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.

Renée Zellwegger is irresistible as Bridget Jones, in this delectable romantic comedy with some sly references to that uber-romantic comedy, Pride and Prejudice. From the opening credits, when we see her singing along with the radio to “All By Myself” in her flannel pajamas, we know that she is destined to find someone who loves her as much as we do already, and that we will have a lot of fun on the way there.

Bridget wants to lose weight, stop smoking and drinking, and stop worrying about getting a boyfriend -– so that she can get a boyfriend. But we know that she is just fine the way she is, and suspect that in her heart, she knows that, too. The trick is finding a guy who knows it, and before she can figure that out, she has to get through the gorgeous cad stage. That means an affair with her workaholic, alcoholic, self-centered, needy, but witty and undeniably extremely gorgeous boss, Daniel.

Hugh Grant seems positively relieved not to have to be the stammering, adorable, truehearted “Notting Hill” guy anymore. He plays the part of Daniel, “a disaster with a posh voice and a terrible character,” with such relish that we enjoy seeing Bridget fall for him almost as much as we enjoy seeing her tell him off.

But being taken advantage of by Daniel is not the worst of Bridget’s trials. There is her mother, who leaves her father for an oily home shopping channel pitchman with a fake tan. There is showing up for a “tarts and vicars” party in a Playboy bunny outfit because no one told her that they had decided not to have the guests wear costumes after all. There is the rather stunning shot of Bridget from below as she slides down a fireman’s pole, broadcast throughout the country on television. And there is the stiff and disapproving childhood neighbor, Mark Darcy, now a divorced barrister, who always seems to be there just as Bridget encounters disaster.

Like his namesake in Pride and Prejudice, though, Darcy turns out to have more tenderness and humor than one would think. And so do the filmmakers. Colin Firth, who played Darcy in the television miniseries “Pride and Prejudice,” appears as this Mr. Darcy as well, and his sly and subtle variation on the character is another of the movie’s great pleasures.

Parents should know that this movie is rated R for strong language and for sexual situations and references. There is a very brief shot of a naked couple making love. Characters drink and smoke a lot.

Families who see this movie should talk about how we sort through all of the expectations of our families and our society in deciding who we will be and what chances we will take. What does someone have to know about herself in order to turn down a Daniel? In order to understand what someone like Darcy has to offer?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “Four Weddings and a Funeral” (rated R) and everyone should watch Firth and Jennifer Ehle in the miniseries version of “Pride and Prejudice.” The classic MGM version with Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson (adapted by Aldous Huxley) is also a treat.

This special effects action comedy is fun for kids and fairly painless for adults. More important, it is a rare film directed at kids from 4th-8th grade, that most neglected of movie audiences. Not surprisingly, it is produced by Nickelodeon, the cable channel dedicated to just that group.

Zak (Jesse Bradford), the son of a loving but preoccupied scientist, accidentally takes a top-secret device, thinking it is a watch. It turns out to be a mechanism for speeding up the metabolic rate of whoever is touching it so that they see the world around them as almost frozen. To the rest of the world, they are moving to fast to be seen. At first, Zak uses it to impress a pretty girl (Paula Garces as Francesca) and together they have fun with some pranks and pay-backs. But then the bad guys come after them, and Zak and Francesca have to save the world.

The plot is a throw-back to the old Disney classics like “The Shaggy Dog” (also with a pretty teenage girl named Francesca) and “The Absent-Minded Professor.” Director Jonathan Frakes (of “Star Trek”) ably handles the sci-fi aspect with special effects that truly are special. We see water droplets suspended in air and a bee floating over a flower. The movie zips along quickly and has a lively pop soundtrack.

Parents should know that there is mild peril, though the guns only shoot ice bullets (to shock the system out of hyper-time) and no one is hurt. Francesca wears some revealing outfits, but she and Zak share only a couple of kisses. The movie features multi-ethnic good and bad guys and Francesca is strong, smart, and brave.

Families who see the movie should talk about the problems of developing technologies that can get into the wrong hands and the problems of balancing commitments to work and family.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy The Rocketeer.