A message to those of you who might be considering larceny, fraud, or murder — it’s much, much more complicated than it seems. Unfortunately, the people who are not smart enough to figure that out are the people who think that it might make sense to, for example, inject paint into the number balls that they use to select the winning lottery ticket, so that only certain numbers will come up. It turns out that the people in this movie use whatever intelligence they have to think up this idea, leaving none left over for small details like what to do with the people who discover what they’ve done and want a piece of the action.

Inspired by a true story, this is the tale of a Harrisburg, PA television weatherman who conspires with the girl who selects the winning numbers for the state lottery to make sure they will have the winning ticket.

John Travolta plays Russ Richards, a popular local figure with a permanent parking space and roped-off table at his favorite local bistro, Denny’s. He has ambitiously but unwisely invested in a snowmobile franchise. Despite his professional expertise, he did not anticipate that Harrisburg’s uncharacteristically balmy winter would leave him on the brink of bankruptcy. He consults his friend, Gig (Tim Roth), who owns a strip joint. Gig arranges a robbery of the snowmobile showroom, but that goes wrong. So he suggests to Russ that perhaps Russ’s girlfriend Crystal (Lisa Kudrow), who goes on camera in a ball gown each week to select the winning lottery numbers, might just be persuaded to help make sure that the numbers she picks are the ones they pick. It turns out that Crystal is delighted.

Russ and Crystal behave like people who know for sure that they were meant to be rich, and are getting increasingly annoyed that somehow the message never got across. But Russ is a sweet guy at heart, if cowardly and self-centered. What he really loves are the fans. Crystal turns out to be completely ruthless. What she really loves is stuff — as she models her new Italian leather coat she happily announces that she will never again have to wear anything that didn’t come over on a boat. Crystal brings in her weird, hulking, snuffling, fun-doll fan of a cousin (Michael Moore) to be the ostenstible purchaser of the lottery ticket. But when he tells her he wants more of the money, she dispatches him with less interest than she would show in a broken nail.

Director Nora Ephron, best known for writing and directing sparkly romantic comedies like “Sleepless in Seattle,” goes for a darker kind of comedy here. She gets terrific performances from a first-rate cast, especially Bill Pullman as a lazy police officer. But Ephron is a long way from the Coen brothers. She has some sharp insights about the ambitions and strategies of her characters and there are some very funny moments, a sort of “Maltese Falcon” on acid, but ultimately it does not work.

Parents should know that the movie has very strong language, nudity, sexual references and situations, assault, murder, shooting, drinking, smoking, and drug use, in addition to the overall theme of larceny and fraud. Some characters are punished, but some are not.

Families who see this movie should talk about why the money is important to the characters and how they calculate their risks. Movies about crime are always in some sense movies about problem-solving, and it is worth pointing out the way that the characters respond to the initial challenge of figuring out a way to sabotage the lottery and to the subsequent problems that they did not anticipate. Families may also want to talk about why people do and do not obey the law and what the consequences are for themselves and society if they don’t.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “Fargo,” a darker but more successful comedy about larceny and murder.

It would take more time to list all of the things that were awful about this odious movie than it would be to watch it again. I’d rather not do either one.

This is a movie about a purportedly loveable slacker named Van Wilder (Ryan Reynolds) who has been the big man on campus for seven years. His father (Tim Matheson) pulls the financial plug, and Van has to find a way to pay his tuition so that he can stay on for more of what he loves about college – parties.

So, like any enterprising young man, he starts up a business: Topless Tutors. It is wildly successful until the strip club owner decides he wants his dancers back. Van finally finds his true calling in life –- he’s a party planner with a specialty in debauchery, sort of Martha Stewart crossed with Hugh Hefner.

Meanwhile, intrepid campus reporter Gwen (Tara Reid) decides to write about Van. Despite the fact that she has a pre-med frat-president boyfriend, she finds herself drawn to him. And despite the fact that Van has spent seven years being benevolent but distant, he finds himself being drawn to her.

Around this slight plot contrivance are strewn many gross attempts at humor involving bodily functions and excretions, both human and animal. They include a prank involving ingestion of dog semen inside éclair filling, getting children drunk (and having them barf), and feeding an extremely powerful laxative to someone just before an exam with no bathroom breaks. It is also supposed to be funny that what appears to be oral sex is just a woman measuring Van for a pair of pants while sucking on a lollypop and that Van is forced to have sex with an elderly woman who wears a wig. Are you laughing yet?

