Take Five

1 GOOD BOY! (MGM) Director: John Robert Hoffman. Liam Aiken, Matthew Broderick (voice). (PG) Take One: Innocuous family fantasy about a young boy who discovers that dogs are really intelligent aliens sent thousands of years ago to colonize and dominate Earth but instead went native and became man's best friend.

Take Two: The genial, blandly amusing tale celebrates the bond between man and dog, and occasional mildly crude humor is limited to flatulence jokes and the like. Kids won't notice, but attentive parents will be irked that the filmmakers saw fit to insert fleeting depictions of an apparent homosexual couple in the supporting cast.

Final Take: Basically harmless but uninspired. It will leave viewers essentially none the worse for wear but no better, either.

2 THE SCHOOL OF ROCK (Paramount) Director: Richard Linklater. Jack Black, Mike White, Joan Cusack. (PG-13) Take One: Rock-rebellion comedy-fantasy about a struggling rocker who poses as a substitute teacher at an elite prep school, grooming his students to play in a big-money battle of the bands contest.

Take Two: The hero's nearly religious reverence for rock's angry posturing and anti-authoritarianism — reverence culminating in a preconcert prayer to the “God of rock” — isn't quite condoned but isn't put in any larger context, either. Rock culture's darker side is whitewashed, and subjects other than music (and even music other than rock) get short shrift. A swishing, lisping fifth-grade “band stylist” injects “Queer Eye” camp into the grade-school setting.

Final Take: At its best a cheerfully anarchic celebration of creative energy and individuality, School ultimately makes no moral sense, but it's almost entertaining enough and harmless enough (not quite) for a qualified pass.

3 UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN (Touchstone) Director: Audrey Wells. Diane Lane, Raoul Bova, Sandra Oh. (PG-13) Take One: The golden Italian landscape is luminously photographed and Diane Lane is charming in a barely-there romantic comedy loosely based on the memoir by Frances Mayes.

Take Two: Following her nasty divorce from her husband, the film's heroine travels the road to recovery on a tour of Tuscany with a hunky Italian.

Sandra Oh plays a pregnant lesbian friend dumped by the lover with whom she had been planning on raising her artificially conceived child. Some profanity and crude language.

Final Take: The charms of the heroine and setting — and a bit of appreciation for Marian spirituality — can't redeem the rest of the movie.

4 SECONDHAND LIONS (New Line) Director: Tim McCanlies. Robert Duvall, Michael Caine, Haley Joel Osment. (PG-13)

Take One: A flaky mother fobs off her young son for the summer on two crusty, eccentric uncles she hardly knows. Rumors of hidden treasure and a romantic, swashbuckling back-story figure into a family film with more than a bit in common with the spring hit Holes.

Take Two: Its heart is in the right place, but the platitudes come with too much “tell” and not enough “show.” True ideals give way to sentimentalism as Duvall urges Osment to “believe in” what he wants to whether or not it's true. Stylized action violence, brief menace and a bit of mild bad language won't spoil the film for older kids. Final Take: A decent but flawed film that could have been a very good one. Family audiences could do worse.

5 THE FIGHTING TEMPTATIONS (Paramount) Directed by Jonathan Lynn. Cuba Gooding Jr, Beyoncé Knowles. (PG-13)

Take One: Spirited gospel music powers a church-set romantic comedy with Cuba Gooding Jr. as a callow fraud whose small-town aunt left him a tidy sum on condition that he lead his hometown church choir to competition glory.

Take Two: Never manages the most generic, safely banal Hollywood spiritual uplift, the vaguest pro-faith cliché. Further marred by sexual references, a winking attitude toward immorality and relentlessly negative stereotyping of Christians.

Final Take: Rife with barely veiled contempt for Christians and Christianity — and the attempt to market and sell the film to Christians — may just be the apex of that contempt. What an indictment of the churchgoing world if Christians buy it.

Steven D. Greydanus writes from Bloomfield, New Jersey

Spotlight: The School of Rock vs. The Fighting Temptations

While I can't quite recommend Jack Black's new hit The School of Rock, it's interesting to compare it to a current hit being marketed to churchgoing audiences: The Fighting Temptations, starring Cuba Gooding Jr.

In both films, a charlatan hero cobbles together an unlikely musical act under false pretenses, seeking to lead it to competition glory and prize money — despite resistance from a suspicious, uptight woman in a position of authority. Eventually his deception is exposed and he departs in disgrace, but his bond with the musicians wins out and they are triumphantly reunited for the climactic concert showdown.

Now consider the differences, and how they reflect on the seemingly church-friendly milieu of Temptations.

In School, there's a lot of talk about the meaning and message of rock music. The music is about something — rebellion, anger, defying The Man. No one in Temptations ever talks about a meaning or message in gospel music.

Similarly, School makes a big point that putting on a good show — not winning the competition — is what matters. In Temptations there's never any hint of any point to playing gospel music except winning the competition.

Astonishingly, School has more compassion and understanding for its uptight authority figure than Temptations. By the end of School, we actually like Joan Cusack. In the end of Temptations, LaTanya Richardson is shamed and disgraced with stunningly unchristian glee by her pastor brother and sent ignominiously away.

Finally, in School, someone says a prayer to God before a concert. Granted, it's not a very Christian prayer; still, it's interesting that prayer and God don't really figure in Temptations.

— Steven D. Greydanus