Cadet Kelly Presented by the producers of Private Benjamin, Cadet Kelly is the story of a young teenage girl's dilemma when her life of free-spirited creativity and unmasked familial love collides with a world of extreme military discipline and reserve. Kelly Collins, played by Hilary Duff, is a happy student at New York Middle School of the Arts whose whole world changes dramatically when her mother marries an army captain who's just been promoted to Commandant at George Washington Military Academy. Thrust into a rigid world of obedience that frowns upon creativity and individuality, Kelly manages to make one close friend, but clashes with Cadet Captain Stone (Christy Carlson Romano) and is eventually court-martialled. Sentenced to maintain the equipment for the drill team, Kelly's disdain for the team suddenly evaporates when she glimpses the beauty and creativity involved in their precise maneuvers. Eventually, Kelly experiences significant personal growth, finds an outlet for her creativity, and begins to forge an important connection with her new stepfather. -Tami Horiuchi Life Size Unhappy and lonely after her mother's death, Casey (Lindsay Lohan) attempts to resurrect her mother, but a minor mishap changes the results of her spell and brings an unwanted doll named Eve (Tyra Banks) to life instead. Eve is elated when she first encounters the smells and flavours of real life, but is shocked to realize that she's not the perfect role model she's always considered herself to be. Casey initially despises Eve-she never wanted this doll in the first place and now she's ruined her chances of bringing her mother back to life. But as Eve grows, she brings out the best in Casey, encouraging her to renew old friendships and spurring personal growth and healing. Even Casey's father (Jere Burns) rises above his grief and builds a better relationship with his daughter as a result of his interaction with Eve. [+]

Peter Pan has a special place in the realm of classic animated Disney films: it instils an element of child-like wonder. The 1953 version of James M Barrie's story is colourfully told and keeps on the straight and narrow of the book. Barrie's wondrous focus on child's play is the key to its longevity: children who don't grow up, shadows that run away from their owners, pirates, a fairy, and the magic ability to fly. In short, you can't help wishing the adventure would happen to you. Fuelled by a few memorable songs (the stunner being "You Can Fly") and the strong impression of the pixie fairy Tinkerbell and the goofy Captain Hook, Disney's version of this story neither supplants nor lessens the Broadway version with Mary Martin that was produced for television the same decade. Unlike some classics, Peter Pan never ages along the way. -Doug Thomas, Amazon. com.

"Out of this world" is probably the best way to describe the style and content of Westlife's home-coming live performance in Dublin, Where Dreams Come True. It's also a fair description (in the inter-galactic sense) of the short film that opens the concert, when Shane, Kian, Mike, Nicky and Bryan are beamed down to Earth (or more precisely to their native Ireland) from deepest space. Decked out in white for the opening and closing segments of the concert it's easy to see why some fans view the five guys as modern-day angels. Appropriately for the song "Flying Without Wings" the guys manage to perform the song strapped to a scaffolding hoist that gently floats above the audience. Overall the concert is a spectacular all-singing, all-dancing affair that showcases their biggest hits and selected album tracks, aided by an amazing set and stage effects. In places the performance does seem rather twee, especially their rural-themed rendition of "Seasons of the Sun" when the group emerge from behind the set decked in stylish country-wear. The moves performed by the all-female dance troupe to "I Have a Dream" are also plain awful. Tour favourites "When You're Looking Like That" and "Uptown Girl" are the hot highlights of this stunning live release. On The DVD: there are plenty of added extras on this DVD including two documentaries, "Access All Areas" and "World of Our Own". However, neither of these featurettes represent the group in a particularly positive light, with the boys spending most of their time crowing about the numerous number ones they've had and how wonderful they are. [+]

Duchess and her three kittens are enjoying the high life with their devoted human mistress until the wicked butler Edgar, with his eyes on a big inheritance, decides to dope them and get them out of the picture. How can these fragile creatures cope in the unfamiliar countryside and the meaner streets of Paris? Only by meeting the irrepressible alley cat O'Malley, a rough diamond with romance in his heart. After they get a taste of the wide dangerous world, he guides them home, and Edgar gets his just desserts at the wrong end of a horse. As always, it's really the voices rather than the animation that are the heart of the Disney magic: Phil Harris is brilliant as O'Malley, Eva Gabor as Duchess is. well. Eva Gabor; but perhaps the most memorable turns are by Pat Buttram and George Lindsay, who turn the old hounds Napoleon and Lafayette into a couple of bumbling Southern-fried rednecks. [+]

