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Paulie

The latest offering from Dreamworks SKG borrows the basic premise of Babe and adds to it the box-of-chocolates platitudes and melodramatic storytelling of Forrest Gump. Paulie (voice of Jay Mohr, doing his own vocal imitation of Joe Pesci) is not your average parrot: he doesn't just mimic human speech but converses with the characters he encounters. Trapped in a cage at a research lab run by a selfish though not completely evil doctor (Bruce Davison), Paulie recounts his life up to that point. After his beloved owner Maria, a shy five-year-old with a stutter, moves away, Paulie starts off on a cross-country trip to find her. Along the way he befriends an elderly widow (Gena Rowlands), sings at an East LA taco stand owned by Cheech Marin, and runs scams with a small-time crook (Mohr again, this time in human form). It all adds up to a sweet, predictable tale that may bore parents (you never doubt that Paulie will be safely reunited with his stuttering sweetie, now a grown-up babe free of speech impediments) but should keep the kids entertained.

-- Jessica Cerretani