Family Filmgoer

"Something New" is truly a rare commodity -- a dramatic comedy about an interracial romance that deals frankly with racial issues and, to a certain extent, with class issues, too. It is opulently filmed and expertly acted -- a date flick with a dash more gravitas than most, but still a date flick. Since it features stronger profanity and more crude, sexually charged phrases and humor than one generally hears in PG-13s -- even as the category coarsens -- "Something New" is not for middle schoolers. The more adult content includes a scene of passionate kissing with shirts peeled off, implying the start of an overnight tryst, sexualized dancing and milder sexual innuendo. Characters also drink.

Sanaa Lathan plays Kenya McQueen, a brilliant, beautiful African American accountant at a top firm. She is well into her thirties, single and lonely, with a rigorous work ethic and a deep fear of seeming undignified. When she meets a cute, easygoing white landscape architect (Simon Baker) and falls for him, the one-time debutante blossoms, then has an emotional crisis. The relationship gets her grief from her class- and race-conscious mother (Alfre Woodard) and her playboy brother (Donald Faison), plus mixed messages from her girlfriends. Can love conquer all that?

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6 and Older

"Nanny McPhee" (PG). Mischievous, warmhearted treat worth seeing even if some under-10s fidget during grown-ups' dialogue scenes and don't get every Britishism; Emma Thompson (who also wrote the screenplay, inspired by Christianna Brand's "Nurse Matilda" books) as the shockingly homely, magical nanny who helps a desperate widower (Colin Firth) with seven unruly, adorable kids; Angela Lansbury as stern, clueless great aunt, Kelly Macdonald as a sweet scullery maid; clever messages about taking responsibility, deflating snobbery. Many do-not-try-this-at-home stunts: baby lying happily in cold casserole, later nearly tossed into a boiling pot; cook (Imelda Staunton) bashed on head, tied up while kids trash kitchen; mildly rude language; toilet humor, gross-out gags with worms; mild comic sexual innuendo; muted incest remark younger kids won't get; a cockney curse.

"Hoodwinked" (PG). Cleverly conceived animated update of "Little Red Riding Hood" boasts snappy dialogue but rough, unlovely computer animation; still, it is funny, and jokes little kids miss will tickle older companions while they enjoy the cartoony mayhem; a suave frog detective (voice of David Ogden Stiers) investigates reports of a "disturbance" at Granny's (Glenn Close) house, coaxing different stories from Granny, granddaughter Red (Anne Hathaway), the Wolf (Patrick Warburton) and a Woodsman (James Belushi). Little ones might be scared to see Red roller-coastering down a mountain barely escaping an avalanche, or streaking downhill in a cable car, or the Wolf threatening her, or the Woodsman (James Belushi) bursting through Granny's window.

10 and Older

"Roving Mars" (G). Fascinating 40-minute Imax film traces launches (in 2003) and landings on Mars of NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity, the photos and geological analyses they've been sending back to Earth; film blends rovers' actual digital panoramic and close-up photos from Mars with computer-generated models to create vivid landscapes and a sense of the rovers moving in them. Kids younger than 10 may squirm during more scientific discussion in latter half.

"Glory Road" (PG). Earnest, safe, still affecting film tells story of historic Texas Western basketball team, which won the NCAA championship in 1966 and how Coach Don Haskins (Josh Lucas) did it by integrating the El Paso school's team, ignoring racist grumbling among school officials, alumni; Derek Luke as a key team member. Occasional racist slurs, including the n-word, in dialogue and visually in hate mail, graffiti; upsetting scene shows African American athlete beaten up; mild drug reference; muffled barnyard epithet; rare mild profanity; muted sexual innuendo; drinking.

PG-13s and a PG More for Teens

"Big Momma's House 2." Martin Lawrence as FBI agent Malcolm Turner goes back undercover as Big Momma in dreary sequel to his raucous 2000 hit ("Big Momma's House," PG-13); posing as a nanny in home of a software magnate (Mark Moses), he spends more time helping the prissy wife (Emily Procter) and troubled kids than chasing bad guys or being with his own pregnant wife (Nia Long). Marijuana references; crudely comic sexual innuendo about breasts, Big Momma's thong; marital sex; preteen girls at cheerleading practice shake their behinds like older girls; supermodels at a spa sashay in towels; a toddler dives off furniture, eats steel wool -- not to be imitated; brief, muted violence; children threatened; mild profanity. More for high schoolers.

