Style and substance are well-suited in this 3-D computer animation story about a 6th grade whiz kid who can build a satellite communications system out of a toaster and create a robot dog that when told to “play dead” blows itself up and then puts itself back together.

Jimmy has created gadgets for every purpose, from a combination planetary-mobile/bedmaker to bouncing bubble transportation device and a girl-eating plant. When other kids bring toys for show and tell, Jimmy Neutron brings a shrinking ray. The kids at school laugh at him and tease him about being short, except for his friends, Carl (overweight and asthmatic) and Shane (a passionate fan of some action heroes called Ultra Lords). Jimmy does not get along very well with a very smart girl named Cindy or a tough kid named Nick. When their parents forbid them to go to a theme park on a school night, Jimmy and his friends sneak. The next morning, their parents are gone, leaving mysteriously identical notes saying that they’ve gone to Florida. At first, the kids are thrilled. But after a day of doing everything they are not allowed to do — going up the down escalator, letting the cold air out of the refrigerator, wearing clothes that don’t match, making messes, and eating lots of candy, the kids are scared and lonely. Some slimy green aliens encased in egg-shaped flying capsules kidnap all the kids’ parents so they can feed them to a monster shaped like a chicken with three eyes. Jimmy builds rockets to take them all into space, rescues the kids when they are captured and put in the dungeon, frees the parents, and arranges their escape.

The animation is done by computer. Instead of going for the more lifelike textures of the Pixar movies, this has the intentionally stylized feel of a computer game. That fits the story’s tone, somewhere between the “Tomorrowland” 1950’s ideal of the future and today’s world of cell phones and headphones. Jimmy’s spaceship and the alien planet owe more to Flash Gordon and the Jetsons than to contemporary rocket science and astronomy.

The music, too, has songs that will be familiar to parents (The Ramones and The Go-Go’s) along with today’s teen dreams (N’Sync, The Backstreet Boys, and Aaron Carter).

Parents should know that the movie, while rated G, may be too scary for younger kids. It also has some crude bodily function jokes which were a big hit with the kids at the screening I attended. I asked a bunch of them after the movie what they liked best, and all agreed that it was the scene with all the burping. The movie has some smart female characters, including Jimmy’s mechanic mother, and kids of different races are friends and support each other.

The movie drags a bit in the middle, and adults may find themselves checking their watches. But most kids, especially those from 8-12, will find it fun, if forgettable.

Families who see the movie should talk about what makes kids make fun of each other for being different. If the parents in your family disappeared for a day, which rules would your children break? How does Jimmy learn from his mistakes?

Families who enjoy this movie will enjoy the Toy Story movies.

I smiled a couple of times and can even say I enjoyed myself, but this is clearly a movie that no adult will ever be able to get the way a kid does. An adult is going to sit there and say, “Wait a minute! Why doesn’t he just tell his parents?” or “No principal ever acted like that!” But a kid knows that none of that matters, any more than it mattered that no kid could ever string up the booby traps of “Home Alone.” This movie is just for fun, and it fits the bill.

Max Keeble (Alex D. Lindz) is filled with hope on his first day of middle school, but things just refuse to go right. The school bully, who telegraphs each day’s victim by emblazoning the name on his t-shirt, has selected Max as his starting point. His dream girl is a foot taller than he is and barely knows who he is. The animal shelter near the school is about to be shut down. An evil ice cream truck driver is after him. When Max finds out that his family is going to move to Chicago in just two days he is angry and sad until it occurs to him that this presents an opportunity for revenge without consequences. Before anyone can catch up with him, he’ll be gone. Max and his friends Megan (Zena Gray) and “Robe” (Josh Peck) set up a variety of pranks and enjoy them very much. But then it turns out that Megan and Robe do not have the “plausible deniability” Max promised. And that Max is not moving after all.

Kids all around me laughed happily at the slapstick humor, especially the scenes with the evil principal, Mr. Jindraike (Larry Miller) and the cafeteria food fight. They loved seeing the school’s two bullies (one throws kids in the dumpster, one takes their money) get their just desserts. Lindz has a lot of personality and he keeps us rooting for Max.

Parents should know that the movie has some crude humor, including a jockstrap, vomit, whacking someone in a sensitive area, and some schoolyard language. Kids do foolish and dangerous things, including riding a bicycle down cement steps, sucking helium, breaking into school at night, putting chemicals into a character’s breath spray, and operating machinery. Kids are harassed by bullies in various ways, including a “swirlie.” One of the bullies is black, but so is the friendly manager of the animal shelter.

Families should talk about why some kids act like bullies and why other kids let them. Some adults can act like bullies, too. The movie makes it clear that Max’s father has to learn how to deal with a bullying boss. What is the best way to respond to a bully? When should you ask adults for help? The janitor tells Max that “any kid can make a mess — it takes a man to clean it up.” And Max tells the kids that they should not bully the bullies when they get the chance because that would make them bullies, too. Families may want to discuss this in light of America’s consideration of the response to terrorism.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Harriet the Spy and Spy Kids.

Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) is the repressed and depressed daughter of an imperious mother (Gladys Cooper), head of a wealthy and socially prominent Boston family. Miserably unhappy and insecure, she spends much of her time in her room, making carved boxes and sneaking forbidden cigarettes. A sympathetic sister-in-law introduces her to Dr. Jaquith (Claude Rains), an understanding psychiatrist. Under his care, at his sanitarium, she begins to develop some sense of herself as worthy, but is still terribly insecure when she departs on a cruise ship, for a rest, before returning home.

On the ship, she meets Jerry Durrance (Paul Henreid), an architect. At first awkward and self-deprecating, she begins to bloom under his attention, and they fall in love. But Jerry is married to a woman whose health is too fragile to consider divorce. They say goodbye, and Charlotte returns home. Her mother is as tyrannical as ever, insisting that Charlotte must do as she says or she will refuse to support her. Charlotte meets Elliott Livingston (John Loder), a kind businessman, who wants to marry her, and her mother approves. But when she sees Jerry again, she knows it is impossible for her to marry Elliott, and turns him down. This so infuriates her mother that she has a heart attack and dies.

Overcome with guilt, Charlotte returns to Dr. Jaquith. But at the sanitarium, she meets a troubled young girl, Tina, Jerry’s daughter. In reaching out to Tina, she finds her own strength and sense of purpose. When Charlotte goes home, Tina moves in with her. Jerry at first wants to take Tina away, thinking it is too much of an imposition, but Charlotte persuades him that it is a way for them to be close, telling him, “Don’t let’s ask for the moon; we have the stars.”

This movie has a lot of appeal for highly romantic teenagers of both sexes, and for those who are interested in the dynamics and impact of dysfunctional families. Charlotte’s mother is completely self-obsessed, consumed with power, incapable of compassion, much less love, for her daughter. As Dr. Jaquith says, “Sometimes tyranny masquerades as mother love.” Never hesitating to make it clear that Charlotte was unwanted, she demands that Charlotte make up for the burden she inflicted by being born by giving in to her every demand. But it is also clear that there is no way for Charlotte to be successful in pleasing her mother.

Dependent and fearful at the beginning, she has her mother’s contempt. But, as we see at the end, her independence and self-respect are much more threatening to her mother, who literally cannot survive Charlotte’s assertion of her right to her own life.

In one sense, Mrs. Vale as ogre disappears like the Wicked Witch of the West doused with water or the Queen of Hearts when Alice tells her she is only a card. In another sense, Mrs. Vale’s attack is the ultimate booby- trap for Charlotte, who must then grapple with the guilt she feels for “causing” her mother’s death. Both Mrs. Vale and Jerry’s off-screen wife assert what F. Scott Fitzgerald called “the tyranny of sickness” or what Dr. Jaquith might call passive-agressive behavior, using powelessness as the ultimate method of exercising power. This is a very important form of emotional blackmail to be able to identify.

The title of the movie is from a line by Walt Whitman that Dr. Jaquith gives to Charlotte: “Now voyager, sail forth to seek and find.” Charlotte learns not to be afraid of what she will find, to risk getting hurt, to risk allowing herself to be known, to risk caring about someone else.

It is also worthwhile for kids to see that Charlotte must love herself before she is able to love someone else, and that just as Jerry’s love helps her to bloom, she is able to do the same for Tina. Charlotte tells Jerry, “When you told me that you loved me, I was so proud, I could have walked into a den of lions; in fact I did, and the lion didn’t hurt me.” Just as important, helping Tina is the most enduring “cure” for her sense of being powerless and without purpose, and far better than marrying the man she did not love.

These days, the decision made by Charlotte and Jerry not to stay together seems almost quaint; we tend to think that everyone should have both the moon and the stars. Their sense of sacrifice and duty is worth talking about as well.

Families who see this movie should talk about these questions: Why did Charlotte have such a hard time feeling good about herself? Why did Jerry and Charlotte decide not to see each other any more? Why did seeing Jerry make Charlotte change her mind about marrying Elliott? What did Charlotte’s mother want from Charlotte? Was that fair? What should Charlotte have said to her mother? Why did helping Tina make Charlotte feel better?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “The Three Faces of Eve.” They might also like to see Bette Davis and Claude Rains in another movie about love, sacrifice and lessons learned, “Mr. Skeffington.” Davis plays a self-centered and flighty woman who marries a man she does not love in order to protect her brother, discovering decades later how much she cares for her husband.

I suppose that it’s a sign that we’ve passed the peak of Pokemon frenzy that the word “Nintendo” got a bigger reaction from the kids in the audience than the word “Pokemon,” but this movie mustered enough of the old Pokemon spirit to keep the kids pretty happy.

