Director: Frederik du Chau. With Hayden Panettiere, voices of Dustin Hoffman, Whoopi Goldberg. (93 min.)

The aptly named hero is a zebra who thinks he's a racehorse, and has the good fortune to be adopted by a teenage girl who's convinced he can outrun any thoroughbred on the track. Not as funny as it wants to be. Grade: C
- D.S.

Mega Movie Guide 2005 Download PDF (1.8 M) Monitor's Top 10 A silver-screen lining in a cloudy year Capsule reviews A through D E through J K through P R through Z Reader ratings Your favorites of 2005

Get all the Monitor's headlines by e-mail. Subscribe for free.

E-mail this story Write a letter to the Editor Printer-friendly version del.icio.us [ What is this? ] digg [ What is this? ]

Sex/Nudity: None.
Violence: 5 mild scenes.
Profanity: 2 mild profanities.
Drugs/Alcohol: 1 scene with drinking.

Red Eye (PG-13)

Director: Wes Craven. With Rachel McAdams, Cillian Murphy. (85 min.)

Taut. Tense. Gripping. Suspenseful. This reviewer hasn't used those words in so long I think I heard the keyboard cough. Nevertheless, they all apply to "Red Eye." McAdams is a workaholic hotel manager en route to her Miami home. Murphy is the smoothie who flirts with her in the airport, turns up next to her on the plane, and promises, soon after takeoff, that her father will be killed if she doesn't call the hotel and have the visiting secretary of Homeland Security moved to a room more advantageous for assassins. Grade: B+
- J.A.

Rent (PG-13)

Director: Chris Columbus. With Rosario Dawson, Taye Diggs. (135 min.)

As directed by Columbus, Jonathan Larson's East Village reworking of "La Bohème" in the age of AIDS retains its calisthenic pathos, as well as most of its original cast, but you'd have to be a real Rent-Head (apparently their numbers are legion) to envisage Academy Awards in its future. As a new addition to the corps, Dawson is like a human Slinky. This is meant as a compliment. Grade: B-
- P.R.

Sex/Nudity: 3 instances of innuendo, 1 instance with slight nudity.
Violence: 2 instances.
Profanity: 29 instances (5 strong).
Drugs/Alcohol: 14 scenes with smoking and/or drinking, 6 with drug use.

The Ring Two (PG-13)

Director: Hideo Nakata. With Naomi Watts, Simon Baker. (111 min.)

More about the insidious video that kills its viewers if they don't copy it and pass it to another victim. Subtler than "The Ring" and scarier than "Ringu," the Japanese thriller that started it all, this is sequel-spinning with a vengeance. Watts is wonderful, and the story's forsaken-child theme still has plenty of horrific power. Grade: B
- D.S.

The Ringer (PG-13)

Director: Barry Blaustein. With Johnny Knoxville, Brian Cox. (94 min.)

Too tenderhearted to fire the office custodian, Steve Barker hires the man as his gardener, only to be stuck with a huge medical bill for an on-the-job injury. His uncle, challenged by gambling debt, has a plan: Have Steve pose as a Special Olympics contestant and win big betting on him. Real-life Special Olympians in the cast prove "differently abled" to be more than a euphemism, but this lame-brained film lets them down. Grade: C-
- M.K.T.

Robots (PG)

Director: Chris Wedge. With the voices of Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Mel Brooks, Jennifer Coolidge. (89 min.)

The animated adventures of a young robot with big ambitions, and an old robot who's been kicked out of his own business by a profit-hungry upstart. The visuals are spectacular, but the screenplay is trite, intermittently vulgar, and not funny. Grade: C
- D.S.

Roll Bounce (PG-13)

Director: Malcolm D. Lee. With Bow Wow, Nick Cannon. (112 min.)

This homage to the '70s teen movie is built on formula: When their South Side roller rink closes, a group of hard-core Chicago skaters head for the North Side, to skate, dance, and conquer. What keeps the film from succumbing to fatigue is a refreshing cast and Lee's deftness with comedy. Grade: B
- J.A.

Saint Ralph (PG-13)

Director: Michael McGowan. With Adam Butcher, Campbell Scott, Jennifer Tilly. (98 min.)

