Small children will enjoy this gentle story of making friends. Their families will be grateful for the fact that there is a suitable movie for younger kids and they might enjoy the pretty water-color backgrounds and a couple of funny moments. And if they take advantage of the the well-under-90-minute running time for a bit of a snooze, they can be grateful for that, too.

Previous features put Tigger and Piglet in the spotlight, but this time the focus is on Roo, the spirited kangaroo son of sweet-voiced Kanga. When the citizens of the 400 Acre Wood decide to capture a heffalump, they tell Roo he is too young to go along on such a scary expedition. But Roo sneaks out to show the others that he is grown-up enough to capture a heffalump on his own.

Roo finds a heffalump, but is surprised to find that not only is he not at all scary, but he is just as frightened of Roo and his friends as they are of him. Indeed, this heffalump is called Lumpy and he is just a child, like Roo. They quickly forget all about being scared of each other as they play games and enjoy getting to know one another.

But when Roo tries to take his new friend home so that Kanga can help Lumpy find his mother, Rabbit, Pooh, Piglet, and Tigger do not understand. They try to capture Lumpy. But friendship — and mothers — come to the rescue.

Newcomer Kyle Stanger, who provides the voice of Lumpy the heffalump was just five when the movie was made, and he is the highlight of the movie. He gives Lumpy so much personality and charm that every child will want a heffalump playmate of of his own. Brenda Blethyn provides the understanding and loving voice of his mother. And be sure to stay for the credits, as the scenes of Lumpy and Roo playing are among the best in the movie.

Parents should know that the movie has some mild peril that the most sensitive young viewers may find unsettling.

Families who see this movie should talk about how we can make sure we do not let fear of anything that is different prevent us from meeting new friends. And they can talk about how children are sometimes impatient to be allowed to do things that adults tell them they are not old enough to do and what “your own call” means. Parents will want to make sure that children understand, however, that they should not talk to strangers and that they should never let anyone persuade them that they do not have to answer when their mother calls them. They might also want to talk about how Roo and Lumpy will have to clean up the mess that they made in Pooh’s house and Rabbit’s garden.

Every family should read aloud the wonderful works of A.A. Milne, both the poetry and the stories about Winnie the Pooh and his friends. The heffalump” in the book is imaginary. Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy the other Pooh stories available on DVD and video.

With a storyline thinner than the protagonist’s stereotyped rich girlfriend and enough lead-heavy dialogue to sink a movie of twice the caliber, “Boogeyman” is a bloated 86 minutes of overzealous spookiness, to be admired primarily by aspiring sound-effects specialists.

Eight-year old Tim Jenson is scarred for life before the title sequence rolls. He went to bed one night jumping at shadows in his rural, gothic home and watched in horror as his closet violently swallowed his father. Fast-forward fifteen years and Tim (Barry Watson, of TV’s “7th Heaven” mini-fame), now a twitchy lygophobic with a tendency to stand staring at dark closets, has to go back home for a funeral. He alone sees that all dark places — under the bed, in the closet, behind the pantry door — are potential lurking spots for the boogeyman. At the off-hand recommendation of his psychologist and to further the plot, he must face his childhood fears, including that of his supernatural closet. Or did Dad really just run off on the family, leaving Tim to seek a more violent explanation?

The movie cuts to the chase quickly but then wallows in atmospherics. The lengthy character-development scenes ensure plenty of opportunities for Tim to freak himself out, for girlfriend, Jessica, to show how two-dimensional she is, and for childhood friend, Kate, to be sweet and understanding. Guess who the Boogeyman gets? There is not a single scene that director, Stephen Kay (Get Carter), leaves unburdened of ominous portent. The creaking, sighing, screeching house, coupled with unnerving close-ups, quick cuts, and flickering lights might make some audience members seasick and others wish they could TiVo to the final confrontation.

Touches of humor, some genuinely spooky moments, and the occasional flash of decent acting keep this movie a notch above straight-to-video caliber, but do not justify the price of admission. Watching Tim at the child counseling center offers a hint that this movie could be richer, more interesting fare, but then the next scene –a possible boogeyman lurking behind a ceiling tile— tugs us back to the over-the-top forcedness of it all.

