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JANE HORWITZ - FAMILY FILMGOER |
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``Happily N'ever After'' (PG, 1 hr., 27 min.) ``Miss Potter'' (PG, 1 hr., 32 min.) (LIMITED RELEASE) The good Victorian lady who illustrated and wrote ``The Tale of Peter Rabbit'' and 22 more stories about Peter, Jemima Puddle-duck, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and others is portrayed in ``Miss Potter'' as a true artist, individualist and early conservationist. This ``Masterpiece Theatre''-esque study of Beatrix Potter may capture the imaginations of artistic and literary-minded kids 10 and older, but they'll need good attention spans and tastes that go beyond pop culture. Some of Potter's charming drawings and watercolors come to life briefly in the film, but the animation element is very low-key. A mild PG, ``Miss Potter'' contains one strongish epithet, themes about death and grieving and about a parent who tries to squelch an adult child's dreams. Renee Zellweger plays Beatrix as a slightly eccentric, unmarried, 30-ish upper-middle-class lady, living in 1890s London with her genial father (Bill Paterson) and disapproving mother (Barbara Flynn). Beatrix creates her drawings and talks to her characters. When a publishing house agrees to release her first Peter Rabbit book, Beatrix and the editor they assign her, Norman Warne (Ewan McGregor), fall delicately in love, but of course their path is strewn with difficulties. ``Freedom Writers'' (PG-13, 2 hrs., 3 min.) BEYOND THE RATINGS GAME -- 6 AND OLDER: ``Charlotte's Web'' G (Entertaining, if not sublime, semi-Hollywoodized adaptation of E.B. White's beloved 1952 book -- live-action, with many computer-generated effects -- about a piglet, Wilbur (voice of Dominic Scott Kay), rescued from slaughter (because he's a runt) by a little farm girl, Fern (Dakota Fanning), who must leave him in a neighbor's barn, where he is befriended first by a spider, Charlotte (Julia Roberts), and eventually by geese Gussy and Golly (Oprah Winfrey and Cedric the Entertainer), cows Bitsy and Betsy (Kathy Bates and Reba McEntire), spider-phobic horse, Ike (Robert Redford), and the rat, Templeton (Steve Buscemi); Charlotte saves Wilbur from a renewed threat of slaughter by weaving the message ``some pig'' into her web; humans deem it a wonder; still brings a tear at Charlotte's passing and other animals' grief. Mildly crude barnyard expressions; cow-flatulence joke; subtle references to the killing of pigs, including Fern's father carrying an ax, and the smokehouse.) -- 7 AND OLDER: ``Happily N'Ever After'' PG (NEW) (Computer-animated sendup of fairy tales has a cute premise about Cinderella (voice of Sarah Michelle Gellar) in love with the moronic Prince (Patrick Warburton) of Fairy Tale Land while his lowly servant, Rick (Freddie Prinze Jr.), loves her; idea is coarsened by film's unfunny sitcomish sensibility as Cinderella's wicked stepmom (Sigourney Weaver) usurps the vacationing Wizard's magic and causes all the villains to win in each fairy tale. Crass phrases such as ``screw up,'' ``pain in the butt,'' and ``a butt the size of a shopping mall''; toilet humor; scenes with glowering wolves, trolls, witches on smoke-belching broomsticks chasing good guys; wicked stepmom remarks how nice it is when girls get eaten by wolves; plot giveaways: for kids who love pure fairy tales, beware of the Giant from ``Jack and the Beanstalk'' squishing Jack under foot, Rapunzel falling out of her tower, Rumplestiltskin stealing the baby.) ``Night at the Museum'' PG (Enjoyable, if under-realized and internally illogical comic romp (live-action with-computer-generated effects) about a shlump (Ben Stiller) who gets a job as the night guard at New York's Natural History Museum; his shifty, aged predecessors (Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, Bill Cobbs) don't tell him that the exhibits -- a T. rex skeleton, Attila the Hun, Sacajawea, Teddy Roosevelt (Robin Williams, having a bully time), miniature Roman legions, Civil War soldiers and cowboys (Owen Wilson in a cameo) -- all come alive and tear up the place after dark; he must rein in the chaos, keep his job, impress his son (Jake Cherry) and woo a cute tour guide (Carla Gugino). Little kids may jump at the dinosaur chasing Stiller, the Huns grabbing him; toilet humor; a few rude but unprofane expressions.) -- 10 AND OLDER: ``Miss Potter'' PG (NEW) (Staid but enjoyable ``Masterpiece Theatre''-esque portrait of Beatrix Potter (Renee Zellweger) as a slightly eccentric unmarried upper-middle-class lady in 1890s London and how she overcame Victorian prejudices about women authors and artists and got her delightfully illustrated and written Peter Rabbit tales published, then fell in love with her editor (Ewan McGregor), though the course of love proves difficult. One strongish epithet; themes about death and grieving and a parent trying to squelch an adult child's dreams. For kids with good attention spans and tastes ranging beyond pop culture.) ``Eragon'' PG (Rather silly, warmed over ``Dungeons & Dragons''-type tale (from Christopher Paolini's book, the first in a planned trilogy) -- done in live-action with special effects -- about farm boy Eragon (bland Edward Speleers), who finds a huge egg, sees it hatch and become a terrific flying dragon, Saphira (voice of Rachel Weisz), who talks to him telepathically; Eragon learns he is destined to be a Dragon Rider, battling an evil king (John Malkovich) and sorcerer (Robert Carlyle); a wise ex-Dragon Rider (Jeremy Irons) and lovely elf warrior (Sienna Guillory) are his allies. Battles with demons, their faces swarming with bugs; implied impalements, arrow-piercings, nongraphic except for occasional bloodless gashes; nongraphic scene implies soldiers torture a man; cool/scary flights on Saphira; newly-hatched dragon eats a rat, mostly off-camera.) -- PG-13s AND TWO PGs BETTER SUITED TO TEENS: ``Freedom Writers'' (NEW) (Satisfying drama mostly overcomes cliches in fact-based story of