No, this PG-rated fantasy adventure is not about a high-school kid fronting a band of misfits for the variety show where he wins a music college scholarship. Someone stole Zeus’s lightning bolt, a less impressive old-school light saber, and Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman) is wrongly fingered. Percy has no idea he’s a demigod, born of mortal Sally Jackson (Catherine Keener) and the full-blooded god Poseidon (Kevin McKidd). “I guess we all got daddy issues,” observes another kid with divinity in his genealogy. Soon our hero is secreted to Camp Half Blood where he meets Athena’s daughter Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario). For extra credit: what kind of kids are born of two demigods? Quarter deities? On what chromosome is the god gene? Percy learns his dyslexia is due to his “hardwired” literacy in Greek. That’s what made English on the chalkboard unreadable: “it’s Greek to him.” His attention disorder is really warrior-grade, battle-ready alertness. Chris Columbus (two “Harry Potter”s and two “Home Alone”s) directs a screenplay that Craig Titley adapted from Rick Riordan’s 2005 book, the first in a series of five by the middle-school teacher. The plot is a cross-country quest by Percy, Annabeth and a sidekick satyr Grover (Brandon T. Jackson) to find three green pearls that serve as “Get-Out-of-Hades” hall passes, so they can rescue Percy’s mom from Hades. Because saving your mom is always more important than averting a multi-god smackdown with the collateral damage of “the end of life as we know it.” To orient viewers who didn’t do their mythology homework, the screen teens cite “High School Musical” and “Extreme Makeover,” and use an iPod in a way Apple never anticipated. This places us life as we know it. Slightly inventive are updates for the Land of the Lotus-eaters and the “H” sign pointing to hell. Best line: “Hi, mom.” With Pierce Brosnan, Rosario Dawson, Steve Coogan, Joe Pantoliano, Uma Thurman, Joe Pantoliano. 119m. (Bill Stamets)

On loan to the CIA from the Chinese intelligence service, spy Bob Ho (Jackie Chan) courts suburban neighbor, abstract painter and single mom Gillian (Amber Valletta, “Gamer”) in this rote kids adventure. Brian Levant directs a formulaic screenplay by Jonathan Bernstein, James Greer and Gregory that’s a lot like the one Levant directed in “Are We There Yet?” (2005). Once again kids conspire to sabotage a prospective step-daddy. Gillian flies to Denver when her dad gets hip-replacement surgery, so Bob babysits 14-year-old Farren (Madeline Carroll, the super-competent little girl in “Swing Vote”), her younger brother Ian (Will Shadley) who’s super-impressed that Bob saw David Bowie and Iggy Pop rock Shanghai in 1985, and little Nora (Alina Foley) who chases her squealing pet pig all around the house. An evil Russian invents bacteria to eat all the oil in the world except Russia’s, so Bob and the kids get a chance to bond while aiming trick bikes into the groins of goons. George Lopez plays Bob’s boss and Billy Ray Cyrus plays his sidekick spouting inscrutable countryisms. The press kit is more entertaining than the film: “We were trying to make a 400 million dollar movie for a lot less,” says Levant, accounting for his titanic shortfall. One actor was once an Icelandic aerobics champ, and another, hailing from Oklahoma, aspired to be “a sociologist and work in the social scope” (sic) but instead “organized a charity called Supermodels Stepping Out Against Hunger.” Chan fans hoping for his usual limber martial arts humor and garbled English outtakes ought to look elsewhere. Will Shadley, Alina Foley, Magnus Scheving and Katherine Boecher. 92m. (Bill Stamets)

The high-treble irritation of “Alvin and The Chipmunks” (2007) is now doubled. The original trio of chirpy brother chipmunks hooks up with a female trio of conspecifics breaking into showbiz billed as The Chipettes. Global pop squeakers and animated critters Alvin, Simon and Theodore are on their own after two mishaps with wheelchairs put their live-action human caretakers in the hospital. Feckless slacker Toby (Zach Levi) sort of looks after the boys who enroll in high school. The message is sacrifice personal opportunity for the sake of sibling solidarity: a boy chipmunk is shamed for playing on the football team and a girl chipmunk is shamed for wanting to open solo for Brittany Spears. All six end up squeaking in sync and then sleeping in matched bunk beds. Betty Thomas (“The Brady Bunch Movie”) competently directs a contentless screenplay by Jon Vitti and Jonathan Aibel & Glenn Berger. The only reason to see this is the off chance that the frequency of the chipmunks’ chatter kills head lice in kids and liquefies hardened earwax of their grandparents. With David Cross, Jason Lee and Wendie Malick; and the voices of Justin Long, Matthew Gray Gubler, Jesse McCartney, Amy Poehler, Anna Faris and Christina Applegate. 91m. (Bill Stamets)

