In fairness to the intended audience for this movie, the following review was written by my 16-year-old, who wanted to give it more stars: Road Trip, a raunchy comedy in the style of Detroit Rock City and American Pie, is a laugh out loud movie that’s good to see with friends if you’re a teenager (probably guys will like it more than girls.) while parents will avoid it for its vulgar humor and its parents-just-don’t understand star Tom Green.

Road Trip starts at Ithaca University with Barry (Green) practicing his typical bother-everyone sense of humor to possible future students he’s touring (he tells them he’s attended Ithaca for the past eight years and makes up stories about the buildings) and eventually gets them caught up in a story about his friends, where trouble starts when Josh (Seann William Scott) cheats on his girlfriend since he was five (Rachel Blanchard) with the girl he really likes, Beth (Amy Smart) and not only is his video camera accidentally left on but his friend accidentally mails it to his girlfriend in Austin. So he and three friends set off on an 1,800 mile epic road trip on which they blow up their car, constantly run out of money and regain it in various ways, meet all sorts of crazy people, (blacks who think its funny to put a KKK mask in Kyle’s backpack and pretend they found it, suspiciously blind lady, and Barry’s parents, the Manilows, to name a few) and learn their respective lessons about standing up to your parents, getting girls, friendship, etc.

Throughout the movie they shoot back to Barry, who stays on campus because he wants to feed Josh’s snake while he’s gone. His attempts to get it to eat a mouse, sing folk songs and help Beth find Josh (“He went to Austin. It’s in Massachusetts.” “You mean Boston?” “Yeah.”) had the audience laughing harder than anything else. Throughout the movie he seems to be just thrown in to make it funnier until the ending where he unwittingly saves the day. Although the entire cast is very good and Green is not the main character, it’s really his movie.

Contains foul language, crude humor, nudity, sexual situations, and a character who does drugs to hide his sensitivity.

Parents should know that the version on video includes even raunchier scenes deleted before theatrical release in order to get an R rating. The unrated version released on the video would have been likely to receive an NC-17 rating from the MPAA and parents might want to view it themselves before allowing their children or teenagers to watch it, even if they saw it in the theater.

Plot: Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) is a sweet-natured but not very bright boxer and small-time enforcer for a loan-shark. He has a crush on Adrian (Talia Shire), the painfully shy sister of his friend, Pauly (Burt Young). Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) is the heavyweight champion, whose big upcoming fight is canceled when his opponent is injured. Creed and his promoters decide to give an unknown a shot at the title, and pick Rocky.

Rocky has never really committed to anything before, but this opportunity galvanizes him. He works with Mickey (Burgess Meredith) a demanding trainer. He takes Adrian on a date, and they fall in love. When her brother becomes furious over their relationship, she moves in with Rocky. Rocky knows he cannot beat Creed; his goal is to “go the distance,” to conduct himself with class and dignity in the ring and still be standing at the end of the fight. Apollo, sure of himself and busy marketing the fight, neglects his own training. Apollo wins, but it is a split decision. Rocky goes the distance. Surrounded by fans and the press, he bellows over and over “Adrian!”

Discussion: In Rocky’s first fight, we get a glimpse of his potential. But it is also clear he has failed to make a commitment to anything. Mickey wants to throw him out of the gym because he doesn’t take boxing seriously enough. It is less an insult to boxing than an insult to himself. He takes pride in small things, like his pet turtles, and the fact that his nose has never been broken. When he gets the call from Apollo, he assumes that he is going to be invited to be a sparring partner for the champion, the greatest honor he could imagine for himself.

But Apollo’s impetuous offer gives Rocky a chance to see himself differently. That offer does for him what Paul does for Billie in “Born Yesterday,” what Miss Moffat does for Morgan in “The Corn is Green,” or Obi-Wan does for Luke in “Star Wars.” Rocky has a chance to think of himself as someone who can hold his own with the world champion, and once he has that image of himself, it is just a matter of taking the steps to get there. That image also gives him the courage to risk getting close to Adrian. Rocky also gives Adrian a chance to see herself differently. He was told when he was young that he was not smart, so he should concentrate on his physical ability; she was told she was not pretty, and should concentrate on her mental ability. Each of them sees in the other what no one else did. He sees how pretty she is; she sees how bright he is; each sees the other as loveable, as no one has before. This, as much as anything, is what allows both of them to bloom.

Rocky is realistic about his goal. He does not need to win. He just needs to acquit himself with dignity, to show that he is in the same league as the champion. In order to achieve that goal, he will risk giving everything he has, risk even the small pride of an unbroken nose. He develops enough self-respect to risk public disgrace. This is a big issue for teenagers — adolescence has been characterized as the years in which everything centers around the prayer, “God, don’t let me be embarrassed today.” Rocky begins as someone afraid to give his best in case it is not good enough, and becomes someone who suspects that his best is enough to achieve his goals, and is willing to test himself to find out.

