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JANE HORWITZ - FAMILY FILMGOER

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January 25, 2007

``Catch and Release'' (PG-13, 1 hr., 51 min.)

This softheaded romantic comedy must be what passes for a counterculture film in these perky, pop-culture days. The narrative and emotional landscape feel excessively contrived, but winning performances and the breezy, college-town atmosphere of the Boulder, Colo., location help the medicine go down. High-schoolers with a fondness for contemporary tales of love may be glad they reel in ``Catch and Release.'' As a date movie, it even offers funny male characters who don't let the script's built-in sentimentality dull their edge. The film's casual, semiexplicit way with sexual encounters, as well as its infidelity and child-out-of-wedlock themes, make it an outer-edge PG-13 and more appropriate for high-schoolers. There is one fairly graphic sexual situation. Others are less intense, with bedroom kisses and a nongraphic Hollywood-style montage. The movie includes occasionally crude sexual slang, middling profanity, a verbal description of someone's bloody death, an attempted suicide with pills and booze, talk of experimenting with sexual orientation, a little boy stomping a just-caught fish to death (the fish is off-camera), someone holding an unlit joint (they don't smoke it), and characters drinking.

Jennifer Garner stars as Gray Wheeler, a young woman whose fiance has just died in a sporting accident days before their wedding. During the funeral, Gray goes off to hide behind a shower curtain and weep. One of her fiance's pals, Fritz (Timothy Olyphant), bursts in with the caterer (Sonja Bennett) and they make love while Gray hides, appalled. Still unsettled, she shares a house with two of her late love's pals, somber Dennis (Sam Jaeger) and puppyish overeater, Sam (Kevin Smith), but she is furious when Fritz hangs out there, too. Gradually, she learns that her fiance had secrets and Fritz isn't such a bad guy. Has writer/director Susannah Grant saved Gray from a fate worse than her fiance's death?

P.S. FOR TEENS: Romantic comedies like ``Catch and Release,'' about women who fall against their will for someone other than the man they intended to marry, have a long tradition in the movies. If you're open to checking out an old-fashioned film in that genre, try ``I Know Where I'm Going!,'' a much-loved British film from 1945. Wendy Hiller, one of the best actresses of that era, stars.

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``Smokin' Aces'' (R, 1 hr., 47 min.)

A bloody, irreverent, profane shoot'em-up about mobsters and FBI agents all trying to get to the same snitch, ``Smokin' Aces'' messes with plot and dialogue, adding layers of story and wisecrackery designed to keep an audience fascinated and a little off-balance. It works to a large degree, and builds tremendous tension, though the plot's final payoff comes up a little short and confusing. Writer/director Joe Carnahan, crosscutting cleverly between characters and recording the mayhem with a witty, hyperactive camera, has made a fresh kind of feds-versus-the-Mob flick. ``Smokin' Aces'' may attract high-schoolers, but The Family Filmgoer cannot recommend it for those under 17, with its automatic weapons mayhem and gory aftermath scenes. These include many bullet holes and much blood, as well as a living man's hand after most of his fingers have been shot off and flashbacks to a mobster torturing someone hanging naked (a back view) in chains. Other adult elements include scantily clad and occasionally topless women as prostitutes, very strong profanity, crude sexual slang, some racial and homophobic slurs, cocaine use and drinking.

A mob-connected Las Vegas entertainer named Buddy ``Aces'' Israel (Jeremy Piven) has been playing both ends against the middle with his gangster pals and now they want him dead. Hiding out, he has made a deal with the FBI (Andy Garcia as a deputy director) to bust what's left of the Mafia wide open. Two special agents (Ryan Reynolds and Ray Liotta) are coordinating an effort to stop multiple assassins from killing Buddy. The cast includes Ben Affleck as a bail bondsman and singer Alicia Keys as a hit woman.

