The two worlds of the popular Klasky/Csupo Nickelodeon series come together when the Rugrats get shipwrecked on a deserted island and meet up with the Wild Thornberrys.

That means that we’re in for another mildly pleasant mix of malapropisms and pop culture references, diaper humor, snippets of rock classics, a little adventure, and a message about cooperation, taking care of each other, and the importance of family. It is pleasant for the kids and not too painful for their parents.

A couple of additions take this up a level from the television series. The first is the “Odorama” scratch and sniff card kids can pick up. When numbers appear in the corner of the screen, kids are directed by glow-in-the dark numbers on the card to scratch the spots to smell, adding a certain vivid piquance to scenes that feature jam, root beer, peanut butter, and stinky feet (that one is really vivid).

The second is Bruce Willis, who provides the voice of the Rugrats’ dog Spike when he meets up with Eliza Thornberry, who can talk to animals. Willis adds enormous charm and energy to the story, and as soon as he is on board, we know that any day-saving that needs to be done will be in good hands.

Parents should know that the movie has a lot of potty humor and gross jokes involving dog snot, bird poop, and barfing. We see some bare baby tushes. Characters are in peril but it is never really scary. A character who is bonked on the head loses his memory and thinks he is a child, which may be confusing or disturbing to some children. Parents may want to talk to children about some of the behavior of the characters to make sure that kids know they should not imitate what they see.

Families who see this movie should talk about why Angelica wants so badly to be able to boss people around and why it is so hard for her to be kind or generous. They should talk about the way the characters in the movie react when things go badly. At first, the adults blame each other but then they select a leader and begin to cooperate. How do we choose our heroes, and how do we know when what is on television is real? It is also worth talking about the way that Debbie Thornberry lets her parents know that she wants to spend more time with them — and to discuss your favorite “dorky family activities.”

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy the other Rugrats and Thornberry movies. They might also like to see another shipwreck classic, Disney’s “Swiss Family Robinson.”

As I sat through this stupifyingly incompetent movie, I amused myself (because there was other possible way to be amused while watching this movie) by thinking about why sequels so often completely miss the appeal of the original.

In this case, I was not a fan of the first movie, but even I can tell what made it popular: it had attitude to spare, a believable (in movie fantasy terms) outsider culture of street racers, and capably filmed action sequences. And it had car porn — the vehicles were as lovingly backlit and erotically charged as a Maxim cover model. This movie takes only the least interesting character from the first film, played by the vapid Paul Walker, and puts him into a dumb undercover story that feels like a rejected script for “Miami Vice.”

Walker plays Brian O’Connor, who walked away from his job as an undercover cop in LA at the end of the first film. Now he lives in Miami and races on the streets for money. When given a choice between being arrested or going undercover to get the goods on a sleazy bad guy, Brian agrees to pose as a driver, as long as he can team up with childhood pal Roman Pearce (R&B star Tyrese, the only actor in this mess who shows any presence or class). Yes, there’s some history the two of them have to work through, yes the bad guy (Cole Hauser, barely registering on screen) gives them a test run to prove themselves, yes, the other undercover cop is a gorgeous babe who may be so far undercover that she can’t be trusted, and yes, there are lots of chases, races, and what Roman refers to as “Dukes of Hazzard stunts.”

Talented writer/director John Singleton (“Boyz N the Hood,” “Shaft”) is really slumming here. This movie has some of the most numbingly inane dialogue I have heard in many months. For a story about people who are in love with machinery, it is also absurdly low-tech. In one completely idiotic scene, the bad guy tortures a policeman with a metal bucket, a huge rat, and a torch (you don’t want to know, believe me).

It also has many too many close-ups of feet slamming down on pedals, hands shifting gears, and eyes narrowing meaningfully in the rear-view mirror. The cars may be fast, but I am the one who is furious at having to sit through this dumb movie.

Parents should know that the movie has some strong language and a great deal of violence, including gunplay and torture. There are girls in skimpy clothes and sexual references.

Families who see this movie should talk about Brian’s conflicts in deciding which side he is on. They should also discuss the difficult choices faced by undercover operators, who must stand by or even assist while their subjects commit crimes.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy the original and “Gone in 60 Seconds.”

This lovely, lyrical fable of a movie is set in the Maori community of New Zealand. According to legend, the Maori came to Whangara when their great leader Paikea led them by riding on a whale.