It is worth taking a look at Creed as well. Like the hare in the Aesop fable, he underestimates his opponent. He is so sure of himself, and so busy working on the business side of the fight that he comes to the fight unprepared.

It is especially meaningful that the action behind the scenes paralleled that in the movie. Stallone, a small-time actor, was offered a great deal of money for this script, which he wrote. But he insisted instead on selling it for a negligible sum, provided that he play the lead. The entire movie was made for less than $1 million. Stallone beat even longer odds than Rocky did when the movie went on to win the Oscar as Best Picture. Stallone also became only the third person in history (after Charles Chaplin and Orson Welles) to be nominated for both Best Actor and Best Screenplay.

Questions for Kids:

· Why did Mickey want to throw Rocky out of the gym?

· Why didn’t Rocky have higher aspirations, until after he got the offer from Apollo?

· How is Apollo like the hare in the fable about the tortoise and the hare? Why is it so hard for Rocky and Adrian to get to know one another?

Connections: There are four sequels, all increasingly garish and cartoonish. They are barely more than remakes, and are only for die-hard fans.

There is logic, there is movie logic, and then there is the kind of “throw some big musical numbers and some good-looking stars on the screen and no one will notice that it makes no sense whatsoever — just look at ‘Flashdance'” logic. “Rock Star” is in that last category, and while it is not as preposterously entertaining as “Flashdance,” it is still has moments of guilty pleasure.

The story goes back to “Cinderella,” or at least to “Rocky,” with a little bit from Pinocchio. Chris (Mark Wahlberg) a 1980’s metal band’s biggest fan, gets picked out of obscurity to become the band’s new lead singer, only to find that dreams are not always what they seem from the outside. The equivalent of Pinocchio’s visit to the place where boys get turned into donkeys is Chris’s life of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, with increasingly more of the former. But before you can say “This would make a great episode of ‘Behind the Music,'” he sees the error of his ways, and finds the girl who loved him all along. I think he even invents grunge, the next new music craze, because he somehow goes from shrieking hard rock in leather pants to playing anquished ballads in a Seattle coffee house. Then there’s the clinch and the fade-out, followed by the movie’s most entertaining scenes, the out-takes shown during the credits.

The movie’s biggest problem is that it cannot make up its mind whether it wants to be a satire or play it straight. It tweaks the rock star worldview now and then, but no one could ever send up metal bands better than that masterpiece mockumentary, “This is Spinal Tap,” and they do not even try. That leaves us with an umimaginative rise-and-fall story that never really captures our hearts or even our attention. At least that makes it easier to ignore major lapses in the storyline.

Wahlberg enjoys himself onscreen, but it is impossible not to compare this to his performance in the vastly more complex and intelligent “Boogie Nights,” another movie about a naive young man who is brought into a world of debauchery and corruption. Jennifer Anniston is woefully underused in a standard-issue “good woman who stands by her man and holds on to her values” role that gives her only a few brief opportunities to show her crackerjack timing and ability to give snap to anything within 50 miles of a comeback. It is nice to see the musicians played by real-life guitarists Zakk Wylde and Brian Vander Ark, bassist Jeff Pilson and drummer Jason Bonham.

Parents should know that the movie is rated R for very strong language, nudity, explicit sexual situations (including group sex and bisexual encounters), and abuse of every kind of licit and illicit substance (even hotel room furniture). Many characters give the finger. There is an explicit close-up of a very unhygienic nipple-piercing. A gay character is insulted and fired from his job. The overall message is that the sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll lifestyle is empty and destructive, but not unappealing, for a short time anyway. Interestingly, there is some suggestion that it is a cynical marketing strategy, though that appears to be rationalization. One nice shift from the usual format for this kind of movie is that Chris has parents who are entirely loving and supportive of his passion for metal, and genuinely enjoy the music themselves.

Families who see this movie should talk about how some people limit themselves to dreaming that they can be exactly like someone else, instead of thinking about dreams that allow them to be most themselves. Why was it so easy for Chris to lose his way, while Emily saw that it was wrong? Why was it important for her to have her own life and career? What do we learn about Chris from the way he gets back on stage after his fall? What does he learn about himself? Do you agree with the comment that “we all owe somebody an apology along the way?”

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy This Is Spinal Tap (Special Edition) (mature material). They also might like to compare the Steel Dragons’s song “Anything Goes” to a classic song by the same name by Cole Porter.

Hong Kong action star Jet Li (“Lethal Weapon 4”) and R&B artist Aliyah are a hip-hop Romeo and Juliet in this tired tale of rival gangters. Fans of martial arts will do well to wait for it to come out on video, so they can fast-forward through all the meaningless exposition and endless shots of people giving mean and meaningful looks at each other and get to the good stuff.

