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)

RECOMMENDED

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)

A 1978 kids’ book by Judi Barrett and Ron Barrett is the source of this animated 3-D PG fare about inventor Flint Lockwood (voiced by Bill Hader) whose gizmo– launched skyward by an extra jolt of 17,000 gigajoules– transforms upper atmospheric moisture into all manner of foodstuffs that rain down upon Swallow Falls. This single-industry island town was in dire need of a turnaround after the sardine market tanked. Mayor Shelbourne (Bruce Campbell) sees an opening for tourism and weather channel intern Sam Sparks (Anna Faris) sees her career break. Chris Miller and Phil Lord co-write and co-direct this loopy adventure with sarcasm and satire. Zingers fly from the fringes, often voiced by offscreen extras. The opening credit reads “a film by a lot of people” but an unoriginal agenda of uplift for the misfit kicks in with the opening voiceover by Flint as a schoolboy: “Have you ever felt you were a little bit different?” Mom bestows an oversized white lab coat on the little tinkerer. His fishbait shopkeeper pop (James Caan) utters unintelligible fishing metaphors that will only make sense after one of his son’s inventions–a Monkey Thought Translator–decodes the loving father’s intent. One nice surprise is the last-minute reveal of the extraordinary unsuspected skill set of Sam’s cameraman Manny (voiced with very few words by Benjamin Bratt). This Guatemalan immigrant can do more than turn the pages of the latest issue of Broadcast Engineer. As the heavens disgorge an apocalyptic deluge of “sentient” killer food, the action goes sugar-high ballistic. Science fixes the mess science inflicted. The National Science Teachers Association will eat this up. With Mr. T, Andy Samberg, Bobb’e J. Thompson, Neil Patrick Harris and Al Roker. 90m. 2.40 Anamorphic widescreen. 3-D. (Bill Stamets)

RECOMMENDED

Relatively young Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-Eda remains the best successor to Ozu regularly showcased in the U.S. : a patient observer of Japanese family patterns, in  his own manner, the 47-year-old auteur still captures the fleeting, rare detail, the moment of behavior, the instant of communion or miscommunication in a family setting, that is both wry and affecting. In “Still Walking,” (Aruitemo aruitemo, 2008), Kore-Eda’s seventh feature from a roster than includes the kid-centric “Nobody Knows” and “After Life,” he elaborates on family dynamics with sculpted naturalism like few other directors as the Yokoyama family gathers to mourn  on the anniversary of a beloved son’s death on a single day fifteen years after. Comparison’s to Ozu’s 1953 “Tokyo Story” are apt: magic happens out of minutiae. Gestures indicate resentments that no longer simmer, but steep in a language of attention-inattention. It’s simple, heart-stopping, life-affirming stuff. With You, Hiroshi Abe, Yoshio Harada, Ryôga Hayashi, Haruko Kato, Kirin Kiki, Yui Natsukawa, Hotaru Nomoto, Kazuya Takahashi, Shohei Tanaka. 115m. (Ray Pride)

Kid-friendly father of five Robert Rodriguez puts his brood to work on another fantasy adventure set in suburban Texas. “Dream” won the word count in his script for “The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D” (2005), centered on a 10-year-old boy. “Wish” wins in “Shorts,” which centers on 11-year-old Toe Thompson (Jimmy Bennett, “Orphan”) and a rainbow-hued stone that tells him to make wishes. He does and gets new friends: a fun alien squadron of tiny sentient flying saucers. Adventures arise as the magic stone passes to other kids, adults, a crocodile, and a booger from the nose of Toe’s pal Nose Noseworthy (Jake Short). The boys live in Black Falls, a subdivision owned by Black Box Industries for housing its white-collar labor. Its star product is a black Blackberry-like device with Transformers-type options to mutate into “just about everything you would ever wish for,” as Mr. Carbon Black (James Spader) touts his Back Box, “the ultimate communication device.” Toe narrates out-of-sequence episodes numbered zero through five, using pause and fast-forward icons on the screen. “It’s very different,” overstates ambidextrous auteur Robert Rodriguez, who writes, directs, shoots, edits, supervises the visual effects, and scores this inoffensive family fare. “I wish I were in a Hollywood movie,” wishes one kid at the end, who settles for one made in Austin with zero to say about movies as wish-fulfillers. Most original detail: naming Mr. Black’s mean daughter “Helvetica” (Jolie Vanier). “Hel,” as her dad calls her, presents a science project on “Aggressive Behavior of Female Wasps.” With Jon Cryer, Leslie Mann, William H. Macy, Kat Dennings and Rebel Rodriguez. 108m. (Bill Stamets)

The Warner Brothers logo looms into view as a gray iron gate. Not quite like the “No Trespassing” sign outside Charles Foster Kane’s Xanadu, but still, any unsuspecting soul who wanders into the sixth episode of this fantasy franchise without first reading the source novel by J.K. Rowling may need a wand to unveil throughlines of the ongoing mythology. Sooty aerial wraiths called Death Eaters—whose name suggests they ought to shit everlasting life—conspire to upset a school of kids learning how to wave their wands. There’s a new Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts on the faculty, and his horny charges are brewing the equivalent of date-rape potions. The title lad (Daniel Radcliffe) wins a vial of Liquid Luck by cheating in class. Teen make-out drama offers respite from a rote plot of good wizards versus bad wizards over ancient grudges and eternal dominion. Screenwriter Steve Kloves and director David Yates shortchange fans of the inventive grandeur that charmed early Potter product. All I look forward to in the seventh film is more screen time for the lovely weirdo Luna, played by Evanna Lynch. With Jim Broadbent, Helena Bonham Carter, Robbie Coltrane, Warwick Davis, Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Timothy Spall, David Thewlis, Julie Walters, and the expertise of weather consultant Dr. Richard Wild. 153m. Anamorphic 2.40 widescreen. (Bill Stamets)