The fun cohort of prehistoric critters return for a third installment of family-oriented animation. Manny the woolly mammoth (voiced by Ray Romano), Diego the saber-toothed tiger (Denis Leary) and Sid the sloth (John Leguizamo) teamed up for a trek to take a human baby back to its father in “Ice Age” (2002). “Ice Age: The Meltdown” (2006) added Ellie (Queen Latifah) as a mammoth mate for Manny. “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” sees the birth of their first offspring. The message: moms love babies, and males love adventure. As their pal lumbers into fatherhood, single Sid adopts some dinosaur hatchlings and Diego ponders a solo odyssey. The exodus motif of the last film—outrunning a deluge of melting ice water—is now multiplied into a multitude of chases and rescues. The new terrain is a tropical underground where dinosaurs roam. This hollow-earth is home to a new character, Buck (Simon Pegg), a loner pursuing an albino dinosaur. This eyepatch-accessoried, Cockney-accented weasel is modeled on Captain Ahab. Another single male with an obsession returns in recurring bits of classic cartoon action. The kinetic squirrel-rat Scrat continues to chase a nut. A female squirrel-rat named Scratte adds tail to his quest. However, the heartbeat of this franchise is the notion of a blended family, here called a “herd,” where pan-species pals do not eat each other. Step-sibs, are you getting this? Screenwriters Peter Ackerman, Michael Berg, Yoni Brenner and Mike Reiss keep the tone kind and clever, with only three yuks about testicles. Director Carlos Saldanha and co-director Michael Thurmeier lend inventive detail to the physical comedy in this 3-D treat. 87m. (Bill Stamets)

Based on the 2003 book by the prolific Jodi Picoult-she’s published fifteen novels since 1992-this well-made chemo weepie poses a tough issue of medical ethics without shameless tearjerking. An L.A. family deals with chronic illness in a script by Jeremy Leven (“The Notebook,” “Alex & Emma”) that’s directed by Nick Cassavetes (“The Notebook,” “Alpha Dog,” “She’s So Lovely”) with over a dozen medical consultants, including pediatric oncologists, in the credits. When Sara (Cameron Diaz) and Brian (Jason Patric) learn their little daughter Kate has leukemia, they genetically engineer a sister, a supply of compatible tissues and organs for treating Kate’s disease. (A similar decision figured in last year’s “A Christmas Tale” by French director Arnaud Desplechin.) This designer donor is Anna (Abigail Breslin “Kit Kittredge: An American Girl,” “Little Miss Sunshine,” “Signs.”) After a lifetime enduring painful procedures for keeping Kate (Sofia Vassilieva, NBC-TV’s “Medium”) alive, 11-year-old Anna decides she does not want to donate a kidney. She hires a lawyer (Alec Baldwin) to file a “petition for medical emancipation.” His own medical issue-alerted by his service dog named “Judge”-will come to light in a hallway of the justice building. The judge in the case (Joan Cusack) is just back from a six-month leave after an emotional breakdown triggered by her 12-year-old daughter’s death. In court her own mom, an attorney who sacrificed her career to take care of Kate, questions Anna. Cassavetes handles the turmoil with measured performances, and downplays a trite plot turn around a courtroom outburst and leaked secret. I’d prefer more on Anna’s tragic conflict to sacrificing for her sister, and could do without all the narration and flashbacks. Kate’s terminal nobility is prescribed: “I don’t mind my disease killing me, but it’s killing my family too.” If only Cassavetes and Leven gave equal time to her physical pain, instead of their hurt by proxy. With Evan Ellingson, Thomas Dekker, Heather Wahlquist, David Thornton. 106m. Anamorphic 2.40 widescreen. (Bill Stamets)

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Jeremiah Zagar’s family portrait, “In a Dream” is a decades-long quest following his father Isaiah, a Philadelphia muralist who believes in “giganticness,” and is said to have painted more than 50,000 square feet of the South Street corridor of the City of Brotherly Love. Over the course of a decade, family secrets and indiscretions are sure to emerge, and their eruptions are painful, but hypnotic. Animation and a dazzling visual style suggest that Jeremiah has Isaiah’s gifts, with perhaps a tad less self-absorption. 80m. (Ray Pride)

