"Serenity"

Naked breasts: Nope.

Dirty words: Just some naughty stuff with Kaylee talking about how (sexually energized) she feels.

Best lines: "Start with the part where Jayne gets knocked out by a 90-pound girl." - Wash, totally digging hearing about River trouncing the big guy. "I swallowed a bug." - River, after a big chase scene.

The rest: Written and directed by Joss Whedon. Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense violence and action, and some sexual references. 1 hour, 59 minutes.

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ATLANTA — I never watched that TV show "Firefly," which was created by the guy who made "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" - another show I never watched on account of it sounding so incredibly gay.

But here comes "Serenity," the big-screen version of "Firefly," and I’m starting to think I owe Joss Whedon an apology.

See, I was gonna check out "Into the Blue" because it stars Jessica Alba and a bikini. And since half of the movie is filmed underwater, that means you can watch Jessica Alba and her bikini WITHOUT having to listen to her talk. Because talking is not one of Jessica’s big talents.

But then I looked at the poster outside the theater and remembered the movie ALSO stars the big blonde vanilla tool known as Paul Walker, who is to movies what kids without bladder control are to swimming pools.

But right beside that poster was one of a guy looking real serious, and a spaceship and, best of all, a semi-hot chick holding a big gun. So "Serenity" it was.

The serious guy is Mal (Nathan Fillion), and the girl with the gun is River (Summer Glau), a 17-year-old psychic with a major head trip.

See, it’s 500 years in the future. Humans have colonized all these other planets and built frontier towns like the Old West, but with cool upgrades like video games, legal prostitution and a sex robot wearing a prom dress.

Before the movie starts, some of these far-flung settlers waged civil war against the Alliance, the evil big-brother government, but they lost. Mal was one of them, and so was Zoe (Gina Torres), one of the crew on his rattletrap spaceship, Serenity. The rest are Zoe’s pilot husband Wash (Alan Tudyk), the engineer Kaylee (Jewel Staite) and the big dumb muscle, Jayne (Adam Baldwin).

There’s also a couple of old team members no longer on the ship: the preacher Book (Ron Glass) and the "companion" (aka high-end hooker) Inara (Morena Baccarin). We don’t see nearly enough of them, especially Inara, who runs around in a harem outfit straight out of "I Dream of Jeannie."

The Serenity crew goes wherever there’s work, most of it on the dirty side, stealing and smuggling stuff. They also take on paying passengers. River’s one, along with her brother Simon (Sean Maher), who stole her away from the Alliance hospital where doctors were monkeying with her brain.

But the Alliance wants her back and sends the Operative (Chiwetel Ejiofor) after her. He’s a bad(buttocks), making people fall on his samurai sword and telling them, "This is a good death, there is no shame in this." (Well, not for HIM, I guess.)

He’s bad news, but he’s got nothing on the Reavers, these mutated humans that rape and eat whoever they get their hands on, usually at the same time. They’re like a cross between zombies and intergalactic hillbillies, and their trashed-out ships look like an outer-space trailer park.

There’s a lot of plot in "Serenity." Mostly it has to do with Mal and his crew figuring out what to do with River when something triggers her brain and turns her into a kung fu fighter who might kill them all.

To be honest, I didn’t follow every little plot twist. Maybe that’s because these folks talk old-fashioned funny in a way that keeps throwing you off. Like Mal says, "Let’s have no undue fuss" and "I aim to misbehave." It’s kinda quaint, and when Kaylee complains about not having anything "twixt my nethers" for months, it takes you a minute to realize she’s talking pure filth.

It’s the kind of movie you have to pay attention to, but it pays you back with cool things like excellent fight scenes, outer-space chases and, yeah, a sex robot in a prom dress.

And what’s really surprising is Whedon kills off (spoiler deleted), and people in the theater gasped when he did. So now I REALLY have to watch the old "Firefly" DVDs and find out what the fuss was all about.

But it’s gonna take more than one good movie to make me go anywhere near "Buffy" - am I right?

Jordy "Ray" Purlky is the pseudonym of a longtime writer at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.