The Movies

1 Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

$48.2 million 1 week in release $48.2 million to date

PLOT Movie version of the video game with the heroine battling a secret society looking for an ancient artifact.

CAUTION Rated PG-13 for action violence and sensuality.

BOTTOM LINE Pulp escapism for computer geeks and teenage boys. Everyone else may be bored silly by the B-grade action.

$20.4 million 2 weeks in release $20.9 million to date

PLOT A nerdy explorer gets the chance to find the fabled lost continent.

CAUTION Rated PG for action violence.

BOTTOM LINE This unexciting riff on Jules Verne will likely have kids squirming in their seats.

$12.9 million 5 weeks in release $197.2 million to date

PLOT A stupid king sends an ugly ogre on a quest to save a captive princess.

CAUTION Rated PG for bad language and crude humor.

BOTTOM LINE This movie strip-mines the fairy tale genre into postmodernist fantasy, tormenting characters from old Disney movies.

$12.2 million 2 weeks in release $39.2 million to date

PLOT A spy teams up with a computer hacker to try to steal billions from the government.

CAUTION Rated R for violence, bad language, sexuality, and nudity.

BOTTOM LINE This paranoid, trashy cross between The Matrix and Dog Day Afternoon is just another flashy exercise in postmodern moviemaking.

$9.5 million 4 weeks in release $160 million to date

PLOT The Pearl Harbor attack and Jimmy Doolittle's raid on Tokyo are juxtaposed with a love triangle involving two pilots and a nurse.

CAUTION Rated PG-13 for sustained intense war sequences, sensuality, and bad language.

BOTTOM LINE Key moments in American history are reduced to standard Hollywood formulas.

How far, exactly, can Disney sink? Atlantis: The Lost Empire is an adventure story that comes up completely bland. At least nobody sings in this one. The hero is Milo Thatch (Michael J. Fox), who wants to live his father's dream and find the underwater city. A rich benefactor finds him and sets him up with a crew of explorers, who set out to find Atlantis. When they arrive, the group's leader (James Garner), who turns out to be a mercenary looking for the Atlanteans' power source, double-crosses Milo. While Atlantis happily discards the synth-pop musical score typical of 1990s Disney, it tries too hard to inculcate bits of the Indiana Jones movies and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Yet nothing engages. Atlantis winds up thin, with unsympathetic characters, too many pointless action scenes, an uninteresting underwater world, and a plot that turns into nonsense. The battle revolves around the movie's obligatory New Agey part: Everybody in Atlantis wears crystals that harness a mystic force that draws power from their ancestors. Hollywood is buzzing that Disney's animation studio is having problems-complete with cutbacks and layoffs-and Atlantis is sure evidence of trouble in the Magic Kingdom.