2006 Summer Movie Preview
May 2, 2006
I’ve been looking over the long list of summer movies, analyzing what I think will be good, what I think will hit it big at the box office, what I think could surprise, and what I think will waste all of our time, and I’ve come up with one resounding conclusion, and it’s that the summer movie season will undoubtedly be better than the spring movie season. I know that’s not much of a huge estimate, given that, personally, I’ve only seen a handful of films since January that were actually good (two that were great, “Thank You For Smoking” and “United 93”), and anything this summer has to be better than stuff like “Silent Hill”, “Aquamarine”, and “RV”, but the list I’m looking at is still a huge crapshoot of potential dynamite blockbusters, unoriginal sequels, risky (i.e. unoriginal) remakes, and oddball coin flips that could be little gems, or big fat bricks. Who knows if the mixture of CG animation and motion capture performance will charm kids and adults alike in July’s “Monster House”, or if it’ll be as creepy and hard to sit through as “The Polar Express”, or whether or not newcomer Brandon Routh and director Bryan Singer can put an exciting new spin on Christopher Reeve’s long retired Superman in the year’s most anticipated action film, “Superman Returns” (June 30th), or if it’ll just make us miss Reeve’s classic portrayal all the more. Nothing is given this year, even the usually bankable talking animal pictures look suspect after the failure of last month’s “The Wild”, but if there’s one thing we can always count on during the season, it’s that we’ll get lots of hype and anticipation for nearly every big budget studio tent pole picture, so to whet appetites as to what to expect over the next few months of said hype, here is a rundown of the films I’m looking forward to, the ones that I’ll do my best to avoid, and the ones that’ll make a fistful of green, just as they should in the audience friendly months of May through August.
Let’s begin with those talking animals and the CGI animation films of the summer, since those are always big potential moneymakers for the studios, and equally potential headaches for bored reviewers. Dreamworks is heavily promoting a May 19th adventure called “Over the Hedge”, about a few woodland creatures that steal into human territory to ransack garbage cans, while later in the summer, Kevin James voices a humanlike cow in “Barnyard” (July 28th), and Nicolas Cage and Julia Roberts lend their voices to “The Ant Bully” (Aug 4th), a film about a young boy who gets shrunk down to the size of an ant. Ants, cows, turtles, whatever, talking animals will be invading our screens again this summer (lest we forget the return of the ridiculous Garfield movies in “A Tale of Two Kitties” on June 16th), and it’s all a bit much to handle if you ask me, but if there’s one movie to watch out for that should escape the trappings of the Talking Animal Syndrome it’s Pixar’s “Cars” (June 9th), which should be the best, and most profitable CGI film of the summer. Pixar chief, and “Toy Story” pioneer John Lasseter directs this story about a race car (Owen Wilson) on an adventure outside of the tack, traveling down dirt roads and Route 66, and based on early screenings, and general word of mouth, the buzz is that the Pixar touch is still going strong, which will be great news for fans of the famed animation studio, and fans of inanimate talking objects that aren’t as annoying as talking birds and turtles. If just one of those other CGI films comes close to rivaling “Cars” for entertainment value, and quality of content (I’m rooting for “Barnyard”, just because I love Kevin James), than maybe there’s hope yet for this tiring sub-genre of animated movies.
Moving on from the CGI films, there are a handful of live action movies that should make a nice dent in the box office, including this week’s “Mission Impossible III”, the official starting entry of the summer season, May 19th’s “The Da Vinci Code”, with Tom Hanks as Dan Brown’s hero Robert Langdon in a film about Jesus (or something, I’m the only person in the world who still hasn’t bothered to read the book), and July 7th’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest”, the first of two successive sequels to the popular, and very entertaining 2003 sea adventure starring Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, and the increasingly gorgeous Keira Knightly, fresh off an Oscar nomination. Of the three, I’ll bank on the mainstream literary set to come out in droves for Ron Howard’s much anticipated, and much concealed ‘Da Vinci Code’ (with a cast that includes Ian McKellen, Audrey Tautou, and Paul Bettany, and written by Oscar winner Akiva Goldsman, it’s got some kind of golden pedigree, plus the last time Hanks and Howard collaborated the result was the classic “Apollo 13”), but don’t count out Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and J.J. Abrams to punch some life into the aging “Mission Impossible” franchise, and I’m sure there are more than a few out there who want to revisit Captain Jack Sparrow, though I’m afraid the ‘Pirates’ franchise feels like something that’ll lose it’s originality after one or two solid hits. Elsewhere this summer, Michael Mann tweaks his old ‘80’s TV show “Miami Vice” (July 28th) to present times, and casts cool cats Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell in the leads; Will Ferrell reteams with “Anchorman” director Adam McKay for a potentially hilarious NASCAR comedy called “Talladega Nights” (the trailer is pretty funny, so anticipation is peaked – Aug 4th); Oliver Stone looks to get back on track after “Alexander” with a heroic story about two surviving 9/11 firefighters in “World Trade Center” (Aug 9th), the second major 9/11 film of the year following Paul Greengrass’ masterpiece “United 93”; and Samuel L. Jackson battles snakes on a plane in August 18th’s “Snakes on a Plane”, a film with the year’s most obvious title, and one of the most buzzed about cheese-fests of the season. If Sam Jackson can score a box office hit in the dog days of the summer shooting pythons at 30,000 ft than we’ll know that Hollywood will pay to make anything, and worse yet, people will pay to see it. But who knows, sometimes camp sells, and if it’s actually entertaining, than that’s just a happy coincidence.
