Camp Ovation does not look like much, but to the high school kids who return there summer after summer, it is close to heaven. Heaven being Broadway, that is.

Camp Ovation is a camp for “theater kids,” those kids who may not be familiar with the songs on the radio but have memorized the entire oeuvre of Stephen Sondheim, including the legendary flops that even Sondheim has probably forgotten. They can’t catch a ball, but they know every kind of stagecraft, from tap-dancing to sword-fighting. These kids feel completely alone all year long, except when they come together each summer to put on a full theatrical production every two weeks.

If this sounds like Fame with pine trees, you’ve got the right idea. Writer/director Todd Graff filmed the story at the real-life theater camp he attended and then worked at as a counselor. His affection for the camp and the kids and and his eye (and ear) for detail are very engaging. When the kids are first gathering at the buses that will take them to the camp, one girl re-introduces herself to another with a marvelous throwaway line, reminding her that they had appeared together in the suicide drama, “‘night Mother.”

But, as it should be, what is best about the movie is the kids. At the center of the story are Vlad (Daniel Letterle) and Ellen (Joanna Chilcoat). The kids are a little suspicious of Vlad because he seems too normal — an all-American straight boy who likes to skateboard and throw a football. Ellen is a more typical Ovation camper, a sensitive and insecure girl. Her close friend Michael (Robin de Jesus), is a gay boy who was thrown out of his school prom and beaten up because he arrived in drag. Then there is Jill (Alana Allen), already a diva, and Fritzi (Anna Kendrick), her devoted sidekick.

The performances by the kids are terrific, with Broadway show tunes from “Promises, Promises,” “Follies,” “Gospel at Colonus,” and “Dreamgirls.” Kendrick and Sasha Allen (Dee) are standouts, with true show-stopping Broadway voices.

There is some sharp dialogue, well delivered. The plot is too cluttered, however, including not just the expected romantic complications, adolescent angst, and even the future of Broadway musicals, but also a one-hit composer with a drinking problem that is resolved too neatly, and an All About Eve subplot about a sabotaged performer that is resolved too messily. The Vlad character is particularly overdone, burdened with at least two too many plot twist/quirk-style complications. Letterle does his best, but no one could pull all of that off.

Parents should know that the movie has very strong language and sexual references and situations for a PG-13. An adult character is an alcoholic. One of the movie’s strengths is the way that the love for theater gives these kids so much in common that other differences, including race and sexual orientation, are warmly embraced.

Families who see this movie should talk about how several of the kids are deeply hurt by parents who do not support their interests and talents. They should also talk about Bert’s bitterness — why did he think it would make him feel better to speak to the kids the way he did? Why didn’t it?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Fame (some mature and upsetting material).

They say that the two worst years of a woman’s life are the year she is 13 and the year her daughter is.

We get to experience both at once in this film about a 7th grader named Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood) who is catapulted into self-destructive behavior because she wants so badly to be accepted, to be cool, and to numb some of the pain of growing up. It was co-written by 13-year-old Nikki Reed, who plays the friend Tracy is so desperate to impress.

Tracy lives with her brother Mason (Brady Corbet) and their mother, Mel (Holly Hunter), a loving but damaged recovering alcoholic who does her best to support the family.

On the first day of 7th grade, there are always a couple of kids who really hit the puberty jackpot over the summer. Just as the rest are at their most clumsy, insecure, and vulnerable, those impossibly sure and golden kids appear to have arrived at the destination while everyone else is still trying to find the map.

Adults of any age are likely to still be carrying around the vision of their own perfect 7th grade classmates and how inadequate they felt by comparison. It somehow is not much comfort that not only did those kids themselves not feel as together as we thought, but that they were surpassed soon after by the late bloomers, who had to work a little bit to get there and thus have more staying power.

For Tracy, it is Evie (co-screenwriter Reed) who seems to have everything she desires. So when Evie introduces her to drugs (taking them and selling them), shoplifting, body-piercing, lying, and sex, it seems a small price to pay for feeling accepted or, to use a word that is only used about teen-agers or celebrities, “popular.”

Reed and first-time director/co-screenwriter Catherine Hardwicke have given this film great strengths — particularly its authenticity of detail (Hardwicke’s past career as a production designer really helps) and its genuine commitment, even tenderness, toward its subject matter. This really shows in the performances. Hunter is fearless in revealing Mel’s fragility, her generosity, and the deep, deep love for her children that grounds her. Wood (of television’s “Once and Again”) is breathtakingly open; every ounce of the joy and anguish she feels is in heart-breaking relief on her face. Wood shows us Evie’s wounded child inside the cool manipulator. The script has some particularly subtle and perceptive moments, especially when Tracy’s father keeps asking for the problem to be explained to him “in a nutshell.”

On the other hand, it would be nice if Tracy didn’t have to take on every single one of every parent’s worst nightmares; in addition to substance abuse, sexual involvement, lying, stealing, and failing in school, she develops an eating disorder and cuts herself. There are enough teenage problems in this movie to fill a decade’s worth of after-school-specials. But the film’s weaknesses are the weaknesses of youth and inexperience, and that is actually very appropriate for the subject matter.

Parents should know that the R rating comes from frank and explicit — but thoughtful — treatment of the subject matter. This is just another example of the failings of the MPAA rating system, because there are comedies that refer to all of the same issues that are rated PG-13. This movie is far better for teenagers because it deals forthrightly with the consequences of the behavior it depicts.