The unlikely hero is a 14-year-old boy with an ailing mother, a penchant for trouble at his parochial school, and an odd notion that if he wins the Boston Marathon he'll receive a miracle to cure his problems. This deliciously offbeat Canadian comedy gets its charm from marvelous acting and from a screenplay bursting with ideas. Great fun. Grade: A
- D.S.

Saraband (R)

Director: Ingmar Bergman. With Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson. (107 min.)

A stately dance of love and hate among two senior citizens who were married years ago, a middle-aged musician, and his young daughter. This masterpiece is the best movie from Bergman in decades. Hardly ever does such brilliant acting, screenwriting, and cinematography find its way into a single film. In Swedish with subtitles. Grade: A
- D.S.

Sex/Nudity: 7 scenes with innuendos and nudity.
Violence: 2 instances.
Profanity: 27 strong and mild profanities.
Drugs/Alcohol: 4 scenes with drinking.

Schultze Gets the Blues (PG)

Director: Michael Schorr. With Horst Krause, Ursula Schucht. (114 min.)

Bored with retirement, an aging German realizes that it's a lot more fun to play American zydeco music than polkas on his accordion. Eventually, he makes it to the US to hear the music in person. Filmed in a leisurely, understated style, this dark comedy is downright entrancing. A spectacular directorial debut. In German and English with subtitles. Grade: A
- D.S.

Separate Lies (R)

Director: Julian Fellowes. With Emily Watson, Tom Wilkinson. (87 min.)

London solicitor Thomas Manning (Wilkinson) is wounded deeply when his younger wife (Watson) takes up with an insufferably arrogant neighbor. The film manages to make reasonable parallels between physical violence and emotional betrayal without curdling the pudding. Grade: B
- J.A.

Serenity (PG-13)

Director: Joss Whedon. With Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres. (119 min.)

"Serenity" is yet another tale that foretells of an interplanetary dictatorship, following a war of insurgency: In this case, the Alliance has made outlaws of the intrepid crew of the spaceship Serenity. The action sequences are intense, and the film is fun, if you can swallow all the hokum. Grade: C+
- J.A.

Shopgirl (R)

Director: Anand Tucker. With Steve Martin, Claire Danes. (104 min.)

Martin plays a dotcom millionaire who successfully woos Mirabelle (Danes), a salesgirl at Saks. Whether intentionally or not, Martin has given us something truly spooky: A full-fledged portrait of a hollow man. Grade: B
- P.R.

Sex/Nudity: 13 frank scenes of innuendo and sex.
Violence: None.
Profanity: 9 fairly mild expressions.
Drugs/Alcohol: 3 scenes with smoking, 11 scenes with drinking.

Sin City (R)

Directors: Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez. With Bruce Willis, Rosario Dawson. (126 min.)

Interlocking stories of crime, revenge, and horror based on Miller's comic books and graphic novels. The cast is excellent and the computer-generated visuals are consistently stunning. Too bad the movie never comes within hailing distance of a moral perspective on its hyperviolent material. Grade: B
- D.S.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (PG)

Director: Ken Kwapis. With Amber Tamblyn, Alexis Bledel. (110 min.)

The adventures of four girls who part for different summer vacations and stay in touch by mailing each other a pair of jeans that mysteriously fits them all and may have magical powers - or perhaps just enhance the self-esteem of young women who'll soon leave adolescence behind. Grade: B
- D.S.

The Squid and the Whale (R)

Director: Noah Baumbach. With Laura Linney, Jeff Daniels. (80 min.)

Writer-director Noah Baumbach's squiggly semiautobiographical comedy has the freshness of firsthand observation. It's about the breakup of a marriage between a self-infatuated novelist and his headstrong wife as seen through the eyes of their two sons, 16-year-old Walt and his younger brother Frank. Baumbach captures the ways in which children takes sides in a war they can't even begin to comprehend. Grade: A-
-P.R.

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (PG-13)

Director: George Lucas. With Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen. (142 min.)

Lucas wraps up his second "Star Wars" trilogy, centering on Anakin Skywalker's secret marriage to Padme, his friendship with Obi-Wan Kenobi, and his temptation to use the Dark Side of the Force for personal gain. As spectacle, this stands with the best. Grade: B
- D.S.

Sex/Nudity: 2 instances of mild innuendo.
Violence: 26 scenes, often grisly.
Profanity: None.
Drugs/Alcohol: None.

