The big surprise ending of “Unbreakable” is what a disappointment it is.

The writer/director of “The Sixth Sense” begins with many of the same elements — Bruce Willis, a Philadelphia setting, a strained marriage, a child who is grappling with some big issues, elements of the supernatural, and a twist at the end. Once again, he creates a haunting and portentous mood with subdued performances, somber hues, and fluid camera movements. But unlike “The Sixth Sense,” in which a surprise at the end kicked the entire movie into a higher gear (and inspired audiences to go see it again to help them unravel it), this one has an ending that inspired hoots and boos at the screening I attended. In particular, the “what happens after the movie ends” description that come up on the screen just before the credits is the worst I have ever seen.

Bruce Willis plays David Dunn, a security guard who seems disconnected from his own life, unable to remember very much about his past and unwilling to connect to his wife and child. When he is the only survivor of a train crash, walking away without a single injury, bruise, or scratch, he is contacted by Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), a comic art dealer who has a congenital bone disease. Price has bones that break easily; Dunn has bones that never break. Price believes there must be a connection, and that he must help Dunn find his destiny.

Comic book themes of good and evil, hero and enemy, strength and vulnerability, thesis and antithesis, and destiny and choice appear throughout the movie. Several times, characters see something upside down at first, and then have to turn it around to see it clearly. Price helps Dunn realize that he is more than a security guard. He is a protector. When Dunn begins to use his gifts, he begins to lose the sadness that has always engulfed him. When he tells his wife he had a nightmare, he is not referring to the murderer he has just battled but to a past in which he was able to sense tragedy around him but was not aware that he had the ability to protect people from it.

Parents should know that this movie has a lot of violence. Although most of it is offscreen, its themes, including sexual assault, murder of the parents of two children, and genocide, may be especially disturbing. A child uses a gun. There is a brief vulgar reference and an implication of date rape.

Families who see this movie should talk about how we find our “place in the world,” and the importance of recognizing our special gifts so that we can make the best use of them. If members of the family enjoy comic books, they may want to talk about the tradition of pictoral story-telling, the themes of hero and arch-villain and what makes them so enduring. We often think of good guys and bad guys as opposites, but we should also think about what they have in common.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “The Sixth Sense” and a better teaming of Willis and Jackson in “Die Hard: With a Vengeance.”

The Plot: Harpo, Chico, and Groucho Marx bring their sublime brand of anarchy to perhaps its most fitting setting in this comic masterpiece. Groucho is (as ever) a fast-talking fortune hunter (this time called Otis P. Driftwood), chasing (as ever) dim dowager Margaret Dumont (this time called Mrs. Claypool).

Mrs. Claypool brings two Italian opera stars to the United States (Kitty Carlisle as sweet Rosa and Walter Woolf King as cruel Rodolfo Laspari) on board an ocean liner. Talented tenor Riccardo (Allan Jones), who loves Rosa, his manager Fiorello (Chico Marx), and Tomasso (Harpo Marx), Rodolfo’s abused dresser, stow away in Driftwood’s steamer trunk. They manage to get off the boat disguised as bearded Russian aviators, but are discovered and are chased by a New York detective. When Rosa refuses Rodolfo’s romantic advances, she is fired. But Tomasso and Fiorello wrack havoc on the opera’s performance of “Il Trovatore,” until Rosa and Riccardo come in and save the show.

Discussion: Many of the Marx Brother’s best-loved routines are here, including the wildly funny contract negotiation, as Groucho and Chico try to con each other (“That’s what we call a sanity clause.” “Oh no, you can’t fool me. There ain’t no Sanity Clause!”) and the famous stateroom scene, as person after person enters Groucho’s closet-sized room on the ship, while Harpo manages to stay asleep (and draped over as many women as possible) and Groucho stays philosophical (when the manicurist asks if he wants his nails long or short, he says, “You’d better make them short; it’s getting pretty crowded in here.”). The movie veers happily from the wildest slapstick (the Marx brothers replace the music for “Il Trovatore” with “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”) to the cleverest wordplay (by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind), punctuated by musical numbers that range from pleasant to innocuous. Children studying piano may especially enjoy Chico’s speciality — playing the piano while his fingers do acrobatics. And all children will enjoy learning that the stars were real-life brothers, who performed together for most of their lives.

Questions for Kids:

· Why won’t Rodolfo sing to the people who came to say goodbye to him?

· The Marx brothers play people who are not very nice in this movie — they steal, they cheat, they lie, and they cause havoc. How does the movie make you like them anyway?