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BEYOND THE RATINGS GAME

-- 6 AND OLDER:

``Arthur and the Invisibles'' PG (Disappointing family film alternates touching live-action scenes with frenetic, charmless computer-animated ones in tale of a lonely boy, Arthur (Freddie Highmore), spending a summer with his Granny (Mia Farrow); he learns she is about to be evicted because she can't find the rubies his missing inventor-granddad buried; following grandfather's secret instructions, Arthur enters the invisible elf world of the Minimoys beneath Granny's garden, morphs into one himself (they look like veggie-bug hybrids with punk hair, like the old troll dolls); he teams with an elf princess (voice of Madonna) to wrest the rubies from a bad elf (David Bowie). Animated action sequences feel harmless: flying battles on dragonflies; swordfights; floods, rapids; bad elf looks like an icky skeleton/grasshopper mix that could scare youngest kids; young hero feels abandoned by busy parents; grandmother worries when he goes missing.)

``Night at the Museum'' PG (Enjoyable, if under-realized and internally illogical romp (live-action with computer-generated effects) about a shlump (Ben Stiller) hired as the night guard at New York's Natural History Museum; his aged predecessors (Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, Bill Cobbs) fail to mention that the exhibits -- a T. rex skeleton, Attila the Hun, Teddy Roosevelt (Robin Williams, having a bully time), miniature Roman legions, Civil War soldiers and cowboys (Owen Wilson in a cameo) -- come alive each night; he must rein them in, keep his job, impress his son (Jake Cherry) and woo a museum guide (Carla Gugino). Little kids may jump at the dinosaur chasing Stiller, the Huns grabbing him; toilet humor; rude expressions.)

-- PG-13s:

``Catch and Release'' (NEW) (Jennifer Garner in softheaded, contrived romantic comedy that passes for counterculture aesthetic in these pop-culture days; she's a young Boulder, Colo., woman grieving for her dead fiance, sharing a house with his quirky/funny pals (Kevin Smith and Sam Jaeger), and furious at his other friend (Timothy Olyphant), until she learns a) he's not such a bad guy and b) her fiance had secrets. Fairly graphic sexual situation; other less intense encounters, with kissing and a nongraphic Hollywood-style lovemaking montage; occasionally crude sexual slang; middling profanity; verbal description of someone's bloody death; attempted suicide with pills and booze; talk of experimenting with sexual orientation; a little boy stomping a just-caught fish to death (fish is off-camera); unlit joint (no one smokes it); drinking. An outer-edge PG-13, not for middle-schoolers.)

``Stomp the Yard'' (Oft-corny college saga uplifted by exuberant dancing: a Los Angeles inner-city teen and ace street dancer (Columbus Short) loses his brother in a brawl and is sent, still grieving, to live with Atlanta relatives; he enters a historically black university and works part-time; snobby students look down on him; he enters the fraternities' big ``stepping'' competition (synchronized dance inspired by African gumboot dancing) and aims to impress a girl (Meagan Good), overcome the dislike of her provost dad (Allan Louis) and win her from an arrogant boyfriend (Darrin Henson). Fatal shooting; midrange profanity; racial slurs; implied overnight tryst between college students, suggestive dancing by girls, rapper-style crotch-grabbing by guys, shots of young women's jeans-clad behinds. Too much swearing, macho posturing for middle-schoolers.)

``Freedom Writers'' (Satisfying drama largely overcomes teacher-hero cliches in fact-based story of Erin Gruwell (a cleareyed Hilary Swank in pearls), who taught high-school English in the early 1990s to ``unteachable'' inner-city teens in Calif.; trying to defuse racial and gang tensions in class, she gets students to keep journals, talk about violence and prejudice in their lives and read ``Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl''; they meet Holocaust survivors, gain insight, confidence. Nongraphic, but intense portrayals of shootings, including a little boy playing disastrously with a gun; fights; talk of a girl and her mother being beaten; profanity; racial slurs. More for high-schoolers.)

``Dreamgirls'' (Fun, high-gloss, well-sung, long-awaited film adaptation of 1981 Broadway hit musical about the tempestuous rise of a 1960s girl group much like the Supremes; Beyonce Knowles as the pretty Deena; terrific Jennifer Hudson as the talented, temperamental Effie; Jamie Foxx as their machiavellian manager; Eddie Murphy as the eccentric soul singer who first hires them; cultural history of the era neatly woven in. Drug abuse; implied extramarital affairs; unwed motherhood; male singer strips to his skivvies; mildish profanity, mostly the S-word. OK for most teens, but likely to attract musical theater buffs and ``American Idol''-ators eager to see one-time losing contestant Hudson triumph.)