Stay (R)

Director: Marc Forster. With Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts. (99 min.)

If you're the kind of moviegoer who likes puzzling out the plots of insoluble movies, then by all means rush to see "Stay," a great big blurry mess starring Ewan McGregor as a psychiatrist who gets pulled into the dreamscape of his disturbed patient. Grade: C-
- P.R.

Sex/Nudity: 2 scenes of innuendo.
Violence: 10 horror scenes.
Profanity: 28 harsh expressions.
Drugs/Alcohol: 3 scenes with smoking, 4 scenes with drinking, 1 scene with prescription drugs.

Stealth (PG-13)

Director: Rob Cohen. With Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel, Jamie Foxx. (121 min.)

Three Navy flying aces aren't happy that a computer will pilot the fourth plane in their squadron. Most dismaying is that it learns bad habits from its human counterparts - such as not always following orders - and it begins to pursue its own agenda. Grade: C
- M.K.T

Sex/Nudity: 5 scenes of innuendo and implied sex.
Violence: 16 instances.
Profanity: 34 profanities.
Drugs/Alcohol: 7 scenes of smoking cigars or drinking.

Steamboy (PG-13)

Director: Katsuhero Otomo. With voices of Albert Molina, Anna Paquin, Patrick Stewart. (106 min.)

Visually stunning animation about a 19th-century boy caught between factions using steam power for combat and destruction in London, where most of the action takes place. Otomo outdoes his "Akira" with this cinematic feast, which also raises big moral questions about science as benefactor or enemy of true human progress. Grade: A
- D.S.

Swimming Upstream (PG-13)

Director: Russell Mulcahy. With Geoffrey Rush, Judy Davis, Tim Draxl, Jesse Spencer. (98 min.)

Drama based on the life of a real Australian swimming champion who rose to success despite challenges posed by his alcoholic father, his abused mother, and his brother, who's his keenest competitor as well as his best friend. Rush and Davis shine, and the drama is engrossing until it turns sadly sentimental in the last minutes. Grade: B
- D.S.

Syriana (R)

Director: Stephen Gaghan. With George Clooney, Matt Damon. (126 min.)

A lot of people held out high hopes for "Syriana," a vast mosaic about the prospective merger of two American oil companies against the backdrop of a reformist Persian Gulf prince who has sold drilling rights to the Chinese. But the discussion most moviegoers will likely have is: "Could you figure out what was going on?" "Syriana" falls down at the most basic storytelling level, and this incoherence damages even the good parts. Grade: B-
- P.R.

Sex/Nudity: None.
Violence: 8 scenes, including torture.
Profanity: 35 strong expressions.
Drugs/Alcohol: 7 scenes of smoking, 7 scenes of drinking.

Tell Them Who You Are (R)

Director: Mark Wexler. With Haskell Wexler, Mark Wexler. (95 min.)

Portrait of legendary cinematographer and political activist Haskell Wexler, directed by his son, who has a hard time keeping control of the project with such a forceful dad in front of the camera. A fascinating glimpse of family love and rivalry, if not a deep-digging documentary of "My Architect" quality. Grade: B
- D.S.

The Thing About My Folks (PG-13)

Director: Raymond De Felitta. With Paul Reiser, Peter Falk. (96 min.)

On the occasion of his wife's self-imposed disappearance, Sam Kleinman (Falk) shows up at the door of his son, Ben (Reiser, who wrote the screenplay), and the well-cast pair embark on a road trip meant to keep dad busy while Ben's sisters sort things out. Result: a comedic, sometimes jarring, and deeply human interaction with only a few brief feints toward hyper-sentimentality. Grade: B+
- Clayton Collins

This Divided State (Not rated)

Director: Steven Greenstreet. With Michael Moore, Sean Hannity, Jim Bassi. (88 min.)

Documentary about the uproar that ensued when student leaders at a mostly Mormon college invited filmmaker Michael Moore to give a talk on their Utah campus. Frequently funny, sometimes sad, often electrifying. Grade: A
- D.S.

This Revolution (Not rated)

Director: Stephen Marshall. With Rosario Dawson. (90 min.)

