If you transport “The Color of Money” from the pool hall to the golf course, you get something like “The Squeeze,” though to be honest there’s a considerable drop-off in quality from Martin Scorsese’s film to Terry Jastrow’s. Nevertheless golf lovers will get a charge out of the picture despite its flaws, and after the recent recent-breaking win by newcomer Jordan Spieth at the Master’s, it could even attract viewers who don’t spend a lot of time on the links.

Jeremy Sumpter, an engaging young actor who on the evidence provided here is a better-than-average player (there doesn’t appear to be much fakery in the action), is Augie Baccas, a spectacular golfer in his small southern town who enjoys not only winning local tournaments with ease but playing fast-paced “cross-country” games with his girlfriend Natalie (Jillian Murray) and pals. Intrigued about the lad’s potential is Riverboat (Christopher McDonald), a flamboyant gambler driving to Las Vegas with his even more extravagant wife Jessie (Katherine LaNasa). They approach the kid—whose mother and younger sister are under the thumb of his abusive father—with a tempting offer: to hustle players along the way to Nevada, where they can score big against a local kingpin named Jimmy Diamonds (Michael Nouri). Though Natalie warns him against the scheme, Augie sets aside his dreams of scoring in the pros and accepts Riverboat’s offer.

After a series of sequences showing Augie’s frequently wacky victories along the way, the trio arrive in Las Vegas and in a poker game Riverboat cons Jimmy into a golf match that will pit the supposed pizza delivery boy—Augie, of course—against Diamonds’ player, nationally-ranked Aaron Bolt (Jason Dohring). The problem is that Jimmy isn’t the pushover he appears, and Augie’s naivete lands him in big trouble. Caught between a rock and a hard place—Riverboat and Diamonds—he’ll need more than a little help from his back-home friends to survive the contest unscathed.

Written as well as directed by Jastrow, himself a golfer who was in charge of broadcasts of numerous championships over two decades at ABC Sports, “The Squeeze” claims to be based on the real-life experiences of one Keith Flatt, who’s been involved in running several golf-related businesses in Las Vegas for many years. How closely the script hews to the facts is open to question; certainly many of the plot elements, particularly the twist ending, strain credulity past the breaking point. But historicity is no more central to this movie than it was to “The Color of Money” or “The Sting”—the question is whether the story works as entertainment, and the answer is that it does, sporadically. Mostly that’s due to Sumpter, who’s sufficiently likable that he makes Augie somebody you can care about and root for. (That’s so even though a speech about his sister he delivers to Natalie before leaving for Vegas is pretty shameless in its manipulation. The fact that Sumpter delivers it without a hitch is testimony to his acting ability.)

Otherwise, however, the performances veer toward near-burlesque. One expects that of McDonald, who’s never been known for subtlety. Still, Riverboat is an over-the-top character, and so the scenery-chewing, while sometimes painful, is understandable. The same defense can be made for LaNasa, who’s equally over-the-top. But why Nouri should have chosen to play to the rafters, sporting an accent it’s difficult even to identify, is less defensible. The others—including Murray—tend to overplay too, though not as badly. “The Squeeze” is technically okay—Taron Lexton’s cinematography is attractive enough, and the editing (by Eric Treiber and Alexa Vier) is good, particularly in the golf sequences, shot—aficionados of the sport will appreciate knowing—at a couple of courses in Wilmington, North Carolina, as well as the Wynn course in Las Vegas.

“The Squeeze” won’t efface memories of the best caper pictures of the past, sports-related or not. Golfers, however, who after all are accustomed to things not always going right on the fairway, may well find it a pleasant diversion. At least it shouldn’t tee them off.

Once upon a time in the Magic Kingdom, Disney made scads of nature documentaries. Some were released to theatres in the fifties, while others showed up on television as episodes of the “Wonderful World of Disney” series. The tradition went into decline with the cancellation of that show, however, and it was less than a decade ago that it was revived with Disneynature, which has annually released a theatrical film, ordinarily in connection with Earth Day. The latest is this one from writer-director Mark Linfield, which offers a tale about a clan of macaque monkeys living in the forest of Sri Lanka, near some ancient ruins.

As usual, this is not a simple documentary. It employs magnificent footage of the monkeys taken on site, but fashions it—and obviously staged scenes—into a typically anthropomorphic narrative storyline. The plot centers on Maya, a solitary female at the lowest end of the class system among the animals, who has a child by a newcomer called Kumar before he’s exiled from the group. After a time during which Maya must struggle to raise little Kip on her own, Kumar returns and is accepted by the clan’s alpha male. All finally seems happy on the outcropping of rock the monkeys call home, along with some bears, peacocks and a mongoose.

But a rival clan drives them off the rock, forcing them to flee further into the forest. At this point Maya becomes a leader, since her lowly condition had led her to forage for food much further in the past, and she helps the others avoid predators like snakes and lizards before conducting them to a human village, where they adeptly steal eggs, cakes, vegetables and other delicacies before going back to their home and, under Kumar’s leadership, retaking their rocky home. As the film ends, Maya, Kip and Kumar have won newly exalted status in the clan and all is well.

The plot centered on Maya has clearly been superimposed on footage that was collected and, in some cases (as the town sequence, or others pitting the monkeys against predators like a large lizard), carefully arranged, though even there spontaneity must have been the general rule. And much of the narrative—like the class structure in the clan—is told not so much through action as via narration delivered with deadpan panache by Tina Fey. But Maya’s character, along with those of Kumar and Kip, is fashioned adeptly by the filmmakers, and it must be said that with her mop of unruly hair, she strikes a likable, slightly mournful figure the audience can readily identify with. The story generates some suspense, but not so much as to disturb younger viewers, and even the sequences of imminent danger are handled with a light touch to avoid becoming too scary for toddlers. Of course most of the footage is devoted to monkeys acting in simian ways that will delight children, who will recognize themselves in some of the critters’ horseplay (though the moments when Kip is slapped by the elder ladies of the clan could upset some).

One might doubt the wisdom of anthropomorphizing creatures of the wild as extravagantly as “Monkey Kingdom” does, especially when the process is linked to a narrative that essentially boils down to the oppressed but courageous lower class, forced to eat mere scraps, boldly taking power from an effete, over-privileged upper crust that hogs resources for themselves. (Some conservative parents could actually be offended by the perceived political message.) One might also question whether some of the musical choices are too cutesy to have been advisable—particularly the use of the theme song from the old “Monkees” TV series to introduce things. (It increases one’s irritation that what’s played isn’t the actual theme sung by the original members of the group, but a modern effort to replicate it, none too successfully.)

Still, the lead monkeys are such an engaging trio, and the filmmakers are so successful in capturing them in vibrant images, that family audiences are will probably be charmed, if not enthralled, and are unlikely to complain overmuch over such extraneous considerations. The film may be awfully insistent in castigating the privileged position of this kingdom’s royalty, who treat their underlings with an air of utter entitlement, but it plays to what people might like to believe about how eventually innate talent and courage will inevitably rectify social injustices. In that respect “Monkey Kingdom” might be thought as much a fairy tale as most Disney animated features are.