Family Film Reviews

"Wall-E" (G, 1 hr., 38 min.) ("Presto," G, 5 min.)

This computer-animated feature from the geniuses at Pixar breaks brilliant new ground in its astounding cinematic look, its surprisingly deep sci-fi story and its humor. However, the mild existential dread inherent in its central idea -- a desolate, trash-covered Earth abandoned by all but robots -- and the way the narrative meanders in the middle could mean trouble for younger audiences. The Family Filmgoer still recommends it for kids 6 and older because it is funny and exciting, with vivid characters, albeit robotic. But that comes with the caveat that some kids may fidget at times, and be upset by parts of "Wall-E." Scary bits include roaring dust storms, explosive lasers and fiery spaceship landings.

A lonely garbage-compacting robot in Manhattan some 700 years in the future collects trash, saves knickknacks, has a cockroach as a pal (it likes to sleep in a Twinkie), and watches an ancient video of "Hello Dolly!" (G, 1969). Wall-E's favorite number is the cheery "Put On Your Sunday Clothes." His name stands for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class, and he is a squat, grungy 'bot with binocular "eyes" and tractor-tread "feet." One day he finds a plant sprouting in a dump and saves it. Then a spaceship lands and offloads a sleek, white robot, EVE (Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator). Despite her ability to blast stuff with lasers, Wall-E is smitten and so is she. He shows her the plant and she abruptly ingests it and shuts down. The spaceship picks her up and Wall-E hitches a ride as it shoots through rings of space junk and galaxies, docking at an enormous star cruiser where humans have lived since Earth became uninhabitable. People have become blubbery and weak from weightlessness, so robots do all the work. Wall-E and EVE upset the status quo when the ship's captain (voice of Jeff Garlin) learns Earth may support life again. He decides they should go back, but the ship's autopilot refuses (a la the recalcitrant computer HAL in "2001: A Space Odyssey," G, 1968). Wall-E and EVE must lead an uprising of robots to save humankind.

The movie is preceded by "Presto," a breathlessly funny animated short, also rated G, about a magician and his rabbit. The bunny, when deprived of a carrot, wreaks riotous revenge during a performance.

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Beyond the Ratings Game: Movie Reviews for various ages

-- OK FOR KIDS 6 AND OLDER:

"Wall-E" G (NEW) -- This computer-animated feature from the geniuses at Pixar breaks brilliant new ground in its look, its story and its humor. However, the mild existential dread inherent in its central idea -- a trashed Earth abandoned by all but robots -- and the way the narrative meanders in the middle could mean trouble for younger kids. The Family Filmgoer still recommends "Wall-E" for 6 and older because it's funny and exciting, but with the caveat that some kids may fidget at times, and be upset by parts of it. Scary bits include roaring dust storms and explosive spaceship landings. Wall-E is a garbage-compacting robot in Manhattan some 700 years hence. He's a squat, grungy 'bot with binocular "eyes" and tractor tread "feet." He saves knickknacks, has a cockroach as a pal and watches an ancient video of "Hello Dolly!" (G, 1969), especially the cheery "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" number. One day he finds a sprouting plant and saves it. A spaceship lands and offloads a sleek, white robot, EVE. Wall-E is smitten and so is she. He shows EVE his plant and she abruptly ingests it and shuts down. The spaceship picks her up and Wall-E hitches a ride as it shoots out to an enormous starship where humans have lived since leaving Earth. Weightlessness has made them soft and blubbery, so robots run the place. When the captain (voice of Jeff Garlin) learns that Earth may again support life, he wants to go back, but his autopilot refuses. Wall-E and EVE lead a robotic uprising to save humankind. "Wall-E" is preceded by "Presto" (G), a breathlessly funny animated short about a magician and his vengeful rabbit.

"Kung Fu Panda" PG -- In ancient China, a pudgy panda dreams of being a Kung Fu fighter in this very funny, artfully animated tale. "Kung Fu Panda" doesn't rely on easy pop-culture jokes or double-entendres. It unfolds as a classic hero's journey, with wildly inventive humor and delicately spun messages about overcoming self-doubt and being "your own hero." Po the panda (voice of Jack Black) lives with his dad, a goose (James Hong), and works in their noodle shop, but imagines himself a hero. At the local palace, Kung Fu master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman), a red panda, holds a contest among his star pupils, the Furious Five -- Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Monkey (Jackie Chan), Viper (Lucy Liu) and Crane (David Cross). The winner will fulfill a prophecy and defeat the evil snow leopard (Ian McShane). Flinging himself over the palace walls to see the contest, Po crash-lands into the middle of it. A wise old turtle (Randall Duk Kim) says Po is the one destined to fulfill the prophecy. Master Shifu , while doubtful, trains Po in a riotous sequence. Fine for kids 6 and up and many younger. The fights are intense but stylized. The yellow-eyed snow leopard may scare tots. Po yowls about getting hit in "the tenders."

