Summer Movie Season: The Good, the Bad and the Maybe — Part III: Could Go Either Way

by John Nolte

With “Wolverine” opening this Friday, summer finally, finally arrives.

We’ve celebrated the good.  We’ve dreaded the bad.

Now on to the maybes; those that could fall either way, or just do the minimum by delivering a couple hours of forgettable entertainment. I’ll take that and truth be told, when the lights dim, they’re all “maybes” to me because when the lights dim I’m twelve again. But the lights aren’t dimming now and in the cool light of day I’m on the fence over these.

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May 22nd: Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian - The first one was a splendid concept brought down by a cookie-cooker plot involving a dad having to redeem himself. The hope is that the sequel is looser and less constrained by boilerplate convention. I’m a little ticked The Mighty Mickey Rooney wasn’t brought back, but it’s still a great concept and one helluva cast.

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May 29th: Drag Me to Hell – After being buried for nearly a decade by Spider-Man, director Sam Raimi makes a long overdue return to his roots in the horror genre. This is a “maybe” because as a huge fan of the “Evil Dead” trilogy, I. Must. Manage. Expectations. Everything that made “Evil Dead” so special, the low-budget, the obvious hunger to succeed… Well, let’s just say that it’s not easy to go home again. Who am I kidding … I’m counting the days.

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May 29th: Up – Pixar or no, animation is not my bag. What can I say, I like actors. In this whole burst of animation over the last decade or so, I’ve only fallen in love with “Ratatouille,” and “The Incredibles,” the former especially. Brad Bird is responsible for both and not involved with “Up.”

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June 5th: The Hangover – Drunken misadventures in Las Vegas. Could be lame, could be a mindless gem like Tom Hanks’ “Bachelor Party.” If the runtime hangs around 90 minutes, there’s hope. Another positive is BenderSpink, a hit-or-miss production company, but they do comedies well. I’m also heartened by the fact that Judd Apatow is in no way involved.

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I know this photo is from the first one and I don’t care.

June 24th: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - Except for that godawful shaky-cam, the first one delivered in a lot of ways. It was also openly patriotic and very pro-military. Please, Michael Bay, step away from the shaky-cam. It probably wouldn’t hurt to cut 35-minutes out of the 147-minute runtime, either.

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June 26th: The Hurt Locker - Director Kathryn Bigelow understands driven men of action better than most male directors and earned my eternal goodwill with the lean mean vampire-Western, “Near Dark” way back in 1987. She’s an enormously gifted director, but her script choices always lack. The stories are too long and too cluttered. In some cases, like “Blue Steel” and “Point Break,” you can see there’s a great film struggling to get out. If “Hurt Locker” were 101 minutes instead of 131, my enthusiasm would be higher. I do, however, trust her to tell an Iraq war story respectfully.

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July 31st: Funny People – Judd Apatow has yet to make a film I’m glad I saw. His crudeness is strictly for crudeness sake (you can always feel the strain for the “iconic” moment), his stars are almost always incapable of sincerity or warmth, and his self-indulgence is everywhere with scene after scene that lingers unnecessarily long, way past a payoff. On the other hand, Adam Sandler is the star here and I’ve been a fan of the Happy Madison sensibility since “Billy Madison.” So there’s no telling what to make of this. But I’d bet my house that the 131-minute runtime is a problem.

You might have noticed a pattern here and that’s the length of some of these.

The talent and confidence to tell a simple, linear story with a satisfying climax and sympathetic characters seems all but dead today. “Taken,” “Gran Torino,” and Stallone’s revival of his Rocky and Rambo characters did it, but nowadays too many of these films are over-stuffed as if dulling the senses with special effect excess is the goal. And if you can’t tell a simple story well, all you have left is your effects budget.

That Judd Apatow is taking this philosophy to comedies is the most disturbing trend in modern film since that godawful shaky-cam.

Here’s hoping they’re all classics and make $300 million.


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Posted Apr 28th 2009 at 6:43 am in Reviews | 49 Comments