Family Filmgoer: Watching With Kids in Mind

Ice Age: The Meltdown (PG, 89 minutes)

There's just enough scary stuff in "Ice Age: The Meltdown" to make this highly entertaining computer-animated comic adventure iffy for kids younger than 8. Parents will need to decide whether children ages 6 to 8 are ready for it. The still improbable family of prehistoric wanderers -- Manny the woolly mammoth (voice of Ray Romano), Diego the saber-toothed tiger (Denis Leary) and Sid the sloth (John Leguizamo) -- face life-threatening dangers in this sequel to the 2002 hit. Plot giveaways : They are surprise-attacked from beneath the melting ice by two freshly thawed, quite alarming reptilian monsters. They nearly drown, nearly fall from a rocky peak, endure waterfalls, rockslides, floods and a chorus of hungry vultures. (The vultures sing a variation on "Food, Glorious Food" from the musical "Oliver!" with phrases such as "just thinking of putrid meat.") Sid is nearly sacrificed into a volcano by a colony of miniature sloths. Not surprisingly, there is toilet humor and very mild sexual innuendo.

Our heroes begin trekking with all the other animals to a safer place when they learn the glaciers are melting and a flood is coming. Manny, who thinks he's the last mammoth on Earth, meets Ellie (Queen Latifah), a girl mammoth who grew up with possums and thinks she's one, too -- just like her crazy, daredevil adoptive brothers, Crash (Seann William Scott) and Eddie (Josh Peck) -- only bigger. The family expands to include them. Intercut with their adventures are those of that frantic, wordless squirrel-rat, Scrat. The insult humor can get too mean and the film feels a little padded, yet it is a hoot -- a happy blend of old-style cartoon mayhem and modern sensibilities.

ATL (PG-13, 105 minutes)

Rapper Tip Harris (aka T.I.) makes a convincing film debut as a parentless 17-year-old caring for his kid brother and trying to find hope for the future in a tough world. High schoolers from all backgrounds will find someone and some thing to identify with in this relatively mild and engaging slice-of-life saga set in South Atlanta among African American teenagers. At first, it feels as confusing as a Russian novel, because it has so many characters. Director Chris Robinson, who comes from the music video world, tends to confuse things further with too many layers of style, but eventually, he lets the story break through. The movie includes muted violence -- a gun confrontation and off-camera shooting, nonlethal muggings/beatings, an older brother hitting a younger one and snarling attack dogs. The lone nongraphic sexual situation subtly implies undress and lovemaking but never becomes explicit. The film also contains usually understated but sometimes crude verbal and visual sexual innuendo and occasional strong profanity. Other more adult elements are a drug-dealing subplot, a marijuana moment and cigarette smoking.

ALSO PLAYING

8 and Older

"The Shaggy Dog" (PG). Flat dialogue, homely special effects mar update of 1959 Disney film and 1976 sequel, "The Shaggy D.A."; kids may like slapstick humor, dog, nice young characters; Tim Allen as workaholic assistant district attorney bitten by magical Tibetan sheepdog escaped from drug company's cruel lab, rendering him able to morph into a dog. Some kids may cringe at premise of a parent changing shape, lab full of weird hybrids, including dog-toad mix (truly creepy); evil scientists (led by Robert Downey Jr.) threaten animals with electric cattle prod, but use it only on humans; toilet humor -- dogs sniff one another's behinds; implied nudity; mild sexual innuendo; older man seems to have a seizure; D.A.'s kids (Zena Grey, Spencer Breslin) briefly fear parents will divorce.

10 and Older

"Duma" (PG). Handsomely filmed, bittersweet adventure with intense (for a PG) scenes of animal violence. Young South African farm boy, Xan (Alexander Michaletos), raises a cheetah cub, calling it Duma; Plot giveaway : His father (Campbell Scott) dies, and a move to the city means Duma must go back to the wild; avoiding authorities, Xan runs off with Duma in dad's motorbike-with-sidecar toward a far-off preserve; in the desert, a mysterious drifter (Eamonn Walker) joins trek; Mom (Hope Davis) searches. Scenes of lions, other predators, stalking, pouncing, though we only hear prey taken down, see carcasses later; boy and cheetah barely escape crocodiles, lions; police brandish guns; school bullies; very mild sexual innuendo.

