The Family Filmgoer
Watching With Kids in Mind
The Guardian (PG-13, 136 minutes)
"The Guardian" offers a salute to the U.S. Coast Guard and its elite rescue swimmers (who earned much praise in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina). The movie blends harrowing portrayals of high-seas rescues and rigorous training exercises with an utterly cliched story. Luckily, the protagonists are played by likable lugs Kevin Costner, whose weathering features and laid-back acting are always a kick, and Ashton Kutcher, who exhibits, at long last, some grit as an actor. Many teens will appreciate the movie's sincerity and action. (It was made with the full cooperation of the Coast Guard.) "The Guardian" is about angry seas and the heroes who pluck people out of them -- nothing more -- and has a surprisingly corny (even for this film), pseudo-mythic ending. In addition to the non-graphic depiction of drownings, near-drownings and injuries, the film shows a fiery helicopter crash, bar fights, implied overnight trysts, a comic bedroom scene with muted sexuality, beer drinking and midrange profanity.
Costner plays Ben, a veteran rescue swimmer stationed in Alaska and so married to his job that his wife (Sela Ward) leaves him. He goes on a disastrous mission and is the only survivor. Reassigned to the Lower 48 to recuperate while training rescue swimmers, he butts heads with Jake (Kutcher), the best in the class, but a young man with attitude. Do we doubt that the mentor and mentee will form a bond and that it will be tested in the waves? Jake even falls for a teacher (Melissa Sagemiller) who tries not to love him, knowing the career he has chosen -- another echo of Ben's life.
ALSO PLAYING
6 and Older
"Open Season" (PG). Refreshingly riotous and inventive computer-animated fable about a domesticated bear (voice of Martin Lawrence) and the one-antlered mule deer (Ashton Kutcher) he reluctantly takes on as a pal, and how they're sent back to the wild after trashing a convenience store and must learn to survive; they're pursued by a crazed hunter (Gary Sinise), harassed and then befriended by woodland creatures -- silly rabbits, acorn-hurling squirrels (Billy Connolly as their Scottish leader), gossiping skunks, dam-building beavers, a cuddly porcupine. Younger kids may be briefly scared by the hatchet-faced, rifle-toting hunter when he takes aim or chases our heroes in his truck (he gets his comeuppance); characters caught in a frightening flood, rapids, waterfall; final battle between creatures and many hunters shows no animal or human with serious injuries; main hunter pulls a knife but doesn't use it; really droll what-does-a-bear-do-in-the-woods toilet humor; rare semi-crude language.
PG-13s
"Jesus Camp." Riveting -- and depending on your point of view, either chilling or uplifting -- cinema vérité documentary follows an evangelical Christian youth pastor (Becky Fischer) who runs a camp in North Dakota, teaching pre-adolescent kids to pray, speak in tongues and rev up their born-again Christianity to greater fervor, grooming them to be faith-based activists and preachers; film shows kids rallying against abortion, being taught that creationism is right, that evolution and global warming are wrong and that "Harry Potter" books and films are satanic; intense close-ups of kids in prayer, weeping, speaking in tongues; opposite view heard in occasional remarks of liberal radio talker Mike Papantonio. For teenagers ready to view the material critically.
"School for Scoundrels." Well-cast, consistently funny but never hilarious farce about Roger (Jon Heder of "Napoleon Dynamite [PG, 2004]), a painfully timid Manhattan parking cop who enrolls in a class designed to build confidence, taught by shady, verbally abusive Dr. P (Billy Bob Thornton) and his hulking assistant (Michael Clarke Duncan); Roger does great until Dr. P starts hitting on his new girlfriend (Jacinda Barrett). Infrequent use of the f-word, but much use of the s-word, other profanity push film toward R; semi-crude sexual slang, innuendo; sexually charged verbal joke implying one male character raped another; gag about stalking women; paintball shots in the crotch; head shoved in toilet; drunkenness; pointless use of African American stereotypes. Too profane and occasionally lewd for many middle schoolers.
