Stuart Little 2

The film adventures of the little mouse boy (based oh-so-distantly on E.B. White’s book) continue, with Stuart (digitally generated and voiced by Michael J. Fox) befriending a wounded bird (Melanie Griffith) after a run-in with a predatory falcon (James Woods). The decor and emotional atmosphere of the Little house (with humans Geena Davis, Hugh Laurie and Jonathan Lipnicki) is so thickly Cleaver-family sweet that author White would hardly recognize his creation. It’s hard not to think it’s deliberately overdone to make a satirical point—but if there’s irony intended, director Rob Minkoff and writers Douglas Wick and Bruce Joel Rubin never tip their hands. It’s all harmless fun for kids, and if the story gets a bit too cloying for their parents, there are the ingenious visual effects to make up for it.