This misbegotten mess of a movie is a terrible disappointment for fans of Dana Carvey. It is also a disappointment for fans of comedy and fans of movies.

It really is hard to imagine how the talented Carvey can have taken what sounded like a can’t-miss premise and missed so completely. Carvey’s genius for impressions is utterly wasted. So is his charm. So is his time. So is ours.

Carvey plays Pistachio Disguisey (are you laughing yet?), the youngest in a family with magical powers to transform themselves. His father (James Brolin) never told him of the family’s secret because he wanted to protect him. So little Pistachio does not know why he has a Tourette-like compulsion to imitate everyone he sees. When his parents are captured by bad guy Devlin Bowman (Brent Spiner), who suffers from intestinal distress whenever he tries his evil laugh (now are you laughing?), and it is up to Pistachio to save the day. Pistachio’s grandfather (Harold Gould) arrives to give him a few quick lessons in transformation and self-defense.

Weak references to classics like “The Exorcist,” “Star Wars,” “Jaws,” and “A Hard Day’s Night” will have no meaning to the kids who are the intended audience. The “Star Wars” references are more rip-off than satire; Disguiseys get their power from Energyco, so much like “the force” that it even has a dark side. Audience members old enough to recognize Jesse Ventura, Jessica Simpson, and Bo Derek might enjoy their brief cameos. But even at less than 70 minutes, the movie feels endless, with an extended post-credit sequence that just adds insult to injury.

Parents should know that the movie is too vulgar for a PG rating and too dumb for audiences of any age. Pistachio is fascinated with women who have large rear ends and he makes crude jokes when a character serves appetizers (“do you have a little wiener and tiny nuts?”). He disguises himself as a cow patty. And slapping an opponent while yelling “Who’s your daddy?” is supposedly a way of showing manliness and competence. Pistachio himself is a annoyingly disturbing character, an odd child-man with an inexplicable accent and an unforgivable haircut.

Families who see this movie should talk about how being able to imitate someone requires very careful observation.

Families who enjoy this movie will enjoy Jerry Lewis playing eight characters in The Family Jewels.

“The New Guy” is a waste of talent. This high school epic, supposedly about one boy’s path to true cool is so half-baked and uncool that it’s embarrassing. It is also another case of the MPAA giving a PG-13 rating to a comedy that has material that would get an R in a drama.

Chickenesque D.J. Qualls, this generation’s Don Knotts, plays Dizzy, a funk-loving dork stranded at the bottom of the school pecking order with his pals, played by Parry Shen, the magnificent Zooey Deschanel (“Big Trouble” and “Almost Famous”) and Jeord Mixon. After an opening-day incident where Dizzy is injured in an unlikely and spectacular and deeply personal way, he decides he must escape. Deciding to get expelled, his antics at first only merit a diagnosis of Tourette’s syndrome and some stupefying medication. Now drug-addled as well, his behavior escalates until he gets thrown in jail. There his meets the mentor he’s been needing: Eddie Griffin, playing an inmate who’s cultivated a fierce facade to survive the comic rigors of movie-prison life.

Under his tutelage, Dizzy is transformed into the punky Gil. At a new school, on the other side of town, Gil uses his newfound abilities to spout decade-old pseudo-Ebonic aphorisms and publicly beat the local bully. His badboy status confirmed, he begins to restructure the social hierarchy of the new place. Eventually, he’s forced to confront the fact that Gil is just an invention, and also forced by the lame script to win the heart of the school bully’s sexy girlfriend, as portrayed by Eliza Dushku.

It is painful to see some of today’s most talented young actors wasted in this dreck. They’re given very little to work with in the script. The writer and director have sadly bought into the same limited mindset about popularity and conformity that they are purportedly skewering.

