PG- 13

Pitch Perfect 2

Easily as funny and musically fresh as the 2012 original (also PG-13), “Pitch Perfect 2” toggles similarly between good clean fun and good-natured raunch. So it’s problematic entertainment for middle-schoolers and tweens, many of whom may be itching to see it. Lovable weirdos — that’s the genius concept behind the “Pitch Perfect” brand. The college kids who compete in a cappella groups doing harmonized and choreographed covers of hits wouldn’t fit in doing anything else. Three years on, the Bellas from fictional Barden University, now seniors, lose their national championship because of a mortifying costume malfunction (not shown, but graphically referred to) involving Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson). Dissed by competition announcers John (John Michael Higgins) and Gail (Elizabeth Banks, who also directed), the Bellas go after the international a cappella title anyway. They welcome a songwriting freshman (Hailee Steinfeld), but their brilliant arranger, Beca (Anna Kendrick), is distracted by career goals. A scary German group called Das Sound Machine, the current champs, taunt the Bellas mercilessly. (115 minutes)

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THE BOTTOM LINE:The comedic use of sexual innuendo, obvious sexual euphemisms, direct references to private parts, sexually suggestive choreography and lyrics, as well as ordinary mid-range profanity, all stay barely within those ever-expanding PG-13 boundaries. Racial and ethnic characters are deliberately and ironically stereotyped. The college seniors also drink a lot.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

The camaraderie and snappy repartee among the terrific cast of the “Avengers” make this latest Marvel epic consistently entertaining and likely to please teens and also tweens who are into comic-book heroics and fantasy. Director Joss Whedon’s brainy-funny script even includes tasty literary, theatrical and biblical allusions. The film is way too long, and, as with most special-effects epics, the battle scenes start to look alike. But the evolving relationships among Tony Stark/Iron Man, Bruce Banner/Hulk, Steve Rogers/Captain America, Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, Clint Barton/Hawkeye and Thor (a Norse god who needs no “regular” name) keep things interesting. The superheroes must juggle teamwork with their go-it-alone instincts and occasional mistrust. An artificial intelligence called Ultron, the wayward brainchild of Stark, breaks free, replicates itself into highly destructive robotic warriors and aims to “save” the world, probably by destroying it. Old villains perish and a new pair, the twins Pietro Maximoff/Quicksilver and Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch, join the fray. (141 minutes)

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THE BOTTOM LINE:The big special-effects battles show massive destruction that must, if you use normal logic, result in many innocent civilian deaths. But ordinary humans shown in danger are rescued by various Avengers. The script includes rare mild profanity and mild sexual innuendo.

A cop tries to protect the widow of a drug boss as they race through Texas pursued by cops and gunmen. ( /Warner Bros. Pictures)

Hot Pursuit

If co-stars Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara played this ham-fisted comedy any more broadly, it would need an Imax screen. Perish the thought. “Hot Pursuit,” which, despite the PG-13 rating, is too full of sex jokes for middle-schoolers, looks and sounds bad enough in standard format, though it might amuse high-schoolers in search of a goof. Witherspoon plays Cooper, a San Antonio cop relegated to the evidence room after she non-lethally Tasered an innocent man and set him on fire. Tightly wound and humorless, petite but gung-ho, Cooper gets a chance to redeem herself. Her captain assigns her to help a U.S. marshal escort a mobster and his wife to Dallas to testify against a drug lord. When hit men take out the mobster and the marshal, Cooper grabs the wife (Vergara), and they go on the run, bickering endlessly while dodging bullets and crooked cops. (87 minutes)

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THE BOTTOM LINE:The script and physical comedy hover between PG-13 and R. There are easy-to-decipher, explicitly intended sexual euphemisms and a drug gag in which a cloud of spilled cocaine sends Cooper into hyper-drive. There is lethal gunplay but little blood. The script includes occasional mid-range profanity, barnyard slang and ethnic stereotyping.

