First, the good news. (1) It isn’t very long. If you are going to waste time at a movie, you won’t waste more than 85 minutes on this one. (2) It isn’t as bad as some of the other SNL movies, like “Superstar” and “It’s Pat.” It’s more of the caliber of “Stuart Saves His Family,” meaning that there are some very funny moments. (3) Will Ferrell is great as the husband of one of The Ladies Man’s ladies and some of the other SNL and “Kids in the Hall” veterans provide some bright spots. (4) It’s always great to see Billy Dee Williams.

Now, the bad news. You can’t make a five minute SNL sketch into a feature-length movie, even a short movie. It will have to have stretches of obvious padding, as in a useless sequence about how The Ladies Man grew up in the Playboy mansion. Most attempts to make a sketch character work in a movie try one of two options. Either he has to stay one-dimensional and get tiring or he has to have more depth and become less funny. This movie makes both mistakes, recycling the same jokes over and over and then asking us to believe that he’s really a loveable guy. Meadows the screenwriter should do better by Meadows the performer, who is much more talented than this material.

Tim Meadows plays Leon Phelps, a late-night talk show host who drinks Corvoisier as he does his broadcast and has been repeatedly fined by the FCC for using inappropriate language on the air. He and his beautiful producer Julie (Karyn Parsons of “Fresh Prince of Bel Air”) are fired and have to find new work. Julie gets organized and begins making pitches to other local stations. But Leon’s approach to problems is to “go have sex and wait for something to randomly happen.” He tries to track down a former lover who has written to offer him a fortune. He doesn’t realize that the husbands of many of his ladies have banded together to go after him, communicating via a “victims of the smiling ass” website, a reference to a tattoo of a smiley face that is glimpsed as he jumps out of the bedroom windows. Much comic chaos ensues, including a very gross bar-food eating contest.

Parents should know that this gets a well-deserved R rating for frequent and explicit sexual references. Though intended to be comic, Leon’s behavior is foolish, risky, hurtful, and exploitive. It may be an odd sign of progress in race relations that a movie like this can include a comic scene of a potential lynching, but it still may strike some viewers as uncomfortably insensitive to the tragic evidence of past racism.

Families who see this movie can talk about the ways that some people use sex to hide from feelings of sorrow or loneliness, and how Julie sees something in Leon that no one else does.

People who enjoy this movie will also enjoy the best of the SNL movies, “Wayne’s World.”

What is it about football movies? I don’t even like football, but I am a sucker for a good football movie. I’m even a sucker for a pretty good one like this lightweight but likeable story about players called in when the team goes on strike. It’s sort of “Rocky” crossed with “The Longest Yard,” “The Dirty Dozen,” and “The Bad News Bears.”

Gene Hackman plays Jimmy McGinty, a former coach of the Washington Sentinals football team brought back by the owner (Jack Warden)when the players go on strike. The other teams quickly hire professionals, but McGinty has been keeping a file of talented players who for one reason or another, have never played pro ball. One had an injured knee, one is in prison, one is deaf, one is a Welsh soccer player, one is a sumo wrestler, and one, Shane Falco (Keanu Reeves) was a college superstar who quit after a disastrous showing at the Sugar Bowl.

Not that I’m trying to spoil the ending or anything, but this is definitely a feel-good movie, and if we have to suspend a little disbelief with regard to a few small issues, oh, well, we don’t go to summer movies to think too hard.

What we do go to summer movies for is to enjoy ourselves, and that we do. As McGinty says, these guys get “what every athlete dreams of, a second chance.” They get to play for the love of the game and the challenge of defeating the other guys and their own demons. Loners get to be a part of a team. Their time on the field may be brief, but they leave forever changed. We get to see “everyday guys” playing in the big league. It is a delicious fantasy and just plain fun to watch.

Director Howard Deutch takes no chances, loading up the soundtrack with every classic sports movie standard from “We Will Rock You” to Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll, Part II,” and adding in some replacement cheerleaders who come from a strip club for some sizzle. It all comes together nicely. There are some very funny spots along the way, including a prison cell rendition of “I Will Survive” and a stripper-led cheer that distracts the opposing team at a crucial moment. The romance between Falco and head cheerleader Annabelle Farrell (Brooke Langton) is handled nicely, making it clear that it is not until he begins to feel better about himself that he can allow himself to get close to her. The team’s growing sense of loyalty and dignity and the coach’s faith in them are warmly portrayed. And, when all else fails, the football games are a hoot.