"Jet Li's Fearless." Exciting, poignant epic stars Jet Li in partly fictionalized story of Chinese martial arts master Huo Yuanjia, who, in 1909, founded the still-extant international Jingwu Sports Federation; film follows Huo's life from timid childhood to arrogant adulthood to tragedy, self-imposed exile and redemption as he fights challengers and learns the value of humility and peace. Thunderous punches, heavy swordplay; restraint in use of blood, portrayal of death; murdered woman and child (killing not shown) are seen lying in blood, but with no graphic injuries; victim of poisoning vomits blood; themes deal with the loss of a child, heavy grief. In Mandarin, Japanese, occasional English, with subtitles. Teenagers.
"Flyboys." Reverent, sentimentalized but still absorbing tale of young American men who, for adventure or glory, joined France's aerial fighting corps in 1916 (before U.S. entered World War I), flying rickety planes into dogfights against better-armed Germans; James Franco as callow flying ace; Martin Henderson as a jaded veteran. Swooping, bullet-riddled dogfights, ground warfare re-created with thundering ballistic realism, some blood and death -- little graphic gore -- including hacking off of a man's hand; shootings; a suicide; shell-shock symptoms; mild sexual innuendo, including scenes at a brothel with women in underwear; rare profanity; racial slurs; brief toilet humor; drinking. Teen history and aviation buffs.
"Gridiron Gang." Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as real-life youth counselor Sean Porter, who started a football team in a California detention center for violent juvenile offenders, using it to turn around gang members' lives; uplifting fact-based story (based on a 1993 documentary) feels preachy, long, heavy-handed, but might inspire teens who like sports dramas. A couple of fatal shootings; rough fights; lots of midrange profanity, a few stronger words; mildly crude sexual language; racial slur; themes about teens fathering babies, losing a parent, grief.
Rs
"The Departed." Martin Scorsese's ultra-violent, profane, terrific adult crime saga plays like an homage to dramatic styles of opera, gangster flicks and graphic novels; convoluted narrative follows two Massachusetts State Police detectives, one a good cop (Leonardo DiCaprio -- stressed, scowling) working undercover to infiltrate the operation of a South Boston crime boss (Jack Nicholson -- hilarious, chilling) operation; the other (Matt Damon -- secretive, petrified), a real mob acolyte, infiltrating the state police; the two moles tunnel away, each trying to expose the other. Brain-spattering shootings, beatings, a knifing, a strangulation, a gun suicide, victim hurled from a high window to the ground; severed hand in a plastic bag; searing profanity; graphic, misogynistic, homophobic sexual language; lewd sexual innuendo; verbal pedophilia joke; racial slurs; rare, non-explicit sexual situations. Drinking, smoking, drug use. 17 and older.
"The Last King of Scotland." Harrowing, fictionalized, occasionally preposterous tale about addictive nature of power, woven around real events during 1970s regime of bloody Ugandan dictator Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker, scarily blending charm, paranoia and brutality); a naive young Scottish doctor (James McAvoy) goes to Uganda for adventure, buys into Amin's charisma and signs on as his physician, realizing too late the murderous nature of the regime. Graphic portrayal of mutilated corpses, intercut with quick flashbacks to torture and killings; rough scene shows injured cow in agony; explicit sexual situations; nudity; profanity; possible marijuana joint; liquor and cigarettes. Not for under-17s.
"Jackass: Number Two." Johnny Knoxville et al. in sometimes hilarious, often gag-inducing, gross-out, tomorrow-we-die stunt fest (sequel to "Jackass: The Movie," both based on MTV's "Jackass" show) continue their shtick, raised to extreme levels of crudeness and danger. Stunts -- not to be tried at home -- include going off piers in rocket-powered grocery carts, running from rampaging bulls, letting a snake sink its fangs into a sock puppet covering one guy's member and a tasteless "terrorist" sketch; graphic toilet humor, including on-screen defecation, vomiting, consuming products from a horse's bodily functions; strong profanity; not-quite-fully-frontal male nudity. NC-17-esque.
