Catch That Kid (2004)

'KID' STUFF? Terrible parenting leads to a cute li'l heist (led by Stewart) -- how adorable!

''You know what you did is wrong,'' scolds harried working mom Molly (Jennifer Beals), admonishing her preteen daughter Maddy (Kristen Stewart)...after the latter has robbed a bank and led the LAPD on a perilous high-speed chase. This quasi-absurdist understatement reads like a damning bit of comic irony -- but Catch That Kid is dead serious. (''I know I haven't been there for you'' is the next thing out of Beals' mouth.)

Yeah, I'm guessing Maddy knew it was wrong around the time she had her young admirers (Corbin Bleu and Max Thieriot) disable the bank's alarm system and arrange their go-cart escape. I'm guessing she knew it was wrong when she used her ripening tween wiles not only to secure the loyalty of her boy accomplices but to distract a security guard who looks at least 19. (Girl power!) ''Kid'' seeks to ''empower'' its target audience of recent Pokémon grads with an adult antihero desperation that feels preemptive and inappropriate. (Maddy's father needs an expensive operation -- thus, larceny.) It's all fantasy, sure, but whose? That of the young audience it's aimed at or of the grown-up children who made it?