Parents should know that this movie tries everything possible to be a scary horror movie but retain its PG-13 rating. Family members disappear violently, animals panic, children are strange, corpses lunge, lights frequently go out for no reason, there is an aural assault of haunting sounds, and no one believes the main character. A character watches as loved ones are tossed around and then taken from him, a child is shut in a closet as a cure for being scared, another child is separated from her family. There are references to sex and a character is naked (non-explicit). Characters drink to drunkenness at a party and there are references to drinking, as well as a jarring product placement.

Families who see this movie might want to talk about the legend of the boogeyman, who appears in many cultures as a warning to misbehaving children. The psychologist discusses how children might turn to supernatural explanations as a coping mechanisms for feelings of loss or powerlessness. How do modern stories use scary characters or the supernatural to guide behavior now? Urban legends often have an element of the supernatural, how might they derive from older tales, like those of the boogeyman?

Families who enjoy watching scary movies together might prefer to watch Poltergeist, The Grudge, The Sixth Sense, or The Shining.

All the romantic comedy gloss in the world can’t save a script as stale as last week’s wedding cake. Despite a promising set-up and talented performers, it leaks air like a tire that ran over a tack.

Debra Messing (“Will and Grace”) is one of television’s all-time funniest women with impeccable timing, brilliant with both verbal and physical comedy. But she gets a lot of help on the show from the writers who created a terrifically appealing and witty character. Here, she plays Kat, an insecure and not especially interesting young woman who is in a panic over what she thinks of as two of the most terrifying words in the English language on her sister’s wedding invitation. They are: “and guest.”

Her younger sister Amy (Amy Adams) is getting married. And Kat’s ex-fiance is the best man. Kat needs a date to bring to the wedding so that “the ex-fiance will be sorry that he left you and your family will think we are in love.”

With $6000 from her retirement account, Kat hires Nick (Dermot Mulroney), a male escort she read about in the New York Times Magazine. Kat and Nick pretend to be in love to reassure the family and torture the ex. But there is an undeniable attraction between them as well.

So they tell us, anyway, which is one thing that is wrong with this movie. They describe, but they do not show. The movie wants us to find Kat adorable and endearing. She is just fluttery, self-centered, and insecure. The movie wants us to find Nick desirable. But we hear about it more than we feel it. Kat’s cousin is supposed to be delightfully outrageous. But raunchy is not the same thing as outrageous, even if a few supportive comments are tossed in, and it is especially not the same thing as delightfully outrageous. Give us something specific, people! That’s why they call it “writing.”

Then there is the troubling Pretty Woman problem of having a light romantic comedy with characters whose behavior is unsavory. This lends a sour tinge to the purported hijinks.

Most of the people behind this movie are women. They show some sensitivity to just what it is that someone like Kat would want from Nick, but, regrettably, they don’t show any more wit, insight, heart, or imagination than we find in the dozens of dull movies about female characters made by men.

Parents should know that the movie includes some strong material for a PG-13, including brief partial nudity, explicit sexual references (including prostitution, infidelity, a joke about an orgasm, the idea that “the best sex is make-up sex,” and a drunken sexual encounter that is supposed to be romantic), smoking and a lot of drinking (characters get drunk and hung over)

Families who see this movie should talk about whether it is true that people get the love life that they want. Why does it take courage to let someone love you?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Runaway Bride and French Kiss.

Lust. Betrayal. Revenge. Greed. Murder. Somehow, all of these things become dull in the preposterous and yet decidedly un-fascinating “Fascination,” a movie that plays as though the script was being made up on the spot. By aliens not quite familiar with human beings or the English language but who had seen a couple of Ed Wood movies.

Wealthy Patrick Doherty (James Naughton), a former Olympic swimmer, is killed in a swimming accident. His widow, Maureen (Jaqueline Bisset), comes back from a post-funeral cruise with a new boyfriend and marries him a week later. Her son, Scott (Adam Garcia) finds this at first unsettling and then suspicious. But his attempts to investigate the possibility that Maureen and her new husband, Oliver (Stuart Wilson), may have murdered Patrick are sidetracked by his attraction to Oliver’s daughter Kelly (Alice Evans), who slinks around looking femme fatale-ish in a series of the most hideously fluttering little outfits ever worn in a movie.

