You never know.”

What does that mean? Of course you never know, but why would someone adopt that as an all-purpose rejoinder?

Writer/producer/actor Paul Reiser has a good feel for the way families talk to each other, especially the talk that goes around the subject the long way rather than addressing it directly. The subjects here are the ones families find hardest to talk about, the ones

Parents should know that this movie has some very strong material for a PG-13 (and that it will be unlikely to be of interest to teenagers anyway). It has some very strong language, bathroom humor, some frank sexual references (including a father and son talking about the parents’ sex life and some objectifying treatment of pretty young women), drinking (and drinking too much), smoking, a fight (characters hit in the crotch), and sad scenes of illness and death.

Families who see this movie should talk about what Ben learned from his father and his mother. Why was it hard for him to hear what his wife was telling him about the house in the country? What did Sam learn from Ben? One of the movie’s most important lessons is that it is never too late to resolve old issues. And another is that even though our families drive us crazy and are never all we want them to be, they are still the most precious thing we have.

Families who enjoy this movie will enjoy others on this theme, including Memories of me (Billy Crystal and Alan King), Nothing in Common (Tom Hanks and Jackie Gleason), Dad (Ted Danson and Jack Lemmon), the current King of the Corner (Peter Riegert and Eli Wallach), and I Never Sang for my Father (Gene Hackman and Melvin Douglas). They will also appreciate Reiser’s fine television work in “Mad About You” and Falk’s in “Columbo.

There are so many reasons to love writer-director Nick Park’s dim, gentle, cheese-loving inventor Wallace and his patient, practical, and loyal dog, Gromit. First, they are brilliant at every kind of funny, from sophisticated wit to sly parody to outrageous puns, to this-is-what-pause-buttons-on-DVD-players-are-made for detail and fall-down, lose-the-toupee farce. Second, their adventures are hilarious and genuinely exciting. And third, W&G themselves and their world are more alive and expressive and endearing than most “real life” human actors filming on “real life” locations. (Did I forget to mention that they are made out of clay and their movies are filmed in painstaking one-frame-at-a-time, one-or-two-seconds-a-day stop motion photography?)

Perhaps the best reason to love them is that they are irresistibly quirky, completely un-focus grouped, the plot never driven by product placement or marketing synergies (though the new movie does have some fast food and other tie-ins). In an era of loud, homogenized, generic, undistinguished and indistinguishable films, and CGI perfection, this is unquestionably the work of one adorably demented sensibility, with an engagingly handmade feel. It has a cheerfully, sometimes opaque, understated Britishness that doesn’t really translate (though they did redub one word — what are called “marrows” in England are referred to as “melons” in this release). And it has wildly funny tributes to a range of classic movies. It is fabulously funny, endlessly inventive, and utterly charming.

In three short films (two won Oscars; the third was nominated but lost to another one of Park’s movies), Wallace and Gromit have gone to the moon (in search of cheese, of course), rented a room to a diabolical jewel thief who happens to be a penguin, and outsmarted a sheep-rustling dog. Wallace creates remarkable contraptions (like dog-walking automatic pants) that work very well (his rocket does take them to the moon), but always create terrible problems and only Gromit can save the day. He’s a bit like a middle-class Jeeves to Wallace’s Bertie.

In their first full-length feature, Wallace and Gromit have a successful humane pest-control business serving the local gardeners, who have the very British passion for both vegetable-growing. Just about everyone in town is growing something to enter into the upcoming competition, so the prospect of a rabbit invasion is frenzy-making all around.

Fortunately, Wallace and Gromit and their company, Anti-Pesto, are on the case. At any hour of the day or night, if a rabbit appears in a garden, an alarm goes off and our heroes, using Wallace’s inventions, are almost-instantly on the job. Moments later, the rabbits are humanely extracted via Wallace’s invention. The tender-hearted W&G end up taking them all home and feeding them. The customers are very happy, especially Lady Campanula Tottington (voice of Helena Bonham Carter). But her suitor, Victor Quartermaine (voice of Ralph Fiennes), is furious and jealous. He wants to hunt the rabbits. And he wants to marry Lady Tottington.

Wallace decides that if he comes up with a machine to brainwash the bunnies so that they don’t want to eat veggies anymore, that will solve all their problems. Unfortunately, there’s a disturbance and things don’t go exactly the way Wallace planned and soon a terrifying, vegetable-loving creature is causing “califlower carnage.”

The feature length suits Wallace and Gromit perfectly. The new characters are brilliantly imagined, especially Lady Tottington and Quartermaine who both sport a W&G first — lips. Bonham Carter and Fiennes, clearly enjoying themselves, provide silly toff accents that are part Ealing comedy and part Monty Python. The result is hilarious, thrilling, and utterly engaging. If it takes five years to make one of these, I hope they’re already four years into the next one.

Parents should know that although this movie is rated G, some scenes of peril may be too intense for younger children. One character is a hunter who uses guns. There is brief crude humor, including a bare behind.

Families who see this movie should talk about which of Wallace’s inventions they might like to try or what he should make next. And they might like to try to make a claymation film (Park began making films at home when he was 12) or maybe grow their own vegetables!

Families who enjoy this movie will enjoy Park’s other movies, including A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers, and A Close Shave, and the series Creature Comforts. They may also enjoy learning about Rube Goldberg, whose hilariously complicated contraptions would fit right into Wallace’s workshop.

As generic as its title, this drearily predictable and tushie-obsessed buddy cop movie has just one distinction — it wastes more talent in less time than we get to see very often outside of straight-to-video releases.