Ever since, the Maori have been led by the descendants of that leader. The movie begins with the birth of twins, the latest in that line. But the boy twin and his mother die. Over the objection of the current leader, Koro (Rawiri Paratene), the girl twin is named Paikaea. Her heartbroken father leaves New Zealand, and Pai is left to be raised by her grandparents.

Koro loves Pai deeply, but he is still bitter about not having a male heir. When she is 12 (an exquisite performance by Keisha Castle-Hughes), Koro assembles the local boys to begin to train them in the traditions of their culture and test them to see which has the courage, skill, wisdom, and leadership. It is clear to her grandmother (Vicki Houghton), to us, and to Pai herself that she has all of those qualities, but Koro, struggling fiercely to maintain the Maori pride and identity against the assaults of the modern world, cannot allow himself to consider such a change.

Writer-director Niki Coro perfectly suits the style to the story. The modest buildings in the midst of the starkly beautiful setting conveys the contrast between the timeless culture of the Maori and the ephemeral artifacts of the modern age. Pai’s perceptiveness and quiet persistence are always evident, but when she finally speaks from her heart, standing on stage in a school production, wearing traditional garb, she is purely luminous. The movie is not just genuinely lyrical, but, even harder to manage, it is lyrically genuine.

Parents should know that the movie has some tense family confrontations. The death of a mother and baby in childbirth is very sad. A character is injured, but ultimately recovers. There is brief strong language. Characters drink and smoke and there is a and a brief drug reference. A character refers to an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. The movie presents a minority culture with great dignity and respect, and the theme of equality is exceptionally well handled.

Families who see this movie should talk about the traditions of their own cultures. How do we decide which traditions to hold on to and which to change to adapt to changing times?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “The Secret of Roan Inish,” “Into the West,” and “Island of the Blue Dolphins.” They should also find out more about the Maori culture. This site is a good place to start and this one has information about Maori carvings.

I plead guilty to being a sucker for heist films. It’s such a reliable plot structure — we see the problem (usually an elaborate security system, as in Mission Impossible), we see how they plan to solve it, and then we see how they respond when things don’t go according to plan. I am happy to have my heart stolen as long the characters are charming and clever. They also have to meet at least one of the three key requirements for movie thieves: they have to be stealing for a good reason (How to Steal a Million), stealing from someone genuinely hateful (see The Sting), or — I’d better keep that last category a secret, to avoid spoiling the ending of some wonderful movies.*

This movie fits into the second category. It begins with the theft of $35 million in gold bars (not just tricky to steal, but almost impossible to transport). But then there is a second theft as one of the team double-crosses the others and, thinking he has killed them all, he takes the gold for himself. The rest of the movie is about how the team gets back the gold.

The team is led by Charlie (Mark Wahlberg), and includes genius tech whiz Lyle (Seth Green), genius demolition whiz Left Ear (Mos Def), genius getaway driver Handsome Rob (Jason Statham, essentially reprising his role from the underrated The Transporter), and the latest addition to the group, genius safecracker Stella (Charlize Theron), the daughter of Charlie’s great mentor — and genius safecracker John (Donald Sutherland). They want to get the gold back from colleague-turned-enemy Steve (Edward Norton), who killed John. Stella just wants revenge. And if a little romance enters into the picture, no one should be too surprised.

Charlie keeps telling Steve that he has no imagination, an unfortunate reminder that the movie, a remake of a Michael Caine caper film (also featuring both Noel Coward and Benny Hill!) doesn’t have much, either. But it has enough panache and charm to make it an enjoyable genre film. Def, Green, Statham, and Sutherland deliver their usual top-notch performances, even when the script gets formulaic. Norton, who reportedly was not happy about being contractually obligated to do the film, at least acts as if he was not happy about being contractually obligated to do the film. The film’s biggest waste of time is a running Napster joke that is two years out of date and tired the first time it is used, excruciating by the 10th. Apparently, they were stuck with it because of the appearance in the film of real-life Napter creator Shawn Fanning in the film, a joke maybe one percent of the audience will get and one tenth of one percent will care about.

Parents should know that the movie has a lot of tense scenes. Characters are shot and killed and there are implications of other painful murders. Characters punch someone as a way to satisfy feelings of betrayal and revenge. The main characters are all thieves, charming or not, and while they show loyalty and are committed to crime without violence, they are hardly role models. There is some strong language and characters drink alcohol.