``The Pursuit of Happyness'' (Fine, refreshingly un-Hollywood film takes hard look at living one paycheck away from the street; Will Smith as a down-on-his-luck family man scrambling to get out of debt and into a real job in San Francisco, circa 1981; Smith's real son Jaden, a charmer, 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; a disintegrating marriage; selling blood for cash; father and son spend nights in a homeless shelter, a subway restroom; shoving, shouting but no real violence. Teens.)

-- R's:

``Smokin' Aces'' (NEW) (Cleverly constructed, visually fresh and frenetic feds-versus-the-Mob caper with dense narrative and dialogue, but a disappointing payoff at the end. Two FBI agents (Ryan Reynolds and Ray Liotta) lead an operation to save a mob-connected Las Vegas entertainer (Jeremy Piven) from an array of hit men and women (including Alicia Keys) and bail bondsmen (Ben Affleck) so he can go state's evidence; the FBI boss (Andy Garcia) desperately wants the guy. Point-blank automatic weapons mayhem with much spattered blood; a man's bloodied hand with his fingers shot off; flashbacks to a mobster torturing a man hanging naked (a back view) in chains; scantily clad, occasionally topless women playing prostitutes; very strong profanity; crude sexual slang; some racial and homophobic slurs; cocaine use; drinking. 17 and older.)

``The Hitcher'' (NEW) (Uninspired, uninteresting, so-what? remake of 1986 horror-slasher hit (same title, also an R), playing on our fears of strangers, set against desolate stretches of highway in the American West; a college couple (Sophia Bush and Zachary Knighton) narrowly avoid hitting a man (Sean Bean) on the road at night (in the rain, natch), then encounter him at a gas station and agree, guiltily, to give him a ride; they learn too late he is a serial killer intent on framing them. Bloody crime scenes show gun, knife victims with slit throats, spurting arteries; child victims strongly implied but not shown in scene about a murdered family; strong implication that a victim chained between two trucks is pulled apart; jackrabbit smashed by car in first scene; huge car pileups; strong profanity, sexual language; affectionate but nonsexual shower scene; implied nudity. 17 and older.)

``Venus'' (LIMITED RELEASE) (Bittersweet, character-rich comedy stars Peter O'Toole in pricelessly frisky, poignant turn as Maurice, an aging London actor who falls for the sullen young woman (Jodie Whittaker) who is supposed be caring for his ailing best friend (Leslie Phillips); she rebuffs Maurice and his ``old man smell'' at first, but eventually they become friends and, seeing his longing, she lets him touch her -- within limits; the sometimes rocky friendship transforms both people. Moments of explicit sexuality (not exactly sexual situations, but sexual behavior); brief, nongraphic bedroom scene; understated but upsetting violence against an elderly person; doctor's visit strongly implying prostate exam; brief nudity; strong profanity and sexual slang; drinking, smoking. 17 and older.)

``Pan's Labyrinth'' (LIMITED RELEASE) (Extraordinary, harrowing film for adult audiences -- stunningly acted and visualized -- explores how a little girl (Ivana Baquero), surrounded by wartime violence and loss in Franco's Spain, circa 1945, escapes into a darkly beautiful fantasy world (created with puppetry, animation and live-action), away from her stepfather (Sergi Lopez), a murderous army captain; her life is threatened and courage tested in both imaginary and real worlds. Bloody point-blank shootings; knifings; strongly implied torture; a bloody childbirth; a fatal beating; drug overdose; fantasy creature with eyeballs in its palms bites off fairy's head, tries to kill the little girl; strong profanity; drinking. In Spanish with subtitles. Art film fans 17 and older.)

``Letters from Iwo Jima'' (LIMITED RELEASE) (Clint Eastwood's memorable, humane, layered companion film to ``Flags of Our Fathers'' (R, 2006), this time viewing the World War II battle of Iwo Jima in 1945 through the eyes of Japanese fighters of various ranks and backgrounds. Less bloody than ``Flags of Our Fathers,'' film still shows spurting, limbless stumps and soldiers ablaze; one intense scene (though more smokey than bloody) depicts Japanese soldiers committing suicide with hand grenades (pressure for honor suicides among Japanese troops is a key theme); depiction of prisoners murdered by both sides, but acts of mercy also shown; dialogue (in Japanese with English subtitles) has mild profanity; some drinking. Cinema and history buffs 16 and older.)