If you want to ride this movie the way its heroine rides the waves, the best thing to do is bring a walkman and a really good pair of headphones and watch it while listening to your favorite assortment of surfer hits. A compilation of Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, and, of course, the classic Surfari rendition of “Wipeout” will be a far better accompaniment to this movie’s visuals than the dreary attempt at story, acting, and dialogue.

And oh, those visuals! Some of the most glorious cinematography of the year takes you right inside those Hawaiian “pipe” waves that the big-time surfers master. Hawaii’s glorious natural resources, including many very pretty girls in very tiny bikinis, are lovingly photographed.

The story is one of those eye-of-the-tiger, Flashdance on a surfboard, will she believe in herself enough to follow her dream sagas with no special insight or freshness. Kate Bosworth plays Ann Marie, a cute tough-on-the-outside-but-vulnerable-on-the-inside surfer girl who has what it takes to be world-class if she can just (1) get over the fear she has had since almost drowning, (2) manage to train for her big chance while supporting herself and her younger sister, and (3) not get distracted by Prince Charming, a cute quarterback named Matt. Pals played by Michele Rodriguez and real-life surfer Sanoe Lake provide support.

The surfing scenes are breathtaking and by themselves worth the price of a ticket. The water is the most vivid and memorable character in the movie. MTV-style camera tricks will be annoying to some, but there are no tricks that can spoil the shots of the massive, thundering, walls of water that writhe like a sea serpent the size of a skyscraper.

The three actresses have a nice, easy camaraderie and it is easy to believe that they have lived together forever with a mixture of familial bickering and unquestioned loyalty and understanding. I was especially impressed with the surfer sisterhood that had one of the world champions taking time in the middle of a competition to give encouragement to a young competitor. And it was nice that Prince Charming (Matthew Davis, last seen as the boy who broke Reese Witherspoon’s heart in Legally Blonde), when asked for advice, instead provides support for Ann Marie and gently reminds her that she is a girl who does not need anyone else’s advice.

On the other hand, amidst all of this female empowerment there are some issues that make the characters less than ideal role models. Parents should know that Ann Marie accepts a lot of money ($1000 for “surfing lessons”) and expensive gifts from the quarterback. She has sex with him after knowing him for a couple of days and then is horrified to overhear a conversation that makes her think that he does not think of her as marriage material.

Parents should also know that the movie has strong language and a lot of vulgarity for a PG-13. We see a mess in a toilet bowl and a used condom. Ann Marie is a poor guardian for her 14-year-old sister. She chases after her sister when she sneaks out to go to a raucous party and worries about her smoking and ditching school, but makes very little effort to set an example or impose limits. Parents of younger kids who want to see a movie about two sisters in Hawaii who go surfing should watch Lilo and Stitch.

Families who see this movie should talk about the obstacles Ann Marie must overcome – not just the finding a way to support herself and doing all the training but overcoming her fears of failing and of succeeding. Some viewers may conclude that her attraction to Matt was in part a way to give herself an excuse not to do her best in the competition. Families might also want to talk about the way that the Hawaiian natives feel about the tourists (one tells a tourist to leave the beach he likes to surf, saying “We grew here; you flew here”).

Families who enjoy this movie will enjoy the surfer classic The Endless Summer and the recent documentary about the beginning of extreme skateboarding, Dogtown and Z-Boys. And of course there’s always Gidget!

Once upon a time, there was a television show that was genuinely cool. Robert Culp and Bill Cosby played smart, laid-back guys who traveled around to exotic and romantic locations saving the world. Everyone thought they were a tennis player and a coach who didn’t take anything very seriously, but we knew that they were in reality really smart guys who knew all kinds of great stuff and exchanged effortlessly witty wisecracks. The show was also quietly revolutionary. Bill Cosby was not only the first black actor to star in a television drama, but he played a supremely smart and capable spy who could also play tennis. The casual equality of the two leads just a few years after the march on Washington and the “I Have a Dream” speech was a milestone of the civil rights movement.

Now that television show has been remade as a forgettable buddy movie that feels like a rejected script for “Rush Hour 3.” Eddie Murphy plays an egotistical heavyweight champion who is teamed up with a spy played by Owen Wilson to go after a stolen invisible plane before it is sold to the highest bidder.

Murphy mugs, Wilson pines for his beautiful fellow spy (Famke Janssen), stuff blows up, and the credits roll. This movie is designed to be forgotten before you get the popcorn out of your teeth.

Parents should know that the movie is rough for a PG-13 with some raunchy humor and many knee-to-the-groin scenes.

Families who see this movie should talk about why it was so hard for Scott to tell Rachel how he felt.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “Rush Hour” and “Shanghai Noon.”

