Pun Salad

This is billed as being for kids, and is rated PG, but I thought it was pretty scary. Nick Nolte's in it, and I think that should be an automatic PG-13 right there.

Summary: The Grace family is on the verge of breakdown: Dad's dumped Mom, who's at her wits' end, and the kids (a daughter and two twin brothers) are in nonstop bicker mode. So—naturally enough—they move into an old house, remote from anywhere, that once belonged to great-uncle Arthur Spiderwick, who mysteriously went missing eighty years back. Soon enough, noises are heard behind the walls, small items inexplicably vanish, and secret passages are discovered. It turns out they've moved into sort of a locus where the border between the fantastical world and ours is thin indeed.

Moral: being humanity's only hope against its imminent destruction by evil ogres is pretty good family therapy. Pay attention, Dr. Phil!

Everyone in this is good, especially the amazing Freddie Highmore, who plays the twins. Special effects are great, and the script is funny and scary. You don't have to actually have kids watching it with you to have a good time.