Erin Gruwell (a driven Hilary Swank in pearls), who taught high-school English to supposedly ``unteachable'' teens from tough neighborhoods in Long Beach, Calif. in the early 1990s; struck by the racial and gang tensions in class, she gets the kids to keep personal journals, talk about violence and prejudice in their lives and read ``Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl''; they read more, meet Holocaust survivors and gain empathy, perspective, confidence. Nongraphic, but intense portrayals of a robbery/murder and an incident in which a little boy plays with a gun and shoots himself; fights; verbal references to shootings and to a girl and her mother being beaten; occasional profanity; racial slurs. More for high-schoolers.) ``Dreamgirls'' (Fun, high-gloss, well-sung and long-awaited film adaptation of 1981 Broadway hit musical about the tempestuous rise of a 1960s girl group inspired by the Supremes; Beyonce Knowles as the pretty Deena, Anika Noni Rose as the naive Lorrell and terrific Jennifer Hudson as the talented, temperamental Effie; Jamie Foxx as their machiavellian manager; Eddie Murphy as the eccentric soul singer who hires them as a backup trio; much cultural history of the era neatly tossed in. Drug abuse; implied extramarital affairs; unwed motherhood; male singer strips to his skivvies to perform on television; mildish profanity, mostly the S-word. OK for most teens, but likely to attract musical theater buffs and ``American Idol'' fans eager to see one-time losing contestant Hudson triumph.) ``The Painted Veil'' (Beautifully observed melodrama (based on W. Somerset Maugham's novel) traces emotional/spiritual arc of an English couple living in the Far East in the 1920s -- he a stiff-necked epidemiologist (Edward Norton), she a bored socialite (Naomi Watts); when he discovers her infidelity, he takes a brutal assignment in rural China fighting a cholera epidemic and drags her along; she comes to see how shallow her earlier existence was; he learns to forgive her; they fall in love at last. Graphic depiction of a cholera epidemic, including patients losing bodily fluids; strongly implied sexual situations, steamy for PG-13; hints of nudity; implied opium use; drinking. More for high-schoolers.) ``Rocky Balboa'' PG (Sylvester Stallone's hugely amiable, meandering swan song for the great South Philadelphia boxer and philosopher he created (with many sequels) 30 years ago (``Rocky,'' PG, 1976) harks back nicely to that first film; now in his 50s and widowed, Rocky regales customers at his little restaurant with boxing tales, until a heavyweight champ (Antonio Tarver) challenges him to an exhibition match; his estranged son (Milo Ventimiglia) objects, but his brother-in-law (Burt Young) and a struggling waitress (Geraldine Hughes) he befriends cheer him on. A few hard punches, cuts and bruises in fairly nongraphic fight scenes; mild curse words; a couple of shouting matches; drinking. Too nostalgic to appeal to many teens.) ``We Are Marshall'' PG ( Matthew McConaughey has a winning goofiness and drive as real-life college football coach Jack Lengyel, who rebuilt the football program at Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va., soon after a tragic 1970 plane crash killed most of the school's team, coaching staff and several local boosters; Anthony Mackie as a haunted varsity player, David Strathairn as the shy college president, Ian McShane as a tortured board member. Aftermath of crash depicted, with burning wreckage, a body bag, anguished loved ones; crash not re-enacted -- we see passengers on the plane, a flash, then blackness; frequent use of S-word, milder oaths; college kids drinking beer. More for teens.) ``The Pursuit of Happyness'' (Fine, refreshingly un-Hollywood film offers unvarnished look at being one paycheck away from the street; Will Smith stars as a down-on-his-luck family man scrambling to get out of debt and make it through a non-paying stock brokerage internship and into a real job in San Francisco, circa 1981; Smith's real son Jaden plays his film son, with Thandie Newton as the despondent wife who leaves them; loosely based on entrepreneur Chris Gardner's life. Rare profanity, including the F-word as a graffito and spoken by a child; smoking; depiction of a disintegrating marriage; scenes in which Chris gives blood for cash and in which he and his son spend nights in a homeless shelter and a subway restroom; shoving and shouting but no violence. Teens.) -- R's: ``Children of Men'' (Chilling, intensely vivid, ultimately inspiring dystopian thriller (based on P.D. James' novel), set in a grim Britain, circa 2027, where a militarist regime rules a strife-torn land and brutally rounds up refugees; humans the world over have become infertile and are doomed; Clive Owen plays Theo, a former activist who now despairs; his ex-wife (Julianne Moore), an anti-government fighter, asks him to get travel papers for a special young woman (Claire-Hope Ashitey) who offers hope for humanity; an old mentor (Michael Caine) offers sanctuary; Theo and the girl must run a gantlet of violence. Shattering gun and bomb violence; bloody injuries; suicide theme; birth scene; very strong profanity; marijuana; drinking; smoking. Thoughtful film buffs17 and older.) ``The Good Shepherd'' (Mesmerizing fictionalized saga traces in a nonlinear narrative the growth of the CIA from its World War II inception as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) into a covert Cold War behemoth, seen through the eyes of a counterintelligence agent (Matt Damon) recruited while still a student in 1939, already a guarded, emotionally remote fellow; directed with brains and style by Robert De Niro, who also acts in it, with William Hurt, John Turturro and other biggies, plus Angelina Jolie as the agent's neglected wife. Non-gory acts of murder, beating, suicide; betrayal theme; explicit sex scenes; unwed pregnancy; nudity; profanity; ethnic slurs; smoking, drinking, drugs. 16 and older.)
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