MANILA, Philippines -- Disney Pictures officially ushered in this year’s summer of big movies with “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.” And what a blockbusting treat that proved to be for kids and kids-at-heart alike.

New franchise director Rob Marshall carried on Gore Verbinski’s original trilogy with the abundant pyrotechnics increasingly available to today’s filmmakers, latching on to the 3-D technology which Hollywood re-launched just last year in order to get TV couch potatoes back to the cinema.

Producers now regularly churn even bigger spectacles to lure moviegoers out of their homes into multiplexes that now offer combination 3-D and IMAX fare. They all seek the box-office friendly PG-13 rating at worst and G rating at best to ensure constantly ringing cash registers.

Seasoned cineastes can predict the inevitable, unwelcome result: Formula films of the franchise type. Screenwriters don’t have to tax their brain synapses to come up with new and inventive stories, as formulaic storytelling takes over.

Hence, gentle reader, don’t be surprised that three of the season’s current cinema bestsellers are sequels. Only one – the limited theatre release “Insidious” – seems new. But first things first.

A cleverly re-structured heist plot

Remember Dom, the fast and furious character in the first of this car racing franchise that Vin Diesel played? The long arm of the law finally catches up with him, and he’s duly tried and sentenced. As a well-guarded van plies the road at night to take him to prison, guess what. A cohort of Dom’s fellow fast riders, under the leadership of Hobbs (the ever dependable Dwayne Johnson), takes turn dovetailing and encircling the vehicle, literally driving it to a smasheroo. So before viewers with pummeled ears, thanks to all that THD and Dolby-enhanced noise, can say “samba at Mardi Gras,” everyone’s transported to planet earth’s most gorgeously photographed beach – Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro.

The motley crew includes rough necks from the first four films. Brian, played with absent glee by Paul Walker, provides the film’s expectedly tame romantic angle, so the opus can continue its success in Turkey and other no-sex-please Islamic markets. In the pre-heist preamble, you see him wooing and winning Dom’s sister, Mia (Jordana Brewster). Other semi-sexy females include a former Miss Israel (Gal Gadot) and Elsa Pataky as a Brazilian cop.

So what about the robbery itself? Screenwriter Chris Morgan has cleverly re-structured the movie, turning it into a bank vault heist, instead of a plain bank heist. Enough said.

Good, clean fun  and eye-candy

From splendiferous Rio, away the gentle reader must now go to China wearing 3-D glasses to witness the new exploits of the black-and-white bear, Po, voiced by the ubiquitous Jack Black who we just saw in “Gulliver,” didn’t we? The poster of “Kung Fu Panda 2” did not exaggerate the film’s awesomeness. Along with Black, the 2nd in the franchise (for, of course, this is also now a franchise) features such vocal heavyweights as Angelina Jolie, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Gary Oldman and Dustin Hoffman,

Po’s continuing saga takes place still in ancient China, hence the vocal presence of today’s biggest international Chinese stars like Jackie Chan (playing Monkey), Lucy Liu (Viper) and Michelle Yeoh (Soothsayer). All have, of course, graced some of cinema’s most widely watched martial arts films. Here, they act as foils to Po’s search for inner peace. This identity crisis becomes magnified by the much larger issue of genocide which the peacock Shen (played with insidious vocals by Gary Oldman) instigates against Po and his other B&W ilk.

But despite this “grand theme,” the sequel stays true to the spirit of the original – good, clean fun, with lots of eye candy. Ravishing palaces, gardens and woods complement a coterie of lovable beasts. The bloodshed concomitant to any war, especially one involving racial extermination, does not, ultimately, get in the way of “entertainment for the whole family” that is the usual trademark of Dreamworks Animation movies. Credit the director Jennifer Yuh Nelson for her restraint with Jonathan Aibel and Genn Berger’s script.

Discrete charm  amidst chaos

Credit, too, Todd Phillips for directing “The Hangover Part II” with the deft hand that transformed “The Hangover” into a box office success.

Filmgoers who enjoyed that will find little more here, but nobody’s counting. In fact, this installment apparently outstripped the first three-day grosses of “Pirates over the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.”

Not surprising, since the film’s anti-hero Phil is still played with discrete charm by cinema’s current poster boy Bradley Cooper. Boozing buddies Stu (Ed Helms), Alan (Zach Galifianakis) and Doug (Justin Bartha) keep Phil company.

In this sequel, the guys accompany Stu to Bangkok for his wedding to Lauren (Jamie Chung). They meet and become friends with Lauren’s brother Teddy (Mason Lee), everyone toasting Stu’s impending nuptials with a couple of drinks that become three, four, etc. Upon waking up the next day in their woefully trashed hotel room, they discover that Teddy is missing and his place taken by a monkey. A human finger, Teddy’s, intimates that something awful has happened. They must locate Teddy, or there won’t be any wedding.

The search provides screenwriter Craig Mazin the opportunity to showcase the sights and sounds of Bangkok, including an assortment of monks, strippers, gangsters, storekeepers, prostitutes and transgenders. Through all this, Stu wanders the streets, and you just know “The Hangover Part III” is already brewing. So what else is new?

Cristobal Labog has worked for advertising agencies in Manila, Tokyo, Brussels and Amsterdam. He divides his time between Mandaluyong in Metro Manila and Trabzon, Turkey. For comments and questions, e-mail crislabog@gmail.com.