Family Film Reviews

-- 10 AND OLDER:

"ALICE IN WONDERLAND" PG -- It would help kids 10 and older if they had some prior knowledge of Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass," since Tim Burton's fresh and often miraculous film moves beyond the two books while incorporating most of the original characters. This movie's Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is a young Victorian woman of 19 with an independent streak, and the story is about her liberation from doing what's expected, helped by another visit to her childhood escape, down the rabbit hole. When a twit of an aristocrat (Leo Bill) proposes to her at a garden party, Alice dashes off to follow the White Rabbit (voice of Michael Sheen). She falls -- and falls, and falls -- down the rabbit hole and lands in Underland. (In her childhood visits she thought of it as Wonderland.) Ruled by the bulbous-headed, tyrannical Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), Underland is a ruin. Alice learns she's destined to help overthrow the Red Queen by slaying her fearsome monster, the Jabberwocky. It is the brave, gap-toothed, orange-haired Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) who, along with the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), gently nudges the reluctant Alice toward victory. The movie is occasionally incomprehensible due to accents or overdone effects. Shown in 3-D, the film has extra visual depth, but doesn't exploit it.

THE BOTTOM LINE: The Family Filmgoer suggests "Alice in Wonderland" for those 10 and older because the violence, while strictly fantasy-style, gets quite fearsome. The fall down the rabbit hole is rather scary, too, though Alice's "Drink Me" and "Eat Me" transformations from normal to tiny, to giant and back are quite understated. The "frumious Bandersnatch" monster (from the poem "Jabberwocky") is toothy and vicious and gashes Alice's arm. It's eye gets plucked out with a pin. The Red Queen's "off with his head!" exclamations lead to one near-execution, but the only head that rolls is that of the Jabberwocky in the final battle. There is very mild sexual innuendo and an infidelity theme early in the film.

-- 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 enthrall younger teens and pleasantly surprise adults, as it feels like the old special-effects fantasies of the 1950s and '60s. It might inspire kids to read the myths. Zeus (Sean Bean) and Poseidon (Kevin McKidd) meet atop the Empire State Building, Zeus fuming that the son of Poseidon has stolen his lightning bolt. Cut to Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman), a New York high-schooler who feels like a loser. During a museum visit, Percy learns he is in fact a demigod -- the child of his mom's (Catherine Keener) long-ago liaison with Poseidon. Percy's pal (Brandon T. Jackson) turns out to be a furry-legged satyr assigned to protect him. When Percy's mom is abducted by Hades, god of the Underworld, he sets out to rescue her and to show Zeus he's innocent.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Kids 10-to-12 would like "Percy Jackson & the Olympians," but they must be able to handle mayhem that is intense, if mostly bloodless. Percy and his cohorts fight a huge, horned Minotaur, the serpent-haired Medusa (snake phobics beware) and other monsters. There is the beheading of an immortal and the bandying about of the head, a monster's impalement, bone-cracking fights and gashes. Percy's stepdad (Joe Pantoliano) is an abusive drunk. There is mild sexual innuendo.

-- PG-13s:

"REMEMBER ME" (NEW) -- Some filmgoers will find "Remember Me" and its climactic finale annoyingly predictable, but high-schoolers may not see the tragedy coming -- the story takes place during the summer of 2001 in New York, leading up to Sept. 11) -- and just appreciate the drama. Though it lapses into soap opera at times, this is a well-acted and largely well-written tale. Robert Pattinson of the PG-13 rated "Twilight" films will pull high-schoolers in, too, playing yet another tall-thin-and-tortured anti-hero (who chain-smokes) named Tyler. Estranged from his gruff stockbroker dad (Pierce Brosnan) since the suicide of his older brother (not shown), Tyler is a lost soul. Then he meets Ally (Emilie de Ravin), a fellow college student who is the daughter of a cop (Chris Cooper) who roughed Tyler up and arrested him outside a bar. Tyler's roommate (Tate Ellington) puts him up to wooing Ally and breaking her heart for revenge, but as soon as he meets her, Tyler drops that plan. The two young people connect on all levels, till other issues threaten to separate them.

THE BOTTOM LINE: The movie opens with a prologue showing the young Ally witnessing her mother's gun murder in a subway mugging. The film is one of those PG-13s that is not for middle-schoolers. The sexual situations are quite steamy, if not explicit. The murder is very intense, and there are other fistfights, profanity, drug references and sexual slang and much drinking and smoking. The 9/11 depiction is not graphic at all.

-- R's:

"SHE'S OUT OF MY LEAGUE" (NEW) -- The Family Filmgoer went to a screening of "She's Out of My League" expecting the lewd-crude-rude worst and was happily surprised -- though the film is definitely not appropriate for under-17s. It earns its R rating (and then some), with highly profane language and explicit sexual slang, as well as semi-explicit comic sexual situations. Even so, the story is sweet: A skinny, nerdy Pittsburgh guy named Kirk (Jay Baruchel) works for airport security and figures, since he never went to college, that his life is mapped out for him and it's pretty dreary. Then he meets a gorgeous young woman (Alice Eve), who falls for him not because of his washboard abs (he hasn't got any) or money, but because he's nice and funny and smart. His burping, beer-drinking, friends can't believe it, nor can his awful ex-girlfriend (Lindsay Sloane). Their constant buzzkill chatter nearly destroys Kirk's self-confidence.

THE BOTTOM LINE: "She's Out of My League" uses extreme frat-house/locker-room humor, sexual situations and language, but the story it tells is something much gentler. There is also drinking and backview nudity.

