Animated characters Roxanne Ritchi, voiced by Tina Fey, and Megamind, voiced by Will Farrell are pictured in the movie "Megamind." The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-II – adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association o f America rating is PG – parental guidance suggested. Some material may not be suitable for children. (CNS photo/DreamWorks)NEW YORK –– At its core, "Megamind" (Paramount) is a parable about an individual's positive nature battling to overcome his negative nurturing.

Director Tom McGrath's generally endearing 3-D animated adventure offers older kids enough worthy lessons about making good use of talents and abilities, and about the dangers of allowing others to define who you are, to outweigh its occasional indulgence in mild bathroom humor.

Victim to that unfortunate upbringing is the titular character (voiced by Will Ferrell), a basically good-hearted alien whose supposed villainy toward humans is largely nominal.

Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis star in a scene from the movie "Due Date." The Catholic News Service classification is O – morally offensive. The Motion Picture Association of America is R -- restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian. (CNS photo/Warner Bros.)NEW YORK –– In director John Hughes' 1987 hit "Planes, Trains and Automobiles," two comic geniuses, Steve Martin and John Candy, played unlikely companions thrown together on a mishap-plagued journey home for Thanksgiving.

Tinged with tenderness, the proceedings eventually saw the two become friends after Martin's character discovered the endearing qualities lurking beneath Candy's bumbling ways.

Though it traces a similar arc, and invites comparison with Hughes' film, the sour comedy "Due Date" (Warner Bros.) is marked by a profoundly different tone: hard-edged, mean-spirited and, at times, violent.

Kimberly Elise and Phylicia Rashad star in a scene from the movie "For Colored Girls." The Catholic News Service classification is O – morally offensive. The Motion Picture Association of America is R – restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian. (CNS photo/Lionsgate)NEW YORK –– A good man is hard to find in writer-director Tyler Perry's ensemble drama "For Colored Girls" (Lionsgate).

As well as allowing for only one positive male character in an unusually large cast, the misguided feminist values underlying his script also take for granted behavior quite at odds with Judeo-Christian sexual ethics, and hold out, as the sole source of hope for a series of embattled characters, the discovery of the "God-within-myself" and female solidarity.

This screen version of Ntozake Shange's 1974 play, "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf," shuttles among the lives of nine New York-based African-American women to present a downbeat exploration of the personal effects of numerous societal ills. The dialogue is studded with verbally impressive, but sometimes dramatically distancing, poetic set pieces.