“K-Pax” has a couple of daunting movie cliché obstacles to overcome: the only-in-movies “land of cute crazy people” setting and the always popular “patient heals the doctor” theme. Despite all of that and an unwise decision to tie things up too neatly at the end, the film manages to make it work, thanks to outstanding work by stars Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges and a script that is warm, witty, and genuine.

Spacey plays Prot, who is committed to a mental hospital when he says that he is from another planet called K-Pax and that he traveled to Earth on a beam of light. He begins treatment with Dr. Mark Powell (Jeff Bridges). When Mark hesitates to categorize Prot as delusional, one of the other doctors asks, “What’s your diagnosis, jet lag?” To believe Prot’s claims would require abandoning fundamental beliefs about time and space. But his story is so complete – and so enticing – that Mark is determined to find out the truth, more for his own sake than for any therapeutic benefit to Prot.

Mark is not the only one enthralled by Prot’s stories of his home planet, K-Pax. Mark’s astronomer brother-in-law, despite his commitment as a scientist to rational empiricism, is so intrigued by Prot’s answers to his questions that all he can say is, “I don’t know what I believe. I only know what I saw.” Prot’s fellow patients begin to clamor to go back to K-Pax with him. It is not because anything he says makes K-Pax especially appealing – according to Prot, reproduction on K-Pax is uncomfortable, there is no such thing as family, and they don’t have anything as delicious as our produce – but because Prot himself is so appealing. There are indications that he may not be human: in addition to his extraordinary knowledge of astronomy, he has a superhuman sensitivity to ultra-violet light and seems impervious to anti-psychotic medications. But the most important evidence that he is not human could be that he is just too pleasant to be from Earth. He greets everyone by name and he really listens. He is not distracted by conventional beliefs and looks at the world as an outsider, which gives him great insight. Patients believe he can heal them, and Mark almost begins to believe it, too. When Mark’s boss asks him “why choose this one to save?” Mark replies, “I don’t know. Maybe he chose me.”

Director Softley has a delicate touch. Sunlight splintered by a prism, a child’s ruby slippers, Spacey is outstanding, as always, resisting the temptation to make Prot too adorable. The subtlety and grace of his performance are astonishing. Bridges does a fine job as the doctor, and his scenes with Spacey make the movie.

Parents should know that the movie has brief strong language, social drinking, and references to teen pregnancy, rape, and murder. There is a terrible crime, mostly offscreen, but we see bodies and blood. A child is briefly in mild peril. Patients and medical staff of different races and both genders work together in an atmosphere of professional respect.

Families who see this movie should talk about how people react to unthinkable tragedy and how being an outsider can give someone insights that others miss. Why did everyone want to go to K-Pax? Why do we see the reflections of Prot and Mark merge before they ever speak to each other? Why did Prot say that we have within us the power to heal ourselves? What did that mean about his own need to heal? Why do both the Mark and the sheriff say that they do not want to know the truth? Some families may want to talk about Mark’s unprofessional (and unrealistic) behavior in treating Prot.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy seeing Bridges as an alien in Starman, Richard Dreyfuss as a man drawn to follow a spaceship in Close Encounters of the Third Kind…, and that greatest of alien/human friendship stories, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial They will also enjoy John Travolta as a man who mysteriously becomes super-intelligent in Phenomenon, Barbra Streisand as a patient who teachers her psychiatrist about something beyond the rational world in the musical On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. And they might like to see James Stewart’s acclaimed performance in Harvey a gentle comedy about a man who believes his best friend is a six-foot-tall rabbit with magical powers, and Captain Newman, M.D. about a dedicated WWII-era army psychiatrist (Gregory Peck).

The new movie from the people behind “James and the Giant Peach” and “A Nightmare Before Christmas” has some of the same trademark visual inventiveness, but this is no children’s story.

“Monkey Bone” is based on a “graphic novel” (i.e., upscale comic book), and the plot is something like “The Wizard of Oz” crossed with “Orpheus and Eurydice” by way of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”

Brendan Fraser plays Stu, a shy comic artist whose repressed emotions are acted out by his cartoon creation, Monkey Bone. After a celebration of his new cartoon television series, and on his way to propose to the girl he loves (Bridget Fonda as Julie), his car crashes. Julie is not injured, but Stu is in a coma. Stu’s sister Kimmy (“Will and Grace’s” Megan Mullally, playing pretty much the same role) wants to pull the plug.

