New films from a family perspective, including 'Yes Man'

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A guide to movies from a family perspective:

"Yes Man"

-- Rated: PG-13.
-- Suitable for: Mature tweens and up.
-- What you should know: Jim Carrey plays a lonely loan officer whose life is transformed when he attends a seminar in which he vows to say yes to every opportunity.
-- Language: One use of the f-word plus a dozen uses of other profanity or vulgarities.
-- Sexual situations and nudity: There is a randy encounter between Carrey's character and an older neighbor who plops her teeth into a glass by the bed and largely disappears from view. However, there is no mistaking what is happening from Carrey's facial expression and his reaction.
-- Violence/scary situations: A barroom dispute turns into a fight, characters are arrested and a car crash sends people to the hospital. Other scenes are played for laughs.
-- Drug or alcohol use: Adults drink and sometimes get drunk.

"Seven Pounds"

-- Rated: PG-13.
-- Suitable for: Teens and older.
-- What you should know: Will Smith plays a man who is trying to atone for a grievous past mistake. That brings him in contact with various strangers, including an ailing woman played by Rosario Dawson.
-- Language: Roughly nine or 10 mild profanities and vulgarities.
-- Sexual situations and nudity: A couple kiss, start to undress and spend the night together, but the scene is discreetly shot.
-- Violence/scary situations: The movie opens with Smith announcing he's about to commit suicide, and it deals with fatal accidents -- some very disturbing -- as well as a woman who has been abused and one who is sick enough to be hospitalized.
-- Drug or alcohol use: Nothing notable.

"The Day the Earth Stood Still"

-- Rated: PG-13.
-- Suitable for: 10- or 11-year-olds and up.
-- What you should know: This is a remake of the 1951 sci-fi movie about an alien visitor who comes to Earth, setting off a global panic and bearing a timely message for the planet's inhabitants. This time, the alien is played by Keanu Reeves and the cast also includes Jennifer Connelly, Jaden Smith, Jon Hamm and Kathy Bates.
-- Language: Minimal, a mild four-letter word or two.
-- Sexual situations and nudity: None.
-- Violence/scary situations: Lots, with people who are mourned, shot or killed (and occasionally brought back to life), destruction and the stopping of time, as the title promises.
-- Drug or alcohol use: Nothing notable.

"Australia"

-- Rated: PG-13.
-- Suitable for: Tweens and above.
-- What you should know: Baz Luhrmann directs Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman in a sweeping, old-fashioned movie set in Australia in the late 1930s and early '40s.
-- Language: One crisply delivered f-word and a few stronger versions of "darn" and "heck."
-- Sexual situations and nudity: The most explicit and yet PG-13 scene involves a couple who start kissing, begin to undress each other and end up in bed before the camera cuts away.
-- Violence/scary situations: Men are killed by spears, a woman drowns, a man is trampled during a cattle drive and a prolonged attack by the Japanese leaves a city in fiery ruins and imperils children exiled on an island.
-- Drug or alcohol use: Rum is a favorite, and drinks are tossed back in rowdy bars and served at society functions.

"Four Christmases"

-- Rated: PG-13.
-- Suitable for: Teens and above.
-- What you should know: Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn play an unmarried couple whose vacation plans are short-circuited and end up visiting their families instead.
-- Language: About a dozen mild expletives or vulgarities.
-- Sexual situations and nudity: A couple is shown leaving a bar bathroom after a romantic interlude, kisses are exchanged, a grandmother talks about "pleasuring" her partner, a man describes his much-older girlfriend as a "very sexual being" and a woman says her husband "knows I slept with the entire water-polo team just like I know he experimented with men." Also, a home pregnancy test is the focus of a game of keep-away.
-- Violence/scary situations: Childish men punch, jump on and otherwise physically abuse their brother. An attempt to install a satellite dish ends badly, with a fall from the roof and destruction inside. A baby's head is accidentally banged against a cabinet, and children and an adult are tossed around in a backyard inflatable playroom.
-- Drug or alcohol use: Adults consume a variety of alcoholic drinks, although mainly beer and wine.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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