The most troubling aspect of “The New Guy” might be strained impressions D.J. Qualls calls upon in his quest for status. It’s intrinsically funny to watch the gawkiest white guy on the planet attempt to imitate macho black posturing (especially when the source of this posturing is the chihuahua-like Eddie Griffin). But so much of it goes on for so long that posturing begins to seem a little like caricature. And it’s precisely this behavior, the epitome of imitative uncool, which is supposed to secure “Gil’s” status.

Parents should know that this film contains a lot of sexual talk, a little sexual activity (offscreen), and a mutilating injury that is supposed to be funny. Dizzy/Gil overdoses on medication, crashes a motorcycle, and sets his father’s head on fire (by accident, for comic effect). The slapstick of the film is pretty violent, and there are frequent kicks to the groin. One character is described as a “slut” and likes to have sex in public. Another pages a friend on a store intercom, reporting a “pair of lost testicles.”

Families who see this movie should talk about who the arbiters of social status are in real high schools, and what qualities determine a person’s status. What are the advantages of popularity? What are the consequences (advantages?) of being unpopular? Is social status fixed, or changeable? Does any of this really matter after high school?

Families who enjoyed this film might want to catch D.J. Qualls’ breakout role in “Roadtrip”, or give Eddie Griffin some space for his comedy in “Double Take”, alongside the underutilized Orlando Jones.

The Powerpuff Girls’ first feature-length movie may be a treat for the fans of the show, but its non-stop excitement and sense of humor is going to win over just about anyone. Move over Pokemon, there are some new rulers of the animated action scene.

The big city of Townsville is overrun by crime, and the lonely but always good-hearted Professor Utonium decides to make some daughters out of sugar, spice, and everything nice. But his troublesome lab monkey Jojo knocks some mysterious “chemical X” into the concoction and the girls come out having seemingly endless superpowers, in addition to being the nicest girls he could ask for. He names them Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup, and they all have different, distinct personalities.

They show their sugar and their spice — and their superpowers on their first day of school when a game of tag goes terribly wrong and destroys much of the town. The people of Townsville are furious at the girls, who are ashamed and outcast. When Jojo tells them he has a plan to save the town, they agree to help. But they are deceived. It turns out his plan is to take over earth with oppressed apes, with Jojo becoming Mojo Jojo, king of the planet of the apes. At first chaos ensues and it looks like Mojo Jojo will in fact reign, but the girls use their powers to take on the apes in a spectacular battle to save the city and finally prove to the people that they’re actually good girls.

The Powerpuff Girls are more fun than many recent films and most of today’s animated superheroes. It was funny, exciting, and involving. Mojo Jojo is voiced by Roger L. Jackson, the phone voice of the killer in all three Scream movies, and the apes are the most colorful animated villains since Yellow Submarine and the most fearsome gang of monkeys since The Wizard of Oz. And of course, the older audience is targeted in some of the jokes as well, including two characters who talk in Van Halen lyrics and references to the original Planet of the Apes.

Parents should know that this film has lots of destructive cartoon violence, as well as some brief bathroom humor.

Families who see this film should talk about what they would do if they had superpowers — or if they could make up their own animated characters.

Families who enjoy this movie will enjoy The Powerpuff Girls DVD Powerpack and The Powerpuff Girls Meet the Beat-alls, in which the entire dialogue is taken from Beatles songs.

This witty modern fairy tale by William Goldman (screenwriter of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “All the President’s Men”) is resoundingly satisfying. The most beautiful woman in the world (Robin Wright) is engaged to the cruel Prince (Chris Sarandon) but kidnapped by a huge man with enormous strength (Andre the Giant), a master swordsman (Mandy Patinkin), and an evil genius (Wallace Shawn), until she is rescued by a mysterious masked man who must defeat them all, and then escape with her through the treacherous Fire Swamp. But then she is captured again by the Prince, until honor, courage, and true love prevail.

The book by Goldman is even better, and lots of fun to read aloud, though I admit that when I read it to my children I skipped his asides, which are better appreciated by adults.

