I liked the first "Stuart Little," and with the return of most of the creative crew, I'd hoped for a tolerable family movie. In fact, in seventy-eight sweetly calculated minutes, "Stuart Little 2" offers up one of the most beguiling portraits of the streets of New York since September 11. The tiny mouse adopted by a human family is a guileless never-say-die trouper whose gaudily-colored, swoop-and-zoom adventures bring Manhattan to life as few movies do (or at least the romance that many of us have with the city).

And a filmmaker doesn't have to turn pedantic with life lessons for the little 'uns when the earnest young hero on-screen is a 3-inch-high critter accepted by his family against the crushing outer world. (And there are more than enough poop jokes to keep we adults happy.) Hugh Laurie and Geena Davis repeat as the so-straight, so-tall parents, as well as Jonathan Lipnicki as Stuart's older brother, and the voices of Nathan Lane as shrieking, sarcastic grumpy-puss Snowbell and Michael J. Fox as the earnest voice of Stuart.

Although much of the look is storybook timeless—watching the trailer, a friend asked, "This is now?"—the attention to blue skies and crimson sunsets, the verdant green of Central Park, the gleaming skyline, perhaps the most romantic vision of the city since "Manhattan." "It was more complicated to do the skies, but we wanted the bright colors," director Rob Minkoff says of the look, which involved manipulating virtually every shot. "Getting a chance to go outdoors is great [as opposed to the set-bound prior installment], but it's still a fantasy. You're on the streets of Manhattan, you get that, but you don't want reality to intrude."

Writers of drama penned both installments; the first was written by M. Night Shyamalan and Bruce Joel Rubin ("Ghost," "Jacob's Ladder") takes over here. Rubin's the most notable new collaborator. I asked wife-and-husband producers Lucy Fisher and Douglas Wick about their greatest fears of screwing up a sequel to a good-natured success. "Boy, cut to the chase, why don't you?" he says, laughing.

"With new tools, like CG [computer generated images], people expect just putting it up on the screen ensures some kind of spectacle," Wick says. "Everything comes back to storytelling and performance. It has to be emotionally relevant. The story has to speak to children and their families, which is part of why the book has stayed popular for all these years. C'mon, the idea of being three inches [tall] and you could go out and survive. This one was more active visually, but still, it's a bizarre kind of movie where the hero is created inside a computer."

Much of the reason for the film's fleet length is the expense of creating characters from digital scratch, including Stuart's love interest, a sometimes-larcenous finch named Margalo, voiced by Melanie Griffith. She'd never done voice work before, she says, twirling a menthol Benson & Hedges 100. "They videotape you while recording without makeup or anything so you look like absolute shit. I had no clue how to work with my voice. Not necessarily bigger, but you're in there, your voice is there, it's just a different deal. Rob is not once to mince words—'You're terrible!' Michael [J. Fox] had his eyes closed, so into it, I was like—" She tosses her hair. "I don't know. I was just being really stupid. It was weird enough playing a bird after my mom was in 'The Birds'! It's not like you can say, 'What's my motivation?' I'm a cartoon character! It was traumatic enough when I got [from Minkoff], 'That's not working, that's not working, that's not working, that's not working!'"

She continues to play with her cig. "My voice, I guess, is perfect for a finch." She smiles. So you look at birds differently now? "Noooo." She thinks. "No. But can you blame me for all the things I've done in my life that you guys write about? They covered my eyes when Suzanne Pleshette got her eyes pecked out—God, that sounds gross! But nobody's ever, in therapy, told me it was because I saw 'The Birds' when I was 5."

I muse how acting like a finch would be less difficult than pretending to be any other character. What's the toughest thing about getting into the heads of others, I softball. "The toughest thing?" She fixes her wide eyes with utmost sincerity. "The toughest thing is finding jobs. Finding roles. I'm 44, after you turn 40... I used to think, when I was 34, I'd think, 'What a great excuse to use! Those 40-year-old, old people.' Nobody's protected."

Except Stuart Little. "Everybody's protective," Wick says. "They look at you, they get all pissed off, 'Stuart would never do that!' All these parents [say] of Stuart."

Fisher adds, "Several hundred parents."

"Stuart Little 2" opens July 19.

Also by Ray Pride

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