We’re all friends here, so let’s be honest: doesn’t this look like a shit summer? Practically nothing is opening, and those few things that do are shockingly flat. Even with its notoriously inconsistent reviews, Indiana Jones 4 still looks on track to be one of the 5 best of the season if for no other reason than…what the hell else would be? There is literally one and only one film opening in June that I have even the remotest desire to see. You’ll know it when we get there.
6.6.2008
Hint: it’s not You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, in which Adam Sandler’s trademark silly voice antics are once again paired with director Dennis Dugan’s trademark gay panic gags. He’s an Israeli assassin! Who wants to cut hair! Oh, will the silliness never end with that mad-cap Adam Sandler? And can this possibly be as good as last year’s Sandler/Dugan epic, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry?
I might be slightly excited by Kung Fu Panda, if it weren’t for an ad campaign invasive enough to make those for Iron Man and The Dark Knight look like the whisper campaigns for an under-budgeted arthouse flick.
Speaking of arthouse flicks, The Promotion pairs John C. Reilly with Seann William Scott, if you were one of the eight people waiting for that to happen.
13.6.2008
You heard it here first (maybe) – The Worst Weekend of the Summer! If it’s not a new film from M. Night “Narf” Shyamalan, with the inordinately awful title The Happening… And It Freaks Me Out, it’s a reboot of Marvel’s Hulk franchise that actually looks like it’s going to be worse than Ang Lee’s benighted film from 2003.
20.6.2008
There are two major high-concept comedies opening this summer. So of course they’re opening on the same day! The certain winner: Get Smart, which awesomely stars Steve Carrell as Maxwell Smart, and then every single other fact about the film makes it seem that much less exciting, until eventually we get to: directed by Peter Segal, a man whose very best film ever was Tommy Boy. His worst film is hard to choose.
The other: The Love Guru, where Mike Myers shows us that he has spent the five years since his last live-action film figuring out which Austin Powers gags would be best to recycle using an Indian accent.
Also: Abigail Breslin stars as Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, a Depression-era family drama based on a ludicrously popular toy line, with a cast stretching from Jane Krakowski to Stanley Tucci to Glenne Headly. I have no doubt that they’ve figured out who the target audience is for this project, but they are not sharing it with the rest of us.
27.6.2008
It’s “W” Day! We’ve got Wanted, from the crazy director of the awful Night Watch, in which Angelina Jolie blah blah sexy assassin blah and then James McAvoy was never cast in another movie ever again.
Then, Wally, in which Number 5 of Short Circuit falls in love with a sentient iPod and chases her into space. Or, less cynically: WALL-E is the new Pixar movie, a sci-fi picture that’s been drawing comparisons to the nearly-silent French comedies of Jacques Tati or Sylvain Chomet. The protagonist, though a bit like Number 5 in the broad strokes, is just about the cutest animated character ever.
Oh, and the one and only movie I’m looking forward to? Let’s recap: Pixar is making a sci-fi movie that early buzz has been comparing to French silent comedy, and the protagonist is the cutest animated character ever. They could just as well advertise it as “Presenting Tim Brayton’s favorite motion picture of the decade.”