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Pixar’s one stumble, “Cars” is reportedly the one that’s made the most money in product tie-ins, but one of their great virtues is letting directors run with passion projects and having their colleagues pitch in with their own inspired notions. While I’m keener on Brad Bird’s work like “The Incredibles” and his masterpiece, “Ratatouille,” “Up,” an improbable variation on Werner Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo,” plays effortlessly, a grab-bag of comic tone and narrative ambition that works from epic to intimate, from tragedy to doggie goop on a tennis ball. There’s death, blood and a gaudy outsized bird (that caws with jungle obscenity), ranks of easily amused talking dogs and blue skies filled with anthropomorphic clouds and eventually, a world of marzipan-bright helium balloons. “Up” is filled with tidy renditions of Gilliamesque fancies. Read the rest of this entry »

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In a sequel to “Night at the Museum,” Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) returns as a steward of museum specimens and a seeker of his true self. Writers Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon, the duo who earlier wrote “Herbie Fully Loaded,” adapted Milan Trenc’s 1993 children’s book “The Night at the Museum” for the 2006 film. Larry was then a failed inventor of gizmos. Perennially evicted, this divorced dad also failed to show up for Parent Career Day at his son’s school. He got an $11.50-an-hour job as the night guard at a New York City museum where historic wax figures, toy soldiers, taxidermized animals and a dino skeleton came to life every night, thanks to an ancient Egyptian gizmo. Now Larry is a wildly successful purveyor of gizmos who risks blowing a big deal with Wal-Mart, so he can repatriate his old museum pals after they’re crated and trucked to the archives in D.C. Read the rest of this entry »

Rated G, “Earth” gets a grade of D for underachieving in the genre of nature movies. Whether indoctrinated with creationist cant or by green propaganda, kids will learn little about the title planet, its seasons or its creatures from Leslie Megahey’s script narrated by James Earl Jones. This premiere production from the Disney nature label tracks three moms and their offsping, so moms in the audience can identify with their elephant, polar bear and humpback whale counterparts on the screen. There’s nothing to upset treehuggers or treehaters, not even the non-denominational invocations of our Paradise. George Fenton, who scored “Planet Earth” episodes in 2006, composes colorless music. The rest of the soundtrack lacks acoustic detail about the habitats and their inhabitants. I liked seeing demoiselle cranes from Mongolia soar over Himalayan peaks; Birds of Paradise from Papua, New Guinea strut their stuff; and mincing Chacma baboons forge the Okavango Delta in the Kalahari. Non-meat-eaters take note: there’s no assurance from the American Humane Association that “no animals were harmed” in “Earth” since none of that Denver-based group’s Certified Animal Safety Representatives accompanied camera crews shooting forty two animal species over five years. When a wolf and a cheetah make their kills, on their respective continents, directors Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield cut before a bite draws any blood. 89m. (Bill Stamets)

Four mutant earthlings forge bonds as they save the planet from a squid from deep space. This Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson) seeks Quantonium, a rare element that will enable him to clone himself to dominate Earth. He got here in pursuit of a Quantonium-laden asteroid that hit Susan (Reese Witherspoon) on her wedding day. The stuff affects brides differently: instead of multiplying her, it just made her bigger. The U.S. government interred her in a secret, subterranean chamber and renamed her Ginormica. There she meets other detainees without due process: Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie), The Missing Link (Will Arnett), B.O.B. (Seth Rogen) and 350-foot-tall mute winged grub called Insectosaurus. Kiefer Sutherland voices General W.R. Monger, who urges the president (Stephen Colbert) to deploy the monsters against the alien. Typical of the lax writing is that the General is not at all a warmonger: he never mobilized the monsters for the Cold War or the Global War on Terror. And Colbert gets better lines in the press kit than on screen: “To find a voice for The President, I tried to be just as declarative and as authoritative as I could without actually thinking about anything I was saying. The result: ‘Hollow certainty.’” In this animated family fare, the smartest humor comes from the one-eyed, orally fixated, gelatinous character without a brain. Although there’s a little wit about fifties sci-fi clichés, there’s nothing original about mocking a dim Modesto, California TV weatherman. Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO of DreamWorks Animation SKG, does not sound so bright himself when he says of the film’s 3-D effects: “the storyteller can actually bring the audience into the movie” and “we can actually deliver that third dimension.” In fact, the screen and glasses “actually” do not do what theater does. Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon direct a screenplay by Maya Forbes & Wally Wolodarsky and Rob Letterman and Jonathan Aibel & Glenn Berger. 94m. Widescreen. (Bill Stamets)

