MOVIES WITH A MESSAGE

With the holidays upon us, the question “Aren’t there movies for families anymore?” is one we hear with a special plaintiveness, from colleagues, in letters or at the checkout stand.

There is certainly more to choose from now than there’s been for months: “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home,” “Malcolm,” “Crocodile Dundee,” “Seven Minutes in Heaven,” “An American Tail,” “Peggy Sue Got Married,” “The Nutcracker” and, for those who’ve somehow missed it since autumn, “Stand by Me.”

But beyond a simple checklist--good, bad, yes, no--is a deeper question: What do these movies teach our kids--or us? Some of the answers are surprising.

From the distant reaches of “Star Trek IV,” of all places, you get a passionate message about the endangered species of our planet. Here, specifically, it’s the humpback whale, but you suspect that any youngster stirred by the movie’s presentation--and that’s probably in the 95% range--might be curious enough to find out about other creatures as well. (Particularly if parents gave just a little encouragement. . . .) This is one example of the enormous power of film turned to a benign and positive channel.

Just how and why the crew of the starship Enterprise must pop back to the San Francisco Bay and the late 1980s to beam up a pair of humpbacks is a bit of a leap--call it the Star Trek McGuffin, the thing needed to get the action rolling. What the film makers (director Leonard Nimoy, producer Harve Bennett and the myriad screenwriters) have achieved after their McGuffin is the almost-impossible. They’ve made the first “Star Trek” movie that un -Trekkies can enjoy and that will make their most rabid fans happy, too. Not to mention the ecologists.

What “Malcolm” has for us is a gentle lesson about people regarded as “different.” Director Nadia Tass’ brother was one of these; after his death at 25, as a result of a car accident after an epileptic seizure, she and her husband, screenwriter/cameraman David Parker, wanted to make a film that would capture his particular qualities of innocence and enthusiasm. The result was “Malcolm.” Astonishingly, their unpretentious movie, full of real gadgets that move with cartoon-like character, just swept the Australian “Ozcars.” The message is low-key; the sight gags are whoopingly funny and, although crime certainly pays here, it does so with the same light touch as the now-classic Ealing comedies.

If the school-age members of the family find adults championing “Seven Minutes in Heaven,” they probably won’t go, but if they find it on their own they’ll probably like it just fine. It may be the way we wish to think about high school, with a drug-free student body in a picture-perfect small American town. But at bottom the concerns of the film are real: a struggle to hold on to unfashionable values (chastity, studiousness); the dislocation that divorce and remarriage produce; a plea by kids for more time in their parents’ lives. Director, co-writer Linda Feferman has a natural touch with these marvelous actors; Jennifer Connelly may be the one most quickly recognized, but her co-stars shine as well.

A curiously old-fashioned quality may be behind the enormous popularity of “Crocodile Dundee”--respect. It’s one of the great, hidden messages of the movie. “Crocodile” star-writer/alter ego Paul Hogan and director Peter Faiman have created a man who respects his fellow man and, especially, woman, even when she’s doing (or wearing) everything to provoke ungentlemanly responses.

Respect is a sturdy, courtly quality, absent enough on these shores to make audiences eat it up. And it’s certainly a nifty value for kids to absorb. (Now, if your children are playing skin-the-alligator using your Sabatier in place of Dundee’s bush knife, and nobody’s seen the cat in a few hours, the kids may have picked up on another of Hogan’s outback talents.)

Aside from those of us who were there at the time, it’s older adolescents who will probably enjoy “Peggy Sue Got Married” most. The fun comes afterward, with the whole family pulling out photograph albums, discovering that costume designers don’t exaggerate and that girls then really did dress like tiered, ruffled lamp shades. The dating habits and sexual strictures of “Peggy Sue” should also put a kink in the nostalgia for the ‘60s; one of the movie’s subtler points is to dramatize just how far the sexual revolution has brought us, and out of what. But the sweetest message of “Peggy Sue Got Married” is about endurance, about re-discovering the reasons you loved someone in the first place. It’s a surprisingly reassuring quality.

Two of the new releases unfortunately give opposite messages from the ones their makers intended. With the combined talents of director Carroll Ballard, author-illustrator Maurice Sendak and Tchaikovsky, you could hope for a holiday classic with “The Nutcracker.” Alas, except for fleeting moments, what youngsters are going to learn is that ballet is just as tedious and confusing as they mistakenly thought it would be. (Where is a rerelease of “Tales of Beatrix Potter” when you need it most?)

And “An American Tail” from Don Bluth, whose laudable idea was to introduce youngsters to the immigrant experience, has used extraordinary animation in the service of a thin story that diminishes and trivializes the subject (as Charles Solomon pointed out). Cat Cossacks and mousie pogroms? Really!

The warmth and resonance of “Stand By Me” certainly make it whole-family stuff, with this small consumer warning: This reminiscence of 1950s pre-adolescence is reproduced with an exact ear for the self-consciously scabrous language of 12-year-old boys. It also has the now infamous and outrageous pie-eating gross-out sequence. If either of these qualities would disturb the equanimity of your family, you might just as well know the reasons for the film’s R rating in advance.

But if I had to pick one film above all whose themes I wanted to share--a movie to see and re-see and then go back and see again--it would be an almost unknown seven-minute treasure called “Precious Images,” which at the moment is paired with “Malcolm.” Made as a gift to American movie audiences to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Directors Guild of America, it’s like the wildest dreams of the wildest movie fan who ever lived: 469 separate images from most of the movies of our dreams.

They’ve been selected and edited by Charles Workman into a collage so witty, so incisive and so full of emotion that the cumulative effect almost stuns you. From the first indelible image, the dropped glass snowball and the murmured word Rosebud to the last, as Dorothy and her beloved friends skip up the Yellow Brick Road, Workman sculpts in themes and waves. Some linger for a second, some are so fast they’re nearly subliminal; all are built on a great, passionate curve of knowledge, wit and affection.

Its message? The pure joy and the thrilling and infinite possibilities of the movies themselves.