Movies for all Ages By Desson Howe Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, May 5, 2000

"Dinosaur" offers a visual feast for the younger set of moviegoers. (Walt Disney)

The top attraction? "Dinosaur," of course. Walt Disney's live-action special-effects extravaganza, which opens next week, looks like a classier, bells-and-whistles version of "The Land Before Time." Kids are likely to thrill to the story, about a three-ton iguanodon who joins a herd of dinosaurs in search of safety, food and water.

Walt Disney will also release "Fantasia/2000" (June 16), an update of the 1940 classic, "Fantasia," with brand new animation inspired by Beethoven, Gershwin, Shostakovich, Stravinsky and others. As part of a limited national run, the movie screened earlier this year at the Maryland Science Center. But it returns for a wider release.

Coming up fast behind "Dinosaur" in terms of potential kid thrillability is "Titan A.E.," Don Bluth's animated outer space epic about a rebellious teenager trying to save the world. It opens June 16. And then there's DreamWorks' "Chicken Run" (June 23), a stop-action animation feature about a coop full of chickens trying to keep a neck ahead of the Frank Perdue types. It's from Nick Park, whose Aardman Animations made the "Wallace and Gromit" films. Listen for the familiar clucking of Mel Gibson.

Some automatic kid attractions: "Thomas and the Magic Railroad" (July 26), featuring Alec Baldwin as the magical Mr. Conductor. No sign of Ringo, unfortunately. Also: "Pokemon the Movie 2000" (July 21), starring Ash, Pikachu and all those, uh, lovable mutating weirdos.

It's hard to guess whether "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle" (June 30), a hyped-up, quippy intermixing of live action and animation featuring the likes of Robert De Niro, will attract the very young. But it clearly has family-viewing possibilities.

Check the summer schedule, also, for "Running Free" (June 2), a live-action modern fable about a horse in Africa; "Shanghai Noon" (May 26), Jackie Chan's latest gymnastic venture, this time into the Wild West; "Nutty Professor II: The Klumps" (July 28), a sequel to Eddie Murphy's successful "Nutty Professor" remake; and "Disney's 'The Kid'" (July 21), in which Bruce Willis magically meets himself as a young child.