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JANE HORWITZ - FAMILY FILMGOER |
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``The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause'' (G, 1 hr., 38 min.) ``Stranger Than Fiction'' (PG-13, 1 hr., 45 min.) Will Ferrell plumbs new acting depths in ``Stranger Than Fiction,'' an utterly engaging, visually striking comic-romantic fantasy beautifully realized by director Marc Forster (``Finding Neverland,'' PG, 2004). Ferrell plays Harold Crick, a wonkish IRS agent who, while brushing his teeth (and counting the strokes, as usual) suddenly hears a female voice in his head, narrating his life as if it were a novel. The movie's internal logic quickly stipulates that Harold is not insane. So when he learns the author intends to kill him off, he panics; after all, she's been right about everything else. The crisis brings Harold out of his shell. He meets a literary scholar (Dustin Hoffman) who tries to figure out who ``his'' author is and he falls in love with a tax-flouting baker (Maggie Gyllenhaal) whose returns he is supposed to audit. On a parallel track, we follow Emma Thompson as the depressive, death-obsessed writer, Kay Eiffel, struggling to finish her novel and unaware her hero is ``real.'' Though a mildish PG-13, ``Stranger Than Fiction'' has the sort of intellectual heft and wit that make it ideal for book-loving high-school and college kids. Its slow pace and quiet dialogue won't keep general teen audiences enthralled, though. The rating reflects passionate kissing and tossing off of outer garments, an implied overnight sexual tryst, middling profanity, drinking, chain smoking, toilet humor and nonsexual rear nudity. Two lethal road accidents are portrayed and there are snippets of documentaries showing animals downed by predators. ``A Good Year'' (PG-13, 1 hr., 58 min.) Russell Crowe shows not only a knack for romantic comedy in ``A Good Year,'' but also lends with his screen presence the much-needed ballast to keep the story from floating away like a postcard wafting on a breeze. High-schoolers who like Crowe or simply like stories of romance in distant places ought to find much amusement and even warmth in this tale of an arrogant London financier who mellows during a sojourn in France's picturesque Provence region. The PG-13 rating encompasses much sophisticated, rarely crude sexual innuendo, passionate kissing, one implied overnight tryst, subtle hints of undress and mild-to-midrange profanity. We do see a child sip wine, and adult characters drink and smoke cigars. A pair of American tourists are stereotyped as dumb and boorish in the extreme -- a cheap shot. Director Ridley Scott lovingly depicts Provence in a cliched, yet insistently amiable story from Peter Mayle's novel. Crowe plays Max, who executes an unethical stock coup in London, then heads to France to take possession of a rundown chateau and vineyard left him by his uncle. The place awakens memories of Uncle Henry (wonderful, voluble Albert Finney) and Max's visits as a boy (Freddie Highmore). Scott's graceful folding in of flashbacks plus a fine supporting cast lend charm, however contrived, to the process of turning Max into a nice guy who falls in love with a beautiful restaurant owner (Marion Cotillard). BEYOND THE RATINGS GAME -- 6 AND OLDER: ``The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause'' G (Bright colors and occasional slapstick may divert kids from tacky sets, poorly attached elf ears, a charmless, pseudo-sentimental script in this tired, shamelessly derivative sequel (to ``The Santa Clause,'' PG, 1994, which wasn't bad, and ``The Santa Clause 2,'' G, 2002); this time, Scott (Tim Allen), the man who became Santa, is in his busy toy-making season, with a hugely pregnant wife Elizabeth Mitchell); he brings his in-laws (Alan Arkin and Ann-Margret) up to visit, but tries to hide the fact that he is Santa and they are at the North Pole; meanwhile conniving Jack Frost (Martin Short) tries to make the visit so awful that Scott/Santa will quit. Under-6's may be frightened to see Jack Frost freeze people, or Mrs. Santa go (gently) into labor; a flatulent reindeer.) -- 7 AND OLDER: ``Flushed Away'' PG (Enormously witty (many references only adults will get) computer-animated fable mimics clay-mation style of ``Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit'' (G, 2005) to tell of a pampered pet mouse named Roddy (voice of Hugh Jackman) who gets flushed down the loo by a London sewer rat (Shane Richie) who wants to take his place; Roddy discovers a charming mini-London in the sewers, built by rodents and roaches; he and a feisty mouse named Rita (Kate Winslet) take on a cabal of amphibians and rats, led by Toad (Ian McKellen), who plan to destroy the underground city. Surprisingly mild toilet humor (a chocolate bar, partly in its wrapper, floats by; oozy brown slugs who shriek and sing); under-7's could be unsettled by chase scenes on sewer rapids and a tsunami-like flood; insults such as ``dipstick'' and ``get stuffed''; Roddy eats maggots posing as rice.) -- 10 AND OLDER: ``Flicka'' PG (Absorbing, fiercely emotional, occasionally oversentimental adaptation of Mary O'Hara's 1941 novel, ``My Friend Flicka,'' this time with a female teen protagonist; 16-year-old Katy (Alison Lohman) captures and trains a wild mustang filly on her parents' struggling Wyoming ranch, against her father's (Tim McGraw) wishes; she rebels when her dad sells Flicka. (BEG ITAL)PLOT GIVEAWAY ALERT(END ITAL): Intense, if nongraphic, scenes show Flicka nearly killed by a mountain lion; implied gravity of horse's injury is upsetting; Katy gets sick in sympathy. Mild sexual innuendo (joke about gelding a man); a teen kiss; hints that older ranch hands are sweet on Katy, but they don't act on it; the wild Flicka kicks Katy; perilous rodeo stunts; mild profanity; toilet humor.) -- PG-13s: ``Stranger Than Fiction'' (NEW) (Utterly engaging, visually striking comic-romantic fantasy about a wonkish IRS agent Howard Crick (Will Ferrell, ever a better actor) who