PG-13s

"Stay Alive." Incoherent, nearly scare-free horror flick about twenty-something video gamers (Jon Foster, Samaire Armstrong, Frankie Muniz, Sophia Bush, Jimmi Simpson) in pre-Katrina New Orleans; their video game "tester" pal dies playing a new "underground" game about the ghost of a killer countess (Maria Kalinina); at first fascinated, they see that they'll die like the game's characters unless they play their way out. Hangings, throat-stabbings, runnings-over -- strongly stylized, with foreboding, spooky figures, blood, but little graphic gore; quick views of bloody crime scenes; strongly implied nonexplicit sexual situation; profanity; hint of marijuana use; smoking; recollection of parental violence, death. Not for preteens.

"Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector." Lewd, crude, rude, tattooed, blue-collar, single-named funnyman Larry stars as improbable restaurant health inspector, tracking down a kitchen saboteur in grossly unappetizing, though occasionally rather funny, manner; Iris Bahr as his prim co-worker, Megyn Price as nice girl who likes him. Hugely yucky scenes of vomiting, intestinal distress; constant slang references to breasts, testicles; gag about man in a wheelchair; homophobic humor; ethnic jokes; implied toplessness; drinking. Not for middle schoolers.

"She's the Man." Way-too-broadly-played romantic farce, based on Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night," will still delight teen girls (and some tweens, with permission) who buy into its forced but fun premise; Amanda Bynes as soccer-mad high-school un-debutante, Viola, dons male drag as her twin brother Sebastian (James Kirk) while he sneaks off to London; she then enrolls in a rival school to keep playing soccer after her own team gets cut, falls secretly in love with her new roomie, Duke (Channing Tatum), while the girl Duke likes (Laura Ramsey) falls for her as Sebastian. Mild profanity, sexual innuendo; two subtly implied penis jokes; tampon, toilet humor; semi-lewd, implied locker room nudity; comical fights.

Rs

"Basic Instinct 2." Sharon Stone returns as possibly psychopathic, perhaps serial-killing novelist Catherine Tramell in chic-looking but lame, lurid sequel to the 1992 hit; now living in London, Tramell plays with the mind of a handsome psychiatrist (David Morrissey), transferring suspicions about a recent murder from her to him. Numerous graphic sexual situations, including an orgy; nudity; voyeurism; dead bodies in sexual settings; violence includes slit throat, gun death, near-drowning, punch-ups; highly explicit sexual language; very strong profanity; hint of marijuana use; smoking; drinking; characters using loveless sex to manipulate, avenge. No one younger than 17.

"Inside Man." Director Spike Lee brings humor, energy to complex thriller; Denzel Washington as police detective who tries to foil a bank heist in which the masked ringleader (Clive Owen) and his gang take hostages, the bank owner (Christopher Plummer) wants a certain safe deposit box protected, and his high-priced facilitator (Jodie Foster) aims to get it done. Strong profanity includes one obscene, misogynistic epithet; steamy verbal sexual innuendo; lewd sexual slang; ethnic slurs; nongraphic violence -- implied beatings, gunfire, execution-style shooting, hostages roughed up and threatened; lone child hostage is not hurt. No one younger than 17.

"V for Vendetta." Sometimes polemical, always gripping thriller imagines a religio-fascist England in 2020, into which a mystery terrorist, V (Hugo Weaving), appears in a mask with the face of 17th-century insurgent Guy Fawkes; he threatens to blow up Parliament, start a revolution; Natalie Portman as a shy Everywoman he befriends; Stephen Rea as police inspector. Stylized, occasionally graphic mayhem: martial-arts impalings with arcs of spattered blood, point-blank shootings, beatings, attempted rape; flashbacks of naked detainees used in medical experiments, disfigured, piled into mass graves -- images drawn from Holocaust; strong profanity; crudely sexualized verbal reference to gun suicide. No one younger than 16.