Family Filmgoer

Watching With Kids in Mind

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6 and Older

"Bolt" (PG). If it weren't for a very funny hamster, "Bolt" would not make much of a blip on the radar screen. It's too riddled with tired inside-Hollywood jokes that kids won't get. Bolt (voice of John Travolta) is the canine star of a TV series who believes he has real superpowers. Even his young co-star, Penny (voice of Miley Cyrus), who loves him, doesn't tell Bolt the show is make-believe. When he's mistakenly shipped to New York in a crate, Bolt escapes and meets a smart-aleck kitty named Mittens (Susie Essman) who tags along on the trek back to Los Angeles as Bolt realizes he's not a super-dog. But only when they meet a hamster named Rhino (Mark Walton) do things get funny. Rhino is a huge, nerdy fan of Bolt's show. When Rhino is center-screen, "Bolt" is funny and the kids stop fidgeting.

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa" (PG). This deliciously dizzy animated sequel has mildly earthy humor aimed at older audiences but also plenty of raucous slapstick and wit to delight kids 6 and older. Alex the lion (voice of Ben Stiller), Marty the zebra (Chris Rock), Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer) and Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) try to fly home to the Central Park Zoo in a rattletrap plane. They crash into an African nature preserve, where Alex finds his father, Zuba (the late Bernie Mac). (In a brief, scary prologue we see how Alex as a cub was stolen by poachers, who shot Zuba in the ear.) Gloria flirts with a hippo (Will.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas), which adds mild sexual innuendo. Someone nearly falls into a volcano.

PG-13

"Transporter 3." Jason Statham is still fun to watch as the grimly macho Frank Martin, kicking villainous behinds. As the stoic, muscled driver (and former Special Forces type) who delivers valuable items, no questions asked, all over Europe for a big fee, Frank keeps getting involved with employers who turn out to be bad guys, and he can't stop himself from saving innocents caught in their web. The plot involves the Russian mob, biological waste and "explosive bracelets." The mayhem is mostly nonlethal; the martial arts fight scenes are very cool, and there are great car-train and underwater stunts. We also see people killed by a biohazard. There are a couple of point-blank shootings with little blood, explosions, an implied sexual situation, rare profanity, drinking and drug use.

"Australia." Baz Luhrmann's sprawling film is a happy pastiche of many styles, and an old-fashioned love story set against an epic backdrop. Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman give big, starry performances to match. If teens can leave modern cynicism at home, they'll have a great time. The film deals candidly with racial segregation and mistreatment of Australian Aboriginal people and particularly mixed-race children. Set before and during World War II, the story is narrated by a half-indigenous and half-white boy named Nullah (an excellent Brandon Walters). Prissy Lady Sarah (Kidman) comes to Australia from England to confront her wayward husband on the cattle ranch he owns. She finds he has been murdered. The police suspect a mysterious Aboriginal man (David Gulpilil), who becomes the film's spiritual touchstone. Sarah fires the ranch's corrupt foreman (David Wenham) and hires a fiercely independent cowboy named Drover (Jackman) to get her cattle to market. There is drinking, smoking, an implied affair, a hint that Aboriginal women are abused by white men, racial slurs and rare profanity.

"Four Christmases." It's hard to imagine teen audiences warming to this sour holiday comedy about an insufferable couple forced to visit families they can't stand. Brad (Vince Vaughn) and Kate (Reese Witherspoon) always take luxury trips at Christmas, lying to their families that they're off doing charity work. Then their flight to Fiji is canceled, and they're forced to make barely bearable Christmas visits to both sets of parents who are divorced and remarried. There is sexual innuendo, profanity, smoking, drinking and homophobic humor.

"Twilight." Teens who love the books by Stephenie Meyer will find much to swoon over in this moody film, adapted from the first novel in Meyer's series about a girl who falls for a vampire. While the Goth-inspired blood-suckers strike too many fashion-model poses, the story remains a poignant, occasionally thrilling (and occasionally silly) meditation on the struggle between desire and restraint, love and sacrifice. There is understated sexual innuendo and one "normal" kiss. A finale battle against murderous rogue vampires involves blood but is more about gravity-defying martial arts. Other vampire attacks are understated.

"Quantum of Solace." This new 007 adventure artfully boils the James Bond formula down to its essence: frenetic chases, bone-breaking fights, impossible stunts with gunplay, icy sex appeal, exotic scenery, an ironic worldview and a barely comprehensible plot. The mayhem is intense but nongraphic. There is mild sexual innuendo, an implied sexual liaison, rare profanity, muted talk of violence against women, drinking and smoking. Okay for teens.

R

"Punisher: War Zone." Ultraviolent but with a distinctive gray-and-gritty look and actors who give their comic book characters soul, this newest take on the Marvel Comics vigilante Frank Castle, a.k.a. the Punisher, is not for the queasy. But it's a pretty good crime thriller for high-schoolers 17 and older who like the gory genre. Ray Stevenson plays Frank, the former FBI agent who has been taking out bad guys extra-legally ever since his wife and kids were killed by mob hit men. After the Punisher mows down a roomful of mafiosi, a gangster named Billy (Dominic West) becomes the new mob boss. The graphic violence includes impalement, much spurting blood and an implied beheading. There is strong profanity, sexual slang and drug use.

"Milk." Sean Penn gives an inspired performance as Harvey Milk in this sprawling, emotional account of the birth of the gay rights movement in San Francisco and the man who sparked it. Milk was elected to that city's Board of Supervisors in 1977, the first openly gay person elected to public office in the country. In 1978, Milk and Mayor George Moscone (Victor Garber) were assassinated by Dan White (Josh Brolin), an embittered, homophobic former supervisor. Sexual situations are stylized and less explicit than many heterosexual scenes in R-rated films. There is a suicide victim seen hanging, a murder victim in a body bag, seminudity, pot smoking, drinking, profanity and sexual language. For mature high-schoolers.