We’ve seen everything here so, so, many times before and done so much better. Take one tough, break-the-rules loner ATF agent whose partner has just been killed by the bad guys (though Internal Affairs is not persuaded that he is entirely innocent). That would be Samuel L. Jackson as Van. Take one mild-mannered family man with eyebrows like caterpillers who is in town for dental supply salesmen’s conference who gets mixed up with those very same bad guys so that Van needs his cooperation. That would be Eugene Levy as Alex. There’s a long-suffering supervisor (an uncharacteristically subdued Susie Essman of “Curb Your Enthusiasm”) and a bad guy with an accent. Hilarity is intended to ensue. It doesn’t. Even the action scenes are dull.

This would just be another mindless time-waster without a single memorable or original idea if not for its cluelessness about how exceptionally crude and ugly its humor is. The director, the screenwriter, and the stars seem to have no idea how un-funny its “jokes” about toilet functions, prison rape, who is whose b-word, and body cavity searches are. Let’s make that potty humor even funnier by putting nuns in the scene so we can see them making funny faces about the smell!

And then it has the nerve to try to go for the cockles of our hearts with a detour into whether Van will make it to his adorable little daughter’s ballet recital. Please.

Buddy cop movies are often better than this. Jackson and Levy are almost always better than this. Go see one of those movies instead.

Parents should know that the language in this movie is strong for a PG-13, with several uses of the f-word and humorous references to one man as another’s b-word as well as other strong and crude words. There is also a great deal of crude humor including prolonged scatalogical situations and jokes about prison rape and a body cavity search. And there is a lot of violence, some played for humor, including repeated abuse of an informant and characters getting beaten and shot. Characters are in peril and some are injured or killed. A strength of the movie is the portrayal of strong and dedicated work relationships between men and women of different races.

Families who see this movie should talk about what Alex and Van learned from each other. What most surprised them about each other? Families may also want to talk about the different approaches of the two men to trust and Alex’s expectation that all relationships will end in friendship. Why does Alex say, “I couldn’t live my life like that?”

Families who enjoy this movie will enjoy the vastly superior Midnight Run and Die Hard: With a Vengeance (also with Jackson).

It’s the details that matter in this movie more than the characters, the story, or even the music, all blander than in writer/director Tim Burton’s first claymation movie, Nightmare Before Christmas. Still, there is a goulishly enchanting love triangle and spectacularly spot-on voice talent. And, what really matters, every moment is filled with wonderfully witty Daumier-like caricatures and sly Charles Addams-style macabre humor. The main characters and the story are not nearly as intriguing as who and what is going on around them.

The Van Dorts have money but no social position. And they have a son, Victor (voice of Johnny Depp). The Everglots have social position but no money. And they have a daughter, Victoria (voice of Emily Watson). Victor and Victoria have not met, but what does that matter? Their parents arrange a marriage. The wedding rehearsal is about to begin. Nothing must go wrong.

Victor and Victoria meet — shyly — and are relieved and a shyly excited to find themselves drawn to one another. But Victor is so nervous that he keeps getting mixed up on his vows. He runs to the forest, practicing, and accidentally places the ring on what appears to be a twig. But it is the sepulchral finger of the Corpse Bride (voice of Helena Bonham Carter). Jilted on her wedding day, she has been waiting for a groom ever since. And now that she has one, she is not about to let him go, even though they have the pesky little problem that he is alive while she is dead and live in literally different worlds. It’s a mixed marriage at a rather fundamental level.

Victor is honorable and does not want his accidental and very sensitive bride to be hurt again. In her own way, other than the odd maggot or decaying body part, she is very appealing. He cannot allow himself to be the second man to desert her, even if that means that he will have to join her in the underworld for good.

Victoria turns out to have more spirit and determination than she or her parents expected, especially after they inform her that with Victor out of the picture, they plan to marry her off to a mysterious nobleman named Lord Barkis, who seems in an awful hurry. And Victor, in part through his struggle to decide what duty requires, discovers his own sense of purpose and independence.

Burton, always the most wildly and happily goulish of visionaries, has created a thrillingly intricate world, or, rather two of them. The gray, Victorian setting of for the Van Dorts and the Everglots is filled with looming structures and old, stately, portraits. And the world of Emily and her after-life compatriots is, well, lively and deliciously macabre, with the kind of gleefully demented pleasure of Disney World’s Haunted Mansion (the ride, not the awful movie).

Echoing dance with death themes from Mexico’s Day of the Dead holiday to 1930’s cartoons with skeletons playing each other’s ribs like xylophones, this movie explores not just our fear of death but our ways of confronting that fear, from humor to myth, to music, to love. With made-for-pause-button attention to detail, some unexpectedly understated humor, and a surprisingly touching conclusion, it proves again that humanity is sometimes best found and conveyed in unexpected places.

Parents should know that this movie may be disurbing to young and sensitive viewers. It has some grotesque and scary images, including decomposing bodies and skeletons. Characters are in peril and some are injured or killed. There is some crude humor. Characters drink alcohol.

Families who see this movie should talk about why Victor ran away and why Victoria was loyal to him. They may also want to talk about the appeal of ghost stories and their own thoughts on the supernatural.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy the always imaginative Burton’s other movies, including Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Nightmare Before Christmas, Beetlejuice, and Edward Scissorhands (with Depp in the title role). They may also enjoy the Noel Coward ghostly romantic comedy classic, Blithe Spirit.