There’s no rousing musical score, star-studded vocal cast or groundbreaking animation in this Disney fable about an emperor who has been turned into a llama. But aside from the subpar visuals, the movie does not suffer as a result. Without the weight of a blockbuster tag, The Emperor’s New Groove is freed from the Disney

Disney may seem like it’s cashing in on one of its brand names with this sequel to 1953’s Peter Pan, but Return to Never Land is lavished with more care and respect than you’d expect. The result is a fun, thoughtful extension of the fairy tale’s central themes – this time Wendy’s daughter takes center

This Shrek wannabe doesn’t really work for parents or kids, largely because it strains so hard to include Mom and Dad in on the fun. An elaborate reworking of the Little Red Riding Hood fable, the computer-animated venture runs on obvious, self-reflexive humor and aggressive visual gags (the filmmakers fall just short of paying off

Shark Tale takes pains to give its cast of fish specific cultural characteristics, so that Will Smith spouts hip-hop lingo and sports a skewed baseball cap as a colorful cleaner wrasse who gets himself into trouble when he claims to have killed a shark. Only the painfully politically correct might complain, but such a narrow

Coasting on sheer joy, this genial, feel-good family drama reveals what a perfect pairing of subject and medium roller skating and movies can be – it’s a celebration of movement in an art form defined by movement. Tracing the coming of age of a roller-rink teen (a sweetly gawky Bow Wow) and his buddies in

The stray dog in this saccharine family drama has an unusual nose: It sniffs out wisdom-spouting adults. And so the lonely 10-year-old who adopts it starts following it from role model to role model, including pop star Dave Matthews as a pet store clerk who serenades the animals. Sentimental director Wayne Wang (Anywhere But Here)

Based on the life of Jim Morris, a Texas high-school science teacher and father of three who took a second shot at making it into Major League Baseball as a 35-year-old, The Rookie is a sun-dappled celebration of second chances and small-town camaraderie. Things are kept from becoming too sugary by Dennis Quaid’s Mr. Mom

This hyperactive adaptation of Chris Van Allsburg’s children’s book is not content to echo the gentle beauty of the original illustrations (though some of the images do that wonderfully). Instead, director Robert Zemeckis and his team of computer animators kick things up several notches with frantic action filler. If there is any conceivable way a