If you liked the original, then Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams is more of the same, with perhaps a touch less heart and a stretch more scale. The Cortez Family are back in action, with dad (Antonio Banderas) annoyed not to get the job as head of his spy organisation, mum (Carla Gugino) stuck with her overbearing and meddling spy parents (Ricardo Montalban is fun as her father) and kids Juni (Daryl Sabara) and Carmen (Alexa Vega) coming second to a new, nastier pair of spy siblings, the Giggles kids. The story is negligible, with an evil spymaster plotting to use a device that neutralises all electrical gadgets everywhere, and the nice idea of paying homage to those Ray Harryhausen adventures with big hybrid monsters (a spider-legged monkey fights a cobra-headed lizard, sword-wielding skeletons feature in a lost temple scene) is slightly undermined by the use of flat-looking CGI rather than proper model work. But there's a nice bit from Steve Buscemi as a paranoid mad scientist and director-writer-editor Robert Rodriguez, who makes these films between more grown-up action pictures (Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn), can stage a stunt better than most. -Kim NewmanOn the DVD: Spy Kids 2 is a nicely presented disc with fun menus and informative extras. The most interesting is Rodriguez's "Ten Minute Film School" which offers an easy-to-follow explanation of the digital effects. The director's commentary is also upbeat and full of useful information. As you would expect of an action spectacular such as this, the sound and visual aspects are superb. -Nikki Disney.

Designed for infants and toddlers (1 to 36 months), Baby Bach is a nicely produced video that features recognisable, familiar toys and colorful objects, moving to the beautiful music of Johann Sebastian Bach. According to the video producers, "Bach's music has shown to enhance creativity, improve academic achievement, reduce anxiety and heighten mental awareness. " Any parent will embrace this theory. Not only did this video completely captivate a 22-month-old for its entire 30-minute run-time, but it's easy on the parents, too. The images are lively, clean, and sharp, and producers The Baby Einstein Company have a firm handle on what interests babies and toddlers. The extraneous segment with two pretty little blonde girls is silly, but forgivable. Given that most children elect to watch a video repeatedly, this is one that parents won't mind in the slightest. The music, available on CD, is simply lovely. -N. F. [+]

Though it's not in the same league as the classic screen musicals, Annie's heartwarming rags-to-riches storyline, social comment (shallow as it may be) and catchy songs make for an entertaining and unpretentious 90 minutes' viewing. Aileen Quinn is the irrepressible titular orphan, by no means as irritating as she looks in the cover picture; Albert Finney is Oliver Warbucks, the tyrannical tycoon (with a hidden heart of gold, of course) who adopts her for a week in the interests of good PR. The real show-stopper, though, is Carol Burnett as the gin-soaked harpy Miss Hannigan, ruling with an iron fist over an orphanage full of unruly girls, flirting with every man in sight and eventually scheming with her unscrupulous brother (Tim Curry) to kidnap Annie and reap a fat Warbucks reward cheque. While the songs-including "Tomorrow", "You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile" and "It's a Hard Knock Life"-are excellent, the kids' voices are shrill and the production pretty low-rent: Annie is very obviously a stage show brought to screen on a low budget. But while it lacks the polish that make the Rodgers and Hammerstein and Lerner and Loewe musicals so special, it's funny and sweet and has a rough charm all its own. On the DVD: The film is presented in widescreen, preserving its original 2. 35:1 aspect, and is enhanced for 16:9 widescreen TVs; the soundtrack is Dolby surround, though as noted above the music score is relatively rough and ready so top-notch sound isn't actually as important as it would be in other musicals. The extras are pretty disappointing-an uninspired interactive menu features only the obligatory multi-language subtitles, (very) short biographies of the key cast members, a few publicity cards and posters, the theatrical trailer and-most interestingly-an isolated musical score. No commentary from director John Huston, no documentaries, nothing about the 1930s cartoon strip that was, apparently, one of the most popular of its day. There's actually more information in the accompanying booklet than there is on the disc. [+]

A delightful undersea world unfolds in Pixar's animated adventure Finding Nemo. When his son Nemo is captured by a scuba diver, a nervous clownfish named Marlin (voiced by Albert Brooks) sets off into the vast-and astonishingly detailed-ocean to find him. Along the way he hooks up with a scatterbrained blue tang fish named Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), who's both a help and a hindrance, sometimes at the same time. Faced with sharks, deep-sea anglers, fields of poisonous jellyfish, sea turtles, pelicans and much more, Marlin rises above his neuroses in this wonderfully funny and thrilling ride-rarely do more than 10 minutes pass without a sequence appearing that's destined to become a theme-park attraction. Pixar continues its run of impeccable artistic and economic successes (Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc). Supporting voices here include Willem Dafoe, Geoffrey Rush and Allison Janney. -Bret Fetzer.