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)
RECOMMENDED
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)
“When I was young, I really loved movies in which kids become empowered,” shares Ewan Leslie, one of the seven producers of this “urban fairy tale.” Leslie’s director Thor Freudenthal and his writers Jeff Lowell and Bob Schooley & Mark McCorkle target a PG demographic with a dumbed-down “family comedy-adventure.” “Hotel for Dogs” is based on a 1971 book by Lois Duncan, author of “Who Killed My Daughter?” and “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” After five foster homes in three years, 16-year-old Andi (Emma Roberts) and 11-year-old Bruce (Jake T. Austin) are siblings in Central City. These delinquents run a scam of peddling rocks packaged inside cell phone boxes, using a hair dryer to fake shrink-wrap the fraudulent merch. They resort to crime to feed the adopted dog they hide from their own handlers, a couple of idiot rockers played by Lisa Kudrow and Kevin Dillon. Teamed up with new pals from the local pet store, the kids trespass into an old posh hotel and set up a safe house for strays, including ones they liberate from dogcatchers. The local pound keeps shortening the time between capturing and killing its dogs. The kids plot an Exodus-like escape across the county line to a “no-kill” shelter. Pro-life parallels between strays and orphans are underlined by Don Cheadle playing a Social Services bureaucrat: as in “Hotel Rwanda,” this savior repurposes a hotel into a refuge. Not really a treatise on euthanasia as canine-cleansing, “Hotel for Dogs” is less clever than the fake fun that the kids concoct for their bored dogs: an indoor thrill ride with big fans blowing into open windows of car doors, and movie projectors showing dogs a passing vista from the road. With Kyla Pratt, Johnny Simmons, Troy Gentile and Ajay Naidu. 100m. (Bill Stamets)
RECOMMENDED
For a drama about a young couple starting a family, there’s “Revolutionary Road” and there’s “Marley & Me.” The kids exist on the sidelines in both looks at East Coast marriages. “Marley & Me” is the lighter one starring Owen Wilson as the title’s “Me,” a newspaper writer named John married to Jenny, played by Jennifer Aniston. Marley is played by twenty-two Labrador retrievers of various ages. More than a pet, Marley does double duty as a plot line to follow the first fourteen years of married life for the Grogans. They arrive in South Florida as newlyweds from snowy Michigan. They are reporters for local dailies, and acquire Marley as a pup, which supplies John with material when he is promoted to a columnist slot. There’s a splendid montage of Marley adventures narrated by John from his popular column. Children come along and Jenny quits her job. They get a nicer house. Marley loves the pool. Then John gets a job in Philadelphia where he can return to reporting. There are three kids now and Marley is getting old. Wilson and Aniston make an appealing pair. What’s most interesting about this “dog picture” is that Marley is left alone to be a dog, with far less personality than Lassie or other four-legged stars offering cute reaction shots and trained to do adorable tricks. Marley is merely a great dog, greatly loved by his owners and their children. This is a love story warmed by comedy. Director David Frankel is joined by his cinematographer and editor from his earlier “The Devil Wears Prada.” Screenwriters Scott Frank and Donald Roos draw from the non-fiction book penned by the real John Grogan about his dog Marley, his wife Jenny, their three kids and his newspaper jobs in Florida and Philadelphia, despite the film’s disclaimer that everyone and everything is “fictitious” and that any resemblances are “purely coincidental.” With Sebastian Tunney, Alan Arkin, Eric Dane and Kathleen Turner. 95m. (Bill Stamets)
Adam Sandler lets his fans down in “Bedtime Stories.” Jim Carrey did likewise in last week’s “Yes Man.” Neither star breaks new ground or matches his past comic product. Sandler’s Skeeter is another immature nice guy with a mean streak. Once again, he has a workplace issue. Another case of arrested mobility. Plus no love life. Skeeter is the handyman at a fancy hotel he ought to manage. His dad raised him and his sister at a modest comfy motel that was bought out by Barry Nottingham (Richard Griffiths), who promised the kid would one day run the glitzy hotel he planned to build on the site. Years later, it’s the snotty boyfriend (Guy Pearce) of Nottingham’s ditzy daughter (Teresa Palmer, playing a sorta-Paris Hilton) who’s in line to take over. Skeeter gets a shot at getting what’s his when he starts babysitting his sister’s kids for a week. As he makes up interactive bedtime stories, the tykes script tangents that come true the next day. So Skeeter steers the storylines to get him both the job and the girl (Keri Russell). Director Adam Shankman (“The Wedding Planner”) handles the crossover between make-believe and the real world with no wit at all. The finale is by-the-book formulaic, except for a mean-hearted humiliation inflicted on two formerly imperious schemers. This is Tim Herlihy’s eighth screenplay for Sandler. The story comes from co-writer Matt Lopez, who needed Skeeter’s inventive niece and nephew in his rewrite corner. With Russell Brand, Jonathan Morgan Heit, Laura Ann Kesling, Courteney Cox, Lucy Lawless and Carmen Electra. 95m. (Bill Stamets)