Connections: This was the most commercially successful of the Marx Brothers movies, in part because of the very sections that seem most tedious to us now — the serious musical numbers and the romance. Children will enjoy the other Marx Brothers movies as well, especially “A Day at the Races” (NOTE–that movie contains some material that seems racist by today’s standards, particularly a rather minstrel show-ish musical number), “Duck Soup,” “Horse Feathers,” and “Monkey Business.” Fans of the many movie references in “The Freshman,” with Matthew Broderick and Marlon Brando, may notice that Broderick’s fake passport is in the name of Rodolfo Laspari.

A very uneven thriller-romance is brightened by dark comedy and another magnetic performance by Nicole Kidman as the 21st century equivalent to a mail order bride. Shy bank teller John (Ben Chaplin) orders his bride from an internet company called “From Russia With Love.” He orders a brand new double bed and cleans up his little suburban house in anticipation, though he is not able to (foreshadowing alert) rid his house of an infestation of ants, and then goes off to the airport to pick her up.

The good news is, well, she looks like Nicole Kidman. The bad news is that she does not speak English, she smokes, and on the way home from the airport she has to throw up.

John has some second thoughts, but he can’t get anyone from the agency on the phone. Meanwhile, Nadiya efficiently discovers his stash of porn and even more efficiently makes herself sexually indispensible.

Nadiya stays at home and knits, and John goes off to the bank with a spring in his step and the ring she brought him on his finger. He presents her with a Russian/English dictionary and she uses it to tell him that it is her birthday. But the celebration is interrupted by the arrival of her cousin and his friend.

At this point, things start to go wrong. Many betrayals, a bank robbery, a lot of smacking around and threats with guns later, there is a resolution as uneven as the movie’s tone. There are some signs of real talent here in John’s generic performance evaluation and the bank’s “trust” exercises, Nadia’s monologue about her binoculars and her bright red knitting. The movie’s director, screenwriters, and producer (three brothers) clearly intended to make a movie that transcends genre, but it does not really work. It just feels unsettlingly muddled.

Parents should know that the movie has very strong language, a lot of violence and explicit sex, including bondage, references to prostitution, and an out of wedlock pregnancy. Stealing and corruption are positively portrayed.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Kidman’s sensational performance as a woman who entices two teenage boys to kill her husband in To Die For and Francois Truffaut’s mail-order bride thriller Mississippi Mermaid.

I may sound like the Movie Grandmom here, but it is a darned shame that this smart and sassy movie has to include unnecessarily raunchy humor. Otherwise, this would be a terrific movie for kids, because it raises some important issues and it is a lot of fun.

Kirsten Dunst plays Torrence, whose whole life revolves around competitive cheerleading. She has just been elected captain of her squad, the five-time national champions, and it seems as though her senior year will be everything she dreamed of. But then one girl on the squad is out with a broken leg. And then real disaster strikes — it turns out that their award-winning routines were stolen from another squad, black cheerleaders who could not afford to go to the national competitions. Torrence has to face challenges of ethics and leadership and romance to sort all of this out before the nationals.

The movie strikes just the right note, respecting Torrence’s commitment and sportsmanship, but not taking any of it too seriously. The opening and closing cheers are the movie’s high point, the first one mocking the cheerleader ideal and the one that accompanies the closing credits to the classic 80’s “Mickey” song by Toni Basil. The issues of the white appropriation of black culture (going back at least to Elvis and Pat Boone) is an important one for kids to understand.

Parents should know, though, that while the behavior of the kids in the movie is mostly unobjectionable, the language and sexual references get pretty raunchy. It isn’t just the four-letter words that are typical these days in movies intended for a high school audience. But a boy jokes about slipping his finger in a girl’s underpants while he is holding her up during a cheer, and the insults are more vulgar than usual. Torrence’s little brother is practically demonic in his behavior. Parents should also know that Torrence’s boyfriend cheats on her (there is a girl in his bed). But Torrence and her new love have just one kiss (and, believe it or not, a very romantic tooth-brushing scene).

Families who see this movie should talk about the way that Torrence decides what is important to her and shows determination and commitment. At first, she tries a moral compromise in hiring a professional choreographer because “everybody does it,” but she knows it is wrong, and she is scrupulously honest and fair in her preparation for the nationals. She also handles the results with grace, and she believes in herself enough to break up with the boy who does not believe in her. Kids should also talk about the way that Missy and her brother Cliff support each other.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy watching some of the real-life cheerleader competitions on ESPN. They are amazing!