A true connoisseur of the scary movie (note, not slasher flicks but psychological thrillers) will recognize certain spooky elements in many of the “classics” of the genre: the cruel parent (or stepparent); the otherworldly child, a medium for the spirit world; and, the violent reaction of animals, children and the insane to the presence of evil. Certain images are also commonly found in these movies and are preternaturally disturbing: wells, bleak cliffs, lighthouses, remote cabins in the woods, lone autumnal trees on hillsides, rainy nights, and other symbols of isolation.

Renowned mythologist, Joseph Campbell, argued that certain tales and images are part of our universal consciousness and, therefore, part of collective human storytelling. Heavily influenced by Carl Jung, Campbell described how these themes reoccur throughout the tapestry of stories told by groups divided by time and geography. Perhaps then there should be no surprise that certain images reappear with such alarming effectiveness in scary movies whether the source is Hollywood, or in this case, Japan.

Based on “Ringu”, a series of books by Kôji Suzuki (the “Stephen King of Japan”), Hideo Nakata directed the original, record-breaking box office smash for Asian audiences (1998), which DreamWorks decided would translate well for American audiences. Gore Verbinski was chosen to direct even though he is best known for more light-hearted fare such as “Mouse Hunt” and “The Mexican.”

The premise is fairly simple. Urban legend meets scary movie reality when four teens die, as predicted, exactly seven days to the minute from when they watched an unmarked video in a remote mountain cabin. The aunt of one of the teenagers is a savvy and skeptical journalist whose curiosity is sparked by tales of the tape. After finding and watching the source of the mystery, she receives a phone call announcing that she has seven days. From there, it is a race to solve the clues and answer the riddle of the video, with the stakes greatly raised when two of the people closest to her, including her young son, watch the deadly tape.

The video itself is a mosaic of images both familiar and disturbing. With its mirrors, wriggly things, ladders, and -–of course—- rings, you might think you were watching “Un Chien Andalou” (Luis Buñel and Salvador Dali’s 1929 surrealist classic) as directed by David Lynch after he had been reading Jung and not getting enough fresh air.

As one born to the genre, Director Verbinski does an excellent job of letting our imaginations find portent and peril in the most mundane of actions, such as picking up groceries at the local corner store. Naomi Watts, a relatively unknown actress for those who missed her in David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive” (2001), plays Rachel, the journalist whose desire to find the cause of her niece’s death becomes a life or death quest for answers. For all of us who have rolled our eyes at the screaming teen, walking backward alone through the dark house, Watts will be a relief as she plays through the gamut of Rachel’s emotions with truly credible, but not overwrought, gusto. While the adults are busy solving the riddle of the tape, the heart-stopping dyad of the Ring’s children usher in the deeper dimension of fear. Rachel’s son, Aiden (a stony-eyed David Dorfman) is the medium and interpreter for the terrifying Samara (Daveigh Chase), who lays at the heart of the mystery.

“The Ring” dips deep in the well of those aforementioned familiar scary images, which paradoxically results in a movie that is both architecturally firm but –with little new to add—empty of true revelation. Joseph Campbell could have used this movie as a reference book for universally terrifying images, but perhaps the tale itself was more effectively told in Japanese.

Parents should know that this movie is very, very scary. Four people and a horse die on-screen, with the potential for many more untimely demises throughout and -–don’t read on if you enjoy surprises-—beyond the end of the movie. The overall tone is creepy and would leave many of the staunchest of movie-goers in dire need of brightly lit rooms and laughter.

Families who see this movie should talk about the decision that Rachel makes at the end of the movie and the ramifications of her actions. They might also wish to discuss the way that different characters deal with the untimely death of a loved one.

Families who enjoy this movie might wish to shiver together over “The Shining”, “The Omen”, “The Exorcist”, “Poltergeist” or “The Sixth Sense”. Alternately, they might wish to never watch a video again (especially an unmarked one) and opt to have a Scrabble night instead, preferably after turning on all the lights in the house.