"The World's Fastest Indian." Anthony Hopkins shines in sunny, unpretentious, fact-based portrait of Burt Munro, a cheery, speed-obsessed New Zealander who broke records in 1960s at Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah on souped- up 1920 Indian motorbike; film recounts his first trek to the United States from New Zealand and how, as a man past middle age, with no money and a heart condition, he won friends all along the way. Two implied overnight trysts; intense biking wipeouts, angina attacks; middling profanity; mild sexual innuendo; marijuana use; toilet humor; crude talk of a remedy for prostate trouble; drinking, smoking; Burt recalls death of his twin brother. Teenagers.

"A Good Woman" (PG). Generally spiffy reworking of Oscar Wilde's 1892 comedy of manners, "Lady Windermere's Fan," set in the 1930s among wealthy British and Americans on Italy's Amalfi coast; issues of marital fidelity, trust, morality, gossip all explored with much of Wilde's original, perfect dialogue; alas, Scarlett Johansson and Helen Hunt are awkward with the ornate dialogue in key roles as a naive American bride and a woman with a past, respectively. Muted but unmistakable sexual innuendo, sly references to prostitutes, adultery; a married couple cuddles in bed; drinking, smoking. Teenagers.

"Annapolis." Slick, derivative, dumbed-down fable of all-American up-by-the-bootstraps triumph; James Franco as moody, hardheaded shipyard welder who gets accepted by U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis; he spends his "plebe" year defying one officer (Tyrese Gibson), falling for another (Jordana Brewster), boxing his way out of low self-esteem, proving to his dad (Brian Goodman), roommates (Roger Fan, Wilmer Calderon, Vicellous Shannon) he's not a quitter; only he never studies. Intense boxing -- no bad injuries; a character's off-camera suicide attempt; profanity; muted ethnic slurs; drinking; joke about woman being a prostitute when she isn't. Teenagers.

"The New World." Legendary filmmaker Terrence Malick's at times stunning but overlong paean to an end of paradise, a collision of cultures -- about painful 1607 founding of Jamestown colony in Virginia, ill-fated romance between John Smith (Colin Farrell) and Native American princess Pocahontas (Q'orianka Kilcher). Skirmishes between settlers and Indians show occasional impalings, point-blank shootings, but little blood; Smith is nearly hanged, another time beaten by his own men; settlers nearly starve, with verbal reference to cannibalism; muted sexual innuendo. Too violent for preteens; may bore teenagers.

"Last Holiday." Immensely likable, low-key comedy remake of 1950 Alec Guinness film stars Queen Latifah as a painfully shy cookware demonstrator at a New Orleans store who can't flaunt her skills as a gourmet chef or flirt with the guy (LL Cool J) she likes; news that she has only weeks to live makes her cash in her savings and head to a posh European resort with a famous chef (Gerard Depardieu), where she aims to let loose and live. Profanity; occasionally steamy sexual innuendo; mildly implied sexual situation; remark about "sleeping around"; rude joke about a derriere; drinking, smoking. Iffy for preteens.

R

"Underworld: Evolution." Utterly incomprehensible (except to fans), dark, damp, vampire-werewolf revenge flick, sequel to "Underworld" (R, 2003); Kate Beckinsale as vampire warrior Selene, determined to do no harm to humans, fight the werewolf race and learn the cause of the thousand-year war between vampires and werewolves and the source of their immortality. Much gory (though dimly lit, stylized) impalement, beheading, shooting, head-cracking among vampires and the alternately reptilian, furry, humanoid werewolves; vampirish blood-sucking; explicit sexual situation with nonfrontal nudity; profanity. Horror fans 17 and older.

R

"Underworld: Evolution." Utterly incomprehensible (except to fans), dark, damp, vampire-werewolf revenge flick, sequel to "Underworld" (R, 2003); Kate Beckinsale as vampire warrior Selene, determined to do no harm to humans, fight the werewolf race and learn the cause of the thousand-year war between vampires and werewolves and the source of their immortality. Much gory (though dimly lit, stylized) impalement, beheading, shooting, head-cracking among vampires and the alternately reptilian, furry, humanoid werewolves; vampirish blood-sucking; explicit sexual situation with nonfrontal nudity; profanity. Horror fans 17 and older.