Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant portray a big-city couple who witness a Mob murder and are relocated to Wyoming with new identities in the comedy "Did You Hear About The Morgans?”

Columbia Pictures / Barry Wetcher

A body-switching soldier, a princess, a frog, a young queen, Dr. Watson, Nelson Mandela, talking chipmunks and even a touch of Fellini are all in a mix guaranteed to make the holiday movie-going season bright … or at least unusual.

Hollywood rolls out some of its biggest guns just after Thanksgiving every year with two very different goals in mind — snaring the kids who are on vacation; shining a spotlight on its Academy Award hopefuls. That’s even more important this year because come March 7, 10 films will be eligible for the best picture Oscar.

Already there are serious contenders on screen, what with Jim Carrey playing several roles in “Disney’s A Christmas Carol” — from the penny–pinching Ebenezer Scrooge to the boisterous Ghost of Christmas Present — and George Clooney giving voice to a former chicken-stealing fox who is trying to go straight in “Fantastic Mr. Fox.”

Clooney is also still on screen in the war fantasy “The Men Who Stare at Goats” and will play a very different kind of role in “Up in the Air” come Christmas Day. From “Juno” director Jason Reitman, “Up in the Air” was the hit of the Toronto International Film Festival. Clooney plays an emotionally isolated corporate hatchet man who takes glee in traveling across the country firing people, until his travel budget is slashed and he’s forced to fight for his own job just as he finds the woman of his dreams and nears his goal of accumulating 5 million frequent-flier miles.

Love is in the air, too, in “It’s Complicated” (Dec. 25) starring Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin. She’s the owner of a thriving bakery/restaurant (shades of Streep’s earlier role as Julia Child) who has been amicably divorced for 10 years. Her ex-husband (Alec Baldwin) has remarried. But when the two ex’s find themselves out of town for their son’s college graduation, it’s oh-oh-oh as Cupid’s arrow unexpectedly hits its mark again. Not complicated enough? Steve Martin turns up as the architect hired to remodel her kitchen and begins falling for her himself.

Romantic complications are also at the heart of “Brothers” (Dec. 4). Tobey Maguire plays a soldier who is missing and presumed dead in Afghanistan. Jake Gyllenhaal plays his brother who looks after and offers comfort to his “widow,” played by Natalie Portman. But then …

Complications abound, too, in “Everybody’s Fine” (Dec. 4) with Robert De Niro as a widower who realizes that his only connection to his family was through his wife. So he undertakes a cross-country road trip in hopes of getting back into the lives of his grown children. The comedy-drama, which costars Drew Barrymore and Kate Beckinsale, is a remake of Giuseppe Tornatore’s 1990 Italian film “Stenno Tutti Bene.”

“Nine” (Dec. 25) is not so much a remake as it is a redo of Federico Fellini’s 1963 classic “8 1/2,” in which Marcello Mastroianni played a filmmaker whose attempts to develop a new project kept getting waylaid by visions of the women from his past. Turned into a 1982 Broadway musical, the screen version is directed by Rob Marshall who did “Chicago.” Daniel Day-Lewis sings (!) as the Italian film director whose leading ladies include Nicole Kidman, Penélope Cruz and Marion Cotillard.

From Italy it’s a leap to Victorian England, with Robert Downey Jr. in the title role of “Sherlock Holmes” and Jude Law as Dr. Watson. Directed by Guy Ritchie, the action-packed film seems to be more “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” or “The Wild Wild West” than Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. But then this movie is not based on the celebrated books by Arthur Conan Doyle but on a graphic comic book series, something that gives one pause. Nevertheless, there promises to be lots of action, clever lines and sparring between the heroes.

Certainly more sedate is “The Young Victoria” (Dec. 25). Emily Blunt stars as Queen Victoria in the turbulent first years of her reign. Rupert Friend plays the love of Victoria’s life, Prince Albert, in this sumptuous production.

A more lighthearted romance, and Disney’s first 2-D animated film in years, “The Princess and the Frog” (Dec. 11) was directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, whose films include “The Little Mermaid” and “Aladdin,” and has songs by Randy Newman.

Set in New Orleans, the film offers a modern twist on the classic fairy tale with a beautiful girl, a frog prince who desperately wants to be human again and a fateful kiss that leads them on comical adventures through the Louisiana bayous. Voices include Anika Noni Rose, Terrence Howard, John Goodman and Oprah Winfrey.

Geared to the young set is “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel” (Dec. 23), the follow-up to the 2007 megahit that brought the singing chipmunks of the ’50s hit Christmas record and the long-running animated TV series to life on the big screen via computer animation. Pop sensations Alvin, Simon and Theodore put aside their music superstardom to return to school and set about saving its music program by winning the $25,000 prize in a battle of the bands … until they find themselves up against a singing chipmunk trio known as The Chipettes — Brittany, Eleanor and Jeanette.

More offbeat are “Gentlemen Broncos” (Dec. 4), about a young writer who discovers that his latest story has been ripped off by a fantasy novelist and then adapted into a disastrous movie by a small-town filmmaker, and “Did You Hear About the Morgans?” (Dec. 18). Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant star in this fish-out-of-water comedy as a sophisticated New York couple who witness a Mob murder and are furnished new identities by the witness relocation program and sent to rural Wyoming.

Clint Eastwood hopes to have another Oscar contender in “Invictus” (Dec. 11), an inspirational drama. Morgan Freeman plays newly elected South African President Nelson Mandela who tries to pull his country together at a time of social upheaval by rallying everyone around an underdog white rugby team which is making a run to the 1995 World Cup Championship. Matt Damon plays the leader of the team.

It’s a heady mix all right, but the perhaps the most eagerly anticipated film of all is director James (“Titanic”) Cameron’s “Avatar” (Dec. 18).

Cameron has gone back to his “Aliens” film for inspiration (Sigourney Weaver’s in it!) in a $200-million 3-D adventure about a paralyzed ex-Marine who is given an alien “avatar” (artificial body) that allows him to infiltrate a race of beings on the planet Pandora. They are standing in the way of human plans to strip mine a mineral worth $20 million per kilogram on Earth and a big corporation wants them out of the way.

Gee, the future sounds very much like the present.

mjanuson@projo.com