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-- PG-13s OF VARYING INTENSITY:

"Get Smart" -- Eureka! The makers of "Get Smart" have re-imagined the 1960s sitcom and yet retained its charms -- bad jokes, bad accents and a goofy blend of slapstick and spy shtick, executed in high deadpan. The movie will get laughs from teens who don't know the old show and parents and grandparents who do. Steve Carell plays Maxwell Smart as a brighter bulb than Don Adams did on TV. Carell's Max is a klutz and a bit of a bonehead, but also a gifted analyst at CONTROL, the secret agency that exists only to foil KAOS, a cabal bent on world domination. Max longs to be in the field like macho Agent 23 (Dwayne Johnson, formerly The Rock). After KAOS attacks CONTROL headquarters, the Chief (Alan Arkin), desperate for agents whose covers haven't been blown, dubs Max Agent 86, and teams him with the highly competent and (to Max) distractingly pretty Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway). They set off to catch uranium thieves in Chechnya. The film uses Arab stereotypes in one scene and includes comic shootouts, fights, chases and other mostly mild mayhem, rare profanity, toilet humor, fat jokes and sexual innuendo. There are rats, too.

"The Love Guru" -- Mike Myers offers up another dizzy caricature as an American-born, India-trained guru who longs to be a bigger star than author/wise-man Deepak Chopra. But Myers insists on tarting up his idea (he co-wrote and co-produced) with endless penis jokes, sexual puns and gross toilet humor. Such gags get laughs, but they don't enrich the film so much as pad its flimsy plot. The pretty owner (Jessica Alba) of the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team invites Guru Pitka (Myers) to solve the marital problems of her star player (Romany Malco), whose wife (Meagan Good) has left him for the goalie (Justin Timberlake) of the L.A. Kings. It's the Guru's big chance. Flashbacks to his training with Ben Kingsley as a cheery, cross-eyed Indian guru are a hoot. There are clever spoofs of Bollywood musicals, too, but "The Love Guru" remains a frustratingly incomplete film. It is not for middle-schoolers because of its raunchy sex jokes. It also depicts elephants mating and contains ordinary profanity, jokes about dwarfism, a bar brawl and beer drinking.

"The Incredible Hulk" -- While not as cool as "Iron Man" (PG-13), "The Incredible Hulk" is an entertaining ride, with stunning (and deafening), but nongraphic mayhem. This new take on the Marvel Comics anti-hero has the frenetic energy of a good chase thriller, but its dialogue and quiet scenes don't crackle much. It takes place five years after scientist Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) was damaged in an experiment. Now, when angered, he turns into the huge, seething, green Hulk (voiced by one-time TV Hulk Lou Ferrigno). He has been living incognito in a Brazilian slum, practicing anger management and avoiding a U.S. general (William Hurt) who wants to harness Banner's Hulkiness for the military. Pursued by Ross' commandos, Banner makes his way to his love, Betty (Liv Tyler), the general's daughter. Middle-schoolers may blanch at the huge hypodermic needles and gross scenes in which the general's top Hulk hunter (Tim Roth), undergoes the same experiment and morphs into Hulk's nemesis, the Abomination, with vertebrae popping out of his back. There is semi-crude language, a brief, nonexplicit sexual situation and cigar smoking.

"You Don't Mess with the Zohan" -- Adam Sandler messes with the Israeli-Palestinian dispute here, but he trivializes the conflict and stereotypes the people. High-schoolers will learn little about the issues and a lot about hummus. True, there are laugh-out-loud moments, but the bawdy humor makes the film problematic for middle-schoolers. Sandler plays ace Israeli army commando Zohan, whose real passions are hairstyling and sex. During a shootout with a terrorist (John Turturro), Zohan fakes his own death, stows away to New York, lands a job at a salon run by the lovely Palestinian Dalia (Emmanuelle Chriqui) and finds Israelis and Palestinians living as peaceful neighbors. He quickly becomes the go-to stylist/seducer for ladies over 60. The movie employs crude sexual slang, strongly implied sexual situations, many crotch gags, comedic violence, ethnic slurs, gay jokes and mild profanity.