Parents should know that the movie includes some salty language, sexual references, and highly suggestive cheerleader moves. There is also substantial violence on and off the field, mostly punching and shoving, and a few mildly gross moments as well. Characters smoke and drink, and there are scenes in bars.

Families who see this movie should talk about what it is that makes people feel good about themselves, how a leader can make all the difference on a team, and whether fame and money hurt professional athletes and sports. Families should also talk about the coach’s comment that the difference between a winner and a loser is that a winner gets back on the horse and keeps trying.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “M*A*S*H” and “The Longest Yard” (both for mature audiences).

A hard-line judge is selected as the President’s new general in the war on drugs. Front-line cops in Mexico and the US go after the small-time distributors and try to make cases against the sources of the drugs. A pampered wife, pregnant with her second child, finds out that her husband’s legitimate businesses are just a front for his real import — cocaine. The judge’s teenage daughter becomes a heroin addict.

Director Steven Soderbergh (“Erin Brockovich,” “Sex, Lies, and Videotape”) ably keeps these stories on track, cutting back and forth to let them provide context and contrast for each other, and using different color pallattes to help keep them straight. There are some good lines: a character compares efforts to cut off the drug supply to a game of “Whack-a-Mole” and when a wealthy high school kid overdoses, one of the other teenagers at the party says, “He can’t die on the f**ing floor–his parents are in Barbados!” And a cop notes that “In Mexico, law enforcement is an entrepreneurial activity.”

Despite a first-rate all-star cast, the movie feels flat and a little formulaic, almost like one of those old “Dragnet” episodes about the dangers of drugs. The script moves the characters around like chess pieces. Packing so many stories in so little time requires a lot of narrative short-cuts like coincidences and stereotypes. The Zeta Jones character switches from innocent and doe-eyed to commanding and vicious faster than you can say “Michael Corleone.” Individual scenes have some tension and some fine performances (especially by Benecio del Toro and Don Cheadle as cops), but the overall impact is muted.

Parents should know that the movie has everything that triggers an R rating: violence (including the death of major characters, murder, torture, and a teenage overdose), explicit sex (including the judge’s daughter trading sex for drugs), and strong language. Characters betray each other and there are intense family scenes. However, this is at its heart a morality tale, and all of the R-rated material is in the service of the overall anti-drug message.

Families who see this movie should use it as an opportunity to talk frankly about drugs, both their own views on individual drug use and the impact that the drug business has on the community and the country. As teenagers what they think about the way the judge and his wife responded to his daughter’s drug use, and about his decision at the end of the movie. Was it the right one? Why did the drug dealer’s wife decide to become involved in his business? Did the movie make you feel differently about the role that illegal drugs play in the lives of people around us? When the judge asks the staff for new ideas, the response is silence. What should the next person to hold the anti-drug czar job do?

Families who like this movie should see some of the other performances by its outstanding cast, including Del Toro (who won an Oscar for this role) in “Snatch” and “The Usual Suspects” (both for mature audiences) and Cheadle in “A Lesson Before Dying.” Families who enjoy this movie might like to see the English miniseries that inspired it, “Traffik.”

For the third time in a row, Disney departs from its traditional animation release formula with this non-musical, intense-action adventure (rated PG for violence) about the search for the legendary city that mysteriously disappeared in ancient times.

Michael J. Fox appealingly provides the voice of Milo Thatch, a scholar and linguist who dreams of realizing his late grandfather’s quest to find Atlantis. He works at Washington’s Smithsonian Institution, where he is relegated to the boiler room. A wealthy and eccentric friend of his grandfather’s offers to fund an expedition, and Milo finds himself on a submarine led by Commander Lyle T. Rourke (James Garner). The crew includes hundreds of sailors led by Helga, a sultry mercenary (Claudia Christian); Sweet, a genial half-black, half-Native American doctor (Phil Morris); Audrey, a teenaged Latina mechanic (Jacqueline Obradors); Vinnie, a demolitions expert (Don “Father Guido Sarducci” Novello); Mrs. Packard, an unflappable, chain-smoking communications officer (gravel-voiced Florence Stanley); and the Mole, a geologist who loves dirt (Corey Burton).

They set off on a journey reminiscent of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” culminating in a ferocious battle with the Leviathan, a mechanical sea monster that destroys the ship and kills most of the crew. Those who are left struggle through every obstacle imaginable but finally make it to Atlantis, where they meet Kida, a Pocahantas-style princess (Cree Summer) who speaks every language and is thousands of years old. She wants to make friends with the strangers, but her father wants them killed, so no one else will ever find them. Milo helps Princess Kida uncover the secret source of her country’s power but another threat appears – it turns out that Rourke and the others are only there to loot Atlantis. Milo has to find a way to save the place that has become his real home.

