SUMMER SNEAKS : Not Just Dog and Pony Shows : Family films aren’t child’s play--just ask the studios that lost a bundle in last year’s glut of them. But even with ‘Pocahontas’ in the field, there’s still room for breakout success.

Hollywood is nothing if not optimistic.

A few years back, bending to the demand for more family films--especially from aging baby boomers with young children of their own-- most studios cranked up their children’s film slates, resulting in more than a dozen last summer alone.

Unfortunately, with the exception of “The Lion King” and one or two others, last summer’s family films disappeared quickly from theaters. This summer, there may be fewer family films overall, but the studios are still hoping for audiences to seize on their particular offerings.

Disney’s “Pocahontas” will be one of the big ticket items this summer, as probably will Universal’s “Casper.” Warner Bros. is banking on “Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home” and “The Amazing Panda Adventure,” and 20th Century Fox is pinning its hopes on “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie.” But predicting what will really catch on at this point is still a bit of a gamble.

“With kids’ movies it’s always a crapshoot,” says MGM distribution head Larry Gleason, “but in the summer, the potential is so great--that’s why you keep taking chances.”

MGM is taking a rather big chance, in fact, on its Memorial Day weekend launch, a dog movie called “Fluke,” a sweet yet somewhat dark reincarnation tale of sorts based on the novel by James Herbert, about a man who dies in a car crash and comes back as a dog in search of his human family. The film is directed by Golden Globe nominee Carlo Carlei, the Italian director of “Flight of the Innocent.”

But dog films--with the notable exception of the “Beethoven” films--have usually spelled disappointment at the box office. The recent “The Adventures of Yellow Dog” disappeared without a trace, and Paramount’s “Lassie,” a dog with name-brand familiarity, performed poorly last summer. So why would a relative unknown like “Fluke” do any better?

“Paramount’s marketing of ‘Lassie’ relied too much on familiarity and that may have been part of the problem,” says Gleason. “Adults grew up with Lassie, but a lot of the young kids going to the movies today don’t know the character as well.

“With ‘Fluke,’ it’s a different kind of story about life from the dog’s perspective. Some adults think it’s too dark, but the testings show children really warm to it. And if you look at Disney’s (animated) movies, most of the stories are built around classics that are very dark.”

Disney is precisely one reason MGM is pushing its movie early. Most studio heads and exhibitors will concede that Disney’s animated spectacle “Pocahontas,” a love story between the Native American princess and the English settler John Smith, will probably be the blowout of the summer. The June 16 release, with songs from Oscar winner Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz, has the well-oiled Disney machine behind it.

“It will be a tough act to follow,” says one exhibitor. “There’s this picture and then there’s everything else.”

Everything else includes a few other anticipated heavyweights, like “Mighty Morphins,” a multimedia phenomenon of the preteen set, which opens June 30. It will be the movie debut of the TV show following six high-schoolers-turned-heroes fending off the evils of the universe.

Banking on its highly successful first film, Warners expects to heat up mid-summer with the July 21 launch of “Free Willy 2.” Warners has two other family films: “The Amazing Panda Adventure,” which opens Aug. 10, and Alfonso Cuaron’s just-released “The Little Princess,” based on the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

And Universal will try to grab the limelight May 26 with “Casper.” This childhood fantasy produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment has Christina Ricci (“The Addams Family”) hanging out with a friendly ghost while her dad, Bill Pullman, fends off tougher poltergeists.

As one Warners executive put it: “That picture, like a ‘Pocahontas,’ ‘Willy’ or (Paramount’s) ‘The Indian in the Cupboard,’ will have crossover appeal to adults. And that’s the key for a successful summer family movie.”

“Cupboard,” to be released July 14, is directed by Frank Oz and adapted from Lynne Reid Banks’ bestseller by screenwriter Melissa Mathison, who wrote “E.T.” It focuses on a 9-year-old boy who, on his birthday, gets a toy Indian that comes to life.

Other children’s movies include: Universal’s “Babe”; Disney’s “Operation Dumbo Drop,” based on the true story of an elephant being flown into a Southeast Asian village; Columbia’s “The Baby-Sitters Club,” based on the popular book series, and Fox’s “The Tenderfoot,” with Daniel Stern leading a group of 10-year-olds on a camping trip.

Crossover appeal generally means that “a lot of hand-holding isn’t involved and that parents could sit through this again,” says the Warners executive. “And if you get teen-agers in there, you’ve probably got a hit on your hands.”