In the interest of providing you with consumer news you can use, I am compelled to point out that just about everyone seems to love Juno. MetaCritic.com, which compiles reviews from noted critics, ranks it above every current movie playing locally except No Country for Old Men, The Savages and Sweeney Todd. The readers of imdb.com give it an 8.5 out of 10, enough to rank on the site’s all-time top 200. So if you’re interested in seeing this comedy about a precocious teenager who gets pregnant and decides to find a suitable pair of adoptive parents, don’t let me talk you out of it. But if you’re interested in my opinion, I wanted to run screaming from the theater for most of its 92 minutes. I smelled trouble the moment I read the writing credit for “Diablo Cody,” a name that just bellows “Pay attention to me!” and that is exactly the voice I heard all through this movie. Imagine if Quentin Tarantino’s formative years had been spent watching John Hughes movies, and you’ll get the idea. Fans like to call it a female version of Knocked Up or Superbad, which I won’t argue other than to point out that it has far more of the faults of those films than the virtues. I understand that young people pepper their speech with ostentatious references both to show off their cleverness and to hide their poor self-esteem. But what I heard too much of in Juno was not an attempt to reveal this kind of character as to show off the likes and dislikes of the writer. (By the way, it’s Thunderbirds are Go, not Thundercats are Go.) Equally painful was a score composed of colorlessly sing-song tunes largely by Kimya Dawson. I didn’t believe any of these characters were real people, and for the most part I didn’t like any of them. But hey, that’s just my opinion.

Given Hollywood’s top operating principle, that only family movies make the big bucks, there are surprisingly few films in theaters right now suitable to entertain whole families. The Golden Compass and Enchanted are already old news, National Treasure isn’t interesting for young kids, and just because your spawn want to see Alien Vs. Predator or Sweeney Todd by no means makes them suitable. So by default, The Water Horse ought to be a big hit, if audiences manage to find their way to it despite a lukewarm publicity campaign and obscure title. Loathe as I normally am to spoil any of a movie’s surprises, I don’t think I’m doing either audiences or the film a disservice by saying that it’s the story of a Scottish boy who finds and raises a baby Loch Ness monster. Alex Etel, last seen as one of the two kids trying to spend a bag of about-to-expire pound notes in Danny Boyle’s Millions, stars as Angus, who lives on the rural estate where his mother (Emily Watson) is the housekeeper. The film takes place during the darker days of World War II, and Angus is both perturbed by his father’s long absence and the arrival of a platoon of soldiers to turn the estate into an outpost to monitor German submarines. (It’s equally possible that this unlikelihood may represent poor scripting in padding out a thin children’s book or a dig at the cowardice of the platoon’s blue-blooded commander—the movie has a notably unheroic view of the military.) The broad outline of the plot isn’t terribly surprising (E.T. and Free Willy), but the critter itself is adorable in its various sizes, the scenery (as much New Zealand as Scotland) is gorgeous, and there are enough intriguing grace notes (like the ruins at the bottom of the lake) to pique adult interest when the plot goes on autopilot.