The set-up is not so bad. At least it wasn’t the last time I took a look at, what was that again — oh, yes, Hamlet. But the stunning incompetence of every single aspect of this movie makes it such a thudding bore that it does not even rise to the level of being laughable. That’s despite howler plot turns that include a do-it-yourself exhumation, a character who appears to be turned on by bloody wounds, a character who has some weird unexplained throat injury (an indicator that the film was rechopped at some point, giving rise to the concern that there may be an even worse version out there) and another man with a bloody wound who can somehow wake up on sheets as pristine as though they came from a commercial for laundry detergent. Badly written, poorly acted, horrendously edited, dreadfully directed, the only thing worth watching in this movie is the still-lovely Bisset and some nice location photography.

Parents should know that this movie includes explicit sexual references and situations, including some with incestuous overtones. Characters drink and smoke and use very strong language. There are several violent situations and characters are killed.

Families who see this movie should talk about the difficulty Scott and his mother had in trying to communicate with each other.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy the overheated Hush with Jessica Lange and Gwenyth Paltrow and better movies like Body Heat and The Postman Always Rings Twice.

A spooky child, creepy rural setting, and eccentric characters are the key props in this atmospheric thriller, where strong acting and quiet scenes are more terrifying than on-screen mayhem.

Dr. David Callaway (Robert De Niro, in a solid but uninspired performance) is a quietly grieving widower who takes his daughter Emily (Dakota Fanning) away from the city to live in a small town in the woods of upstate New York to help her escape the memories of his wife’s suicide. Emily discovered her mother’s dead and bloody body in the bathtub and has withdrawn into near-total silence in response to the trauma.

Once they move into the town of Woodland (population 2,206), they meet the local police officer, the jumpy real estate agent, and a married couple who live next door, trying to cope with the recent loss of their daughter, who was Emily’s age. David seeks out the company of vivacious Elizabeth (Elisabeth Shue), baby-sitter to her niece, Amy, also Emily’s age. And he reaches out to child psychiatrist Katherine (Famke Jannson), who is the understanding adult trying to help Emily and coach David through the grieving process.

With the stage set, Emily introduces a new character into their lives when she starts talking about all the fun games she is playing with “Charlie,” her imaginary friend. The disfigured dolls, scrawled threats, and dead cat that follow alarm David enough to leave his study, where he spends most of the day listening to music on his headphones and writing up Emily’s behavior. The strange drawings Emily has been hanging up in her room hint that Charlie might be positioning himself to be Emily’s only friend, and the mysterious death that follows finally drives father and daughter to action.

To say anything more would make Charlie very, very angry.

Most of the movie comprises a slow but steady-paced thriller with the camera drinking in little Emily’s eerie stare and propensity for standing in the doorway whenever something spooky is happening.

The last twenty minutes of the movie will satisfy audiences looking for a cathartic terror and a good twist. For some jaded audiences, however, the ending might seem self-conscious, forced, and dragged-out, especially when Charlie’s secret is revealed.

Dakota Fanning does a lovely job in this movie, out-gothing even Wednesday Addams (The Addams Family) and out-acting the grown-ups with breathtaking grace and dignity. She genuinely seems to break, well, just like a little girl when during the big showdown. At the end, you wish you could give this talented young actress a break and take her to something like The Incredibles so she could laugh and be a normal kid for once.

Parents should know that it is a very scary movie with intense peril and upsetting deaths. For those who have dealt with loss, the killer, “Charlie” will be especially disturbing since he wins Emily as a friend when she most needs someone to help her. Issues of trust and the suffering of main characters, including a child, are themes in this movie. Relationships are strained by inability of characters to handle trauma. There is social drinking, infidelity, and implied psychological spousal abuse.

Families who see this movie should talk about why Emily did not feel like she could talk about her emotions directly and what other characters might have done to let Emily know she was not alone. What does the last picture that we see on-screen mean about Emily and about the future?

Families who enjoy watching scary movies together might want to see taut psychological thrillers like Identity, The Shining, The Sixth Sense, or The Ring. Each feature child protagonists that hold the key to a mystery that the adults cannot see or solve. And they will enjoy the very chilling story about a child whose father refuses to believe in his imaginary friend, Thus I Refute Beezly by John Collier.