A rogue journalist tracks the activities of a black anarchist group as the Republican National Convention draws near. It's a pity that such vital, thought-provoking material has been rendered so lifeless and inauthentic on the screen. Grade: C
- D.S.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (R)

Director: Tommy Lee Jones. With Tommy Lee Jones, Barry Pepper. (121 min.)

Jones plays Pete Perkins, a ranch foreman whose friend and coworker, Melquiades (Julio Cesar Cedillo), is accidentally shot by a border patrolman (Pepper) who doesn't own up to the deed. Pete figures things out and commandeers the man across the borderlands with his friend's corpse in tow. His goal: A proper burial to fulfill Melquiades last wish. It's a hickory-smoked tale of contrition and redemption. Grade: B
- P.R.

3-Iron (R)

Director: Kim Ki-duk. With Jae Hee, Lee Seung-yeon. (87 min.)

Enigmatic drama centering on a young Korean man whose hobby is living secretly in the homes of strangers, and an abused wife who abandons her husband to join him. Mysterious, sometimes violent, ultimately close to sublime. In Korean with subtitles. Grade: A
- D.S.

Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (PG)

Directors: Tim Burton, Mike Johnson. With the voices of Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter. (76 min.)

A murdered bride hears a young man practicing wedding vows in the forest and drags him underground as her husband. Although the underworld is a lot less grim than the land of the living, he pines for his fiancée. It's too macabre to be out-and-out funny, and feels unfinished. Grade: C+
- M.K.T.

Sex/Nudity: 1 scene of mild innuendo, 1 scene of partial male nudity.
Violence: 6 instances
Profanity: 1 mild expression.
Drugs/Alcohol: 2 scenes of smoking, 6 scenes with drinking.

Touch the Sound (Not rated)

Director: Thomas Riedelsheimer. With Evelyn Glennie, Fred Frith. (99 min.)

Documentary about Glennie, a professional percussionist who happens to be deaf. Exquisitely beautiful for the eyes as well as for the ears. Grade: A
- D.S.

Transamerica (R)

Director: Duncan Tucker. With Felicity Huffman, Kevin Zegers. (103 min.)

The best, and perhaps the only, reason to see Duncan Tucker's "Transamerica" is for Felicity Huffman's touching, shape-shifting performance as Bree, a transgendered man on the verge of surgery to become a woman. Bree discovers just before the procedure that she has a son needing to be bailed out of a New York jail for turning tricks. Believing Bree to be a kindly church worker, he accompanies her on one of those interminable cross-country odysseys that indie filmmakers are so inordinately fond of. Grade: B-
- P.R.

Turtles Can Fly (Not rated)

Director: Bahman Ghobadi. With Soran Ebrahim, Avaz Latif. (98 min.)

The place is Kurdistan, the time is just before the Iraq war, and the main characters are kids who earn their living any way they can, including selling landmines. Superb acting and authentic details energize this rare Iran/Iraq coproduction. In Kurdish with subtitles. Grade: A
- D.S.

2046 (R)

Director: Wong Kar-wai. With Tony Leung, Zhang Ziyi. (129 min.)

Past, present, and future blend into an exquisite whole in this sort-of-sequel to Wong's great "In the Mood for Love," about a writer and an enigmatic train. Filmed to perfection by the great Christopher Doyle and others. In Cantonese, Mandarin, and Japanese with subtitles. Grade: A
- D.S.

Two for the Money (R)

Director: D.J. Caruso. With Al Pacino, Matthew McConaughey. (122 min.)

A hotshot quarterback wins a big bowl game, but injury ends his hopes of going pro. However, his knowledge of the game begins to earn him fame and fortune as a prognosticator for a New York betting service - until he becomes so full of himself that he loses his touch. Grade: B-
- M.K.T.

Sex/Nudity: 9 instances, including sex scene.
Violence: 2 scenes, including a fight.
Profanity: 123 harsh profanities.
Drugs/Alcohol: 17 scenes with smoking, 7 scenes with alcohol.

The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till (Not rated)

Director: Keith A. Beauchamp. With Mamie Till-Mobley, the Rev. Al Sharpton. (70 min.)

Harrowing documentary about the 1955 lynching of a Southern black teenager that became a national scandal, partly because of his mother's courage in refusing to hide its most horrific details. Required viewing for anyone interested in the struggle for American racial equality. Grade: A
- D.S.