Families who see this movie should talk about why we are able to identify with characters in a movie that in real life we probably would not want to cheer for. Why are these people theives? Will they stop?

Families who enjoy this movie will enjoy some of the other classics of the genre, including Topkapi, The Thomas Crown Affair, To Catch a Thief, The First Great Train Robbery and How to Steal a Million.

* Say, for example, The Lavender Hill Mob or Topkapi.

“Down With Love” can’t make up its mind whether it is a salute to the Doris Day-Rock Hudson/James Garner/Cary Grant movies of the 1960’s or a parody of them. Perhaps surprisingly, it works better as a salute, and never quite reaches the heights of the movies that inspired it.

The original movies were glossy fantasies that seemed to exist in that same 1960’s ring-a-ding-ding fantasyland Steven Spielberg brought us in Catch Me if You Can. They may have seemed instantly irrelevant in the era of Vietnam, the civil rights movement, and the sexual revolution, and yet they were as indispensible and — surprisingly — as inimitable and enduringly appealing as some of that decade’s other cultural touchstones.

We think of them as irretrievably retro and sometimes they were (as, for example, in The Thrill of it All, when Day’s doctor husband is profoundly threatened because she gets a job, which she quits after seeing him deliver a baby, reminding her what a woman’s true purpose is supposed to be). But most often, Day played supremely capable and confident working women, and it was the plot contrivances, not prudishness, that kept her characters from sexual encounters outside of marriage. Those movies also had some genuinely wicked commentary on the same conformist consumer culture that was the trigger for a lot of the political protest. Feminist critics like Molly Haskell now recognize that in their own way, these movies were very much a reflection and a part of the revolutions of the 1960’s.

In this movie, Barbara Novak (Renee Zellwegger) is the author of a book called Down With Love, that tells women to be strong and independent, to find fulfillment in work and to use men for sex but not become emotionally attached. Magazine writer and man-about-town Catcher Block (Ewan McGregor) decides to expose her as a hypcrite by making her fall in love with him. He pretends to be a shy astronaut who does not want to have sex unless he is in love. But Barbara — and Cupid — have a few surprises in store for him.

The movie begins by saying that “the time is now — 1962” and the period details are, well, swell, including flip hairdos, Tang, martinis, the twist, “Camelot” and clothes and furniture that are the kickiest! Catch is wearing a dinner jacket when he returns from a luau with the astronauts at Cocoa Beach. When Barbara’s book becomes a worldwide sensation, she receives the ultimate badge of fame — an Alfred E. Newman parody on the cover of Mad Magazine. But the best of the movie’s in-jokes is Tony Randall, who often played Hudson’s best friend, a neurotic rich guy who hopelessly envied Hudson’s confidence and success with the ladies in the original series of movies. In “Down With Love,” that role is exquisitely played by David Hyde Pierce, but Randall appears as the head of the publishing firm, demonstrating his impeccable timing and delivery. Indeed, the supporting players, sets, and costumes are so vivid that they make the main characters seem a little bland.

Parents should know that this movie has a good deal of sexual innuendo and double entendres, including an extended split-screen sequence that makes it appear that the characters are engaging in a number of sexual acts. There is brief strong language. Characters drink and smoke as evidence of sophistication. Equality of women is a humorous theme of the movie. As in the 1960’s movies it salutes, all characters are white.

Families who see this movie should talk about whether a similar plot could work in a movie set in 2003.

Families who enjoy this movie will enjoy the movies that inspired it, especially Pillow Talk and Lover Come Back (both about a battle of the sexes in which the man pretends to be someone else to romance the woman) with Day and Hudson, The Thrill of it All with Day and Garner, That Touch of Mink with Day and Grant, Sex and the Single Girl (about a woman who writes a book promoting women’s sexual freedom) with Natalie Wood and Tony Curtis, If a Man Answers with then-married Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin, Come September with Hudson and Gina Lollobrigida, and Man’s Favorite Sport with Hudson and Paula Prentiss. They might also enjoy similar themes in earlier movies like Theodora Goes Wild (another story about a woman author of a notorious book) and Take a Letter Darling (man gets a job as secretary to a woman executive). And they might like to see more of the pre-“Odd Couple” Tony Randall in the fantasy The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao and the wild satire Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?