Animal Husbandry,” a wry and witty book about a single woman’s efforts to understand men, has become “Someone Like You” a generic looking-for- love-in-all-the-wrong-places romance with plot twists that were tired back in the days of Sandra Dee and Bobby Darrin.

Ashley Judd, once again adding more heart and star power to a movie than it deserves, plays Jane Goodale (sounds like Jane Goodall, the chimp expert, get it?), a booker for a television talk show hosted by Diane (Ellen Barkin, looking a little washed out but always fun to watch). The people booked on the show are called “gets,” and ambitious Diane tells Jane that what she wants on her show is “the un-get-able get” the elusive guest that everyone wants but no one has.

Meanwhile, Jane is looking for a “get” of her own, a man who will love her as much as she loves him. But that seems really un-get-able. If she isn’t looking for love in all the wrong places, she is certainly looking in most of them. Ray Brown (Greg Kinnear), Diane’s new producer, seems like The One, and Jane is blissful, until he gets cold feet just as they are about to move in together. She ends up having to sublet a room from Eddie (“X-Men’s” Hugh Jackman). His womanizing provides the foundation for her emerging theory of male behavior. For example, when she asks him if it isn’t complicated when he begins dating the roommate of a woman he had recently dated, he says, “It’s never complicated for me.” Jane decides that men are genetically determined to act like bulls that refuse to service a cow a second time. Men are always looking for the “new cow.”

Jane’s best friend Liz (Marisa Tomei) persuades her to write a magazine column about the theory, under a pseudonym. Suddenly, everyone is talking about it and everyone, especially Diane, wants to interview the author. Ray tells Jane that he wants to get back together. Eddie turns out to be not heartless but recovering from a broken heart. If you have ever seen or even heard about any movie ever made, you know where it all leads.

So the only question is how much fun it is on the way to the happy ending, and the answer is: mildly. Judd delivers everything she can, and she makes Jane’s yearning to love as well as to be loved very poignant. Jackman, out of his Wolverine X-Men outfit turns out to clean up very nicely indeed, and makes a likable leading man. The dialogue is above average, and director Tony Goldwyn has some good ideas, but the plot twists are below average. This is especially clear in the last 15 minutes, which seem like a desperate attempt to think of any way to end it, and just don’t work at all.

Parents should know that the movie features sexual references and situations and some very strong language for a PG-13. Characters drink and smoke, and there are scenes in a bar. Drinking is shown as a solace for pain. Boxes of condoms and a diaphragm that has not been used for a while are shown for comic effect.

Families who see this movie should talk about the foolish choices made by Jane, Ray, and Eddie. Jane is so in love with the idea of love that she does not expect Ray to say that he loves her before they become intimate. She does not really know him when they have sex, and yet she expects him not just to know her but to love her. Jane and Liz think they have a problem figuring out men, but the problem is in understanding themselves. Eddie uses indiscriminate sex as a way of warding off intimacy. Ray is not able to be honest with himself or with the women in his life. None of them seem to have any sense of how enduring love grows, though the conclusion does suggest that it is more likely to grow between people who begin with emotional intimacy and get that on firm ground before moving on to other kinds.

Families who see this movie should look for Ashley Judd’s mother, country singer Naomi Judd, in a brief role as a make-up artist. And families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “Pillow Talk” with Doris Day and Rock Hudson and Judd’s performance in “Where the Heart Is.

In this movie, based on a story by science-fiction author Thomas M. Disch, a group of household appliances in a summer cottage, worried about their young master, leave home to go and find him, encountering many challenges and adventures along the way. It is exciting and fun, with a thrilling climax and delightful voice characterizations by Saturday Night Live stars Phil Hartman and Jon Lovitz. NOTE: Some very tense moments, with characters in peril.

Dedicated to “Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy,” this movie is both a spoof and a loving tribute to the silent classics, with good guys, bad guys, romance, adventure, slapstick, music, wonderful antique cars, and the biggest pie fight in history. The opening credits are on a series of slides like those in the earliest movies, complete with cheers for the hero and boos for the villain, and a flickering old-fashioned projector that at one point appears to break down. Always dressed in impeccable white, the Great Leslie (Tony Curtis) is a good guy so good that his eyes and teeth literally twinkle. His capable mechanic and assistant is Hezekiah (Keenan Wynn). The bad guy is Professor Fate (Jack Lemmon), assisted by Max (Peter Falk). Like Wile E. Coyote, Fate’s cartoonishly hilarious stunts to stop Leslie inevitably backfire.

After a brief prologue, in which Fate tries to beat Leslie in breaking various speed records, literally trying to torpedo him at one point, they both enter an automobile race from New York to Paris. So does a beautiful reporter (Natalie Wood as Maggie DuBois) trying to prove she can get the story — dressed in an endless series of exquisite ensembles designed by Hollywood legend Edith Head.

