OF MICE AND MEN

Since "Stuart Little 2" tied with "Road to Perdition" for No. 1 at the box office its first week out, it seems only right to review them together. Are you a man or a mouse, Tom Hanks? Of course, "Stuart" also has an Oscar-winner in its cast, the really tall Geena Davis. Davis's height becomes even more apparent when, as Mrs. Little, she has to share the screen with a computer-generated rodent. Sadly, what is also obvious in their scenes together is that Davis lacks Stuart's realistic facial expressions and Michael J. Fox's comic timing. She could have benefitted from a few million dollars of CGI technology. That also might have cleared up her speech impediment?I haven't understood a word out of her mouth since her early stardom on the sitcom "Buffalo Bill."

In this latest desecration of E.B. White's classic characters, whatever reproductive difficulties Mrs. and Mr. Little experienced that led them to adopt Stuart in the first place seem to have been resolved, as they are now the parents of a dumb-founded baby girl. The curly-haired wide-eyed cherub seems to be asking, "What am I doing in this movie?" Since at one point her parents run off and leave her behind in a taxicab, the New York.

Department of Youth and Family Services should be investigating, too. Oh, yeah, they also have older "son" George (Jonathan Lipnicki), but he's too busy checking with his agent to see if Cameron Crowe called to do much here beyond teach young movie-goers that's okay to lie to your parents and let your little "brother" run off to become an appetizer for a falcon (James Woods).

Until 6-year-olds can secure a driver's license and a decent wage, kiddie movies should have something fun in it for adults. The "Stuart 1" script, credited to M. Night Shyamalan of "Sixth Sense" fame, managed a few mature laughs, but the best "Ghost" writer Bruce Joel Rubin could do in "2" was to give Stuart a hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold love interest, a full-breasted...canary? pigeon? a Perdue oven-stuffer-roaster? It's hard to tell, since no one seems to have bothered to provide the animators with an Audubon guidebook. As the thieving Margolo, Melanie Griffith proves her
voice is too unbelieveably childish even for a cartoon character. The interspecies relationship seems doomed from the start, and even Nathan Lane coughs up a furball trying desperately to make his sarcastic housecat
the only comic relief.

Nevertheless, my twin nieces had a good time. Then again, this is only the second movie, after "Fantasia 2000," they've ever seen on the big screen. They were equally mesmerized by the "please turn off your cellphones" film short.

"He's a genius, that Sam Mendes," said an elderly woman behind me at the movie theater, referring to the director of the very adult "Road to Perdition." True, anyone who has the good sense to get Jennifer Jason Leigh (as Tom Hanks' wife) off the screen quickly, before she has a chance to turn in her usual creepy performance, just might be eligible for a MacArthur Grant. But "Perdition" may be too gorgeous for even her to mess up. In fact, its visual splendor nearly makes you forget the lack of dialogue and untidy plot points. Unlike Mendes' "American Beauty," the grimness is nearly unrelieved, until Jude Law shows up with a creepy performance that blows all the other Oscar winners out of the water created by those artsy downpours.

The movie seems to be exploring father and son relationships--or at least, the father-son relationships that plague many directors: mysterious, emotionally withholding dads who can only get close to their children by teaching them how to drive the getaway car. With fathers, and father figures, like these you might want to put yourself in an orphanage. But then you might wind up adopted by the Littles.

- Cheryl Solimini