Family Film Reviews

-- 8 AND OLDER:

"HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON" PG -- A smart, gangly kid named Hiccup (voice of Jay Baruchel) becomes a sort of conscientious objector within his tribe of Viking warriors by refusing to kill dragons in this witty, enjoyable animated adventure. "How to Train Your Dragon" will likely delight kids 8 and older. It's loosely based on the books by Cressida Cowell, though the dialogue is more modern and slangy. Try to see it in 3-D, because the 2-D version looks a bit dark and the sight of Hiccup and his dragon friend in flight would be worth it. Hiccup's dad, Stoick (Gerard Butler), is a big, glowering warrior and the tribe's chief. He feels shame and fear that Hiccup lacks Viking killer instinct. As a prequel to the books, the film imagines what life was like before the dragons were tamed. It opens with a fiery nighttime dragon attack on the Viking village. Hiccup's clever invention takes down a "Night Fury" dragon alive. He can't bring himself to kill it and sets it free. The two bond and he names the beast Toothless (it has retractable teeth). He repairs its tail so it can fly again, and Hiccup and Toothless go soaring. In a climactic battle, Hiccup and other kids teach the adults peaceful coexistence with dragons.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Parents should be sure kids 8 and older can handle the intense and sometimes frightening nature of the action. (That's the one reason you might want younger kids to see it in less intense 2-D.) The Dragon and Hiccup nearly plummet to the ground at one point. The various dragon types, though colorful, are also gargoylish and huge, belching fire and flashing huge teeth and talons. SPOILER ALERT: The dragons' nest inside a mountain teems with the creatures. Their "queen" is a dinosaurish monster with a bad temper. There are jokes about "undies" and lots of talk of killing. Hiccup's friends have gross names like Snotlout.

-- 10 AND OLDER:

"DIARY OF A WIMPY KID" PG -- Few people have happy memories of middle school and "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" does a fine, funny job of showing why -- and in a way that should tickle kids 10 and older. It's based on Jeff Kinney's delightful, if ungrammatical, 2007 novel (there are four "Wimpy Kid" books now). These are the adventures of a middle-schooler Greg Heffley (Zachary Gordon), a small, pre-pubescent kid with a bullying older brother Rodrick (Devon Bostick), a mischievous toddler brother (Connor and Owen Fielding, double-cast) and nice but semi-oblivious parents (Rachael Harris and Steve Zahn). Greg is obsessed with becoming a "class favorite." His best friend Rowley (Robert Capron) is unhip, generous and sweet-natured, not realizing how badly Greg treats him in his race to the top. Greg is self-absorbed, conniving and shallow, yet he redeems himself a little and you forgive him.

THE BOTTOM LINE: There is a lot of emphasis on gross-out gags (nose-picking; a rotten-cheese subplot) and toilet humor (boys sitting on toilets in the school's doorless cubicles; baby brother on his training potty). Greg's and Rowley's classmate Chirag Gupta (Karan Brar) is made to seem silly and stereotyped. There is sexual innuendo regarding the cheesecake photo on the cover of Rodrick's "motorcycle" magazine. Some schoolyard taunts are vaguely homophobic, and Rodrick spoofs Rowley's weight.

"ALICE IN WONDERLAND" PG -- It would help if kids 10 and older had 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 is a kind of sequel. His Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is a young Victorian woman of 19 with an independent streak. A visit to her childhood fantasy world gives her the courage to escape the conventional life everyone expects her to lead. Just as an aristocratic twit (Leo Bill) proposes to her, Alice glimpses the White Rabbit (voice of Michael Sheen) and dashes off after him. She falls down the rabbit hole and learns she's destined to slay the Jabberwocky, a dragonlike monster owned by the tyrannical Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter). The Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) and the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) help Alice fulfill her destiny. The movie is occasionally incomprehensible due to accents or overdone effects. Shown in 3-D, it has extra visual depth, but doesn't feel gimmicky.

THE BOTTOM LINE: The violence, while fantastical, can get fearsome, hence the 10-and-older recommendation. The "frumious Bandersnatch" (from the poem "Jabberwocky") is toothy and vicious and gashes Alice's arm. Its eye gets plucked out with a pin. The Red Queen's "off with his head!" orders lead to a near-execution, but the only head that rolls is the Jabberwocky's. The fall down the rabbit hole is a bit scary, though Alice's "Drink Me" and "Eat Me" transformations are understated. There is mild sexual innuendo and a marital infidelity theme early on.

-- PG-13s AND A PG MORE GEARED TO TEENS:

"THE LAST SONG" PG (NEW) -- Only the most devoted Miley Cyrus fans will keep from gagging at this syrupy, formulaic tear-jerker. Though many of her fans are not yet teens, there are serious themes that make "The Last Song" more appropriate for kids in middle school or beyond. These include terminal illness of a parent and a young female character in an abusive relationship. "The Last Song" tells the tale of Ronnie Miller (Cyrus), a sullen 18-year-old who comes with her little brother (Bobby Coleman) to spend the summer with their estranged Dad (Greg Kinnear) at his beach house. Ronnie has never forgiven him for leaving them and their mom (Kelly Preston) years earlier. Dad's a composer and Ronnie has musical talent, too, but says she won't go to Juilliard, even though they've accepted her. (Cyrus is very unconvincing as a piano/composing prodigy.) She also has a minor criminal record for shoplifting. When Ronnie meets a nice guy (Liam Hemsworth), her trust issues make her push him away and yell at him a lot. Eventually, she learns her dad is suspected of having accidentally started a fire that burned down a historic church. It also turns out that her Dad wanted his kids over the summer for a sad reason. That's a lot of story for not much movie -- perhaps to mask Cyrus' weak acting talent.

