In a crowded kid-film marketplace, it only took five weeks for this week's only new dollar-house addition to slip into the bargain theaters. ---

Mr. Popper's Penguins cast Jim Carrey in a very loose adaptation of the beloved children's book, as a businessman who needs to take time to smell the roses -- is there any other kind in movies -- and instead ends up smelling the fishy breath of the penguins he inherits. Our contributor Andrew Wright found Carrey's enjoyable improvisational moments buried underneath "the flowcharted mandate to hit every demographically favored beat ... [a] ceaseless wave of saccharine montages ... and a series of fart jokes that put the standard 1980s frat comedy to shame." You've been forewarned.