The Family Filmgoer

Watching With Kids in Mind

Superbad (R, 104 minutes)

In this riotous, very R-rated comedy, a pair of smart, sarcastic, potty-mouthed, sex-obsessed, totally uncool high school senior guys try desperately to lose their virginity one drunken night. It is a kind of epic hero's journey in its own profane way. Though technically a "teen comedy," "Superbad" is not appropriate for anyone younger than 17 unless they have extremely open-minded parents. It is the boys' naivete and desperation that keeps "Superbad" from sliding into mere raunchiness. The movie explores that theme and features stunningly explicit sexual language. It also includes scenes of drug use, drunkenness, a squirm-inducing riff on menstrual blood and a series of graphic comical drawings of male sex organs. There are a couple of semi-explicit sexual situations, too, but they are mild compared with the film's language.

Pudgy, profane Seth (Jonah Hill) can't believe his lifelong pal, the quieter Evan (Michael Cera), got into the Ivy League while he must go to a state university. They'll be separated by hundreds of miles. Also, neither boy -- both brainy and glib but dorky -- has any luck with girls. They're determined to remedy that in one night of partying. They get an even dorkier kid, Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), to use his fake ID to buy booze so they can bring it to a popular girl's (Emma Stone) bash and win favor.

ALSO PLAYING

6 and Older

"Daddy Day Camp" (PG). Kids throw up, relieve themselves, get skunked and paintballed in a corny sequel (no cliche unused, no joke untelegraphed) to "Daddy Day Care"; "Day Care" hero Charlie (played by Cuba Gooding Jr. now, instead of Eddie Murphy) takes on a failing day camp and the bullying owner (Lochlyn Munro) of the camp next door, bringing in his estranged dad (Richard Gant), a retired Marine colonel, to help. Mild sexual innuendo; rare mild profanity; child briefly disappears but is fine; jokes about parents who give their kids Xanax.

8 and Older

"Underdog" (PG). Live-action update (with digital effects) of old TV 'toon will entertain kids because human (and beagle) actors put heart in their roles; a mad scientist (Peter Dinklage) transforms a stray K-9 unit dropout into a superpowered talking pooch; the dog escapes and is adopted as a normal hound by Dan (Jim Belushi) for his son Jack (Alex Neuberger); the dog reveals his superpowers to the boy and they invent Underdog, the crime fighter. Mildly scary bits could upset kids younger than 8 -- a giant syringe (we don't see an injection); chases, fights, explosions, abductions, interrupted robberies; Jack's schoolmate (Taylor Momsen) and her dog get mugged but are fine; canine sexual innuendo, toilet humor.

PG-13s and One Arty PG

"The Invasion." Nicole Kidman remains, incongruously, a fashion plate throughout most of this disjointed, only intermittently breath-catching remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" films (1956, unrated; 1978, PG); it has little new to say; Carol (Kidman), a Washington psychiatrist, learns her ex-husband (Jeremy Northam), an epidemiologist, has been infected by an alien microbe brought to Earth on space shuttle debris; people become emotionless automatons, trying to infect others; Carol tries to get to her young son (Jackson Bond) away from his father; Daniel Craig as her colleague and Jeffrey Wright as a scientist are wasted in bland roles. High-speed chases, crashes, people run over; infected people swarm over Carol's car; gunplay; Carol stalked in subway tunnel; infected people regurgitate on new victims -- high yuck factor; vicious dog runs after kids; a man dies covered in slime, having a seizure; people jump off a building; understated kiss; Kidman briefly in revealing sleepwear; verbal account of how a man kills a dog; drinking; mild profanity. Okay for most teen sci-fi/thriller fans.

"Rush Hour 3." Hong Kong police inspector Lee (Jackie Chan) and L.A. detective Carter (Chris Tucker) reunite to fight Asian triad crime syndicates in Paris; the story makes no sense, but the formula gets laughs. Martial-arts face-offs with fists, blades, sticks, including a neat Eiffel Tower fight; high-speed chases; gunplay; leering but non-threatening sexual innuendo (and a bit of sexism); ethnic, racial stereotypes spoofed; racial slurs referred to by their first letters; implied toplessness among club dancers; briefly lewd but nonexplicit sexual situation; rare profanity.

