CORAL REEF ADVENTURE (G) Another quality IMAX production from the acclaimed team of MacGillivray Freeman (who seem to be able to do this IMAX thing in their sleep), Coral Reef Adventure is a fascinating and somewhat frightening look at an exotic and rapidly disappearing underwater world. Music by flag-waving hippie diehards Crosby, Stills and Nash brings home the environmental message concerning the destruction of the reefs (from a deadly combo of over-fishing and global warming), but the movie has its moments of fun as well. 
1/2
DADDY DAY CARE (PG) Fresh from his breakthrough stinkers I Spy and The Adventures of Pluto Nash, Eddie Murphy takes yet another career-killing turn, this time playing an out-of-work marketing exec who decides to open a day-care center. Soon enough he's knee-deep in cuteness and shin-kicking rug-rats. Someone please stop this man before he grins again. —Tray Butler
THE DANCER UPSTAIRS (R) Actor John Malkovich's directorial debut is most enticing for what it suggests of things to come. An imperfect film that uses South America's violent past of political coups and Marxist guerrillas for thriller effect, this adaptation of Nicholas Shakespeare's novel follows a weary detective (Javier Bardem) in an unnamed South American country trying to track down a guerrilla group staging violent murders. Malkovich too often uses the location as atmospheric palette for traditional thrills and chills, but his command of a dark, dreadful ambiance shows real promise. —Felicia Feaster
DOWN WITH LOVE (PG-13) A jumbled misfire that strains to emulate those candy-color Doris Day-Rock Hudson romantic farces of yore, but winds up just lying there. Ewan McGregor and Renee Zellweger are the would-be lovers in this convoluted mess, generating even fewer sparks than previously managed by Doris and Rock (and he didn't even like girls). The self-consciously silly story is negligible: A swinging womanizer (McGregor) jumping through hoops to get a proto- feminist writer (Zellweger) to fall for him. The movie's real concern is to replicate the style of that era, or at least of its movies, from the clothes, cars and colors, to the Technicolor-vivid and blatantly (and deliberately) fake backdrops. Down With Love doesn't quite have the guts to present itself as full-blown camp, but it does constantly dip its toes in that territory, creating a confused and labored tone that's painfully coy and far too full of itself to be very much fun at all. Double entendres drift joylessly through the air, like Austin Powers' dialogue on Thorazine, each accompanied by an annoying nudge-nudge-wink-wink from the soundtrack, as the characters go through their paces in a standard war-of-the-sexes scenario, Hollywood-style, from the early days of the so-called Sexual Revolution. This kind of material wasn't all that much fun even when Doris and Rock were doing it, and it's downright painful to see it exhumed, perfumed and paraded about again. It's far less the cheerfully hip-retro homage it clearly wants to be and more like a grotesquely re-animated corpse trying desperately to look sexy. Also stars David Hyde Pierce. 1/2
FINDING NEMO (PG) Although it doesn't quite scale the heights of previous Pixar projects like Monsters Inc or the Toy Story movies, this latest animated opus is still one heck of a fish story. The computer-generated visuals are as dazzling as ever, the characters are appealing and the gags are consistently clever (and typically savvy of pop culture, with frequent nods to everything from The Shining to 12-step programs). The story just feels a little less inspired this time out. This is the more traditional side of Pixar, sort of an underwater A Bug's Life — but there's still plenty of heart. The little hero's mama gets killed off in the very first scene, opening the way for a narrative that's as much about separation anxiety and overprotective (single) parents as Toy Story 2 was about childhood's end. Featuring the voices of Albert Brooks, Ellen DeGeneres, Alexander Gould and Willem Dafoe. Opens May 30 at local theaters 1/2