Blockbusters are easy to predict, but there are other films this year that could go either way, from surprise hit to complete debacle. I’m on the fence right now about the prospects of Jack Black playing a Mexican wrestler in “Nacho Libre” (June 16th), and Adam Sandler as a man who finds a remote control to pause and fast forward life in “Click” (June 23rd), and I’m not sure if renowned Hollywood hack Brett Ratner was the right choice to replace Bryan Singer for “X-Men: The Last Stand” (May 26th), though Kelsey Grammer as the blue haired Beast should be fun, but I’m pretty sure, with a budget of 175 million dollars, even the shaky Wolfgang Peterson (whose best, “Das Boot”, and worst, “Troy”, are so different that every film he makes is a question mark) can’t screw up “Poseidon” (May 12th), a remake of the Gene Hackman 1972 disaster classic. It doesn’t have to be “Titanic” or anything, but any movie with a budget that big, about an ocean liner that flips upside down when hit by a gigantic tidal wave, should be worth my time – if it’s a clunker than somebody messed something up big time. M. Night Shyamalan is back this summer with “Lady in the Lake” (July 21st), a fable about an apartment complex manager (the great Paul Giamatti) who finds a mermaid-like creature in his pool, and though everything points to an oddly charming, and strange, romance, Night still has to make up to his fans for the letdown that was “The Village”, and I’m not sure this will be the film to do it, but I hope I’m wrong. Other gambles this summer include Kevin Smith returning to his roots with “Clerks II” (Aug 25th), Michael Winterbottom examining present day interrogation tactics with the film fest hit “The Road to Guantanamo” (June 23rd), tabloid couple Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston in the relationship comedy “The Breakup” (June 2nd), directed by the sometimes good, sometimes schlocky Peyton Reed, Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles in a remake of “The Omen” on June 6th (quite unnecessary), and Richard Linklater roto-scoping Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, and Robert Downey Jr. in an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s complex and darkly funny anti-drug novel “A Scanner Darkly” (July 7th). When I read Dick’s brilliant character study I never thought it could be turned into a legible motion picture, what with its conflicting, drug-addled double narrative and constant shifts in character motives, but if anyone can do it, it’ll be the incredibly versatile Linklater and his trippy animation process.
Any number of these above films could sink or swim (“Poseidon”, that lame pun is for you), but if I’m pulling for just one to make it out of the pack and become an instant classic, it’ll be “A Scanner Darkly”, because my man PK Dick has been brutalized by Hollywood in the past (who remembers “Paycheck”?), and it’s time a smart director like Richard Linklater gave him his due. Spielberg made the short story “Minority Report” into a Sci-Fi blockbuster, and Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner”, an adaptation of “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” is a postmodern classic, but “A Scanner Darkly” is a very difficult novel to grasp, and if Linklater can pull it off, maybe a new generation of fans will discover Dick’s wide variety of philosophic Science Fiction works, and appreciate the complex metaphysical universe in which the late master so artfully toyed with. In a summer filled with Supermen, X-Men, Da Vinci Codes, Miami Vices, Poseidon Adventures, talking animals, talking cars, flying snakes, and Tom Cruise, my number one pick is the drug induced rotoscope social critique of “A Scanner Darkly”, and as a devotee of Philip K. Dick, I, and his legions of cult fans, wouldn’t have it any other way.
by Adam Suraf