"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" -- Nearly 20 years after "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" (PG-13, 1989), this belated fourth chapter offers flashes of high amusement, yet feels a bit cobbled-together and at times a little dull. It is 1957. Intrepid archeologist Indiana Jones at 60-plus is wry and athletic. The tale opens with him a captive of KGB agents led by a rapier-wielding woman (Cate Blanchett). Jones escapes, but loses his teaching gig when the FBI suspects he's cozy with the Ruskies. Mutt (Shia LaBeouf), a smart-aleck 20-something, brings news that a colleague (John Hurt) has been kidnapped in the Peruvian jungle after finding an ancient crystal skull. Jones and Mutt go there and fight bad guys. Aside from near-bloodless mayhem, there are wild stunts (a few fall a bit flat) and chases. Under-10s may cower at swarming ants, scorpions, mummies, zombie-ish creatures and a shattering nuclear test. There is mild profanity and drinking. OK for teens and most preteens, but adults should explain the Cold War.

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-- R's:

"Wanted" (NEW) -- The visual effects in this sci-fi thriller (based on the comic books by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones) are spectacular. What makes the film work, though, isn't the effects alone -- a train hanging off a trestle, one car crashing down into a gorge with actors inside. What makes it special is that the story's distinct characters remain so throughout the mayhem and during scenes of clever, cryptic dialogue. That's director Timur Bekmambetov's doing. James McAvoy plays anxiety-ridden office worker Wesley. The film needed an actor with McAvoy's skills, because Wesley transforms from a wimp to a powerhouse. He is shanghaied by the gun-wielding Fox (Angelina Jolie, in her tattooed, dominant mode) and brought into the Fraternity, a secret thousand-year-old club of assassins, led by Sloan (Morgan Freeman). They train their bodies to reach superhuman speeds and to curve bullet trajectories. Their targets are chosen by the mystical Loom of Fate, which weaves clues in binary code. Sloan and Fox tell Wesley they're ridding the world of evil ones, to keep it in balance. (Where was the Loom when it came to Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, eh?) "Wanted" shows point-blank, blood-spattering shootings, bone-cracking beatings and target practice with animal and human corpses on meat hooks. Yet it is all just surreal enough to be watchable. There is an explicit sexual situation, rear- view nudity, strong profanity, and swarming rats. OK for 16 and older.

"Finding Amanda" (NEW; LIMITED RELEASE) -- This dreary comedy suffers from an uneven scrip that veers between glibness and sermonizing, flavorless direction and a pale turn by star Matthew Broderick. He plays Taylor, a TV writer who has kicked drinking and drugs, but who can't stop betting on the horses. In an effort to redeem himself in his wife's (Maura Tierney) eyes, he goes to Las Vegas to rescue their 20-year-old niece, Amanda (Brittany Snow), who is working as a prostitute and living with an awful guy (Peter Facinelli). In between his efforts to talk Amanda out of Vegas and into rehab, Taylor bets and loses big bucks and falls off the wagon. The movie contains a briefly explicit sexual situation, explicit sexual language, topless dancing, drug use, drinking, strong profanity and brief violence. It is too slow and clunky to appeal to high-schoolers and isn't appropriate for those under 17.

"The Happening" -- The very leaves on the trees turn against humanity in this cautionary thriller about an airborne, foliage-bred toxin that wafts through New York's Central Park, disorients people and causes them to commit suicide as if in a trance. The phenomenon spreads. This R-rated fable is not writer/director M. Night Shyamalan's best work ("The Sixth Sense," PG-13, 1999), but the movie's understated creepiness casts a real spell. That noted, the dialogue gets clunky and the catastrophes repetitive. Mark Wahlberg plays a science teacher who, with his wife (Zooey Deschanel), his pal (John Leguizamo), and his pal's daughter (Ashlyn Sanchez) flees to the countryside. Though a mostly understated R, "The Happening" does depict two graphic gun murders and a video of a lion tearing off a man's arms. There are strongly implied but nongraphic hangings and gun suicides, people jumping off buildings, mild profanity and sexual innuendo. OK for most high-schoolers.