lauer while appearing on "The Today Show" (Lauer is a good actor, it turns out.).

Depressed, addicted to junk food, and working as a grade-school science teacher, Rick is visited by a pretty British scholar, Holly (Anna Friel), who believes in his work. She wants him to try his invention, which plays music from "A Chorus Line" when flipped on, and will supposedly allow them to "travel sideways in time." While going through a cheesy desert cave tourist attraction, guided by a loudmouth named Will (Danny McBride), they set off the "amplifier." Rick, Holly and Will, three virtual strangers, land in another dimension -- a desert where the detritus of all human civilization seems to pop through a space-time "portal" and drop in -- a Viking ship, an ice cream truck, big 1960s American convertibles, a roller coaster. The trio also encounter a marauding, drooling T. rex, lots of mini-dinosaurs, and a furry young man named Chaka (Jorma Taccone) from a local village, who befriends them -- Rick, always a jerk, treats Chaka like a slave. Trying to figure out where they are and how to get home again, Rick, Will and Holly meet the lizard-man Enik (John Boylan), part of a slow-moving species called the Sleestak, and his archenemy The Zarn (Leonard Nimoy -- or at least his voice).

There is all sorts of sexual innuendo (many breast jokes), gross toilet humor, midrange profanity and comedic mayhem, including an exploding dinosaur. There are swarming bugs and a huge blood-sucking mosquito that gets squished. The men drink a hallucinogenic beverage, and there is much gay humor and briefly implied toplessness. "Land of the Lost" is not really appropriate for grade-schoolers because of the sexual content. Really young kids may get scared by the charging T. rex.

Beyond the Ratings Game: Movie Reviews for various ages

-- OK FOR KIDS 6 AND OLDER:

"Up" PG - "Up" is a near-total delight, despite its too-complicated second half. This wildly imaginative Pixar animated film tells the tale of a little boy, Russell (voice of Jordan Nagai), and an elderly widower, Carl (Edward Asner), who go on an amazing journey to South America in a balloon-propelled house and forge a deep friendship. Kids under 6 may fidget or get confused during the film's quieter moments and its flashbacks about losing a loved one, sadness and memories. There are genuinely scary scenes for under-6s, too, in which threatening dogs chase Carl and Russell through jungle and canyon. The villain, a crazed old explorer (Christopher Plummer), goes after them with a dirigible, dart-shooting planes, and a shotgun. Scenes showing how Carl met his late wife Ellie when they were kids and a wordless montage about their loving marriage are profound mini-masterpieces. After Ellie dies, Carl, a retired balloon salesman, bops a builder in his gentrifying neighborhood on the head. He's ordered to go to a retirement home, but instead rigs his old house with balloons and floats up into the blue yonder -- only to discover that Russell, a kid who's been trying to earn a "help the elderly badge" for his scout troop, is clinging to the porch. Russell helps Carl steer his house to Paradise Falls in South America, where an explorer he and Ellie admired as kids famously went. Once there, they realize the old explorer has gone mad and his pack of trained dogs with (hilarious) talking collars comes after them. They befriend one friendly dog and a huge, bumptious exotic bird. "Up" is preceded by "Partly Cloudy" (G), a charming Pixar short about little clouds that make babies, puppies and kittens for storks to deliver. But one little thunderhead can't seem to make anything tamer than an alligator.

"Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" PG -- Bursting with special effects and plot, this lively yet aggressively charmless sequel to "Night at the Museum" (PG, 2006) will keep kids 6 and older engaged, if not in stitches. Despite its often deliberately scrambled facts, the film could spark kids' interest in everything from aviation history to art (famous paintings, sculptures and photos come to life). The littlest ones may briefly cower at a roaring T. rex skeleton, a giant squid, Egyptian warriors with shrieking eagles' heads, the statue from the Lincoln Memorial coming to life or planes zooming around the National Air and Space Museum. Guns, swords and clubs are wielded by come-to-life gangsters, Huns and Neanderthals, but no one gets hurt. Larry (Stiller), the nighttime security guard from the New York museum in the first film, now sells his inventions on TV. He hears that the old exhibits, which came to life only while he was on duty, are being sent to the Smithsonian to be mothballed. Larry bids farewell to Teddy Roosevelt (Robin Williams), but later gets a tip that the ancient pharaoh Kahmunrah (Hank Azaria) is wreaking havoc. Larry and a spunky Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams) save the day on the National Mall.