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Simple wonderment is so rare that you can forgive an adventure like “Coraline” its oddities and hiccups: slightly dark and definitely dazzling, Henry Selick’s fourth feature is a grab-bag of visual delights. Based on a novel by Neil Gaiman, Coraline is a bratty 11-year-old with the voice of Dakota Fanning, whose conflicts with her parents lead to a rich and troubling fantasy life. The mix of stop-motion and digital design isn’t consistent, but the expressiveness is Coraline’s features is consistently mesmerizing. “The Nightmare Before Christmas” may be more fully realized, but there are exquisitely dark things in store in “Coraline.” Selick and Gaiman understand how a child’s imagination relies on the bad to define the good. Grown-ups won’t be disappointed. Kids will be terrified. See it in 3-D if you can. (Ray Pride)

“Coraline” is now playing.

From the makers of “Deep Sea 3-D” and “Into the Deep 3-D” come aquarium-style close-ups of eye-amazing life forms. Howard Hall is the director, director of photography and co-writer of the narration for Jim Carrey (“Ace Ventura: Pet Detective”) in this G-rated series of views shot on dual-strip 70mm with side-by-side lenses. You wear lightweight 3-D glasses. The locations are in the Coral Triangle bounded by Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, The Philippines, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste and the Great Barrier Reef off Australia. Unlike last year’s “Wild Ocean 3-D,” “Under the Sea 3-D” does not go above the surface to document any human neighbors of the sea life. As usual, the message is: aren’t these critters so cool, cute and queer? Let’s not kill them with global warming. There’s not a trace of God’s hand or Darwin’s theory. As natural history, this is elementary school entertainment. But I’d like to hear more about how so many species can survive in such an astounding density, according to the narration, only if they all look very different. The feel-good 3-D finale: curious Australian Sea Lions poke their snouts right in your face just like friendly puppies. With Blue Chromis, Cassiopeia Jellyfish, Cardinalfish, Crocodile Fish, Flamboyant Cuttlefish, Frogfish, Epaulette Sharks, Leafy Sea Dragons and Weedy Sea Dragons, Lionfish, Ribbon Sweetlips, Skunk Anemonefish and the Wonderpus Octopus. 40m. IMAX. (Bill Stamets)

Booklovers of all sorts ought to like this fantasy based on—what else?—a 2004 book by Cornelia Funke. Nine years ago, Mortimer (Brendan Fraser, whose “Journey to the Center of the Earth” was triggered by a novel and a notebook) was reading aloud to his 3-year-old daughter. Turns out Mo, as everyone calls him, is a Silvertongue. That means when he reads a book, speaking the words can bring characters—as well as a dog named Toto and a Kansas cyclone if the book in hand is “The Wizard of Oz”—from the plot into reality. Metaphysical accounting dictates a balanced exchange: real people exit the real world and end up in the book when book people leave their world for ours. It’s like finding yourself in a film, reality TV show or a psychotic fugue. (“How did I get here?” as David Byrne and Truman Burbank inquired on other occasions.) Mo unknowingly exiled his wife Resa (Sienna Guillory) into the imaginary land invented in “Inkheart” by its author (Jim Broadbent). Bad guys from that book, led by Capricorn (Andy Serkis), now live in rural Italy in an old castle. 12-year-old Meggie (Eliza Hope Bennett) inherited her dad’s gift or curse. Her quick-witted first draft of a rewrite will save the day. Director Iain Softley (“Hackers,” “The Wings of the Dove”) and screenwriter David Lindsay-Abaire translate this grand adventure of bibliophilia and bibliophobia. Book-haters disheartened by the end credits naming nineteen translators of the original “Inkheart” can take heart that books likely burned in the book-burning scene, since no there’s no disclaimer that no actual books were harmed in the making of this motion picture. With Paul Bettany, Helen Mirren, Andy Serkis, Rafi Gavron and Jennifer Connelly. 106m. Widescreen. (Bill Stamets)