THE BOTTOM LINE: In addition to themes involving terminal illness, divorce, teen alienation and low-level delinquency, the film includes mild sexual innuendo and make-out scenes, and one nonexplicit scene in which a creepy guy tries to grope Ronnie. The same guy is very rough with another girl (Carly Chaikin) whom Ronnie befriends. There's a description of a fatal car accident. There are flashbacks of a bad fire.

"CLASH OF THE TITANS" (NEW) -- Teens who love the Greek myths will see right away that this movie (a remake of the PG-rated 1981 film) plays fast and loose with plots and characters from those ancient tales. Scrambled narrative aside, however, teens may also decide that this film redeems itself with handsome special effects and good acting -- the seething fire-and-smoke persona of Hades (Ralph Fiennes), god of the Underworld; the glowing, all-knowing image of Zeus (Liam Neeson); the flying horse Pegasus; the serpent-haired Medusa. The movie was remastered in 3-D after filming, and the result has extra depth, but isn't spectacularly worth the higher ticket price. Sam Worthington (of "Avatar" fame, also a PG-13) plays Perseus, the mythic hero. He is found as an infant by a fisherman (Pete Postlethwaite) who adopts him. As a man, Perseus sees his beloved family drowned at the whim of a vengeful Hades, who attacks humanity as a way of getting back at Zeus. Perseus learns he himself is a demigod, the son of Zeus and a human mother, destined to save humanity. He joins with soldiers from Argos, a kingdom caught in the crossfire between the warring gods, and goes on a dangerous quest into the Underworld to kill the gorgon Medusa and Hades' monstrous sea demon. Perseus is helped by his protector, the demigod Io (Gemma Arterton).

THE BOTTOM LINE: Warriors are run through with swords and demigods and mythical beasts are impaled, beheaded, or lose limbs, but there is virtually no blood. There are monsters of all sorts. There is one brief, rather amusing instance of mild sexual innuendo.

"THE BOUNTY HUNTER" -- Apart from a few gross-out gags, high-schoolers won't be cracking up at "The Bounty Hunter," as this by-the-numbers romantic comedy is charmless, unfunny, predictable and just plain atrocious. It's also too profane and full of bawdy sexual innuendo to be appropriate for middle-schoolers. Co-stars Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler play, respectively, hotshot reporter Nicole and boorish bounty hunter/ex-cop Milo. They were briefly married, drove each other nuts, and divorced. Now Nicole's a wanted woman for skipping bail on a charge of assaulting a police officer during a minor traffic incident. Milo would like nothing better than to put her in jail. But Nicole is on the trail of a police corruption story which, of course, soon embroils them both.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Near the end of the film, there are pole dancers in G-strings and pasties -- not exactly a PG-13 visual. The dialogue is peppered with low and midlevel barnyard profanity and sexual slang. There is gun and fist violence, most of it not very bloody, threatened torture with a drill, considerable unsubtle sexual innuendo, hints of "kinky" sex with handcuffs, and mild drinking.

-- R's:

"HOT TUB TIME MACHINE" (NEW) -- High-schoolers 17 and older may get a few guffaws out of this uneven, extremely bawdy farce. They may note that the film tries awkwardly to blend emotional content with low comedy and often just drifts into boredom. Three 40-ish guys and one unfortunate 20-something find themselves hurled back into 1986 by a magical hot tub. They're warned that they mustn't mess with what happened in the past, but they can't figure out how not to. In the present, Adam (John Cusack) has just been dumped by his girlfriend. His video-game-addicted nephew Jacob (Clark Duke) lives with him. His old school friend Nick (Craig Robinson) is happily married. Adam and Nick learn that their obnoxious former pal Lou (Rob Corddry) is in the hospital after an apparent suicide attempt. To cheer him up, they book a room at a ski resort where they partied as college guys. The place is now a dump, but when they jump into the hot tub, there's a flash and they dry off in 1986 -- goopy hairstyles all around and President Reagan on the news.

THE BOTTOM LINE: A semi-serious suicide theme bookends the movie. In between, there are explicit (though comic) sexual situations, crude and explicit sexual language, bare behinds, toplessness, drug use, drinking and strong profanity. There is also gross-out toilet humor.

"SHE'S OUT OF MY LEAGUE" -- Beneath all the lewd, crude, R-rated bawdiness in "She's Out Of My League" is a good-hearted story. It's told, however, in a way not appropriate for under-17s, with highly profane language and explicit sexual slang, as well as semi-explicit comic sexual situations. A nerdy Pittsburgh guy named Kirk (Jay Baruchel) works for airport security and figures, since he didn't go to college, that a dreary life is mapped out for him. 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 buds can't believe it, nor can his mean ex-girlfriend (Lindsay Sloane). Their 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. There is also drinking and backview nudity.

"GREEN ZONE" -- This politically charged thriller should capture news-savvy high-schoolers. "Green Zone" is fictionalized, but based on the nonfiction book "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone" by Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran, who was the paper's Iraq bureau chief as the war began. The movie puts you at the dizzying center of the action. Matt Damon plays Chief Warrant Officer Miller. It is early in the Iraq War in 2003, and he is in search of those weapons of mass destruction Saddam Hussein supposedly stockpiled. But Miller and his team are finding zip. When he beefs about bad intelligence, the White House's man in Iraq (Greg Kinnear) and the military brass tell him to shut up, so he teams with a grizzled CIA guy (Brendan Gleeson) to find the truth. 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.