A Bad Case of Summer Movies

Shouldn't this be against the law? It's criminal what they're making off popcorn, which on a per-ounce basis may be the most expensive legal substance in the world. Folks, hello, it's popped corn, that's all. And the popcorn is only the start. Good Lord, they're even selling fried clams in some theaters. You see these families awash with kids forking over the college tuition for fried clams, pizza, hot dogs clearly constructed from chicken elbows, cow horns and pig tonsils. Ugh, the common multiplex smells like the back room at McDonald's, and you're working the fries station. The smell of hot grease, the sugary tangy miasma of the ketchup, the little spurts of sound when someone loses patience trying to liberate his mustard from those impenetrable packets so they have just snapped and smacked the thing, launching mustard into the atmosphere where it will eventually strike some innocent, such as me, and mark us in indelible life-preserver yellow for all eternity.

The truth is, of course, that movie exhibitors aren't in the business of showing movies but the business of selling popcorn. That's because the studios get most of the profit upfront and the theaters have to wait a few weeks for their cut. And what supports them during that time? Popcorn at $9 an ounce, $6 hot dogs, $9 pizza and $8 curly-fries.

Now some wags might point out that whether you're in a summer movie or a revival of Ingmar Bergman's "The Magician," the nachos cost the same. However, I've never let such inconveniences stop me before, why should I now? The Bergman revival at least rewards you with some nourishment of the soul. And, theoretically, since you're more involved, you won't notice the big bucks flying out of your wallets as you do in a dumber brain killer. But sitting there feeling the money draining, it puts you in such a funk that you might actually remember:

6.You hated the "Howdy Doody" show back when it was on TV in the '50s and now they've made a $180 million movie out of it!

Well, no, of course they haven't; they've only made movies out of every other lame '50s-'60s-'70s show. They've also made movies of other movies, which are called sequels. They've made movies also out of comic books, bad bestsellers, video games and even amusement park rides. They've made movies out of John Waters movies (see July's "Hairspray").

What's driving this is something annoying in the abstract but an absolute plague in the summer: brand identification. The marketplace is so crowded with entertainment choices -- an infinite number of them if you factor in the Internet -- that any brand ID gives a product a leg up in the competition. Early sitcoms are a particularly rich lode to be mined, because they double-dip -- they catch the nostalgic memories of aging baby boomers even as they sparkle anew for a new generation of preteen movie consumers. Hmmm, but there are no movies this summer that fit that mold ("Nancy Drew," with Emma Roberts on June 15, comes closest), which suggests that trend may be over, maybe because the baby boomers are too feeble to go to the movies by themselves anymore, or maybe because so many of them have been so bad ("Bewitched," "Dukes of Hazzard," "The Brady Bunch," "The Flintstones" or even the multiple failures of "Tarzan").

But the brand-name thing is still a summer tipoff. I count 13 brand-ID'd movies coming out in the next few months, ranging from the fourth go-round of the "Die Hard" franchise ("Live Free or Die Hard," June 27) to live-action variants of toys that already became cartoons ("Transformers," July 4; there goes the weekend!) to the inevitable Harry Potter reappearance (" . . . and the Order of the Phoenix," July 13, in which Harry is presented the town key to Phoenix, Ariz., and goes to a really nice spa) to the aforementioned musical "Hairspray," to the final degradation, Rob Zombie's take on "Halloween" Aug. 31.

And if you get all mixed up remembering if this is Two or 2 or Too or Deux or even (subscript 2, someone else figure out please) or did you miss Three and fall asleep in Seven, or did you read that book or the one just like it or have you played that game or not, imagine how bad it feels if . . .

5.You can't remember if Johnny Depp is imitating Keith Richards or if Keith Richards is imitating Johnny Depp.

In other words, as part and parcel of their general quality of kitsch, summer movies are almost always full of a kind of smirky in-jokiness. It's their imprimatur of insincerity, their nod to critics and other boring elitists who wander in like naifs, that their makers are really too smart for this sort of garbage. The Johnny Depp thing is a perfect example: Hired by Disney in the original to play a dashing, vivid heroic pirate Jack Sparrow, he confounded everyone by offering up a decadent Keith Richards impersonation, sending up the great Rolling Stone's cadaverous visage and debauched self-awareness. He seems to have single-handedly brought irony to the world of the Summer Movie and the director Gore Verbinski and his screenwriters noticed how big a gag it was and therefore have cast the actual Keith Richards in the third film.

Of course the "Shrek" films work the ironic line, too. They're smart at DreamWorks (they just signed a three-pic deal with Peter Jackson; how smart is that?) and they won't blow it this time. But here's the problem with irony, with kitsch, with attitude, with all those nifty nods to an adult sensibility coded into a summer movie. They're hard! You've got to be smart to do them! So I cringe at the prospect of Michael Bay if he decides to go "ironic" with "Transformers," and suppose Bruce Willis insists on a "subtext" of irony for "Live Free or Die Hard"?

Irony should be licensed and should require a seven-day waiting period to see if the proposed user is mature enough to deal in it.