With near perfect adherence to the original text, director Rebecca Miller has adapted three of the seven short stories from her book “Personal Velocity” for this engaging film about life’s turning points. She has transplanted her short, ambitiously descriptive sentences (“With relief Greta felt the ambition draining out of her like pus from a lanced boil“) from page to screen, taking advantage of the often unflattering effect of shooting in grainy digital camera to mirror the warts-and-all descriptiveness of the text. Miller has stayed so close to her own written word that those familiar with her book might be surprised to hear a man’s voice (John Ventimiglia) narrating the backgrounds of her heroines.

The stories summarized sound like fodder for a made-for-TV movie: Delia (Kyra Sedgwick) leaves her abusive husband in order to protect her three children; Greta (Parker Posey) leaves her milquetoast husband for her new career; and, Paula (Fairuza Balk) leaves childhood behind as she comes to terms with her pregnancy. Where they were discrete, the three stories are now tenuously linked by a narrative trick and geographical proximity to one another.

Each of these characters has her own source of power, from Delia’s sexuality to Greta’s intellect to Paula’s detachment, and each must use this power to attain her own ‘personal velocity’. This shorthand term for personal development and self-definition is used by Greta’s father, Avram (Ron Liebman), but is echoed in many aspects of the film. How personal velocity relates to unresolved issues with one’s parents and lovers is a theme Miller –herself the daughter of Arthur Miller and wife of Daniel Day Lewis—investigates with a hungry curiosity.

Kyra Sedgwick, long cast as the smiling and sympathetic best friend type, clearly relishes the role of steely-eyed, Delia, who swings her jean-clad hips from the brutal Kurt (David Warshofsky) into a hard new life fending for her kids. Parker Posey plays Greta with a deft touch and apparent ease, providing the least-self-conscious of the storylines and some much needed levity to the film. It is left to Fairuza Balk, who does an excellent job of projecting an iron will and feral impishness, to wrap up the stories with the sadly predictable “answer” to life’s big questions. Have a baby.

Each heroine is matched with one individual attribute: Delia Shunt is Courage; Greta Herskovitz is Ambition; Paula Friedrich is Hope. Perhaps Miller fears that sentimentality will prevent her characters from being “bony, rough and true” (Miller’s description of successful writing), but in taking a knife to the fat of emotions, she has left us a curiously lean dish. Although it makes some interesting insights, “Personal Velocity” never quite gets up to speed.

Parents should know that this film depicts very mature themes, including domestic violence, drug use, sexual politics, infidelity, underage sexuality, runaway teens, and child abuse.

Families who see this film should talk about how each character is influenced by her parents and by her past. If each character develops at her own “personal velocity” what does this mean for her relationships with those around her? This movie only touches on the male characters in each of the women’s lives. Why might Miller chose to make these characters two-dimensional?

Families who enjoyed this movie might wish to read the book, both for further understanding of the characters and for the other four short stories. Strongly recommended for those who like the camera feel and overall realism are the so-called “Dogme 95” films (“Italian Lessons for Beginners” and “The Celebration” in particular).

It may not be as great as you hoped, but it is not as bad as you feared. In fact, it exactly has the same strengths and weaknesses as the original three, plus breathtakingly spectacular visual design and special effects.

Those strengths are, in addition to the computer graphics and design, sensational action sequences, including a “Ben Hur”-like race, battle scenes, and some fancy fighting with the Jedi’s favorite weapon, the light sabers. The young queen is strong and courageous. This chapter has made a small step forward by including two black characters, though Samuel L. Jackson has little to do. The weaknesses are cardboardy characters with emotionless line readings (one actor in the three previous movies said that Lucas’ direction to actors consisted of “Look over there! We’ll add in the effects later.”) The director appears to have been more concerned with making his computer characters seem alive than his human ones. The grown-up actors seem constrained by their participation in a legend and the younger actors seem as though they are floundering. Han Solo is sorely missed. So is Chewbacca. Instead of a Wookie, we get a floppy-eared klutz. (In fairness, his slapstick antics, including stepping in monster poop, were greeted with squeals of appreciation by the kids in the audience.)

The plot is reminiscent of Yeats’ “The Second Coming:” it is a time when “the best lack all conviction and the worst are filled with passionate intensity.” While the Senate is deadlocked by bureaucrats and the Trade Federation is imposing heavy tariffs. As the movie begins, they have blockaded the planet of Naboo, inhabited on land by the followers of Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman) and undersea by the floppy- eared, pidgen-English-speaking Gungans. Two Jedi knights (Liam Neeson as Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and Ewen McGregor trying to sound like Alec McGuiness as Obi-Wan Kenobi) arrive to negotiate, but the Federation invades the planet. With Gungan Jar Jar Binks, they rescue the Queen, to take her to make the case for her people before the Senate.