"Stardust." Fairy tale, based on Neil Gaiman's graphic novel, is old-looking but modern-sounding in a nice, breezy way; Tristran (Charlie Cox), a young man from an old English village, crosses into the forbidden magical kingdom of Stormhold to retrieve a fallen star; the star turns out to be a young woman (Claire Danes) who needs protection from a witch (Michelle Pfeiffer) and princes who want to cut out her heart and eat it to gain eternal youth. Witches who gouge out entrails (barely off-camera) of animals, turn people into donkeys; violence is non-gory but intense -- stabbings, bone-snappings; mild sexual innuendo; subtly implied overnight trysts; implied nudity; rare profanity; themes deal gently with sexual orientation (a cross-dressing pirate), unwed pregnancy.

"The Bourne Ultimatum." Hyperkinetic thriller -- gloriously dizzying and paranoid -- is a stunning finale to the Bourne trilogy ("The Bourne Identity," 2002; "The Bourne Supremacy," 2004, PG-13s), updating Robert Ludlum's Cold War novels to the terror-tainted present; Matt Damon, as amnesiac CIA assassin Jason Bourne, gets to the source of his identity and why most (but not all) CIA higher-ups want him dead. Violence approaches bloody R levels in bone-crushing fights, lethal gunplay; foot chases, car chases are breathlessly shot and edited and could induce motion sickness; mild profanity. High schoolers.

"Becoming Jane" (PG). Lovely, atmospheric film won't please Jane Austen purists, but it winningly imagines Jane (Anne Hathaway in a glowing portrayal) as a character in an Austenesque tale -- tasting romance, seizing literary inspiration from people and events; a lawyer (James McAvoy, his role based on a man Austen at least met), combines traits of heroes and cads in Austen's novels and nearly wins her heart. Frisky bedroom moment between Jane's parents (James Cromwell and Julie Walters); chaste sexual innuendo and a kiss between young adults; drinking; women at an inn seem to be prostitutes. Teens.

"The Simpsons Movie." Riotous feature-length episode of the TV show loses momentum briefly but recovers; it is tasteless and subversive but never raunchy; boneheaded patriarch Homer (voice of Dan Castellaneta) dumps pig poo into Lake Springfield, causing such pollution that the Environmental Protection Agency puts a dome over the town; the Simpsons barely escape lynching and flee to Alaska. Homer dares son Bart (voice of Nancy Cartwright) to skateboard naked, offering a glimpse of Bart's sketchily drawn "doodle"; characters drink and smoke -- including, at times, kids; evangelical Christians spoofed; mildly crude language; rare profanity; brief bedroom scene with Homer and Marge; two gay policemen kiss, go into a motel; robot suicide gag.

"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." Wizard-in-training Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) at 15 feels alienation and foreboding in this gripping, somber meditation on the trials faced by all truth-tellers, based on J.K. Rowling's fifth book; the minister of magic (Robert Hardy) makes Harry a pariah for allegedly lying about his battle with evil Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes); cruel Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton) joins Hogwarts to impose the ministry's Taliban-esque rules; Harry secretly readies his friends to fight Voldemort and their climactic battle, though largely bloodless, is chilling. Skeletal spirits could spook younger kids, but Voldemort's face is the creepiest sight; Umbridge etches words painfully on Harry's hand; younger kids may shrink from Hagrid's (Robbie Coltrane) giant half brother; gross humor about boils; adults drink.

Rs

"Rocket Science." Brainy teen comedy by indie writer-director Jeffrey Blitz; film offers poignant, unsentimental view of life's disappointments and betrayals, always moving at a fast, "screwball comedy" clip; a kid (Reece Thompson) with a painful stutter suffers through his parents' (Lisbeth Bartlett and Denis O'Hare) separation, his older brother's (Vincent Piazza) bullying and humiliations in a New Jersey high school, until a fast-talking girl (Anna Kendrick) gets him to join the debate team with hints of curing his stutter and, perhaps, romance. Sexual themes refer comically to teen longing, masturbation, cross-dressing, homosexuality; sound of protagonist's mom and her new lover (Steve Park) having sex; teens make out -- just kissing -- drink, smoke; profanity. 16 and older.