The Family Filmgoer
Watching With Kids in Mind

By Jane Horwitz
Friday, March 28, 2008

21 (PG-13, 123 minutes)

Ben (Jim Sturgess) is a gifted pre-med student at MIT in need of a med school scholarship. A charming math professor named Micky (Kevin Spacey) lures him into a "project" in which the prof and several of his chosen students fly to Las Vegas on weekends and win tons of cash at blackjack. They use teamwork and the technique of card counting. Naive Ben turns Micky down at first but is drawn in by seductive Jill (Kate Bosworth). She and Micky tell Ben it's not really cheating. But closing in on them is a casino investigator, Cole (Laurence Fishburne), eager to beat the truth out of cheats. Ben gets greedy and careless.

Spacey's cold, glib, emotionally distant screen persona suits this story fine, but, alas, nearly the entire film feels cold, glib and emotionally distancing, as well as far too predictable. And the young hero Sturgess makes an uncharismatic protagonist. His Faustian journey barely pricks our emotions until near the end, after he realizes what a selfish lout he has become and how he has hurt his friends.

"21" is based on a true story (told in Ben Mezrich's book "Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions"), but director Robert Luketic seems so intent on camera angles, the card-counting scam and sheer Las Vegas slickness that he loses track of the humanity. Aside from the relatively understate violence, "21" includes a non-graphic sexual situation, other sexual innuendo, suggestive dancing in a club, profanity and drinking. It is okay for most teens.

ALSO PLAYING
Kindergartners and Up

"Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!" (G). A sheer delight, this computer-animated take on the beloved storybook expands the tale without wrecking it. It keeps the Seussian whimsy but adds three-dimensional furriness to the high-haired Whos and weight to Horton the Elephant (voice of Jim Carrey). There's a neat contrast between the pastel Jungle of Nool and the Rube Goldbergian Who-ville, the microscopic city-on-a-speck Horton risks all to save. He and the ditzy Mayor of Who-ville (Steve Carell), with his 96 daughters and one son, communicate by a quirk of sound convergence, but each must overcome his neighbors' disbelief. Narrow-minded Kangaroo (Carol Burnett) tries to stop Horton's quest. Kids 6 and younger may cringe at Vlad (Will Arnett), a bird of prey, chasing Horton and causing Who-ville to shake; Horton on a rope bridge that breaks; a Noolian mob capturing him; and a scary-funny bit with the Mayor, a dentist and a hypodermic needle.

8 and Older

"College Road Trip" (G). If this family comedy were played any more broadly, the cast would be in clown suits. Part slapstick farce, part sentimental saga, it is good-hearted but painfully silly and geared more to kids about 7 or 8 who dream of being grown-up. Martin Lawrence plays a suburban Chicago police chief and obsessively overprotective dad who drives his daughter (Raven-Symon¿) to an interview at Georgetown University. The more he tries to control events, the more they spin away from him. Youngsters may be startled by a potbellied pig going nuts on coffee beans (a don't-try-this-with-your-pet lesson); father and daughter screaming while sky-diving; Dad getting Tasered by a sorority mother.

PG-13s

"Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns." This is another of writer-director Tyler Perry's formulaic but enjoyable recipes, blending broad comedy with emotion and inspiration. Angela Bassett brings intensity to Brenda, a single mom with three kids by different dads, doing her best to keep them in school and out of trouble in the Chicago projects. She loses her job, and her oldest son (Lance Gross), a gifted basketball player, seems drawn to the quick cash of drug dealing. So when Georgia relatives send bus tickets for the funeral of the father she never knew, Brenda takes the kids and goes. Her kin include buffoonish Leroy Brown (David Mann), mean drunk Vera (Jenifer Lewis) and kindly L.B. (Frankie Faison). Handsome Harry (Rick Fox), a basketball scout interested in her son (and in her), also turns up. The film includes marijuana use, drug deals, a shooting, jokes about "hos" and sexually transmitted diseases, a hinted threat of sexual assault, drinking, mild profanity and a theme about deadbeat dads. More for high schoolers.

"Run Fat Boy Run." Older teens especially may enjoy this amiable, if not wholly original, London-set comedy (directed by David Schwimmer) about a Peter Pan-syndrome guy who finally grows up. We meet Dennis (Simon Pegg of "Shaun of the Dead," R, 2004) as he's about to leave his pregnant bride, Libby (Thandie Newton), at the altar because he's terrified. Five years later, he barely covers his rent working as a security guard and has a loving but irresponsible bond with his young son (Matthew Fenton). Then he learns Libby has a rich American boyfriend, Whit (Hank Azaria). A smoker with a beer belly, Dennis decides to run the London Marathon alongside the smug Whit and prove to Libby that he, Dennis, is worthy. Much of the humor in "Run Fat Boy Run" is locker-room crude. There is midrange profanity, back-view nudity, implied frontal nudity, sexual slang and innuendo. Characters smoke and drink.

"Drillbit Taylor." Owen Wilson plays another charming scalawag in this amusing, slightly bawdy trifle. Three nerdy high-school freshmen -- chubby Ryan (Troy Gentile), skinny Wade (Nate Hartley) and dorky Emmit (David Dorfman) -- advertise online for a bodyguard to save them from a bully (Alex Frost). They hire Drillbit Taylor (Wilson), a fast-talking veteran who, unbeknownst to them, lives on the beach, showers (back-view nudity) next to the highway and has criminally inclined pals. He poses as a substitute teacher, so of course their English instructor (Leslie Mann) falls for him. It's hard not to like the film, crude and formulaic though it is, for its fresh performances and repartee. It has midrange profanity, make-out scenes, homophobic humor, implied toplessness, jokes about sexually transmitted diseases and hints of beer drinking. Okay for most teens.

"Under the Same Moon." So sympathetic are the people in this poignant, harrowing immigrant story that the coincidence-riddled plot doesn't hurt it. Nine-year-old Carlitos (terrific Adrian Alonso) lives in Mexico with his grandmother. His mom, Rosario (Kate del Castillo), lives and works illegally in Los Angeles. They talk by pay phone and miss each other terribly. When his grandma dies, little Carlitos heads for L.A. Scary scenes show him hiding under the floorboards of a Mexican American couple's (America Ferrera of TV's "Ugly Betty" and Jesse Garcia) car after he pays them to get him over the border. Then he travels with undocumented workers, often fleeing immigration police. Some adults threaten him, but most help, especially cranky Enrique (Mexican comic Eugenio Derbez). The film shows prostitutes; has rare muted violence, rare profanity and beer-drinking. A fine introduction to subtitled tales for most teens.