The Second 'First Daughter'

Sept. 24, 2004 — -- Now in theaters: First Daughter, Shaun of the Dead and The Forgotten.

First Daughter

In Chasing Liberty, Mandy Moore plays the president's daughter. The Secret Service follows her everywhere, but she falls in love anyway. The film opened last January and didn't do well.

First Daughter was supposed to open last spring but had to be postponed because it's the same movie. This is the cinematic equivalent of Brussels sprouts. You didn't like it the first time, but here it is again.

This time, Katie Holmes is the president's daughter. Just like inChasing Liberty, her beau turns out to be a Secret Service agent working undercover, though never under the covers. After all, these are "tweener" films.

First Daughter is the better of the two. Parents, though, should file an absentee ballot. If you're old enough to vote, you're too old for the movie. Grade: C

Shaun of the DeadIf it isn't scary enough that First Daughter features Michael Keaton as president of the United States, here comes Shaun of the Dead.

Simon Pegg is Shaun. His best friend is a bum. His girlfriend just left him. He's lost in a dead-end job. How could things get worse? For one thing, the dead could come back to life.

This film plays like somebody dug up an old Monty Python sketch and somehow brought it back to life. But it's the funniest zombie movie ever. And dollar for dollar, this could be the biggest moneymaker of the year 3 in part, because I think they made the whole film for a dollar. Still, it's so funny, it's going to be a huge hit. Grade: B+

The Forgotten

Julianne Moore thinks she has a son. But one day he's gone — and not just gone — erased. He's disappeared from the family photo album. Nobody can remember the boy. Not even her husband. His mind has been erased, too. Her shrink, played by Gary Sinise, tries to convince her she's delusional.

The Forgotten has a dynamite commercial, and perhaps it works better as a trailer than it does as a film. I'm not going to say who's doing the erasing, but there are at least two of the most jolting, heart-stopping scares I've seen at the movies in years. It gets a little sci-fi silly at the end, but I'm not going to forget Forgotten. Grade: B