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.

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!

Joline (Heather Graham) is a woman of her word. Her parents “had a way of moving on from things, including each other.” But Joline believes in commitment. When she gets married, she has the ring tattooed on her finger. Less than two years later, when her husband Carl (Luke Wilson) leaves her without telling her where he is going or why he is going, she goes after him.

Joline narrates the story, and she often prefaces her statements with “I read somewhere,” as in “I read somewhere that the reason most relationships break down is that both parties are waiting for the other to fix it.” She also read somewhere that people can find each other just by following their instincts, and sure enough, she somehow tracks down Carl in El Paso, Texas. But she does not let him know she is there. She just parks near his new home and watches him, taking time out to inadvertently disrupt his relationships with Carmen, his new girlfriend (Patricia Velasquez) and his boss (Dylan Baker). Joline and Carmen become friends, and when Joline’s brother, Jay (Casey Affleck) comes after her, he and Carmen become romantically involved. Joline also gets advice from Carmen’s grandfather (Alfonso Arau), who has mystical powers.

Things do not go well, and Joline says, “I had no choice but to get more extreme with my rituals.” She camps out opposite Carl’s apartment, conducting a “spiritual vigil.” Finally, she is “committed” in both senses of the word, and ends up in a mental hospital.

Joline is less committed to Carl than she is to the idea of commitment. Her sense of herself is so deeply tied up in the idea of permanence that she does not stop to think about whether Carl is the one she should be committed to. Carmen’s grandfather explains that she needs to do what he did in exposing himself to a little of the rattlesnake’s poison in order to become immune. She learns that the distinctions between stupid and brave, crazy and lucky, sick and well, committed and uncommitted, are not as clear as she thought. She says, “For a long time I was telling a joke that nobody got.” Finally, she tells Carl that “I’m still committed, but not to you.”

Families should know that the movie is rated R for language and sexual references. Carl’s artist neighbor makes sexual overtures to Joline that include suggestive caressing of a life-size doll he made of Joline. Carmen’s former boyfriend is abusive and threatening. Jay lives with a lesbian couple and occasionally has sex with one of them, which makes the other one jealous and possessive. There is also a brief but weird brother-sister kiss.

Families who see the movie should discuss the challenge of maintaining a balance between supporting the person you love and enabling destructive or self-destructive behavior. They may also want to talk about Joline’s terms, “spiritual wheelchair” and “spiritual coma,” and the metaphor of the rattlesnake poison.

It’s a good thing that the people who will want to see this movie are not too concerned about the plot, dialogue or performances, because the people who made the movie were not too concerned about them either. The plot is predictable, the dialogue is even more predictable, and the performances are barely noticeable. They are just there to give the audience a chance to catch its breath between the scenes that they came for, the scenes with very, very fast cars.

Though it never uses the term, the movie is about Formula One drivers, and the script, by co-star Sylvester Stallone, seems to come from movie script formula one, too, with pieces from the various Rocky films transposed to the world of racecars and himself in the Burgess Meredith/Yoda role. What matters here are the racing scenes, and the racing scenes are worth seeing. Director Renny Harlin (who also directed Stallone in “Cliffhanger”) has a gift for putting the audience in the center of the action, and that is where the movie delivers. When not much is happening on screen, Harlin uses flashy cuts and music-video-style camera tricks with film speed to pump a little more energy into the story.

Kip Pardue (“Sunshine” the quarterback in last year’s “Remember the Titans”) plays Jimmy Blye, a talented young driver who is winning a lot of races and may take the world championship title away from the reigning champ, Beau Brandenberg (Til Schweiger). Beau gets rattled and dumps his girlfriend of three years because she is “a distraction.” Jimmy is coping with another kind of distraction. His ambitious manager/brother (Robert Sean Leonard) is pushing him very hard on and off the racetrack. When Jimmy crashes his car, the team owner (Burt Reynolds) brings in former champ Joe Tanto (Stallone) to provide back up and focus.

There is some story line about which of the drivers the girl really cares about, and something about Tanto’s ex-wife (Gina Gershon, by far the liveliest person on the screen), now married to another driver whom she describes to Tanto as “a younger, better you.” Tanto has to help Jimmy find the part of himself that just loves driving fast (the thing that in “Rocky III” was called “the eye of the tiger” but in this movie is just called “it” or something like that), some choices need to be made, and some old scores need to be settled.

But it is the racing that matters, and that is terrific. Jimmy and Tanto attend a black tie party in Chicago where their cars are on display. In one delirious scene, they impulsively drive the racecars off onto the city streets, slamming around corners, screeching through underpasses, and leaving chaos and admiring onlookers in their wake. The scenes on the track are bone-crunching, heart-thumping, you-are-in-the-driver’s-seat exciting and the crashes are heartbreaking.

Parents should know that the movie has some strong language, smoking and drinking, and tense and scary accident scenes. A character is badly hurt, and another character has been disabled as a result of a racing accident. A character betrays a member of his family and there are other tense confrontations. There are also a lot of girls in revealing outfits, with tiny t-shirts promoting various racing sponsors.

Families who see this movie should talk about how teammates decide when to help each other and when to compete against each other and how to maintain focus on what really matters. They should also talk about the choices made by Jimmy and Beau when one of the other drivers is injured and about why Jimmy’s brother behaves the way he does. They may also want to discuss why people continue to compete in and buy tickets for such dangerous sports, given tragic losses like champion Dale Earnhardt.

Viewers who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “Cliffhanger” and two other racing movies, “Days of Thunder” with Tom Cruise and “Winning,” with Paul Newman and Robert Wagner.