Stuart Little is an odd kind of kid's movie -- it wants to be sophisticated and witty, offbeat and sentimental all at the same time -- and it certainly has its own feel, but the mix just doesn't work. The humor is too dry and the writing too weak to support its own ambitions. And it barely stops to acknowledge its own absurdity. Stuart Little tries for Roald Dahl but ends up more like Charlotte's Web, which is only natural since it's based on a fellow E.B. White story.

I've never read the book, but I can only assume White is rolling over in his/her grave at the news that little Jonathan Lipnicki tries to steal every scene he's in like the future Danny Bonaduce he is. Not to come off as mean; I liked the kid in Jerry Maguire... three years ago. He hasn't aged, he hasn't changed, he hasn't even taken off those glasses. Lipnicki is annoying, and so is his spoiled-rich-kid character.

The movie belongs to the mouse, anyway. Stuart Little has a computer-animated body and the voice of Michael J. Fox. The mouse is a few inches tall, wears bad sweaters and comes in two looks -- meek and sad. He's an orphan who intercepts the Littles (Geena Davis and a very Ward Cleaver-looking Hugh Laurie) as they try to adopt themselves a boy.

HER: Look at all of them.
HIM: How could we possibly choose?

So they compromise. They take the mouse who talks, wears clothes and reads tiny books (no points for guessing Stuart's first onscreen reading project is "Little Women"). No one seems to question the fact that an orphanage has a talking mouse and, surprisingly, no one tries to exploit that. In this day and age, Stuart Little would at least be a sure bet to have his own talk show.

No, the Littles take Stuart home and set him up with his very own bedroom. We're supposed to "ooh" and "aah" over the sight of Stuart sitting at the dinner table with the family, brushing his teeth over a miniature sink and sleeping in his very own bed. Me, I'm sitting there wondering how the family managed to get a tiny sink installed on a Sunday.

The problems start immediately, of course. The Littles have a cat (of course), and the cat is jealous of Stuart's comfy bed and preferential treatment. The cat talks in the voice of Nathan Lane and, as you'd expect, is a little high-strung. ("I gotta relax. Where's my tinkle ball?") He actually says, "Oy!" at one point. Oh, and not 15 minutes pass before Stuart ends up in the washing machine. Hell, if I was threatened by a giant cat and nearly drowned by a Maytag after being adopted, I'd be on the first bus back to the orphanage.

Stuart Little has the episodic feel of a children's book. After the washing machine sequence, we get the overlong story of Lipnicki's toy sailboat race. (DAD: You try like heck and have fun. LIPNICKI: Is it fun to finish last?) For all the movie's tedious and godawful humor, I'll give them one thing -- I laughed my ass off when I saw Lipnicki's ship was named "WASP." Again, no points for guessing what happens when the remote control is broken and Stuart notices the boat is just his size.

Just as the movie is almost completely bogged down by its one-note gimmick -- as the extended members of the Little family, including Allyce Beasley and Jeffrey "Ed Rooney" Jones, are giving Stuart presents he'll never be able to use, like a big friggin' bike ("I think he'll grow into it.") -- it gets better. Stuart's long-lost parents show up, and they're lower-crust. With the voices of Bruno Kirby and Jennifer Tilly, how could they not be? It sets into motion a mixed-up series of misadventures with the Mafioso alley cats and, most importantly, Jonathan Lipnicki is barely on-camera.

Stuart Little works best in its all-animal moments, when it's not focusing on the, "Oh, hey, it's a mouse and he talks, but he's really, really small," angle, when the seemingly endless parade of live-action and voice-over cameos finally grinds to a halt and when it gives in to the cruel side of its dry humor. There's an absolutely hilarious scene where the Littles are talking to a police sergeant about their missing son and he tells them in no uncertain terms that they'll never see him again... and proceeds to show them a series of graphic pictures of the bodies of missing children. It's a wicked moment that really doesn't belong in the movie. It would seem at home in a Roald Dahl adaptation, yeah, but this is definitely no Roald Dahl adaptation and it's sure to be dwarfed at the box office by the far superior Toy Story 2. Stuart Little isn't a bad movie, but it is the victim of bad timing.



Recommended: No