Characters constantly use very strong language. Teenagers engage in every possible self-destructive behavior — they smoke, take drugs, steal, lie, and pierce their tongues and belly buttons. They have sex that is so casual it is almost anonymous. There is also adult substance abuse and bad behavior. There are very tense family confrontations.

Families who see this movie should talk about how easy it was for Tracy to slip away from everything she had learned. Why was Evie’s friendship so important to her? Why was Tracy important to Evie? Why was it so hard for Mel to say no to anyone?

Families who appreciate this movie will also appreciate Smooth Talk and Foxes.

The old-fashioned real-deal movie star charm of Will Smith can occasionally be glimpsed somewhere inside this overlong cacaphony of car chases, shoot-em-ups, and explosions. It is impossible not to watch him and almost impossible not to smile while doing so.

But that’s about the only smile in this generic but mind-numbingly loud and violent summer action movie, more theme park stunt spectacular than story.

Martin Lawrence and Smith reprise their roles from 1995’s “Bad Boys” as buddy cops who toss off wisecracks in between rounds of ammunition. They are cast against type with Martin as Marcus, the worrying family man and Smith as Mike, the go-for-it playa. This time, Marcus’ sister (played by the gorgeously talented Gabrielle Union), a DEA agent, is in town, but hasn’t told her brother that (1) she is working undercover on a dangerous investigation and (2) she is romantically involved with Mike. Meanwhile, Marcus and Mike have smashed up most of the cars in LA but have not yet made any progress on tracking down the drug dealer they are after. And many, many, many, many more cars will be smashed and many attempts at humor will crash before they do.

Director Michael Bay (“Armageddon” and “The Rock”) can shoot action sequences and stunts, though he tries a little too hard to be John Woo. He is less successful at making it worth caring about, especially when it veers into the truly preposterous with a massive invasion of Cuba at the end. For anyone other than hard-core action fans it just gets overwhelming and finally a little tedious. It also makes the fatal mistake of forgetting to include a memorable or interesting villain. Instead we get a stereotyped paranoid drug dealer who is overly attached to his mother and daughter.

Parents should know that the movie pushes the R rating to almost the NC-17 level with very graphic violence. At one point a truck filled with naked dead bodies is hit so that it opens up and spills the bodies all over the street, so that they are hit by other cars. The top of a corpse’s head comes off. A character is chopped up and presented to his partner in parts, with blood dripping out of him. A character is exploded by a land mine. There is extreme, extended peril and violence, and many deaths. Characters use extremely strong language with constant profanity, including racist terms. There are sexual references and situations, including references to impotence and rather homophobic humor. We also see some highly improbable animal sex. Characters drink, and smoke, and at one point it is supposed to be humorous when Marcus gets stoned on Ecstasy. Characters of many races show some prejudice but work together with respect and loyalty and a female character is strong, brave, and capable.

Families who see this movie should talk about how different people decide which risks they will take.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy the original and car chase and explosion movies like “The Transporter” and “Con Air”.

Pop star Mandy Moore plays a teenager in this movie based on two popular books by Sarah Dessen.

The books’ fans — and Moore’s — will enjoy the movie, which puts its heroine through the full obstacle course of adolescence, including coping with her parents’ divorce and subsequent romances, the ups and downs of her sister’s wedding plans, the death of a classmate, a pregnant best friend, and a romance of her own.

But those not already committed to the star or the books will find the movie hard going, because director Claire Kilner and screenwriter Neena Beeber demonstrate stunning ineptitude in translating written material to the screen. The story, the characters, and the relationships seem to go in completely different directions from scene to scene. Without knowing what’s in the books, it is not episodic; it is incoherent. And the dialogue is just painful. Deal me out.

Moore plays Halley (named for the comet), hurt and angry because her radio-host father has left her mother for a younger woman. She thinks her sister’s new engagement to a straight-laced young man as the divorce becomes final and her father announces (on his radio show) his own marriage plans is insensitive. When her best friend’s boyfriend dies very suddenly, it seems to Halley that love can never work out well. So she tries to ignore her feelings for Macon (Trent Ford), a guy whose primary appeal seems to be the fact that most of his face is hidden by his bangs.

Moore is appealing and she showed some screen presence in “The Princess Diaries” and “A Walk to Remember”. But in this movie she only shows two different facial expressions, and one looks like she has just sucked on a lemon.

Alison Janney (Halley’s mother) and Dylan Baker (her new love interest) do their best not to appear to be slumming, even when Baker is called on to wear a Civil War Uniform while stocking a vending machine. But the movie keeps tripping itself up on idiotic developments that are supposed to be comic, like Halley’s pot-smoking grandmother (played by 1940’s movie star Nina Foch) and the stuffy family of the sister’s fiance, and idiotic developments that are supposed to be touching (like a car accident). And it also has the worst costume design of any movie in decades.

Parents should know that the movie has some strong language, and teen smoking and drinking. The grandmother’s use of marijuana is portrayed as humorous. Halley’s friend and her boyfriend have sex and she becomes pregnant. Halley begins to have sex with her boyfriend, but then stops because she says she does not want to care too much about him. Halley’s sister comes home drunk from a bachelorette party with a male stripper’s underwear around her neck.

Families who see this movie should talk about how it can be hard to take emotional risks — but harder not to.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “A Walk to Remember”.