What Kimmy and Julie don’t realize is that while Stu appears to be unconscious, he has really traveled into “Downtown” a place that literally lives on nightmares. Hypno, the god of sleep (Giancarlo Esposito, from the waist up), rules Downtown, but the one who decides which souls can leave, either to die or to be awakened, is Death herself (Whoopi Goldberg as a cross between The Wicked Witch of the West and the Wizard). Stu tries to get back home, but Monkey Bone steals his body. While everyone back on earth tries to get used to the new anything-but- repressed Stu, the real Stu has to find a way to get back, even if it is just long enough to tell Julie that he loves her.

This simple story is just an excuse for some extraordinary art direction and some adolescent humor. If you think that having Stu threaten to choke his monkey is wildly funny, then this is the movie for you. But if you enjoy seeing wildly fantastic images that look like Hieronymus Bosch on acid, then this is your movie, too. Fraser is first-rate both as Stu and as the Stu body with Monkey Bone inside, and Rose McGowan is delicious as a cat woman with very fetching whiskers. But this movie will primarily appeal to teen-agers who like the offbeat.

Parents should know that the movie has some mature material, especially for a PG-13 rating. In a cartoon at the very beginning we see the origin of Monkey Bone when a young Stu is humiliated by becoming aroused in class by his teacher’s saggy arms. There is some strong language and elaborate flatulence humor. We see documentary footage of monkeys mating that is brief but graphic. Comic injuries and violence and some brief gross scenes of internal organs may be upsetting to some viewers.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai.”

There is some irony in the fact that this movie is about a boy who is trying to escape from the cartoonishly dysfunctional adults in his life, when in reality it is the adults in the lives of the people behind the movie who got it made and contribute the only tolerable moments.

“Orange County” stars the children of two Oscar-winners (Tom Hanks’ son Colin and Sissy Spacek’s daughter Schuyler Fisk) and is directed by Jake Kasden, son of screenwriter-director Lawrence Kasden (“The Big Chill,” “The Empire Strikes Back”). Hanks plays Shaun Brumder, a high school senior whose mother (Catherine O’Hara) is a drunk, father (John Lithgow) is too busy making deals to pay any attention to him, and brother Lance (Jack Black) is drugged out and “constantly recovering from the night before.” Shaun also has an airheaded bimbo stepmother, a wheelchair-bound stepfather, and two stoned surfer buddies. And he has a sweet, animal-loving girlfriend named Ashley (Fisk).

Shaun’s dream is to go to Stanford because his idol, Marcus Skinner, teaches there. But when his addled college counselor (Lily Tomlin) sends the wrong transcript, he is rejected. So Shaun, Lance, and Ashley drive up to Stanford to meet with the director of admissions (Harold Ramis) to try to persuade him to let Shaun in. Unfortunately, they accidentally feed him some of Lance’s drugs and burn down the Admissions office. Funny, huh? But after a few moments with his idol, Shaun, like Dorothy, learns that there’s no place like home.

This is the kind of movie that begins with a comic death in a surfing accident, followed by a funeral at which female mourners wear black bikinis. Drugs and drunkenness are supposed to be so inherently funny that no actual jokes have to accompany them. Then there are the wildly un-funny moments involving forgetting to give a sick man his medicine and then having a lot of things hit him on the head.

Since the very beginning of time, movies have featured sensitive teenagers who wanted to be writers and were not understood by the people around them. It’s an obvious theme because movies are written by people who all started out that way, so it is an experience they know well and feel deeply. Besides, writing the story gives them some ability to pay back those who helped or subbed them. But in this movie, our hero shows no evidence of being sensitive or a writer. His opening letter to his idol is ungrammatical and mundane – it sounds like a fan letter to O-Town from an 11-year-old. It may seem like a detail that does not matter in a silly comedy, but in fact it is details like this that separate a string of pratfalls from a story. Even in a comedy, there have to be believeable characters you root for, and that never happens here.

Hanks and Fisk, as the ostensible force of sanity at the heart of the movie, don’t get much of a chance to prove themselves as actors, but they seem to have some presence. Black, as always, even with terrible material, is a joy to watch. The top talent in small roles, including O’Hara, Lithgow, Tomlin, and Ramis, as well as Chevy Chase, Ben Stiller, and especially Kevin Kline, are like the oases in the movie’s desert. Kline, who seems to be on loan from another movie, has a very nice scene with Hanks, and shows us how a real actor can create a complete character with just a few words in a script and a few moments onscreen.

Parents should know that despite the PG-13 rating there is a lot of material that they may consider inappropriate for teenagers. Abuse of alcohol and drugs is portrayed as normal and funny. While on drugs, a character drives dangerously, has casual sex, and sets a building on fire, also intended to be comic. Another character is accidentally given drugs, which is supposed to be funny. A character pretends to be asleep so that he can watch a couple have sex. Some kids may also find the horrendous parenting – or the fact that the dysfunctional parents decide to reunite — upsetting. One of the “good guys’ blackmails a friend by threatening to expose her sluttish behavior.

