A Bad Case of Summer Movies
What Are the Top 10 Signs You're Seeing a Stinker? Stephen Hunter Ticks Off The Telltale Clues.

By Stephen Hunter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 20, 2007

10.You can't see the screen because the light from all the kids checking their text messages is too bright.

You're just settling in for Explosion No. 2, which looks to be a good one, and you think that Explosions Nos. 3 through 6 will be better yet, with the inevitable 7 through 9 downturn, and then 10 and 11 will be stunners and then . . . all the explosions go away. In their place, miracle of miracles, is shaft after shaft of pure white light illuminating the ceiling, like something out of a Cecil B. De Mille religioso-orgy pic, blurring and ultimately banishing those wonderful expanding-gas sequences on screen. It's all from their cells: "U r sooo kwoool! XXXXXXXX," "so what up 2nite?," "hear connor got grounded again? that sux!" They have to stay in touch. They're so febrile, so swarming, so tribal that they cannot bear to be out of contact with the Matrix for even the duration of a movie. God love them, they are the future of us all but . . .

How can a fellow concentrate on his explosions? Which leads to . . .

9.You saw that same explosion last week.

Explosions -- like widths of ties, skirt lengths and hairdos -- follow cycles of fashion. Sometimes we're in a big burning jag; sometimes we just blow things up real good. What this means is that at any given time, from film to film all the explosions will be the same. We seem to be in a burning cycle now. Now I enjoy a human barbecue as much as the next fella, heck maybe even more, but of late, there's just been too much burning flesh on screen. I favor a return to deconstruction by rapid gas expansion and, in fact, I will stand by it. All I am saying is, give TNT a chance.

The issue underneath all this, of course, is computer-generated imagery. In the old days, as nobody cares, they really blew stuff up or burned it, and they got extremely good at making harmless puffs of propane stand in for Dow Chemical's best, or a few hundred pounds of flash powder doing a passable imitation of a 155mm howitzer shell landing next to you. The secret, of course, was the sound. When the propane goes, it goes fssssssssss, but if you overlay a hungry, gulping RUSSSHHHHHHHHHH on the soundtrack, the hair on your fingers curls up and falls off.

Nowadays, they can disassemble the universe any darn way they want to, all on a hard disk bunkered down in some anonymous building in the Valley. The unintended consequence: Sometimes liberation ruins art, even popular art, rather than improving it. And anything goes means they don't discriminate.

The best summer movies find either new ways to use the magic boxes or do it in such a realistic way, you do not realize you're looking at pixels dancing in the amber of cyberspace. That's bad, not good. It leads to other ills such as . . .

8.Your butt has turned to 75 pounds of cold, wet sand.

And why is that? Because what started early this morning is still on the screen. If anything goes, it also goes on and on and on and on. I guess it's part of the gestalt of the summer movie: If you can do anything, why should you ever bother with any notion of self-discipline. Look at "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" -- it's 168 minutes long. You could read a book in that space of time. I think I once wrote one in that space of time. Then there's the recently released "Spider-Man 3" at 140 minutes! "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" is estimated to run about 2 1/2 hours as well. You'll be surprised to note that there are glaciers in the parking lot when you get out. Global warming came and went, and now the new ice age is here.

Why? You'd think common sense would dictate shorter movies with more turnover. Keep them doggies rollin', move 'em on, head 'em up, head 'em up, move 'em on. But no. By the mysterious forces of the marketplace, length is clearly no longer part of the equation. More important is the sense of import that length confers on a confection. And, the longer the movie, the hungrier you get and the more you notice that . . .

7.The cost of refreshments for a family of four could build a small hospital in Darfur.

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.

Not that you can hear it. That's because another sign that you're in a bad summer movie is that . . .

4.You notice it's not loud enough. It's never loud enough.

Why do they play these things so softly? This is a real puzzle. But it seems in movie after movie, the actors are muttering, the plots are lost in the mumbles and make no sense, and this is particularly a problem with the big summer films when a single plot detail can make the difference . . .

Oh, sorry.

Actually, No. 4 crept in from tomorrow's Top 10 list, which is Top 10 Signs You've Gotten Too Old to Be a Movie Critic.

But back to Top 10 Signs You're in a Bad Summer Movie.

3.When the star was on Letterman, he came on after the woman who thought she'd found a Rembrandt in her aunt's closet.

Hmmm, yes, the talk shows, which play a major part in publicizing the summer pictures, really are the first part of the winnowing process and by watching them carefully and mastering their semiotics, you learn a lot more than you do by reading the typical critic. It's actually kind of sad-funny, watching these poor stars lug their shticks from network to network, trying the same jokes for Jay as they do for Dave, then rerunning them for Conan before they work them on Larry, who never gets them anyway or to Jon who always gets them, then tops them.

But if you watch carefully, you can see signs that the enthusiasm displayed isn't quite genuine. The event above actually happened, more or less (maybe it was a Jackson Pollock at a yard sale) and the poor star was the new James Bond, Daniel Craig. He is a formidable Bond, a formidable talent, although he didn't appear until about Minute 46 in the show. That's not typical. Usually, star is first guest. Star and host chat, as assisted by professional comedy writers for each. In the second segment, the star sets up the clip, and it plays, to wild astonishment and pleasure of audience. Star and host shake hands and exchange insidery gossip in whisper as we go to commercial.

Now look carefully: Maybe the star gets only one segment. Or, the star really doesn't seem to want to talk about the movie. Or, Dave or Jay don't really want to talk about the movie. Or, the star makes like she doesn't know anything about the movie. Or, they don't run the clip. Or, the pre-guest comedy routines go on and on and on.

I predict that come the first week in August when Chris Tucker is flogging "Rush Hour 3" all over the place, Letterman will go to a Top 15 List or even a Top 20 List just to keep him off the air until the show is almost over.

Which leads -- well, no it doesn't, but it's a tough segue -- to:

2.Not enough drunken-sailor orgies of taboo words.

Is it because I like drunken-sailor orgies of the taboo? Well, yeah, kinda. Is it because as an older male, my favored form of communication is alcoholic rage? Sure, it's that. Is it that nothing feels better than saying "**** ***" to someone who truly deserves it? Yes, of course. But mainly it's that movies with the bad words are R-rated, which few summer movies are. I think that's bad. Sorry, I do. If it's PG-13 or PG, that means: no truly bad words (you know the ones I'm talking about), no good ideas (alas, R doesn't mean: bad words, good ideas). The big summer doozies are designed to appeal to everyone, which means they'll tend toward the generic, the polite, the safe, the unsurprising. I know, it's summer entertainment, but whoever said it had to be so intellectually drab? You can wander in them for hours and hours awaiting a novel insight, the jab in the ribs, an arresting image, a moment of high drama, a surprise. But no: all the rough spots -- like the rough language and too much gore, the intermingling of limbs and other units of the physical plant -- have been milled out of them by industrial- strength grinders and you know that in them lurks . . . safety. So do you go to the movies to feel safe? I don't.

And finally, the No. 1 Sign You're in a Bad Summer Movie:

1. Two words: Adam Sandler.

I refer you to "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry," July 20.