Directed by Stephen J. Anderson

Written by Joe Bernstein, Robert L. Baird, Michelle Bochner, Daniel Gerson, William Joyce and Shirley Pierce

With the Voices of Angela Bassett, Daniel Hansen, Laurie Metcalf, Adam West and Tom Selleck

102 min. in Disney Digital 3-D

Several months ago, I sang the praises of Disney’s 3-D enhanced reissue of The Nightmare before Christmas. The studio’s newest release is its first original film shot in Disney Digital 3-D. The good news is you’ll be ducking and dodging for 100 minutes: the stereoscopic effects are thrilling. The bad news is, for a comedy, there aren’t many laughs.

Poor Lewis! He’s a brilliant child inventor who just can’t seem to find a family to bail him out of the orphanage. After 124 sets of potential parents, the kid can’t make it past the interview stage. In one instance, a peanut butter and jelly helmet jams and a prospective pater, allergic to peanuts, gets caught in a spray of goobers.

From Dumbo to Bambi to Lady and the Tramp, Disney’s mother figures have spent decades indoctrinating children into a world of adult neuroses. Contemporary directors keep Uncle Walt’s theory alive and take great delight in their motherly mise-en-scéne. In Finding Nemo, the mother fish is killed before the opening credits. In Meet the Robinsons, Lewis takes a nod from Robert Zemeckis by creating a memory scanner to transport him back to the future in search of his birth mother.

If this film hits big, it won’t be long before Disneyland clears a couple of new acres for a Todayland annex. The look of this charming, ultramodern city, with its streamlined design and residents riding through town in giant bubbles, doesn’t seem to have advanced much beyond America’s vision of the future in the 1950s.

While it starts well and ends in an agreeably predictable manner, the film’s second act needs propping up. Once Lewis arrives in Todayland and hooks up with Wilbur Robinson, a bulimic Big Boy minus the hamburger, the effects and pace slacken.

What it lacks in laughs is more than compensated for with a slew of bright and affectionate homage. The main source of nutrition in Lewis’ hometown appears to spring from Tash Farms, named after animation/live action director Frank Tashlin. Billboards throughout the town remind us of those great “Friz Cola” advertising signs in Loony Tunes. The film’s crowning moment is a Tashlin-inspired Science Fair avalanche gag.

Singing frogs simultaneously bow deep to Chuck Jones and Martin Scorsese. (That alone earned it an extra star!) The Robinsons appear to have been grafted from Kaufman and Hart’s You Can’t Take it With You. The villain, simply called “The Bowler Hat Guy,” employs floating remote Magritte derbies. The BHG even looks a cross between Quentin Tarantino and Grandpa Munster, but I don’t think that was intentional.

When it’s over and the surprise is revealed, do the math. I know it’s a fantasy, but bubbles and spaceships replacing automobiles will probably take more than 25 or 30 years to develop. The filmmakers are probably banking on those nationwide low math test scores.

Oddly enough, The Nightmare before Christmas, which wasn’t originally designed in 3-D, had more depth and eye-popping effects than Meet the Robinsons. Even more mind boggling is that the film didn’t top the weekend box office. Hollywood offers fresh stereoscopy and audiences flock to yet another Will Ferrell marginal-sport “comedy” that I wouldn’t see at gunpoint. Give the public what they want and they’ll turn out in droves every time!

Rating: 3 stars

Directed by Steve Carr

Written by Hank Nelkin

Starring: Ice Cube. Nia Long, John C. McGinley and Aleisha Allen

92 min.

Halfway through the film I began silently screaming the title in my head.

The promotional screening began as they invariably do with a radio station personality hurling knotted T-shirts way back into the stadium seats while over-modulating through a portable speaker. Call it a sadistic form of comeuppance, but there is nothing quite as delightfully uncomfortable as watching the jock have to tear down his own equipment while 400 people watch and wait for the real show to start.

This screening was different. In addition to T-shirts and cup holders, our host also threw up some scripture. The AM 1240 Jesus jock was kind enough to offer a pre-show benediction. He asked our dear lord Mr. Jesus to bless the audience. How reassuring that the church endorses a film that features its protagonist throwing back boilermakers and attempting to bludgeon a man with a 2x4. All it needed was a dash of pederasty to make it complete.

If there is a God, I’m sure that She has a lot more on Her mind than a bunch of freeloaders assembled to see a new Ice Cube family comedy. And that goes double for rappers and actors who gratuitously acknowledge Jehovah while picking up a trophy.

There are plenty of laughs, all of them unintentional. Ice Cube assumes the Cary Grant role in this official remake of Mr. Blandings Builds his Dream House. At least the filmmakers had the decency to rip off one of Cary’s lesser films. What’s next? Fatha’ Goose?

This is more of a bland Money Pit, with an emphasis on “pit.” The gang from the equally noxious Are We There Yet? reunites, this time as a family, for an eagerly unanticipated sequel. As Mrs. Ice, Nia Long adds just the right amount of imbecility to pull it off. No matter what Ice does, she’s sure to side with the competition. Hers is one of the dumbest depictions of a woman in recent memory.

And what about some well-timed comic inspiration? As a real estate agent, architect, city engineer, baby whisperer, former member of the Lakers and faith healer, the normally talented John C. McGinley dons numerous caps, each one filled with shit and pathos. A heartfelt scene where Cube pays a condolence call two years after McGinley’s wife’s death brought loud chuckles from my corner of the theater.

Cube plays a sports fan whose upcoming Web site appears so lucrative that he’s moving into a $2 million home. His familial goal is to lock his stepdaughter away from boys and toughen up his stepson. Look for the father and son bonding scene down at the river. It’s worthy of Ford. Tennessee Ernie, not John.

Many of the gags involve food and/or physical pain. The neighborhood welcome wagons fill the family’s freezer with sturgeon. Even more offensive, when Mrs. Cube announces that she’s pregnant, Ice asks “by who?” WWJS?

Perhaps the biggest laugh came from a telegraphed Magic Johnson cameo. Host of what could be the worst talk show in TV history, the Magic Man’s delivery has only improved with age. With feet propped on desk and billboard sized cue cards, he literally phones in his performance. Not since Mr. Sinatra’s one day work on Cannonball Run II has a superstar contributed so little to something so small.

It’s worth sneaking in for the first few minutes to see the rejuvenated R.K.O. logo and the imitation DePatie-Freleng credit sequence. After that, all bets are off. If anything, Jesus’ messenger should have prayed that Ice Cube go back to making more R rated action films. Can I get an “Amen?”

Rating: BOMB