This is a dreadful movie. Shakespeare is multi-facted enough to stand up to almost every possible kind of interpretation and adaptation. Almost. This version, using much of the original language but set in modern-day New York, is so poorly produced and directed that there would be serious doubt that the cast speaks English if it were not made up of such well- known and accomplished actors. So we have to blame the director since most of the time, it sounds as though they are repeating nonsense syllables that they have memorized. Diane Venora as Gertrude and Liev Shreiber as Laertes are the only ones who have moments of connection to the material. What we get from the others instead is tricks of juxtaposition, Elizabethan language amidst 21st century technology.

Remember the “to be or not to be” speech? Ethan Hawke, who wears an idiotic knitted ski cap through much of the movie and mopes around like a teenager who has been grounded, recites that speech while walking through the aisles at Blockbuster. He leaves the “get thee to a nunnery” speech for Ophelia on her answering machine. Polonius (Bill Murray) soliloquizes to a security camera. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern report back to Gertrude and Claudius by speakerphone and Hamlet lets them know he’s coming home by fax. And the play “to catch the conscience of the king” is a video Hamlet screens for his horrified family.

Teen fans of the performers who want to see this movie should go. Even in a monotone, the language and story are worthwhile, and it may inspire them to look at one of the better versions (especially those starring Mel Gibson and Laurence Olivier) on video. Families whose teenagers see this movie should talk about how to respond to injustice, the importance of communication, and how different performers and different times lead to different interpretations of the classics.

Families who enjoy this movie should see some of the other filmed versions, including the ones with Mel Gibson, Kenneth Branaugh, and Laurence Olivier.

Did anyone even read this script before deciding to make the movie?

Did anyone even write it, or was it just made up on the spot by 10 year olds?

This is a movie about a man named Joe (Tim Allen) who is slapped in the face by a bully (Patrick Warburton) in an altercation at the parking lot at work. His daughter, who has come with him for “Take Your Daughters to Work Day,” sees her father get hit, and sees his humiliation afterward. He is so depressed that he sits at home in his bloody shirt for three days, until Meg (Julie Bowen), the office “wellness” coordinator, comes over and asks him what he wants. A lightbulb goes on over his head — aha! What he wants is to challenge the bully to a rematch. As soon as word gets out, he is suddenly Mr. Popularity around the office. So, all he has to do is spend three weeks taking fighting lessons from a former star of low-budget action movies, and he’ll be all set.

So the message of this movie is that being popular and being willing and able to beat someone up are what really matter. On the way to the final confrontation there is a lot of comic violence (including two below-the-belt injuries that are supposed to be funny). Despite his commitment to his daughter, he seems completely insensitive to the impact of his actions on her. And there is also something very icky about the way that Joe’s ex-wife becomes attracted to him again when she sees how newly tough he is, so she puts on a sexy red teddy and tries to sneak into his house to get back together with him. To make it worse, it is their daughter who stops her, in a strange scene that makes it clear that any parenting in that relationship is going to the mother, not from the mother.

Attractive and talented performers are completely wasted in this movie. Despite a couple of nice moments between Meg and Joe, and the use of the truly magnificent Eva Cassidy song “Songbird,” it is an almost unalloyed disappointment.

Parents should know that the movie has very strong language for a PG, including many words they would not want their children to use. Joe smokes a cigar as an emblem of machismo. Characters drink and there is a scene in a bar. The entire theme of fighting back is very poorly handled. And some kids will be upset by the neglect of Joe’s child.

Families who enjoy this movie will enjoy some of Allen’s other movies much more. Try The Santa Clause and one of my all-time favorites, Galaxy Quest.

There is a sub-category of comedy that can only be termed “comedies of excruciation,” in which we laugh at the hideously humiliating experiences of some poor sap. If this is your kind of humor, then this is your kind of movie.

Think about the most stressful emotional situation imaginable and, if you are past your teens and before your 15th high school reunion it is likely to be meeting the family of the person you love. Now imagine that your beloved’s father specialized in sweating the truth out of double agents in the CIA and all your worst fears about exposing every miserable incident in your whole miserable life come together into one endless nightmare.

That is the plot of “Meet Your Parents,” written by the screenwriter of the awful “Meet the Deedles” (who will we meet in his next movie?) and directed by the director of “Austin Powers.” Ben Stiller plays Greg, who loves Pam (“Felicity’s” Teri Polo) and wants to make a good impression on her father, Jack (Robert De Niro). But everything goes wrong. Jack’s natural over-protectiveness meets with Greg’s panicky clumsiness and, depending on your sense of humor, it is either hilarious or agonizing or both. There are many jokes about Greg’s name (Focker, get it?) and his occupation (nurse, which isn’t manly, get it?). The airline loses Greg’s suitcase, so he has to borrow bizarre clothes — enormous pants from Pam’s brother, a tiny Speedo bathing suit from Pam’s former fiancé. Jokes center on a catheter, a “Mountie strap-on dildo,” a cat who uses the toilet, a cat strung out on nicotine gum, a fire, and an overflowing septic tank. Greg is compared to Pam’s sister’s fiancé, a doctor, and to Pam’s former boyfriend, now fabulously wealthy and still pining for her. Greg, who is Jewish, is asked to say grace at dinner, and can only helplessly babble the lyrics from “Godspell.” And, in the movie’s high point, Greg has to cope with the only situation more grueling than a terrifying in-law — airline bureaucracy.

Parents should know that the movie has some strong language, drug use, sexual references and situations, and potty humor.

Families who see the movie should talk about how some people may make us feel uncomfortable and inadequate, and about how even non-CIA families have a “circle of trust” that is very important to them. They may want to discuss how families see the people who want to marry a member, and what they can do to get to know one another, and talk about some of their own experiences.

