Star Trek has a language and following all its own. For those who are not devotees of the series, the way the characters speak often needs to be decoded, causing the viewer to spend more time trying to figure out what the characters are saying rather then why. After a while, if the story doesn’t make itself clear somehow, the viewer loses interest.

This is important to remember during the latest installment of the ever going “Star Trek” franchise, “Star Trek: Nemesis.” The story follows the “Next Generation” crew and their captain, Jean-Luc Picard (the always wonderful Patrick Stewart). A clone of Picard’s younger self, Shinzon, has somehow overtaken the Romulan senate and wants to make peace. Picard and his crew don’t trust this sneaky “clone,” and are suspicious of his origins and what they portend. Of course, treachery is afoot and the crew must stop the Romulans before they destroy or conquer, well, pretty much everything.

The series has had its up and down moments, ranging from excellent, (“The Wrath of Kahn”), to overly silly (“Star Trek V”). It has also had its share of “we’re running low on new ideas,” and “Nemesis” skirts the edges of that territory.

The film does have a few good action sequences, and some solid acting from Stewart, Brett Spiner as the android Data, and Tom Hardy as Shinzon. Hardy’s performance carries the movie in many of its otherwise sub-par scenes, and he and Stewart give the dialogue a lot of help. But the film is too muddled in “Trek talk” and way too overdramatic at times. Its conclusion is not just easy to predict, but laughable. “Star Trek: Nemesis” is not a bad film, but one that will most likely only leave the ever-devoted “Trekkers” as the only completely-satisfied customers.

Parents should know the film contains some violence, most of it sci-fi oriented. Lots of laser beam shooting occurs, almost all of it bloodless. The villain cuts his hand at one point and gives the bloody knife to Data. The beginning contains a rather intense and scary sequence in which a Romulan places a disk in the senate which lets out “spores” that land on the Romulans. These “spores” make the aliens begin to wither away, and then turn them to stone. One then crashes on the floor. There is also a quite surprising and graphic love scene in which two senior officers who have recently married begin to sleep together. During the scene, Commander Troy begins to see Shinzon instead of her husband, and struggles to get him away from her.

Families who see this film should discuss the many positive messages in the film. “Star Trek” has always been about gaining peace, and unlike many movies now, one gets the sense the crew does try to use the least amount of violence necessary to accomplish this mission. Parents may want to discuss why this is, and point out Picard’s constant reluctance to fight. Parents also should discuss the idea of forgiveness preached in the film. Why does it bother Picard so that this clone reminds him of his former self? Another discussion topic may be how we deal with loss, since a major character does meet his end in this film. Why do Picard and his crew toast their fallen comrade and hide their grief?

Families who enjoyed this movie will also like “Star Trek: First Contact,” “The Empire Strikes Back,” and “Minority Report.”

Even by the low standards of Saturday Night Live-alumni movies, and by the even lower standards of Adam Sandler-produced movies, “The Hot Chick” is simply excruciating. It is loathsome, offensive, vile, and, even worse, it is not funny. To add insult to injury, it is also much too long.

This is yet another body-switching movie. There is a pointless introductory scene in which an ancient princess uses some enchanted earrings to switch bodies with a servant girl so that she can get out of an arranged marriage. Cut to the present day where Rob Schneider plays a petty thief who switches bodies with a bitchy blonde high school princess named Jessica (Rachel McAdams), after she steals the earrings from a store specializing in ancient artifacts.

The rest of the movie is about Jessica (now played by Schneider) trying to get back into her old body. Along the way, we are subjected to horrifyingly awful jokes about the different ways men and women go to the bathroom, a cross-dressing child, priest molestation of young boys, the thief (now in Jessica’s body) having to buy tampons, bulimia, places to hide marijuana, parents of different races, homosexuality, and incest.

There is a lot of blame to go around here – from producer Adam Sandler (who appears in dreadlocks long enough to make the same joke about marijuana three different times in another one of his stupid silly voices) to star and co-writer Rob Schneider (who, bi-racial himself, should be especially ashamed of the racist stereotyping of a Korean woman and her bi-racial daughter), to director Tom Brady, who brings out the worst in his cast and has no sense of comic timing whatsoever. But we have to reserve a special blame category for the MPAA, which gave this horrendously crude and vulgar film a PG-13 rating, when its content is closer to NC-17.

Parents should know that the movie includes extremely explicit and offensive humor in just about every category. A father complains to his daughter (not knowing it is his daughter) that his wife won’t give him oral sex (making this the second movie this season with such a parent-child conversation, after “8 Mile”). A mother grabs the person she thinks is their gardener (not knowing it is her daughter) and kisses him passionately. A child is a cross-dresser. Teenagers drink at a bar and a character talks about places to “hide weed.” There are jokes that are racist and homophobic.

Families who like this movie should see the far better “Tootsie” and “All of Me.”