Families who see this movie should talk about what really goes into applying to college and how people respond to terrible family situations.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy How I Got into College.

In fairness to the intended audience for this movie, the following review was written by my 16-year-old, who wanted to give it more stars: Road Trip, a raunchy comedy in the style of Detroit Rock City and American Pie, is a laugh out loud movie that’s good to see with friends if you’re a teenager (probably guys will like it more than girls.) while parents will avoid it for its vulgar humor and its parents-just-don’t understand star Tom Green.

Road Trip starts at Ithaca University with Barry (Green) practicing his typical bother-everyone sense of humor to possible future students he’s touring (he tells them he’s attended Ithaca for the past eight years and makes up stories about the buildings) and eventually gets them caught up in a story about his friends, where trouble starts when Josh (Seann William Scott) cheats on his girlfriend since he was five (Rachel Blanchard) with the girl he really likes, Beth (Amy Smart) and not only is his video camera accidentally left on but his friend accidentally mails it to his girlfriend in Austin. So he and three friends set off on an 1,800 mile epic road trip on which they blow up their car, constantly run out of money and regain it in various ways, meet all sorts of crazy people, (blacks who think its funny to put a KKK mask in Kyle’s backpack and pretend they found it, suspiciously blind lady, and Barry’s parents, the Manilows, to name a few) and learn their respective lessons about standing up to your parents, getting girls, friendship, etc.

Throughout the movie they shoot back to Barry, who stays on campus because he wants to feed Josh’s snake while he’s gone. His attempts to get it to eat a mouse, sing folk songs and help Beth find Josh (“He went to Austin. It’s in Massachusetts.” “You mean Boston?” “Yeah.”) had the audience laughing harder than anything else. Throughout the movie he seems to be just thrown in to make it funnier until the ending where he unwittingly saves the day. Although the entire cast is very good and Green is not the main character, it’s really his movie.

Contains foul language, crude humor, nudity, sexual situations, and a character who does drugs to hide his sensitivity.

Parents should know that the version on video includes even raunchier scenes deleted before theatrical release in order to get an R rating. The unrated version released on the video would have been likely to receive an NC-17 rating from the MPAA and parents might want to view it themselves before allowing their children or teenagers to watch it, even if they saw it in the theater.

Two Oscar-winners are no match for some irresistible dogs (with a little assistance from puppeteers and computer animators) in this so-so slapstick comedy about a Miami dentist who ends up in a dogsled race. The actors do their best, but there is no way they can hold the attention of the audience when those beautiful Siberian huskies and one magnificent border collie are on screen.

This is an a attempt to return to one of the Disney staples of the 1960’s, a light-hearted story pairing cute but clumsy actors with cute but clever animals. Think of “That Darn Cat,” “The Shaggy Dog,” “The Monkey’s Uncle,” and “The Ugly Dachshund.” The set-up this time is fine: a successful Miami dentist named Ted Brooks (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) inherits a team of champion Alaskan snow dogs. And some of the highly predictable jokes work reasonably well, as the city slicker used to sunshine has to adjust to live in a remote area that is all snow and ice.

Gooding is, as always, an attractive presence, with welcome support from Nichelle (“Lt. Uhura”) Nichols as his adoptive mother, James Coburn as his biological father, and Joanna Bacalso as his romantic interest. There is a cute dream sequence and the scenery is gorgeous. But overall, the movie is no better than fair.

Parents should know, though, that despite the PG rating, there is some material they might not consider appropriate for children. Characters drink hard liquor. Brooks’ late mother leaves a drink of Wild Turkey to all her friends. Brooks learns early in the movie that he is adopted, which some children (both adopted and not) might find disturbing. Later, he is told that his natural parents were two loners who had a one-night stand, and his biological father is a cranky (and white) mountain man played by James Coburn. Brooks tries to gain the respect of the mountain man and find out how his biological parents felt about each other and about him.

When Brooks finds out that he is half white, his adoptive mother makes a stereotype joke, responding, “That explains why you’re so crazy about Michael Bolton.” Parents should also make it clear to younger children that despite what it says in the movie, humans do not bite dogs on the ear to tame them.

Families who see this movie should talk about when we allow ourselves to be measured by the standards of others and when we trust our own ability to know what is important.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Beethoven(about a St. Bernard that adopts a family) and Rat Race(another slapstick comedy starring Gooding).