The Upside of Anger (R)

Director: Mike Binder. With Joan Allen, Kevin Costner. (118 min.)

A mother and her four daughters cope with bitterness and confusion after her husband abruptly vanishes from the household. Allen and Costner give admirably understated performances as the woman and her eccentric next-door neighbor, but the story feels more contrived than deeply felt. Grade: C
- D.S.

Valiant (R)

Director: Gary Chapman. With the voices of Ewan McGregor, Ricky Gervais. (76 min.)

Valiant, a small but forceful fowl (voiced by McGregor), has aspirations to join the Royal Homing Pigeon Service and serve Britain. With the royal fleet under attack by enemy falcons - who don't make particularly effective villains - the RHPS is looking for a few good pigeons. What they get are bad-news birds. Grade: B
- M.H.

Waiting (R)

Director: Rob McKittrich. With Ryan Reynolds, Anna Faris.(80 min.)

This gross-out comedy takes place almost entirely inside a generic chain restaurant, and what happens inside the kitchen isn't pretty. Neither is the look of the film, which is so bleary it should have been pulled over for a sobriety test. Grade: B-
- P.R.

Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (G)

Directors: Steve Box, Nick Park. With voices of Peter Sallis, Ralph Fiennes. (85 min.)

In their first feature film, the animated duo of Wallace, a cheese-obsessed inventor, and Gromit, his innovative dog, become a town's only protection from the infestation of rabbits that threaten to destroy its annual vegetable-growing contest. When a gigantic "were-rabbit" materializes, it's up to Wallace and Gromit to save the competition. Despite elements of predictability, Gromit's lovable personality makes the film a delight. Grade: A-
- J.M.

Walk the Line (PG-13)

Director: James Mangold. With Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon. (136 min.)

Johnny Cash gets the full bio treatment in "Walk the Line." It's consistently engrossing and filled with great music and strong performances - beginning with Phoenix as Cash and Witherspoon as his second wife, June Carter. But this film is, finally, too conventional to account for Cash's jagged complexities. Cash was a true anomaly: a poseur who was also the genuine article. A better movie would have made that contradiction its core. Grade: B
-P.R.

Sex/Nudity: 6 instances of innuendo.
Violence: 9 scenes.
Profanity: 17 expressions.
Drugs/Alcohol: 9 scenes of smoking, 8 scenes of drinking, 9 scenes with drugs.

War of the Worlds (PG-13)

Director: Steven Spielberg. With Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Tim Robbins, Justin Chatwin. (117 min.)

Earthlings battle alien invaders who wreak deadly havoc until they're stymied by ... you know what, if you've read H.G. Wells's influential 1898 novel. Spielberg gives the story his full high-tech treatment, building great scariness with help from first-class music and camera work. The picture gets repetitive, though, since its terrors are pretty much the same from start to finish. Grade: B
- D.S.

Sex/Nudity: None.
Violence: 27 scenes.
Profanity: 27 mild expressions.
Drugs/Alcohol: 1 instance of drinking.

The War Within (Not rated)

Director: Joseph Castelo. With Ayad Akhtar, Firdous Bamji. (90 min.)

Hassan is a Pakistani student in Paris who is abducted by Western authorities for suspected terrorism and illegally shipped back to Pakistan, where he is tortured. His imprisonment radicalizes him. While staying with unsuspecting friends in New York, he joins a cell intent on blowing up Grand Central Terminal. Yet by keeping his culpability ambiguous, the filmmakers avoid the real issue: Was he or wasn't he a terrorist? Hassan's blankness is a symptom of the filmmakers's lack of commitment. Grade: B
- P.R.

The Weather Man (R)

Director: Gore Verbinski. With Nicolas Cage, Hope Davis. (101 min.)

Cage plays a forecaster for a top-rated Chicago TV show. Away from the camera, though, his marriage has come apart, his teenage son is in counseling, and his daughter is sullen and overweight. "The Weather Man" is about the meaninglessness of celebrity. David is a star but all he does is read the weather report. Stardom, in the movie's terms, is a sick joke. Grade: B
- P.R.

Sex/Nudity: 9 scenes including sex with nudity.
Violence: 11 scenes.
Profanity: 77 expressions.
Drugs/Alcohol: Not counted.