Delroy Lindo is Isaak O’Day, a gangster who dreams of going legit, “making deals in country clubs instad of pool halls.” He loves his children, Colin (D.B. Woodside) and Trish (Aliyah) deeply and wants to protect them. But Colin wants to “be a man,” and for him that means taking matters into his own hands.

Kai Sung (Russell Wong) is the leader of the rival gang. Like O’Day, he has a son who wants to be a player. He and O’Day are trying to get the deeds to the shoreline property in their districts, to turn it over to a sleezy developer who is competing for a football franchise. We know he’s sleezy because he keeps saying fake profound things in an arrogant way, like,” golf is a game of finesse, not power, much like life,” and “If I say there is caviar on the mountain, you just bring some crackers.”

When Sung’s son is killed, his brother Han (Jet Li) breaks out of a Hong Kong prison to come to the US to avenge his death. He meets Trish, and they find that they have more in common with each other than with their sides in the fight.

There are some nice fight scenes, though it seems an insult to Jet Li’s extraordinary talent to trick them up with computer graphics. If we want to see people suspended in the air while they kick each other, we can rent “The Matrix.” Little flashes of x-ray shots of bones being crunched are an interesting touch. When you’re fast-forwarding the video, be sure to stop and see it.

Parents should know that the movie has very strong violence, some girl/girl kissing, drug use, and that it is really dumb. (I especially love the ending, with Han and Trish wandering out of the house with all the dead people, the police completely ignoring them.) Families who see the movie may want to talk about racism and the way that children prove their independence, or maybe just how such bad movies get made.

In the all-time best romantic comedy ever, “The Philadelphia Story,” Jimmy Stewart says, “The prettiest sight in this fine pretty world is the privileged class enjoying its privileges.” Not really — the prettiest sight in this fine pretty world is movies like that one, and like “The Runaway Bride.” When people say “they don’t make movies like that anymore,” this is the kind of movie they mean. It is a welcome tribute to the kind of 1930’s screwball romantic comedies starring William Powell and Myrna Loy (“Libeled Lady”), Melvyn Douglas and Irene Dunne (“Theodora Goes Wild”), or Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (“Carefree”), and the most delightful romantic confection of the summer.

The stars and director of “Pretty Woman” have reunited and the result is far better than the original, which relied heavily on star power to lend gloss to a story with some bitter undertones. This time, Richard Gere plays Ike Graham, a cynical columnist for USA Today who writes a quick angry column about a small-town woman who has left three grooms at the altar. That woman is Maggie Carpenter (Julia Roberts). When she writes the paper to point out 15 inaccuracies, he is fired by his editor and former wife (Rita Wilson). So, he goes to investigate Maggie, thinking that he can sell a story about her that will vindicate him and restore his career.

Maggie is getting ready to try another wedding, this time with a local high school coach named Bob. Ike ingratiates himself with the people in Maggie’s Maryland home town, so picturesque that it could have been painted by Norman Rockwell. Maggie’s father (Paul Dooley) obligingly loans Ike the home videos of Maggie’s three previous attempts at making it all the way up the aisle, with a Greatful Dead fan, a scientist, and a man who, following their break-up, became a priest. At first, Ike hopes for another last-minute bolt from the ceremony to make his story, but as he gets to know Maggie, he begins to hope that she won’t go through with it so that he can be fiance number five.

Roberts and Gere create real screen magic together. They are clearly very comfortable with each other and with Garry Marshall, the director (who appears onscreen briefly in a baseball game). Gere displays a previously unsuspected light comic talent that is utterly disarming. Roberts just gets better and better; like the character she plays, she is learning to rise above her “excessively flirtatious energy.” The indispensable Joan Cusack, this generation’s Eve Arden, plays Maggie’s best friend, utterly supportive despite having to live through four different bridesmaid’s dresses. And three cheers for adding a small but genuine dose of psychological insight to give a little bit of substance to the story. Both Ike and Maggie have to learn something about themselves before they can move forward together.

The best moment in “Pretty Women” was when Gere asked Roberts what the fairy tale princess does when the prince rescues her, and she replies, “She rescues him right back.” That theme is carried over into this movie (along with the “tell off the boutique salespeople” scene and actors Hector Elizondo and Larry Miller). Families can use this film to initiate conversations on the importance of being a full person yourself before you are capable of making a commitment to anyone else.

Parents should know that the PG rating comes from brief sexual references (please, someone, no more grandmothers making lusty comments as a source of humor — that was tired back on the TV show “Phyllis”). Also, Maggie’s father has a severe drinking problem which appears to be solved when she develops the courage to confront him about it. Families who enjoy this film should try renting some of the classic romantic comedies listed above, along with “My Man Godfrey,” “Bringing Up Baby,” and “Holiday.”