Their spaceship must stop for repairs and fuel, and they end up on Tatooine, the same planet where we first met Luke Skywalker, back in Chapter IV. The group meets Anakin Skywalker, destined to become not only father to Luke and Leia, but also Darth Vader. At this point, though, he is a cute kid with a bowl haircut, mechanical talent, very fast reflexes, and a walloping lot of The Force. He is building the future C3PO and a flying car called a podracer in his spare time. Anakin and his mother are slaves, owned by junk dealer Watto, who looks like a bug and hovers like a hummingbird. Watto will not accept their money, so they make a bet on a podrace, with Anakin’s freedom on the line, too. Anakin flies his own podracer, and soon they are all on their way.

The queen appears before the Senate to ask for support and Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi appear before the Jedi Council to ask that Anakin be trained as a Jedi. The Queen is able to initiate a vote of no confidence, but the results are inconclusive. And the Jedi Council turns down Anakin.

They return to Naboo, where they persuade the Gungan to join them in fighting the Federation, including the scary-looking and mysterious Darth Maul. While our heroes are successful, there is plenty of foreshadowing about the villains in the next two chapters.

Parents should know that the level of violence is about the same as in the other movies — lots of shooting and explosions, and no blood. Many of the bad guys are robots. They get blown up but don’t really “die.” One of the main characters is killed, and a bad guy is sliced in half. Some kids (and some adults!) will wonder about the references to Anakin’s never having had a father and having been somehow immaculately conceived at the sub-cellular level.

Despite the addition of two black characters (and what is that captain’s name again?), the movie is still heavily white Anglo-Saxon, with some of the bad guys and comic characters using Asian or Caribbean accents. Kids under 12 who have somehow missed the original trilogy may find that viewing it will help them to get familiar with the characters and with concepts like The Force before seeing this one.

“The New Guy” is a waste of talent. This high school epic, supposedly about one boy’s path to true cool is so half-baked and uncool that it’s embarrassing. It is also another case of the MPAA giving a PG-13 rating to a comedy that has material that would get an R in a drama.

Chickenesque D.J. Qualls, this generation’s Don Knotts, plays Dizzy, a funk-loving dork stranded at the bottom of the school pecking order with his pals, played by Parry Shen, the magnificent Zooey Deschanel (“Big Trouble” and “Almost Famous”) and Jeord Mixon. After an opening-day incident where Dizzy is injured in an unlikely and spectacular and deeply personal way, he decides he must escape. Deciding to get expelled, his antics at first only merit a diagnosis of Tourette’s syndrome and some stupefying medication. Now drug-addled as well, his behavior escalates until he gets thrown in jail. There his meets the mentor he’s been needing: Eddie Griffin, playing an inmate who’s cultivated a fierce facade to survive the comic rigors of movie-prison life.

Under his tutelage, Dizzy is transformed into the punky Gil. At a new school, on the other side of town, Gil uses his newfound abilities to spout decade-old pseudo-Ebonic aphorisms and publicly beat the local bully. His badboy status confirmed, he begins to restructure the social hierarchy of the new place. Eventually, he’s forced to confront the fact that Gil is just an invention, and also forced by the lame script to win the heart of the school bully’s sexy girlfriend, as portrayed by Eliza Dushku.

It is painful to see some of today’s most talented young actors wasted in this dreck. They’re given very little to work with in the script. The writer and director have sadly bought into the same limited mindset about popularity and conformity that they are purportedly skewering.

The most troubling aspect of “The New Guy” might be strained impressions D.J. Qualls calls upon in his quest for status. It’s intrinsically funny to watch the gawkiest white guy on the planet attempt to imitate macho black posturing (especially when the source of this posturing is the chihuahua-like Eddie Griffin). But so much of it goes on for so long that posturing begins to seem a little like caricature. And it’s precisely this behavior, the epitome of imitative uncool, which is supposed to secure “Gil’s” status.

Parents should know that this film contains a lot of sexual talk, a little sexual activity (offscreen), and a mutilating injury that is supposed to be funny. Dizzy/Gil overdoses on medication, crashes a motorcycle, and sets his father’s head on fire (by accident, for comic effect). The slapstick of the film is pretty violent, and there are frequent kicks to the groin. One character is described as a “slut” and likes to have sex in public. Another pages a friend on a store intercom, reporting a “pair of lost testicles.”

Families who see this movie should talk about who the arbiters of social status are in real high schools, and what qualities determine a person’s status. What are the advantages of popularity? What are the consequences (advantages?) of being unpopular? Is social status fixed, or changeable? Does any of this really matter after high school?

Families who enjoyed this film might want to catch D.J. Qualls’ breakout role in “Roadtrip”, or give Eddie Griffin some space for his comedy in “Double Take”, alongside the underutilized Orlando Jones.