The Wedding Crashers (R)

Director: David Donkin. With Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn. (113 min.)

Wilson and Vaughn play Washington lawyers who get their kicks by crashing weddings in search of fun and sex, only to find their nuptial horseplay going sour when they spend a weekend with a powerful politician and his attractive daughters. A few good laughs, but not enough clever ideas to keep things hopping for two hours. Grade: C
- D.S.

Sex/Nudity: 24 instances.
Violence: 7 scenes.
Profanity: 78, ranging in severity.
Drugs/Alcohol: 39 scenes.

The White Countess (PG-13)

Director: James Ivory. With Ralph Fiennes, Natasha Richardson, Vanessa Redgrave. (138 min.)

At the disquieting center of the beautifully shot but somewhat stolid Merchant Ivory film "The White Countess" is Todd Jackson (Ralph Fiennes), a blind and disillusioned American diplomat who fulfills his fantasy of owning a nightclub in 1930s Shanghai. Natasha Richardson plays Russian émigré Countess Sofia, who is hired by Jackson to be his hostess even though he knows she moonlights as a prostitute to support her family. Vanessa Redgrave, Richardson's real-life mother, plays Sofia's aunt, and her real-life aunt, Lynn Redgrave, plays her mother-in-law, making this movie something of a family affair. But Fiennes's performance, tricky and impassioned, is the showpiece. Grade: B
- P.R.

White Noise (PG-13)

Director: Geoffrey Sax. With Michael Keaton, Deborah Kara Unger, Ian McNeice. (98 min.)

A middle-aged architect believes his recently deceased wife is trying to contact him from "beyond" through VCRs and computer discs operated by a peculiar man he's just met. The story doesn't make much sense, but Keaton is good and McNeice is excellent as his oddball mentor. Grade: C
- D.S.

Sex/Nudity: None.
Violence: 7 scary scenes.
Profanity: 4 profanities, often harsh.
Drugs/Alcohol: 2 scenes with drinking.

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill (G)

Director: Judy Irving. With Mark Bittner, Judy Irving. (83 min.)

A nonfiction portrait of a West Coast eccentric who devotes his life to caring for a particular flock of wild parrots in his neighborhood. Lovely to look at, if not very deep in its thinking about relations between humans and their animal friends. Grade: B
- D.S.

The World (Not rated)

Director: Jia Zhangke. With Chen Taisheng, Zhao Tao, Jing Jue, Jiang Zhong-wei. (139 min.)

The place is the World Park entertainment center in Beijing, which contains scaled-down versions of international landmarks. The characters are people who've come from all over China to work there. The themes are the globalization and homogenization of Eastern and Western cultures. Brilliant, from the sensitively filmed dramatic scenes to the atmospheric animated sequences that fill the screen whenever someone's cellphone receives a text message. In Mandarin and Shanxi dialect with subtitles. Grade: A
- D.S.

Yes (R)

Director: Sally Potter. With Joan Allen, Sam Neill. (100 min.)

A laboratory researcher has an affair with a Lebanese physician who's emigrated to London and become a chef. The film tackles everything from geopolitical conflict to relations between science and religion, with all the dialogue in verse. The results are visually striking, but conceptually they oscillate between poetic, pretentious, and philosophically dubious. Grade: B
- D.S.

Yours, Mine, & Ours (PG)

Director: Raja Gosnell. With Dennis Quaid, Rene Russo. (90 min.)

The film is a remake of a 1968 movie of the same title, starring Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball. But for audiences, the film's slapdash writing and slapstick performances by Quaid and Russo look more like a faithful mimicry of every other "big family" family comedy. Grade: C
- M.B.

Zathura: A Space Adventure (PG)

Director: Jon Favreau. With Tim Robbins, Jonah Bobo. (113 min.)

Two squabbling brothers, home alone for a few minutes, find an old board game in the basement with mysterious, not to mention dangerous, properties. Once the duo sets the game in motion, they find their home adrift in outer space. Here, appropriately retro effects and family values outweigh an episodic script. Grade: B-
- M.K.T.

Sex/Nudity: 1 instance of mild innuendo.
Violence: 15 scenes.
Profanity: 5 mild expressions.
Drugs/Alcohol: None.

NEW LINE CINEMA, UNIVERSAL, AP