Like the first two Pokemon features, this one includes both a short Pokemon-on-their-own adventure and then a longer feature story along the familiar lines of Pokemon Trainer Ash and his pals save the world. Interestingly, this time the threat comes not from a mad scientist, as in the second Pokemon movie, or from a rogue Pokemon, as in the first movie, but from a little girl named Molly who unwittingly causes havoc when she meets up with some Pokemons who grant her every wish.

Pokemons, of course, are those adorable little pocket monsters who love to be caught by their human trainers, who carry them around and deploy them against the pocket monsters of other trainers, to see who is the best. Most adults find them somewhere between annoying and painful, but children love them. They are always drawn to the idea of hidden sources of power accessed by seemingly powerless figures (think of Superman, Power Rangers, etc.). And they love the memorizing, sorting, and of course collecting opportunity that Pokemons afford. This can be an important part of their social development, and parents should respect their affection for Pokemons while maintaining control over the accumulation of clutter.

Parents should know that some children may be upset by characters in peril (though no one gets hurt). The opening segment includes a scary dog, though he later cooperates with the Pokemons. In the feature story, Molly has lost her mother and the magical Pokemon that she thinks is her father steals Ash’s mother for her. Her very loving father leaves her to pursue a scientific inquiry and disappears. This may be of concern to some children. The little girl’s mother returns only during the closing credits, with no explanation. There is a little bit of “I want to be your boyfriend” humor, but it is very brief and utterly G-rated.

Families who see this movie might want to talk about how having one’s wishes granted may not always be a good thing, and about the way the Pokemons take care of each other in the short segment and take care of their human trainers in the feature movie. Older kids may get a kick out of the way that the silly Team Rocket, always trying to get ahead of Ash and his friends, end up helping them out because “without them, we’d be out of show business!” They may also want to talk about the way Molly sees the shape of her Pokemon friend in a cloud, and how we can keep those we love inside us always.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy the other Pokemon movies and “Kiki’s Delivery Service.”

This romantic confection has all the weight of a soap bubble, but it has all the sheen and charm of one, too.

Serendipity is (1) a “happy accident” and (2) a New York restaurant that serves sweet, frozen goodies. It is #1 that brings our couple together, as both try to buy a pair of black cashmere gloves at Bloomingdale’s, and #2 where romantic sparks fly when she (“Pearl Harbor’s” Kate Beckinsale as Sarah) takes him (“High Fidelity’s” John Cusack as Jonathan) there to thank him for letting her have the gloves.

There is a strong romantic connection, but both are involved with other people, so they part, with two romantic note-in-a-bottle opportunitites for fate to bring them back together. He writes his name and number on a five dollar bill, which she puts back into circulation. And she writes her name and number in a copy of “Love in the Time of Cholera,” which she sells to a used book store.

Years later, as both are about to get married, they are still drawn to each other. So we’re in “Sleepless in Seattle”/”When Harry Met Sally” land, watching them just miss each other a dozen times until the happily-ever-after ending.

Cusack and Beckinsale are just right, giving a small touch of bittersweet reality to the fairy tale. Sarah’s insistence on letting fate determine the outcome could make her seem arbitrary and foolish, but Beckinsale shows us that it is just the result of Sarah’s struggle to overcome a deep romanticism. Cusack, always superb in showing us that same struggle (if you haven’t seen “Say Anything,” rent it this weekend) makes Jonathan’s quest to find Sarah genuninely touching.

The script wobbles at times. The respective fiancés are neither interesting enough to merit their screen time or awful enough to make us feel comfortable about seeing them get dumped. And the near-misses get a little overdone. Adept performances by sidekicks Molly Shannon and Jeremy Piven and by Eugene Levy as a persnickety Bloomingdale’s salesman provide buoyancy. And New York City itself, photographed with twinkling lights and floating snowflakes by cinematographer John de Borman, who shows us the city as a dreamy wonderland. That’s an especially warming, if poignant vision these days.

Parents should know that the movie has smoking and drinking (including excessive drinking). A brief sexual situation is inexplicit and played for comedy. There is mild language. A gay character is portrayed sympathetically and without stereotypes. All lead characters are white and middle or upper class.

Families who see this movie should talk about how we decide to take emotional risks, including the risk of appearing like a “jackass,” and how we decide when to act and when to gamble on fate. They might also like to talk about whether there is such a thing as a soulmate, and how to recognize one.

Families who enjoy this movie should also see “And Now My Love” (some mature material, in French with subtitles), about a couple who do not meet until the movie’s last minutes. We see their entire lives, going back to the girl’s grandparents, so that we recognize how perfect they are for each other even before they do. Another charming movie along those lines is Next Stop Wonderland starring Hope Davis. And check out the movie’s website, which has a cute quiz to help you find a serendipitous match.