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.

Some may say that only a guy could enjoy Brotherhood of the Wolf (Le Pacte des Loupes). After all, the movie contains lots of guy elements: gore, martial-arts, and werewolves. But, there’s more to this movie than blood and guts, and although it has its flaws, it’s worth seeing.

The story takes place around the time of the French Revolution. The tale is told, at least some of the time, from the perspective of Jacques Parren, an aristocratic Frenchman about to go to the guillotine. We learn that a ferocious beast has been killing hundreds of people in a creepy little town in the south of France called Gevaudan. A man by the name of Gregoire de Fronsac (Samuel Le Bihan) has been sent by the King of France to find and kill the rampaging beast. At Fronsac’s side is his blood-brother and close companion, Mani (Mark Dacascos), a member of the Iroquois tribe. Fronsac had earlier befriended Mani, the sole survivor of a war fought against European settlers in the New World, and has now brought Mani to France to help investigate the mysterious killings. Marianne (Emilie Duquenne), a witty and beautiful woman, is the object of Fronsac’s amorous affections. But she is also the object of another man’s obsession. That man is Jean-Francois (Vincent Cassel) – who also just happens to be Marianne’s brother.

The story line follows Fronsac on the trail of the killings. Will he get his man (or should we say, beast)? And if he does, what has motivated the killings? What (or who) is good, and what (or who) is evil?

The movie is often gripping. Indeed, one of its first images is that of a young woman running frantically across an open field. As she is running, she trips and falls on the ground. She then tries to climb her way up a rock, but we hear the growling of the beast and then see her get tossed around until the beast finally kills her. Perhaps taking a cue from Steven Speilberg’s opening sequence in Jaws, the director wisely does not show us the beast, allowing our imaginations to run wild.

There are many aspects of this movie that make it both aesthetically pleasing and intellectually stimulating, as well as a bloody thriller. The scenery in this movie is gorgeous, with shots of quaint southern French towns, lush open valleys, and eerie forests that have an other-worldly touch reminiscent of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. (And, like Crouching Tiger, this movie has fabulous martial arts scenes.) The movie forces the audience to really think about who the bad guys are: is it the beast, or is it the blood-thirsty townspeople? There are no easy answers.

The sound effects provide an intriguing element that adds to the movie’s depth. The filmmakers use freeze frames and slow motion to emphasize particular sounds, such as that of a rain drop plunging into a puddle of water. When we hear a stick being whirled through the air, we distinctly hear the “whishing” noise as if it were right next to our ears.

In addition to outstanding sound design, the costume design is first rate. The costumes are lavish, and not only accurately depict the styles of the period but help define the characters as well.

The movie does have its flaws, though none can be characterized as fatal. It was hard to believe, for example, that Mani, an Iroquois Indian could be an expert martial artist in the 18th century. Also, the director overused slow-motion shots (especially during the fight scenes). These shots were inserted so often that they became tedious. The movie seemed to run on about twenty minutes too long. Perhaps if the director has cut out more slow-mo shots, the movie would have been a better length. Finally, the movie delivers too much information to the audience. There are things we just didn’t need to know, and that didn’t contribute to the overall story and effect.

Families should discuss how the townspeople in Gevaudan dealt with the beast and its killings. How did their actions compare with the way people today would deal with a similar problem? Did the townspeople deal with their fears appropriately? What does the beast represent? Why did they pick a Native American to play one of the main character’s roles? How did he compare to Gregoire de Fransac?

Parents should know that a fair number of scenes in this movie include: copious amounts blood, gory swordfights and other very graphic violence, women in peril, and a hideous beast that terrorizes and kills dozens of people. The R-rating for this movie is appropriate both for the violence quotient and also because the movie contains a somewhat graphic sex scene in a house of ill-repute.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “Sleepy Hollow,” “Interview with the Vampire,” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”

This tired attempt at comedy has no imagination or energy. The script is like a smudgy carbon originally rejected by Jerry Lewis as too dumb and then reworked for Gilbert Gottfried. It isn’t even second rate — it’s more like eighth rate. The biggest tragedy is the way it wastes the talents of people who deserve a lot better, especially its star, Saturday Night Live’s Chris Kattan, and castmates Peter Falk, Richard Roundtree, and Fred Ward.