Parents should know that this movie is more intense and scary than the usual Disney release, with lots of (highly anachronistic) dive-bombing planes, lots of guns, a huge robot monster, fire, and the death of hundreds of anonymous sailors. Characters are mean to each other and some betray each other. Major characters are in peril and some are killed. One character is a chain-smoker, and there is a joke about whiskey, one about sleeping in the nude, and a whoopee-cushion gag. Milo becomes seasick. The movie does a good job of showing an inter-racial cast working well together, and there are both male and female good guys and bad guys.

Families should talk about the rise and fall of cultures over time, and how the study of history is essential in keeping a culture alive. Kids might want to learn more about the legends of Atlantis and read about the Greek Island of Santorini, which may be the source for some of them. Families might also want to talk about some of the anachronisms and plot holes in the movie. A key element of the plot involves a reference in an ancient document to Iceland, not Ireland, which, of course, had different names and were spelled with different alphabets thousands of years ago. The technology is also inaccurate – we are willing to suspend belief for Jules Verne-style science fiction machinery, but this features airplanes and trucks as commonplace items.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “The Thief and the Cobbler” – the character of the thief (voice of Jonathan Winters) may have inspired this movie’s Mole.

In this likeable family comedy, Jason Shepherd (Frankie Muniz of “Malcolm in the Middle”) plays an 8th grader who relies on his easy smile and even easier lies to keep him out of trouble, with a little help from his reluctant but loyal friend Kaylee (Nickelodeon’s Amanda Bynes). But it all catches up with him when he tells his teacher an elaborate story about being late with his homework because his father choked on a meatball. Though he thinks he has backed it up by pretending to be his father on the phone, he is busted when his parents show up at school. He has until 6:00 pm to turn in the paper, which must be in his own handwriting. If he doesn’t get it in on time, he’ll have to repeat the class in summer school.

He writes a story called “Big Fat Liar.” Racing to get it in on time, he collides with a car that turns out to contain an even bigger liar than he is, Hollywood producer Marty Wolf (Paul Giamattti). Jason gets into Wolf’s car and everything falls out of his backpack. He shoves it all back in, but when he gets to the school, the story is missing. Summer school is bad enough, but even worse is that no one believes that he really did write the story or that he got a ride from a Hollywood producer. He is literally the boy who cried (Marty) Wolf.

Summer comes, and summer school is miserable. At the movies, Jason sees a coming attraction for a Marty Wolf movie called….”Big Fat Liar.” Wolf has taken the story Jason left in the car and turned it into a major motion picture!

Jason sees this as his chance to prove to his parents that for once he really was telling the truth. When his parents go away for the weekend, Jason take his entire bank account and buys two tickets to Los Angeles so that he and Kaylee can find Wolf and make him tell Jason’s father the truth.

Jason and Kaylee scam their way into getting a limo ride from the airport and duck off the Universal Studios tour bus to find Wolf’s office. Then they scam their way into his office, but Wolf refuses to tell the truth. So Jason and Kaylee, along with a growing group of fellow Wolf-haters, set up a series of pranks designed to torture Wolf into admitting that Jason wrote the story for his new movie.

Muniz and Giamatti are deft comic actors, but the highlight of the movie is Bynes as Kaylee. Her two different but equally hilarious renditions of Hollywood secretaries are gems. Giamatti is so relentlessly selfish and egotistical that it gets a bit tedious, but he does do a wonderful little dance to “Hungry Like a (what else?) Wolf.”

Parents should know that, while the movie’s theme is the importance of telling the truth and being trustworthy, the message is a little mixed. In order to prove that he was telling the truth about finishing his story, Jason and Kaylee have to lie, steal, vandalize, and generally behave in an irresponsible – and illegal – manner, even by the standards of comic fantasy. And at the end, Jason’s parents are proud of him for proving that he was not lying when he said he had written his paper, never mentioning that perhaps two 14-year-olds should not have flown to California when they were supposed to be at home. One small bright spot worth mentioning is that all of Jason’s efforts are intended to show that he was telling the truth. His motive for pursuing Wolf is never getting any money or credit for his story. Another strength of the movie is its racially diverse cast.

Families who see this movie should talk about why people lie and how it feels not to be trusted. When someone is caught in a lie, how can he or she regain the trust of those who have been disappointed? Would you like to see the movie based on Jason’s story? What do you think it would be like?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Harriet the Spy. The Kid, and Snow Day.