There is a half-hearted attempt to portray Van as all right at heart because he raises money for campus causes and befriends people that others might think of as losers. The movie tries to have fun including cast members from classic teen comedies like Animal House, Revenge of the Nerds, Risky Business, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and American Pie, but all it does is serve to remind us of how much better those movies were. (I admit that I had not anticipated ever using some of those movies in the same sentence as the word “better.”)

The script is unforgivably sloppy, with dialogue that sounds like people who don’t know very much English made it up on the spot. It does have many vivid and imaginative euphemisms for female body parts and oral sex.

Parents should know that this movie has the grossest and most disgusting humor imaginable, involving every possible bodily function. There are extended jokes about the size of a dog’s testicles. Characters drink to excess. Van’s beneficence includes getting compliant girls for boys who would otherwise not have anyone to have sex with.

Audiences looking for a better movie in this genre should check out the closest thing to a classic it has produced: National Lampoon’s Animal House.

lTim Burton’s “Planet of the Apes” is less a remake than a re-imagining of the classic staring Charlton Heston. This version has no loincloth and no Statue of Liberty, and no Roddy McDowell, but Heston does show up for a surprisingly effective cameo — as one of the apes.

Mark Wahlberg plays Leo, an officer in the United States Air Force, working on a space station in 2029. An exploratory aircraft piloted by a monkey disappears into a mysterious electrical field. Against the orders of his commanding officer, Leo follows it to find out what happened. The storm hurtles him through time and space until he crashes on a planet where apes rule and humans are slaves. Ari (Helena Bonham Carter) helps Leo and some of the others escape to a forbidden city that will reveal some of the planet’s history. But General Thade (Tim Roth) and his army are in pursuit with orders to destroy them. As Burton promised in interviews, this version does not use the now-famous ending in the first film that showed them the planet they had landed on was Earth. This one ends with a twist that may even top it.

As in all of Burton’s movies, including “Beetlejuice” and “Edward Scissorhands,” the art direction is intricate, meticulous, and strangely beautiful. Every detail is a work of art, from the texture of the ape armor to the outline of the spaceship.

Wahlberg makes an appealing, all-American hero, though he is not up to the task of delivering a brief pep talk to the assembled humans. He is no Kenneth Branaugh in “Henry V.” He is not even Bill Pullman in “Independence Day.” But he is fine in the action scenes and he handles the challenge of kissing females of two different species with reasonable finesse. Overall, the simian performers are better and more believable than the humans. Bonham Carter makes a remarkably fetching ape, flirting through her bangs and using her eyes and body language to deliver a real performance. She has far more range of expression than Estella Warren (of “Driven”) as a feisty human in a costume that seems left over from Raquel Welch in “One Million B.C.” Roth is a seething presence as the bad guy, Michael Clarke Duncan gives physical and emotional weight to the role of the loyal officer, and Paul Giametti is hilarious as a slave trader held hostage.

Parents should know that the movie features intense and prolonged peril, a great deal of violence, and many deaths, including characters we care about. Characters are beaten and branded. There is a brief mild sexual situation and some strong language.

Families who see this movie should talk about the way that Burton makes unabashedly clear the parallels between the views of the apes toward humans and the views of racists and other bigots on Earth. Like those who have argued for segregation, apartheid, genocide, and “ethnic cleansing,” the apes find justification for their oppression of humans by insisting that humans are inferior creatures who have no souls or by demonizing them. The apes seem to have no problem with sub-species distinctions, and different kinds of apes work and socialize without any distinctions.

Families who enjoy this movie should see the original and some of its sequels to compare them. They, too, served as a metaphor for racial divides in an era in which it was much easier to put some of the dialogue about equal rights and revolution into the mouths of apes than people. They should also read Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, a stunning book about a wise ape who teaches his human pupil to think about the world in a completely different way. I promise, when you are done with the book, you will do the same.

The credits for “Scary Movie 2” show seven different screenwriters, which means an average of 1.3 good jokes per writer. But hey, if you thought that this movie would have witty repartee, you never saw the first one.

Though a slight improvement over the original, “Scary Movie 2” is the same hour and a half of easy, dumb humor: insults, pop culture references, political incorrectness, and bodily fluids, gallons and gallons and gallons of bodily fluids.

I’d like to point out for what I am sure will not be the last time that it is not enough to simply insult someone or make a politically incorrect comment or drown someone in excretions. That’s the easy part. The tricky part, and the worthwhile part, is to make those things funny, and this movie misses so often that its hits seem almost inadvertent. So what we have is a lot of fake and lazy attempts at humor. They may have the rhythm and cadence of jokes, but there is nothing really funny inside. On the other hand, the movie is so cheerfully unassuming about being in the worst possible taste that it is hard to be bothered by it.