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(Mammut) Lukas Moodysson worries for the world but not the chance of his own embarrassment: while “Mammoth” is at its weakest points of inspiration only so much Babel, the Swedish writer-director does strain with intermittent success toward the lyrical. Leo (Gael García Bernal) is a childish videogame designer about to seal a deal in Asia, leaving wife Ellen (Michelle Williams) in their New York City loft (crafted and shot in Sweden rather than above Soho streets) with their 8-year-old daughter and Gloria (Marife Necesito), their Filipino nanny. Moodysson intercuts New York life with Leo’s lollygagging in Bangkok and Gloria’s small boys back home, who long for their mother. Child endangerment, prostitution and the threat of child rape ensue. Actions have consequences. Screenplays have structure. Undercooked moralism thuds. Moodysson’s concern for the life of the child shines in movies like “Show Me Love” and even the grim “Lilja 4-Ever.” His themes are more forced here, and the surroundings of the characters, the production design of the rich couple’s pampered environs versus shanty life everywhere else speak more profoundly of a world of unequal opportuity. Bourgeois, beware! Moodysson’s English-language dialogue is overwrought, but Williams, especially, inhabits it. A doctor of children oblivious to the children of the world until they bleed out in her E/R! Still, that heavy-handedness lands with a soft thump alongside her capable features. The music score draws on songs by Ladytron and an oddly placed Cat Power tune. And, in a year of chilling, apt endings, the last line of “Mammoth” is in a class of its own: it’s perfectly demonstrated that someone has learned nothing. Then Chan Marshall plays. 125m. (Ray Pride)

“Mammoth” opens Friday at Facets.

Walt Disney Animation Studios unfurls the brand banner with a wholesome hand-drawn animated musical about Tiana (Anika Noni Rose), a New Orleans waitress who kisses a glib frog claiming to be Prince Naveen of Moldania (Bruno Campos). What’s in it for her? Financing for the eatery she’s scraped and saved to open, to fulfill her late daddy’s dream. Surprise! Tiana turns into a frog too, thanks to the communicable spell by the nefarious Dr. Facilier (Keith David) that originally turned the handsome charming Prince into a frog. Out of their element, this bickering couple hop across the swamp in search of the blind 197-year-old Mama Odie (Jenifer Lewis) who can make things right with her nice magic. Along the way they pick up sidekick critters: a trumpet-tooting gator and a bewhiskered Cajun firefly. The frogs fall in love, and when they kiss at the altar deep in bayou, guess what? Co-directors and co-writers Ron Clements and Chicago-born Northwestern grad John Musker (“Treasure Planet,” “Hercules,” “Aladdin,” “The Little Mermaid”) create a quality kids adventure that celebrates family enterprise besides fairytale romance. This enjoyable tale earns its G-rating by limiting its oaths to “cheese n’ crackers!” Yucky yuks about bodily fluids are limited to lines about an amphibian secretion dissed as “slime,” although “mucuous” is the preferred term (rather like “sweat” versus the more polite “perspiration.”) Message on the side: the pampered and the privileged can overcome their upbringing and become better people. That’s just one of the nods here to Frank Capra’s “It Happened One Night.” With the voices of Jennifer Cody, John Goodman, Jim Cummings, Michael-Leon Wooley, Terrence Howard and Oprah Winfrey. 95m. (Bill Stamets)

Robert De Niro does well here as a widower and retiree who travels to New York City, Denver, Chicago and Las Vegas trying to see all four of his adult kids after they cancel plans to come home for Thanksgiving. He makes surprise visits to invite each one for Christmas. This seasonal heartwarmer of a road movie remakes “Stanno Tutti Bene” (1990) by Giuseppe Tornatore (“Cinema Paradiso”) where Marcello Mastroianni played the dad. Director Kirk Jones (“Waking Ned  Devine”) sentimentalizes De Niro’s POV when he sees his two sons and two daughters as children in flashbacks. And there’s some disposable suspense about lost prescription medication leading to a hospital room. But Jones aces the awkward pride a dad feels for kids, even if their respective dreams fail to come true. The title refers to the lies and wishes that hold a family together when its members relay word of their well-being at a distance, whether transmitted by the internet or the telephone cables a breadwinner once made. Not to be confused with “It is Fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE” by Crispin Hellion Glover. With Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale, Sam Rockwell, Katherine Moennig, James Frain and Melissa Leo. 100m. (Bill Stamets)