Kattan plays Corky Romano, the outcast son of a crime family led by his father (Falk) and brothers (Chris Penn and Peter Berg). Corky is the white sheep of a family of black sheep. He is a tender-hearted vetrinarian who thinks his father is in the landscaping business. The FBI has the evidence they need on Pops, thanks to an informant. The family wants to destroy the evidence, so they decide to send someone undercover as an FBI agent. Since Corky is family, they trust him, and since he has had no connection with their operations, the FBI does not know him. They fix him up with a fake ID and a phony resume and send him into FBI headquarters as an agent.

The rest of the movie is the same lame jokes over and over again. And then over and over again again. Corky messes up but somehow it appears that he is a brilliant and fearless agent. People keep calling him by the name the hacker who created his record gave him — “Pissant,” and Corky keeps trying to make them pronounce it as though it were French: “Piss AUNT.” Corky knocks things over and gets beat up. Corky sings to cheesy 80’s music. Corky wears funny outfits. One of Corky’s brothers can’t read and the other doesn’t want anyone to know he’s gay. None of this is very funny the first time, and any humor it might have had is long gone before the movie is done recycling it. It will only appeal to giggly middle-schoolers who find the jokes enjoyably naughty. Let me put it this way. If you find it marvelously witty that the vetrinarian clinic is called “Poodles and Pussies” and that a snake crawls up Corky’s pants and comes out his fly, then you’ll love the rest of the movie.

Parents should know that there is comic violence, including shooting (no one gets hurt) and a lot of fighting. We hear of an offscreen crime in which the victim’s genitals were torn off, and see the flies buzzing above a corpse (played for comedy). A character is tortured by having jumper cables attached to his nipples and then being shocked. A character accidentally inhales cocaine and is supposed to be comically intoxicated. There is some bathroom humor. The FBI has racially diverse agents working well together, but the female agent complains of not being treated equally. There are sexist and anti-gay comments and some very vulgar language.

Families who see this movie should talk about the conflict between loyalty to the family and doing what is right. They might also want to talk about the way that many of the characters are hurt by not feeling loved and appreciated.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy other SNL-star movies like Wayne’s World and a much better crime comedy, Married to the Mob(mature material).

Before the opening credits are over, we’ve seen bathroom jokes and sexual humor, but at least this time it’s rated PG.

It really is a shame, because Eddie Murphy is just great as Dr. Dolittle, content to be the straight man to an adorable assortment of wise-cracking animals. And the story is a cute one. It’s a twist on the old classic “Born Free.” Dolittle needs to introduce a tame bear into the forest so that he can mate with the last female of their endangered species, in order to protect the forest from developers. Steve Zahn and Lisa Kudrow provide voices for the two bears so deliciously perfect that we want them to get together as much as Dolittle does. Meanwhile, Dolittle has some problems at home with a teen-aged daughter who has a new boyfriend (rapper Lil’ Zane) and a secret she isn’t ready to discuss.

Parents should know that the movie is raunchier than the usual PG, with a lot of bathroom humor and sexual references (kids may ask what it means to be “in heat”), but it is much milder and sweeter than other Murphy vehicles like the PG-13-rated first episode and the “Nutty Professor” movies.

Families who see this movie should talk about the difficulty of responding to the needs of the family and the responsibility to help others. They may also want to talk about the way that children sometimes feel embarassed by their parents, and the importance of listening to the people you love. Families might want to spend some time in a nature preserve and discuss ways to make sure that animals are treated with respect and dignity.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “Cats and Dogs.” They might like to see the original “Dr. Dolittle” movie, a musical starring Rex Harrison.