Age of Adaline

Kids 10 and older, if they like romantic tales laced with fantasy, might get caught up in “The Age of Adaline.” This modern fairy tale doesn’t hang together well, with gaps in its own logic and chintzy production values (apart from the fab vintage dresses). A narrator explains that Adaline (Blake Lively) was born in the early 1900s in San Francisco. She married, had a child, then became a young widow. She was 29 when her car skidded off a bridge in a snowstorm. Adaline was trapped underwater and near death when a bolt of lightning struck. Revived and rescued, she resumed life, slowly realizing that she had become incapable of aging. Cut to the present: Still a beautiful 29-year-old physically, Adaline has led a solitary life, avoiding loss by avoiding relationships and changing her name to escape scientific scrutiny. Only her daughter (Ellen Burstyn), who now looks like her grandmother, knows. When Adaline meets Ellis (Michiel Huisman), she falls hard. A blast from her past adds complications. (113 minutes)

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THE BOTTOM LINE:Car-accident scenes in which Adaline nearly dies are startling but not graphic. She and Ellis spend nights together, but nothing is shown beyond kissing and cuddles. The language is mild.

An alcoholic ex-baseball player suddenly develops a friendship with a young man with Down syndrome who works at his local grocery store. ( /Godspeed Pictures)

Where Hope Grows

This faith-based drama, with a strong teen theme, could engage middle-schoolers and high-schoolers rather well. It’s ably acted, rather like an old-style made-for-TV movie, and delivers its Christian message lightly, no preaching. Discerning filmgoers may note the plot’s predictability and the finale’s bald manipulation, but the film has subtler rewards. Calvin Campbell lives in Louisville with his 17-year-old daughter, Katie. He disapproves of her cocky, slightly older boyfriend, but Calvin’s opinion carries little weight with her because he’s a drunk, always coming home late and driving under the influence. He was a major league baseball player who got cut years ago for anxiety issues and has never recovered. He meets a supermarket employee nicknamed Produce (David DeSanctis), a cheerful young man with Down syndrome, and strikes up a friendship that changes Calvin’s life. The father-daughter and new-friend tales weave together nicely enough to drown out tedious subplots. (95 minutes)

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THE BOTTOM LINE:While not explicit, one scene strongly implies attempted teen rape. In other muted make-out scenes, Katie's boyfriend guilt-trips her about making him wait for sex. A bad accident causes serious injuries, with much blood in a surgery scene. The dialogue includes mildly crude language and sexual innuendo, but no real profanity. Characters use "retard" to describe Produce and one person gets chided for it in an exchange that borders on racially insensitive.

Mad Max: Fury Road

Fire, blood and revenge fuel director George Miller’s galvanizing, hypnotic new take on his own “Mad Max” trilogy of 30-plus years ago. While rated R for relentless 3-D mayhem, the film has relatively understated gore for the genre, and little profanity in the eccentric dialogue. Yet its themes of female enslavement and barbarism in a post-nuclear world may be too much for middle-schoolers. From a rocky desert fort called the Citadel, warlord Immortan Joe rations water and food to the masses while enslaving women to bear children and provide milk for his “war boys.” Former cop Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) is held captive there as a “blood bag,” hanging upside down in an iron mask, transfusing blood into ailing war boy Nux (Nicholas Hoult). The equation shifts when “war rig” driver Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), with a shaved head and without a hand, goes rogue and takes the enslaved women with her. Immortan’s war boys pursue her in a death chase. Max and Furiosa lead the fight for liberation.(120 minutes)

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THE BOTTOM LINE:  Considering all the mayhem — crashes, gunplay, flame-throwing, head-bashing — the actual gore onscreen remains rare, though eye-popping when we glimpse a living person's innards, or a flash of blood when a war rig demolishes someone. An off-screen Caesarean section shows the umbilical of a stillborn infant. The enslaved women are scantily clad with a moment of back-view nudity.

Horwitz is a freelance writer.

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