"GREEN ZONE" (NEW) -- High-schoolers into current events and recent history might be drawn quickly into this politically charged thriller. "Green Zone" is based on the nonfiction book "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone" by The Washington Post's former Iraq bureau chief, Rajiv Chandrasekaran. Directed by Paul Greengrass (the PG-13 "Bourne" thrillers), the movie has his trademark handheld camera moves, to make us feel at the dizzying center of the action. Matt Damon plays Chief Warrant Officer Miller. It is the start of the Iraq War in 2003, and he is in search of WMDs -- the weapons of mass destruction Saddam Hussein supposedly stockpiled. But Miller and his team are finding nothing. When he asks about the bad intelligence at a briefing, the White House's man in Iraq (Greg Kinnear) and the military brass tell him to shut up, but a grizzled CIA guy (Brendan Gleeson) asks Miller to do off-the-books work for him. The film's plotting spins a little out of control, but it is always fascinating.

THE BOTTOM LINE: "The Green Zone" depicts deafening, scary house-to-house battles, street skirmishes and firefights, showing civilians, women and children in danger. There are bloody point-blank shootings as well. The film has midrange profanity and drinking.

"BROOKLYN'S FINEST" (NEW) -- This very adult film about cops working Brooklyn's toughest neighborhood ought to grab filmgoers 17 and older who like the genre. "Brooklyn's Finest" has terrific ensemble acting, intense emotions, and moments of stomach-churning urban violence. That it borrows heavily from other classic cop films, and way overuses street slang, won't bother them so much, even if critics and older moviegoers see cliches. Richard Gere plays a burned-out cop just a week away from retirement and trying to avoid any conflict. Don Cheadle plays an undercover cop trying to bring down a drug gang, but torn about betraying its leader (Wesley Snipes), an old friend just out of prison. Ethan Hawke plays a family man with a sick wife (Lili Taylor), and is desperately trying to skim off some confiscated drug money. His partner (Brian F. O'Byrne) tries to stop him. All these cops don't know one another, but their fates intertwine.

THE BOTTOM LINE: "Brooklyn's Finest" has much blood-spattering point-blank gun violence, beatings, very explicit sexual situations with nudity, a prostitution theme, extremely strong profanity, drug use, drinking and smoking. It also deals with corruption and betrayal.

"COP OUT" -- High-schoolers 17 and older will find cheap laughs in this buddy/action comedy, but that doesn't mean "Cop Out" is anything other than atrocious -- sloppily filmed and trafficking in every kind of ethnic/racial stereotype and cop flick cliche. Observant high-school seniors will see that, as directed by Hollywood iconoclast Kevin Smith ("Zack and Miri Make a Porno," R, 2008; "Clerks," R, 1994), the film is intended as a spoof. But Smith can't seem to decide whether it's wholly tongue-in-cheek or partly serious, so the result is just slapdash. Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan play eccentric police detective partners. Suspended for the crazy way they go after a drug dealer, the partners turn quasi-vigilante.

THE BOTTOM LINE: The script is highly profane -- and even that's a cliche in this derivative flick. There is point-blank gun violence, tasering, beatings, crude sexual slang, a strongly implied sexual situation, gross toilet humor, drug references, and a prolonged scene in which a little boy of 10 cusses out the cops in R-rated language.

"SHUTTER ISLAND" -- A lugubrious mess of a movie, "Shutter Island" (based on the novel by Dennis Lehane) may still grab filmgoers 17 and older with its hypnotic aura of dread, but it might be too much for others. And even older teens who like gothic creep-out films could be frustrated by its disjointedness, its fizzled ending and its overheated mix of themes ranging from mental illness to Nazi atrocities to Cold War commie-baiting. The atmospherics, laid on mighty thick by director Martin Scorsese, could prompt a few giggles, too. It is the early 1950s. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Teddy, a troubled U.S. Marshal and World War II vet. He and his new partner (Mark Ruffalo) come to Shutter Island, a federal facility for the criminally insane, where a patient has disappeared. After meeting with the chief psychiatrist (Ben Kingsley), other patients and guards, Teddy suspects a conspiracy.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Not for under-17s, the movie has repeated graphic flashbacks of corpses and starving survivors at the liberation of a Nazi concentration camp -- an exploitative use of such images in what's really just a potboiler melodrama. There are images (unrelated to the war) of drowned children, murdered by a parent and of a fatal fire. There are graphic gun wounds and intense fights. The "treatment" patients get looks more like torture. There are hallucinatory scenes and swarming rats, strong profanity, crude sexual language, smoking and drinking.

"THE CRAZIES" -- High-schoolers 17 and older who follow current events will totally get that this winningly acted, beautifully shot movie cleverly exploits paranoia about government intrusion in our lives. A remake of George A. Romero's 1973 horror film, "The Crazies" has all the elements needed to please horror buffs 17 and up. Citizens in a nice farm community in Iowa go violently insane after a contaminant gets into their water supply. The sheriff (Timothy Olyphant), his doctor wife (Rhada Mitchell) and his trusty deputy (Joe Anderson) see people turn catatonic, then violent, even killing their own families. Soon gas-masked government troops swarm menacingly into the town.

THE BOTTOM LINE: "The Crazies" is very bloody. People are shot at close range, attacked with knives and bone saws, impaled on pitchforks, and burned alive. SPOILER ALERT: The military rounds people up, separates those "infected" from those not, and mows some of them down with machine guns. We eventually see truckloads of corpses in a chilling, but overused echo of real genocides. The film has midrange profanity.