-- PG-13s OF VARYING INTENSITY:

"Land of the Lost" (NEW) -- Though full of clever, if obvious, visual jokes and cast with comedically adept stars, "Land of the Lost" still manages to be a bit of a bore. Teenaged Will Ferrell fans may be tickled by it, but only intermittently. Based on the 1970s Saturday-morning TV series created by puppeteers Sid and Marty Krofft, it follows the misadventures of a crackpot scientist named Rick Marshall (Ferrell) who studies "quantum paleontology." Depressed and working as a grade-school science teacher, he's visited by a pretty British scholar, Holly (Anna Friel), who believes in his invention, a machine that will supposedly let them "travel sideways in time." At a cheesy desert cave tourist attraction, in the company of its loudmouth manager, Will (Danny McBride), the machine clicks on and they land in another dimension, a sandy planet with several moons, where the detritus of human civilization keeps turning up -- a Viking ship, an ice cream truck, old cars, a roller coaster. They encounter a charging T. rex, lots of mini-dinosaurs, and a furry young man named Chaka (Jorma Taccone) who is from a local village and befriends them. They meet the lizard-like "Sleestak" Enik (John Boylan) and his archenemy The Zarn (Leonard Nimoy, or at least his voice). Rick's guesses are always wrong. There is all sorts of sexual innuendo, gross toilet humor, midrange profanity and comedic mayhem, including an exploding dinosaur. There are swarming bugs and a huge blood-sucking mosquito that gets squished. The men drink a hallucinogenic beverage. There is much gay humor and briefly implied toplessness. "Land of the Lost" is not really appropriate for grade-schoolers because of the sexual content, and really young kids may get scared by the T. rex.

"My Life in Ruins" (NEW) -- So predictable is this lame romantic comedy, you can almost say the lines with the actors. A lonely Greek-American tour guide named Georgia (Nia Vardalos), who's also a classics professor, leads a group of stereotypically crass Americans through the historic sites of her ancestral homeland. Only Richard Dreyfuss brings a bit of freshness to his role as a twinkly widower who helps Georgia with her irritable charges. We know from almost the first frame that the scruffy driver (Alexis Georgoulis) of the rattletrap tour bus will turn out to be Mr. Right under that beard. Vardalos wrote and starred in the fun "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" (PG, 2002), but this tired concoction, written by another, is an unworthy follow-up. Greece looks good, at least. There are several implied sexual situations, much sexual innuendo, some of it crude and/or homophobic, occasional sexual slang, rare profanity and drinking. More for high-schoolers.

"Easy Virtue" (NEW; LIMITED RELEASE) -- The unfortunate casting of American beauty Jessica Biel damages "Easy Virtue," but doesn't wreck it. The fact that Biel is surrounded by terrific British actors just calls attention to her ponderous way with what's supposed to be sprightly dialogue. Set in pre-World War II England and based on a 1925 Noel Coward play, the movie is still amusing, but uneven and finally disappointing. Biel plays Larita, a free-spirited American widow who drives race cars and has a "past." When she marries young aristocrat John Whittaker (Ben Barnes), his iron-willed mum (Kristin Scott Thomas) is furious and makes Larita's life miserable at the family estate. Only John's eccentric father (Colin Firth) seems to understand Larita. There is mild sexual innuendo, a subtly implied sexual situation, brief seminudity, drinking, much smoking, and the accidental off-camera death of a pet dog (we do hear a yelp). For sophisticated teens.

"Drag Me to Hell" -- Comedy and horror make inconsistent bedfellows in this occasionally amusing, often gross parable from filmmaker Sam Raimi about a timid bank officer cursed by an angry customer. The film's deliberately cheesy horror images include demons and corpses vomiting maggots and embalming fluid, eyeballs and false teeth popping out, a projectile nosebleed, implied impalements and a wormy scene in a reopened grave. It's implied that a kitten is killed (off-camera) as a sacrifice. A prologue shows a boy pulled by a demon into a fiery abyss. Christine (Alison Lohman), a loan officer, needs to impress her boss (David Paymer). To prove she can be tough, she refuses an extension to a mortgage holder, and the old crone, (Lorna Raver), with filthy false teeth and a phlegmy cough, jumps Christine in her car and curses her. Soon, Christine is visited by a shadowy demonic tormentor. A fortuneteller (Dileep Rao) warns she's been cursed with a "lamia," which means the demon will drag her into hell. There is rare profanity.