This PG-rated, pro-dad Disney comedy pairs Charlie (John Travolta) and Dan (Robin Williams) as pals who graduated from high school in 1972. Now they’re sports-marketing stars about to land a five-year, $47 million deal with a Tokyo corporation. What could distract the duo? Seven years ago, Dan had a drunken post-divorce fling in Miami that led to nuptials-under-the-influence lasting fourteen hours. The first he hears of the twins (Ella Bleu Travolta and Conner Rayburn) he fathered is when their mom Vicki (Kelly Preston) calls to say she’s headed to prison for two weeks for chaining herself to a bulldozer. Please look after our offspring. David Diamond and David Weissman, who take credit for “When in Rome” and “The Family Man,” write a list of sketches posing as narrative. Bear scat, golf balls hitting groins and side effects from meds supply humor that humored none of the kids in a Saturday morning preview screening. Director Walt Becker (“Wild Hogs,” “Van Wilder”) does what’s needed to make the trailer and no more. An aged dog is recruited for truly cheap reaction shots prior to his (spoiler alert) death. Although an end title notes, “American Humane monitored some of the animal action. No animals were harmed in those scenes,” the humanist on the set overlooked injury to canine dignity. “Old Dogs” insults the two-legged deceased too. It’s made “In Loving Memory of Bernie Mac and Jett Travolta.” With Seth Green, Lori Loughlin, Matt Dillon, Rita Wilson and Mr. Mac. 88m. (Bill Stamets)

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Robert Zemeckis (“The Polar Express,” “Back to the Future”) adapts Charles Dickens’ tale of Ebenezer Scrooge, a cheap mean old man shocked into decency on Christmas Eve by three ghosts who forcibly transport him from his bed to revisit his past, eavesdrop on his employee and nephew in the present, and foresee his miserable demise. CGI allows Jim Carrey to play Scrooge at four ages, as well as the three ghosts administering the radical short-term immersive humanizing therapy. Actually, the night terrors Scrooge experiences smack of alien abduction. He plummets and plummets and plummets through night skies. These nocturnal set-pieces, as well as a terrestial chase by snorting black stallions, evoke Hitchcock’s perverse panics. Carrey fans and Disney stock watchers may not expect the fidelity to Dickens’ prose in the dialogue, nor the morbid supernatural tone. It’s forty minutes of grim before Scrooge zooms through sunny London skies with cheerful music. The hybridized live-action amalgam creates a kind of actorized animation. Disney over-sells this 3D holiday product as “a multi-sensory,” although I only counted two: sight and sound. That’s all Zemeckis needs to remake a classic by taking nice risks. With Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Bob Hoskins, Robin Wright Penn, and Cary Elwes. 96m. (Bill Stamets)

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Dipping into a few months in the life of small-town Sidney, Ohio in Fall, “45365″ is a luscious, impressionistic essay film, a dream-like patch of cinema vérité (without narration) that’s more trance than nonfiction lockstep. The film’s gentle intimacy and easy access to the town’s citizens and routines may spring from the fact that producer-director-editor-brothers Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross grew up there. Their eyes, however, offer up near-rapturous visuals: this is one of the most beautiful-looking shot-on-high-definition films to come around in recent memory. If every native son could do their patch of land and the weave of interconnection of friends and neighbors this kind of funny, tender, lyrical justice, we’d have all-American storytelling from sea to shining sea. I’d like to see more movies that are this generous and giving. 93m. (Ray Pride)

“45365″ plays Saturday 8pm at Chicago Filmmakers 5243 North Clark, Second Floor.

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This winning male weepie portrays Australian sports journalist Joe Warr (Clive Owen) improvising solo fatherhood for the sake of his 6-year-old son Artie (Nicholas McAnulty) and Artie’s half-brother Harry (George MacKay), a teenager living in England with Carr’s first wife. Carr’s second wife Katy (Laura Fraser), a former competitive equestrian, dies of cancer early in the first reel but reappears for sporadic visits with her spouse. “The Boys Are Back” is based on Simon Carr’s 2001 memoir about raising two sons, aged five and eleven, after his wife’s death in 1994. Warr deals with in-laws, his ex, parents of Artie’s peers, and colleagues. He falters in grief and recoils against proper parenting tips with his anarchic “just say yes” fallback. Housekeeping is chaotic; morale improves. Mostly shot on the scenic Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia, this affecting drama comes with seven sirenic numbers by the Icelandic group Sigur Rós. Never glossing over the awful loss of a wife and mother, director Scott Hicks (“Shine”) and writer Allan Cubitt blend warm humor and emotional hurt as Warr works through drafts of a new family. 100m. (Bill Stamets)