The race takes them across America, through the Wild West, to a rapidly melting ice floe in the Pacific, and into a European setting that is a cross between a Victor Herbert operetta and “The Prisoner of Zenda,” where a spoiled prince happens to look exactly like Professor Fate and it takes all of the stars to foil an evil Baron (Ross Martin) who wants to use Fate to take over the throne.

Way back before computer graphics, movie makers knew how to scare us through what the movie didn’t show us. They knew that no one knows what scares us as well as we do ourselves, and that anything we could imagine would be far more scary than anything they could put on the screen. “The Others” is a return to that kind of old-fashioned-squeaky door hinge-flapping shutter-“Who is that playing Chopin downstairs when I know I locked the piano?”-“She can’t leave now! It’s too foggy!” sort of thriller, the kind that creeps into your bones and makes you shiver.

Grace (Nicole Kidman) and her two children live in a huge old home on an isolated island near England. World War II has ended, but she still has not heard from her husband and is trying not to let herself fear that he may be dead. Her two children have a genetic photo-sensitivity and break out in welts if they are exposed to any light stronger than a candle. The servants all left mysteriously, not even staying to get their wages, and they are there alone when three new servants show up, explaining that they worked at the house once years before and were happy there, so they have returned. Their arrival is unsettling, but not as unsettling as evidence of “intruders,” including sightings by Grace’s daughter Anne. Grace does her best to hold everything together, to protect the children’s souls (she is deeply religious, and is preparing Anne for her first communion) and their bodies (she has an elaborate system of keys to make sure that all doors are locked and all curtains drawn, to keep out light, as she says, the way a ship is designed to keep out water.

This movie is more mood than plot, but the mood is expertly handled by the writer/director and by Kidman, who makes her attempts to maintain control scarier than outright terror. The cast is outstanding and the ultimate resolution properly eerie.

Parents should know that the movie does not have any bad language or gory images, but that it is genuinely creepy and may be upsetting even for older children. Some will be concerned over Anne’s questioning of her mother’s religious principles or disturbed by the implications of the final explanation.

Families who see this movie should talk about their views on life after death and why that has been a powerful theme in fiction as well as theology from the beginning of time.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy The Haunting (the original, not the dopey remake), The Uninvited (one of Hollywood’s all-time best ghost stories, with a theme song that may also haunt you), and The Innocents.

Christopher McQuarrie, the screenwriter of the deviously brilliant “The Usual Suspects” wrote and directed this bleak, tough-talking story about a couple of petty criminals named Longbaugh (Benicio del Toro) and Parker (Ryan Phillipe).

Longbaugh says, “Our path had been chosen and we had nothing to offer the world. So we stepped off the path.” The opening scene, a confrontation outside a club, shows us that our heroes are tougher than they are smart. Later in the story Joe Sarno (James Caan), who is both smart and tough, asks which is the brains of the outfit, and Longbaugh responds honestly, “Tell you the truth I don’t think this is a brains kind of operation.” They have no ability to think about the risks they are taking, and even if they did it would not matter because they just do not care.

Their lack of ability and indifference to the outcome turn out to be their greatest assets when they decide to kidnap a pregnant woman named Robin (Juliette Lewis). She is a surrogate mother, carrying the child of a wealthy couple, so they think they can get enough ransom money to take care of themselves. The kidnapping and ensuing chase are so badly organized that the experienced bodyguards who escort Robin to the doctor are not able to figure out what they are going to do, and they get away.

As in “The Usual Suspects,” the dialogue is terrific (“$15 million is not money. It’s a motive with a universal adaptor.” “Karma is only justice without the satisfaction.” “I can promise you a day of reckoning that you will not live long enough to remember to forget.”) The characters are exceptionally interesting, especially as the story unfolds and there are some surprises in their relationships and history. The performances are outstanding, especially Caan, Taye Diggs as one of the bodyguards, Dylan Kussman as Robin’s obstetrician, and Kristen Lehman as the millionaire’s trophy wife. McQuarrie shows a sure hand in his first time as director, with a muted color palatte, strong rhythm, and effective action sequences.

If only it was held together with a brilliant conclusion, as McQuarrie did in “The Usual Suspects.” No thrill in the ending here, just a long, long, shoot-out. Longbaugh and Parker are not coincidentally the real names of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and this movie has some resonances with the classic western about two men who ran out of options. But unlike that classic and like McQuarrie’s own “The Usual Suspects,” he doesn’t let us care about the protagonists, leaving an empty feeling.

Parents should know that this is an exceptionally violent movie with a very gory childbirth scene and lots and lots of gunfire. Many characters die brutal deaths. Characters drink, smoke, commit adultery, use profanity, lie, cheat, and steal.

Families who see this movie may want to talk about the family and non-family relationships, and how loyalties are — and are not — determined. Some family members may have questions about surrogate parenthood and how the biological parents and the mother who carries the child feel about it.

People who enjoy this movie should see “The Usual Suspects” and “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels.”