suddenly hears a narrator in his head and realizes he is the protagonist in a real writer's novel-in-progress and that she plans to kill him off; Dustin Hoffman as a quirky literary scholar; Emma Thompson as the chain-smoking, death-obsessed, blocked writer who doesn't know her hero is ``real''; Maggie Gyllenhaal as a cookie baker Howard loves. Passionate kissing, tossing off of outer garments, implied sexual tryst; middling profanity, crude humor; drinking; smoking; nonsexual rear nudity; two lethal road accidents; documentary footage of animals downed by predators. Book-loving high-school and college kids.) ``A Good Year'' (NEW) (Cliched but pleasurable, postcard-pretty tale (directed by Ridley Scott from Peter Mayle's novel) about an arrogant London stock trader (Russell Crowe, fine as a romantic comedian, but also lending needed ballast to a slight story) who inherits a chateau and vineyard in France; inspecting the property, he flashes back to idyllic boyhood visits with his beloved uncle (wonderful Albert Finney; Freddy Highmore as the hero as a boy); his arrogance softens, he falls in love (with Marion Cotillard). Much sophisticated, rarely crude sexual innuendo; passionate kissing, implied overnight tryst, subtle hints of undress; mild-to-midrange profanity; a child sips wine; adults drink, smoke cigars; cheap-shot portrayal of boorish American tourists. May interest high-schoolers.) ``Marie Antoinette" (Director Sofia Coppola lends a modern edge to a lavish, yet intimate non-epic; a convincing 18th-century portrait (despite the odd rock song commenting on the story) of the teen queen (Kirsten Dunst), a clueless Austrian royal sent to marry the future Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman) of France, a spoiled dullard; their marriage goes unconsummated for years, causing gossip; she compensates with lavish parties and a lover (Jamie Dornan). Semiexplicit (for a PG-13) sexual situations, including her strongly implied deflowering; occasional crude, sexually tinged language; references to prostitution; brief hints of nudity; queen puffs on a pipe; ruling couple's fall is touched on, but no beheadings mar the decor.) ``The Prestige" (Invitingly atmospheric and intriguing, but rather pretentiously convoluted tale of two brilliant English magicians and their obsessive rivalry -- a spiral of spectacular stolen tricks, betrayals, fatal accidents, unethical experiments, revenge and prison; Hugh Jackman as a suave aristocrat, Christian Bale as his blue-collar nemesis, Michael Caine as their boss in a London magic act, circa 1900; a tragic mishap sets the younger men on a collision course. Stylized rather than graphic depictions of drownings, crushed birds, a hand bloodied by gunfire, other gunplay, implied hacking off of fingers, a hanging suicide, an execution; mild sexual innuendo; out-of-wedlock pregnancy; smoking, drinking. Agile teen minds can unravel the plot.) -- R's: ``Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan'' (Brilliant, subversive British comic Sacha Baron Cohen (famed as pseudo hip-hopper, Ali G) as another of his characters, supposed Kazakh TV personality Borat, on a tour of America; shot as cinema verite, with ordinary people often unaware that the crude, sex-obsessed, viciously anti-Semitic, but palsy, puppyish Borat is not real. Tone is lewd, sexually explicit, misogynistic, bigoted, scatological, profane, often uncomfortable. Near-frontal nudity; jokes about rape; graphic sexual language in NC-17 range; likely to offend real Kazakhs with its portrayal. No under-17s -- more for college kids into rude, whacked-out humor.) ``Babel'' (Deeply involving drama (though too long, with some plot threads less compelling than others) peels away degrees of separation between nationalities, world's richest and poorest in tale of linked crises: a well-off California woman (Cate Blanchett) traveling in Morocco with her husband (Brad Pitt) is accidentally shot by two boys playing with a rifle; brutal Moroccan police chase the boys; in California, the couple's housekeeper (Adriana Barraza) takes their little children on an ill-starred trip into Mexico; in Tokyo, a deaf teen (Rinko Kikuchi) grieves for her mother by acting out sexually; her worried father (Koji Yakusho) has a tie to the shooting in Morocco. Frontal nudity; explicit sexuality; briefly explicit scene of a young boy masturbating (he is clothed, his actions implied); in separate scene, he spies on his sister as she undresses -- nothing seen; shootings; beatings; drug use; profanity. Thinkers 17 and up.) ``Saw III'' (Third installment in gruesome but cleverly conceived horror series about a moralistic serial killer, Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), who traps character-flawed victims in puzzle-like death machines; well-written sequel has the killer dying of a brain tumor and directing his worshipful assistant (Shawnee Smith) to complete a new round of killings; the protagonists are a depressed doctor (Bahar Soomekh) and a man (Angus Macfadyen) obsessed with vengeance against a drunk driver who killed his child. Bone-crushing, skin-dissolving, limb-chopping, skull-piercing violence; graphic brain operation; frontal nudity; strong profanity; pig carcasses put through grinder; character self-mutilates. 17 and older.) ``Flags of Our Fathers'' (Beautifully rendered World War II saga, directed with grace and gall by Clint Eastwood, with ultrabloody battle scenes, quiet musings on heroism; film examines complex story (based on the book by James Bradley with Ron Powers) behind famous 1945 flag-raising photo from battle of Iwo Jima; clear-eyed, cynical portrayal of promotional trip on which men from the photo (Ryan Phillippe, Adam Beach and Jesse Bradford) are trotted out to hawk War Bonds; American Indian in the trio (Beach as Ira Hayes) is treated with withering racism. Gut-spilling battle scenes (a la ``Saving Private Ryan,'' R, 1998); profanity; ethnic slurs; drinking, smoking. History buffs 16 and older with strong stomachs.)
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