"Dance Flick" -- The Wayans family of film and TV comics brings us this crude, tiresome spoof of teen-focused dance movies. High-schoolers who care (the film is too bawdy for middle-schoolers) will recognize elements of "Stomp the Yard" (PG-13, 2007), "Step Up" (PG-13, 2006), "You Got Served" (PG-13, 2004), "Save the Last Dance" (PG-13, 2001), and even "Fame," (R, 1980), with break dancing and other styles crassly parodied. Suburban wannabe dancer Megan (Shoshana Bush) loses her mother in a bizarre series of road accidents (played for laughs) and moves in with her derelict dad (Chris Elliott). At her new high school, she meets Thomas (Damon Wayans Jr.). They fall in love and work on dance routines for a school show. But Thomas has violent rivals from a street-dance gang and a mobster named Sugar Bear (David Alan Grier -- who is truly funny) after him. The film includes gay jokes, gross humor about female body parts, and gags about teen pregnancy and neglectful parenting. There is mild profanity, sexual innuendo and jokes about drinking.

"Terminator Salvation" -- With its unremitting mayhem and gloom, this new chapter in the "Terminator" series could even give dystopian science fiction a bad name. Teens may find the intensity gripping, but if they don't know the earlier films ("The Terminator," 1984, "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," 1991 and "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines," 2003 -- all R's), this could be a hard slog. Even with a PG-13, "Terminator Salvation" is grimly violent, though with limited gore and rare profanity. A female character faces the briefly implied possibility of sexual assault. There are huge gun battles and crashing machines. In 2018, after a nuclear holocaust unleashed by the evil artificial intelligence program Skynet and its killer robots, human resistance fighters follow John Connor (Christian Bale), their prophesied leader. From his mother Sarah's audiotapes, John knows he'll meet a teenager, Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), whose time travel will be crucial to the human struggle. John must also decide whether a bionic fighter named Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), once executed (lethal injection shown), then mechanically re-animated, is good or evil.

"Angels & Demons" -- Harvard "symbologist" Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) again uncovers secrets that make the Vatican queasy in this sequel (to "The Da Vinci Code," PG-13, 2006). The pope has died and several cardinals have been abducted. The kidnapper has threatened to blow up Vatican City with antimatter. So beginneth another leaden thriller based on a Dan Brown best-seller. Many high-schoolers will enjoy seeing all the (re-created) church interiors and Renaissance art as Langdon chases clues around Rome. Ron Howard directs pedantically, lecturing us about the Illuminati, a secret 18th-century group who fought church censorship of science. "Angels & Demons" has more violence and disturbing images than "The Da Vinci Code," and may be too intense for middle-schoolers. We see victims with raw brands on their chests, or burning alive (not graphically), a corpse being nibbled by a rat (phobic alert), and a bloodied eyeball. There are shootings and mild profanity. Some will object to Langdon's critical view of church doctrine.

"Star Trek" -- Teens unfamiliar with the 1960s TV show or the feature films will still have a fine time at this smart, funny "Star Trek" prequel. It works as a popcorn flick, but also as a myth-origin tale for Trekker purists. It tells in boisterous and occasionally jumbled detail how the young and frisky James T. Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto), Bones (Karl Urban), Scotty (Simon Pegg), Uhura (Zoe Saldana), Sulu (John Cho) and Chekov (Anton Yelchin) become junior officers on the maiden voyage of the starship USS Enterprise and boldly go against the vengeful Romulans at warp speed. The film will also work for many kids 10 to 12, but some may be unsettled by the space battles and the Romulans' ominous-looking ship with its planet-killing drill. There is a hint of torture, intense fighting, and an implied impalement, mild sexual humor and innuendo, a brief nongraphic sexual situation and rare mild profanity. Kirk and Spock clash, romantically and over tactics.

-- AN R:

"The Hangover" (NEW) -- A frat comedy for grown-ups that will also attract teens, "The Hangover" is very funny, but too crudely sexualized and profane for most under-17s. It follows the adventures of Phil (Bradley Cooper), a sarcastic teacher, Stu (Ed Helms), a milquetoast dentist, and Alan (Zach Galifianakis), a classic jerk, who bachelor-party so hard in Las Vegas that they wake up to realize they've lost Doug (Justin Bartha), the groom, who's supposed to get married that day to Alan's sister. They also discover a baby in their trashed hotel suite and Mike Tyson's pet tiger. Stu is missing a tooth and may have married a strange woman. The clever thing about "The Hangover" is that we never see the actual partying -- only snatches in flashback. The movie is about the guys retracing their steps. It features very strong profanity, rear-view nudity and toplessness, crude sexual language and innuendo, implied sexual situations, homophobic slurs, gross toilet humor, drug humor, and a poor joke about a grandmother's "Holocaust ring."

(c) 2009, Washington Post Writers Group.

This news arrived on: 06/04/2009

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