Families who enjoy this movie will also like The In-Laws and The Freshman as well as the sequel, Meet the Fockers.

Renee Zellwegger’s lips should be eligible for their own Oscar. As the waitress who is such a big fan of a soap opera that she becomes convinced she is a character on it, she does more to convey her essential sweetness and strength of character with her lips alone than most actresses could manage using a couple of bodies.

Zellwegger plays Betty, a sweet, trusting woman married to a boorish used car salesman (Aaron Eckhardt, unrecognizable as Erin Brokovich’s biker boyfriend). She does not know that her husband has stolen some heroin and hid it in one of his cars. When he is scalped by a hitman who is searching for the heroin, Betty goes into what psychiatrists call a fugue state. She has no memory of seeing her husband killed. Instead, she thinks she has left him to return to her former fiancé, a soap opera doctor. So, she sets off to find him, not knowing that she is driving the car where her husband stashed the heroin. The two hitmen, Charlie (Morgan Freeman) and Wesley (Chris Rock), follow her so they can kill her. Meanwhile, she goes to Los Angeles, gets a job in a hospital, and meets the actor who plays her dream man.

Betty’s trip from Kansas to Los Angeles recalls the journey of that other famous Kansan, Dorothy. Both go to a fantasy land only to find that the answer is within themselves. As someone tells Betty, “Honey, you don’t need anybody. You know why? Because you’ve got yourself.”

Charlie, too, is chasing a dream, wanting to finish this one last job so he can retire but growing more and more drawn to the woman he is supposed to kill. Betty and Charlie both seek a dream that will let them leave their pasts behind.

Parents should know that the movie, while primarily a comedy, has some scary and violent moments. The scalping scene is pretty grisly. The movie also has strong language and sexual situations.

Families who see this movie should talk about how Betty learned that she could solve her own problems and follow her real dream of becoming a nurse. Betty’s husband describes the soap opera fans as “people with no lives watching each other’s fake lives.” Is that true of anyone who watches any television show or movie, including the people who watch this one? Is there a difference between watching for escape and watching for entertainment or insight? Why would Betty stay with such an awful husband for so long? Were any other characters chasing dreams? Who?

Families who like this movie will also enjoy “Nashville.”

The best biographical movies do three things. They show us why the life being depicted was important and how the main character had an important impact on the way we see the world. They give us a glimpse of what it is like to care passionately about something, to share a little bit of that passion and to think a little bit about what makes us feel passionate. And they give us a voyeuristic opportunity to experience the life of someone who comes from behind or has a dysfunctional family or has made reckless mistakes, or all of the above.

“Pollock,” a labor of love from director/star Ed Harris, gets about half of it right. Harris shows us the artist as a hugely talented but yowling id, all hunger and impulse. We see that both art and acceptance (and therefore fame) matter a great deal to Pollock. And we see that when the two collide, art wins out. Art critic Clement Greenberg (Jeffrey Tambor) champions of Pollock’s work, making him the darling of the art world. His approval means a lot to Pollock, professionally and artistically. When Greenberg criticizes the color in one painting at a dinner party, Pollock runs to the studio to drag it into the room and takes out a huge tube of paint to squirt onto it. But even his need for approval and his self- destructiveness and spite are not enough to allow him to mar a painting that he thinks is right.

Harris gets a lot of the details right, including the dazzling spectacle of watching Pollock create the paintings. In the beginning of the movie, before a flashback to Pollock’s early days, we see him at a elegant gallery opening, after Life Magazine has already named him the greatest living American artist. Pollock is asked to autograph the magazine and he reaches for it with paint-stained fingers. He may be all dressed up, but a real artist’s fingers are never completely clean. Great care has been taken with the movie’s art direction. A magnificent lobster-decorated dress worn by Pollock’s patron Peggy Guggenheim (Amy Madigan) is an exact replica of one she really wore. Much of the movie takes place on location at Pollock’s home in rural Long Island, and it all feels very genuine and authentic.

Harris, Harden, and Madigan are all outstanding, and the film, while flawed, is engrossing and impressive. But we never really see why Pollock was important or what motivated him. He is boorish, selfish, conceited, and, most of all, needy. A bunch of other artists make brief appearances and then disappear, making no impression at all except for the fun of seeing young versions of artists like Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline. And there are a few cringe-inducing expositional moments, as when Pollock’s wife, Lee Krasner (Marcia Gay Harden), exclaims on seeing his first dribble painting, “This isn’t Cubism, Jackson, because you’re not breaking down the figure into multiple views!” That does not do much either for those who are familiar with Pollock’s work or those who think that they have a child who could finger-paint better than that. Pollock, who wisely resisted explanations and categorization, deserves something more subtle and complex. There are moments when this film gives it to us, as when Pollock makes his famous statement, “I do not use the accident. I deny the accident.”

Parents should know that the movie contains a lot of mature material, including very strong language and sexual references and situations. A highly unsatisfactory sexual encounter between Pollock and Guggenheim is shown fairly explicitly. Characters drink, smoke, abuse drugs, and engage in self-destructive behavior. Pollock’s drunk driving with the passengers screaming, is shown, though not the crash that killed him. Family members treat each other badly, which may be upsetting for some viewers.

Families who see this movie should talk about why people become passionate about art and how art is affected by the surrounding commerce and culture. Why did Krasner give up her own art to take care of Pollock? Why were the views of Guggenheim and Greenberg so important? Why aren’t Pollock’s paintings just considered scribbles? Are there any painters today who are as important a part of the cultural landscape as Pollock was when he was featured in Life Magazine? Or are our new cultural icons working in different mediums?

People who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “Kerouac, The Movie,” a documentary about another highly influential 1950’s figure.