Everyone’s Hero (2006)

Family Rated G

This kids’ baseball movie has so much inspirational blather it makes you want to shove a bat down your throat, yet the computer-animation artists behind it hit enough dazzling and witty visual notes to keep you from self-inflicted injury. A lot of the charm comes from the setting – 1930s New York City, where a

Barnyard (2006)

Family Rated PG

This is one long, computer-animated gag reel about farm animals who secretly act like humans. All of the jokes are obvious, some are funny and none are what you would call inspired. For every amusing gag – we finally find the source of that awful painting of dogs playing poker – there are a bunch

Saving Shiloh (2006)

Family Rated PG

The filmmakers behind Saving Shiloh, the third movie to be adapted from Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s series of children’s novels, must think kids are a pretty slow lot, considering the way they repeatedly hammer home the moral of the story. The picture has more respect for the intelligence of the title dog than for its audience.

Hoot (2006)

Family Rated PG

I’m glad it is easy to approve of Hoot, for disapproving of the movie would mean disapproving of a host of good-natured things, including cute owls and the cuter kids who try to save them. Adapted from the Carl Hiaasen novel, Hoot follows a budding teen (Logan Lerman) whose family has just moved from Montana

Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006)

Family Rated PG

Mercenary, which is not the quality you want in an animated kids’ flick. This sequel’s prehistoric characters might as well be stretching their paws out for money, because the picture gives them little else to do. Everyone’s back – including Scrat – but they’ve been ordered to work by the studio accounting department, not born

Ratatouille (2007)

Family Rated G

“…Oswalt babbles away with the mania of a true obsessive. He’s like Julia Child after too much wine.

Finding Nemo (2003)

Family Rated G

In true Pixar fashion, Finding Nemo is at once a rousing adventure guaranteed to keep kids pinned in their seats, a gorgeously detailed display of computer animation and a comedy with more laughs per minute than your average live-action farce. Albert Brooks provides the voice of an overprotective clown fish in search of his lost

The Incredibles (2004)

Family Rated PG

“Family values have rarely been this much fun.”

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

Family Rated PG

“Pure, undiluted Steven Spielberg.”

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)

Family Rated PG

A giggling, sugar-high Johnny Depp may not match Gene Wilder’s performance in the 1971 adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s book – Depp projects lunacy, while Wilder embodied it – but he still turns candy maker Willy Wonka into both a faithful reading of Dahl’s creation and an offbeat invention of his own. The same goes