What passes for a plot begins with a brief parody of “The Exorcist,” with James Woods in the Max von Sydow role as the title character. This is the highlight of the movie, especially when Veronica Cartwright, in the Ellen Burstyn role, segues from singing “Hello Dolly” with her friends to a rousing chorus of “Shake Ya Azz.” But it ends with tragedy, and we skip ahead to a year later, when a professor (Tim Curry) and his wheelchair-bound assistant take some students to the mansion where it took place, for some paranormal experiments. The rest of the movie is just an avalanche of parodies of everything and anything, from Monica Lewinsky’s dress to “The Weakest Link,” and violations of every possible standard of good taste. Not one but two handicapped characters are played for laughs (with extended comic use of a withered hand), and, as was once said about the infinitely better movie, “The Loved One,” there is something to offend everyone. Woods and Tori Spelling(!) should get good sport Oscars, but the other cast members are mostly forgettable.

Parents should know that this movie is filled with explicit, graphic and offensive humor about every possible kind of sexual act, and that it contains material that would easily get an NC-17 rating in a drama. Peril is mostly comic, but at least two characters are killed and there are some jump-out-at-you surprises. As one would expect in a movie written, produced, and directed by black performers, there are some pointed and valid references to the stereotypical portrayal of black characters in Hollywood films, and the female characters are (in a comic context) brave and capable. However, the movie can be seen as sexist and homophobic, while at the same time parodying sexism and homophobia.

Families who see this movie should talk about the process and role of parody and satire in helping us to see what we take for granted in a new way. How does this movie affect the audience’s ability to enjoy standard thrillers? If they break their promise again and come out with another sequel, what will that one find to make fun of?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy the movies that inspired it, including What Lies Beneath and Scream.

Jehane Noujaim left her job at MTV to make documentaries just as her roommate, Kaliel Isaza Tuzman, was leaving his job at Goldman Sachs to run a new Internet company. They combined their two ventures when Noujaim, in conjunction with Chris Hegedus (maker of “The War Room,” about the first Clinton campaign) agreed to follow Tuzman’s venture to tell the story of what they were sure would be a sensational success. Instead, they ended up telling the story of a spectacular failure.

We first see Tuzman leaving Goldman Sachs for the last time, kicking the cardboard box with his belongings out to the street. He is about to join his high school best friend, Tom Herman. Tuzman will be the CEO and Herman will be in charge of technology. The company, which they decide to call govWorks.com, will be a place for citizens to pay parking tickets, taxes, and other fees to local governments. Tuzman’s first job is to raise money.

From 1999 to 2001, govWorks went from eight employees to more than 200, and then down to none. They raised $60 million and ended in bankruptcy.

Noujaim and Hegedus shot over 400 hours of film, not just in the office, but in the bedroom, the gym, the car, in a pizza parlor, on a company retreat hosted by Herman’s parents, and even at the circus. We see Herman braiding his daughter’s hair and hear Tuzman’s soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend complaining that he does not call her. We see arguments over priorities and presentations. A competitor visits the office and then there is a mysterious burglary that appears to be espionage. Finally, we see the almost unbearably painful moment when the friendship is shattered by the business, as Herman leaves and then, on advice of counsel, tries to return only to be formally terminated. Herman says, “I’d rather see govWorks fail than risk personal relationships.” Tuzman says, “The thing that I’ll remember most from last year is when you told me you don’t trust me.” At the end, though, Herman, still wearing the t-shirt of the failed firm, tells Tuzman that “I had a great time over the last year and I love you.” And we see from the end credits that they are still in business together – using their expertise to advise distressed dot.coms.

In finding one story to tell among 400 chaotic hours of footage, there were probably a million options. They story the filmmakers chose to tell is the story of the Herman/Tuzman relationship and the way that the very qualities that made the two men good complements for each other ultimately led to catastrophe. Maybe it is because their access to the principals of the firm was extensive but they were not allowed to film the backers or board, so the story they told was determined by the pictures they had to show it. Maybe it is because the filmmakers were women, so they saw the story with a Deborah Tannen-esque yang to Tuzman’s testosterone-driven yin.

Parents should know that the movie includes very strong language and tense and emotional moments. One of the great strengths of the story is the way in which a group of people from very diverse backgrounds and cultures works together with great loyalty and commitment.

Families who see this movie should talk about how we make choices when our work and professional lives conflict. At one point in this movie, Tuzman, under intense deadline pressure, calls for an all-weekend meeting. Herman refuses, saying that he promised to be with his daughter. Families should talk about what happens next, and what they would do in that situation.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “The War Room.”