At an advance screening, local exterior shots elicited applause from a local audience. Local co-producers Robert Teitel and George Tillman, Jr. set this Christmas-time family story in wintry Humboldt Park. It’s a pleasing, good-looking feature about a Puerto Rican family that should travel with ease beyond the west side, just as “Barbershop” and “Roll Bounce,” two earlier ensemble features from Teitel and Tillman, found audiences far from the south side. Alfredo de Villa (“Washington Heights”) directs a script by Rick Najera and Alison Swan (“Mixing Nia”) that defaults to simplistic, unsatisfying revelations and resolutions in the last reel. We get the usual roster of issues for a family get-together film. Best performance comes from former Humbodt Parker and executive producer Freddy Rodriguez, who plays an Iraq war vet with survivor guilt trying to reunite with a former true love. John Leguizamo plays his older brother, a New York exec with a Debra Messing as his Jewish exec wife. These characters are fine company. They deserve better sub-plots in their stockings. With Alfred Molina, Elizabeth Peña, Jay Hernandez, Melonie Diaz, Vanessa Ferlito and Luis Guzman. 99m. (Bill Stamets)
RECOMMENDED
Like “JCVD,” “Bolt” opens with an outlandish action sequence. Spoiler alert: it’s not real. Just a shoot for an episode of a hit TV series starring the title dog (voiced, barked, yelped and whimpered by John Travolta) that thinks it’s all for real. Every week Bolt rescues his plucky owner Penny (Miley Cyrus aka “Hannah Montana”) from evildoers. Like “The Truman Show,” the TV show “Bolt” is shot with hidden cameras. Real-time special effects trick Bolt into believing he really does possess all his super-powers in the script. “If the dog believes it, the audience believes it,” states TV director (voiced by windbag James Lipton from “Inside the Actor’s Studio”). The target demographic wants new plots: “They’re not happy with happy,” reports a network exec. Bolt bolts and gets shipped by a mishap to New York City. He meets sassy kitty Mittens (Susie Essman) and heads back to Hollywood. She brings Bolt up to speed on his life-long delusion, as well as coaching him on how to stick his head out the window of a moving vehicle. A high-strung hamster and super-fan (voiced by Mark Walton) joins the journey. Like the movie-star dog in “Firehouse Dog,” the star of “Bolt” will rescue people in real peril. Directors Chris Williams and Byron Howard, and writers Dan Fogelman and Chris Williams unleash a treat for dog-lovers and haters of L.A. agents and network execs. Walt Disney Animation Studios superbly reproduces behavioral details of puppies and pigeons. But this Digital 3-D feature is needlessly 3-D. The only delight it brought me was second-hand: hearing the squeals of delight when the opening credits startled kids in the audience. With Greg Germann, Malcolm McDowell, Diedrich Bader, Grey DeLisle and Sean Donnellan. 95m. (Bill Stamets)
RECOMMENDED
A denizen of the Central Park Zoo escaped to visit exotic Connecticut, but only got as far as Grand Central Station before he and his pursuing zoo pals were captured. Sent back to their African birthplace, these New Yorkers got stranded on the title island in 2005′s animated feature “Madagascar.” Co-directors Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath, and their co-writer Etan Cohen, deliver an entertaining episode in the further adventures of a lion (voiced by Ben Stiller), a zebra (Chris Rock), a giraffe (David Schwimmer) and a hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith). Penguins, lemurs and chimps are the critter equivalents of character actors, sidekicks, second bananas and all-around scene-stealers. The quartet takes off from Madagascar and soon crashes land on a savannah where they find vast populations of their own kinds. This raises issues of individualism for one-of-a-kinders homesick for the accolades of their human visitors back in New York City. Cue music from “Born Free” and quips about Alex Haley’s “Roots.” Thanks to some thirty million render hours, the foursome keep busy with a lively plot set in a wonderfully detailed Africa. Another band of New Yorkers—a bunch of ambushed tourists on a SUV safari—find themselves just as lost and just as resourceful for surviving the wilds of Africa. There’s the usual affirming of family values, following one’s true path, and standing by your friends. The inventive design and warm crossover humor should make this a pleasant chore for older siblings, caretakers and parents taking the core audience to the theater. With Sacha Baron Cohen, Cedric The Entertainer, Andy Richter, Bernie Mac, Sherri Shepherd, Alec Baldwin and will.i.am. 89m. (Bill Stamets)