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RECOMMENDATION: Watch The Dark Knight, although young children may have problems with the violence and dark gritty visuals of the movie, as well as Heath Ledger’s haunting performance.

The Dark Knight
Heath Ledger’s final performance as The Joker elevates the sequel to Batman Begins.

Mamma Mia!
Another Broadway musical turned movie, listen to ABBA songs and feast on gorgeous visuals of the Greek islands.

Space Chimps
Monkeys in space movie tries to win over children this weekend, with questionable theme choice and even more questionable visuals

Read on for last week’s box office results:

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RECOMMENDATION: Go for Hellboy II, for family-friendly fare, skip the Journey to the Center of the Earth and instead take a trip to the outerspace with WALL-E.

 Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Director Guillermo del Toro helms the sequel in which the blood elf prince breaks the truce between the elves and the humans, and amasses his Golden Army.

Journey to the Center of the Earth
This time in 3D, Brendan Fraser must survive his trip through the prehistoric world in the center of the Earth.

Meet Dave
Eddie Murphy is a spaceship (yes, a spaceship) as aliens land on Earth and try to blend in with, hopefully, humorous consequences.

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Latest movie from Pixar is set in the world where humans have abandoned Earth and left in a posh spaceship as refugees while robots remain behind to clean up the mess. Post-consumerism world run by a big conglomerate Buy ‘N Large has turned Earth into a wasteland, and it’s up to WALL-E robots to compact the trash. 700 years pass, and the last functioning WALL-E robot on Earth has struck a friendship with a cockroach, has developed a somewhat of a personality and is obsessed with Hello Dolly.

Unlike previous Pixar efforts, the movie’s grandiose visuals at the beginning, and then the antics of WALL-E who can’t technically speak dominate the beginning. For close to 40 minutes, there is no discernable human dialog in the movie, and you won’t miss it as you’re too busy marveling at the visual creations of Pixar.

And when humans enter the picture after WALL-E grabs a leaving rocket, humanity has devolved into a fat and lazy consumers where they use hoverchairs to avoid walking, and all their needs are attended to by robots. WALL-E and EVE overcome their prime directives, and will end up saving the world (as usual). This movie also marks the first time a human has appeared in a Pixar movie as Fred Willard plays the president of Buy ‘N Large.

The movie is another winning effort by Pixar. If the simplistic and charming story doesn’t win you over, the lush visuals will keep both children and adults glued to their seats.

Rating: 97%

Hancock
What a better way to celebrate the Fourth of July with the release of Will Smith’s Hancock? Will Smith plays a superhero who is not really good at his job, and doesn’t care either way.

WALL-E
Latest Pixar animation features robots in a world where humans abandon Earth and start living in giant spaceships controlled by a mega-corporation.

Wanted
This violent comic book adaptation features plenty of deaths, bullets and improbable acrobatic action pieces.

Get Smart
Steve Carell plays Maxwell Smart in the big-screen adaptation of the TV show.

The Love Guru
Mike Myers returns to the big screen in The Love Guru, where he has to give love and relationship advice to the Toronto Maple Leafs’ owner played by Jessica Alba.

The Happening
M. Night is back in his first R-rated thriller where people unexpectedly start committing suicide.

The Incredible Hulk
Another Hulk movie seeks to reboot the franchise after the disastrously bad Ang Lee movie from a few years back.

Spoof films show no sign of slowing down, and Meet the Spartans clearly shows the genre needs a reboot. Actually Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, the writer-directors of this movie can be blamed for pushing out mediocre and outright crappy spoof films in the past few years. When done properly, spoof movies offer guilty pleasures such as Airplane! that cleverly satirized the disaster movies.

Meet the Spartans is a take on the ultra-violent (and stylish) movie 300. As the heroic king Leonidas must battle the invading Persians, he is joined by his most elite 13 (instead of 300) Spartans and the Persians bring along Ghost Rider, Rocky, Transformers and even Paris Hilton. Clearly no material was left behind, as an early battle is straight out of You Got Served (and the other dancing-gang movies).

Jokes fall flat almost all the time, and you’ll be glad the movie is only 80 minutes long, as more runtime would be cinematic torture. Still the movie finds time for 2 musical numbers set to I Will Survive, playing on the whole homoerotic vibe of 300 and the Spartans in the original source material.

It looks like their next target is the disaster genre: here’s to hoping that they find better materials and better writers.

Rating: 10%