Rating the Summer Blockbusters

The official first day of summer is a couple weeks away, but the summer movie season is in full swing. It'll be tough to follow up last year, when there was week after week of huge franchise blockbusters released (Spiderman, Shrek, Pirates of the Carribean, Fantastic Four, Harry Potter, Transformers) combined with not one, but two pictures involving Seth Rogen. Those are some big ticket sellers right there. While this season doesn't have as much depth as last, there are still some films I'm pretty excited to see.

Here's what I've already seen, in order of least impressive to most impressive:

Prince Caspian - An overwhelming "meh" on this film. I saw this movie at midnight on a Thursday evening, so maybe that clouded my judgement. As a book adaptation, it was great. Spot on. They covered pretty much everything. But as a movie, it lacked two key ingredients: writing and acting.

It's probably difficult when writing up an adaptation. You want to stay true to book as much as possible. The problem is the book didn't have much for dialogue. CS Lewis told his story with vast descriptions of what was going on. This puts the screenwriters in charge of having to create interesting dialogue without fabricating too much. They unfortunately didn't do that well.

What made it worse was the four kids they have playing the parts of Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy all are terrible. Maybe not terrible, since I've never seen them in anything else. But all of their lines seem awkward and unnatural. The lone bright spot amongst these characters is Trumpkin the dwarf, played by Peter Dinklage. You may remember as the little children's book author who runs across the table and attacks Will Ferrel in Elf.

If you've read the books or just like seeing medieval battle movies, then go see it. If you don't fit any of the aforementioned criteria, than wait until it's on DVD or cable.


Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - What can I say? It's an Indiana Jones movie. If you like the old ones, you'll like this one. If you don't like the old ones, then you might still like this one. My favorite thing they did with this was keep the time lines parallel. With the Chronicles of Narnia, the two worlds they jump between operate at different speeds. While only a year has passed in their real world, over a thousand years have passed in Narnia.

Not so much here. In our real world, it's been about twenty years since The Last Crusade was released. That's also about the same time that has elapsed in the movie world of Indiana Jones. The last movie back in '89 had Indy dealing with the rise of evil Nazis before WWII in the '30s. Now it's 2008 here and 1957 in Indy-world, where the new enemies are the Soviets and nuclear weapons.

The only thing I was disappointed with is the excessive use of CGI animation. I wished they would have done more live action stunts and blew up real props with real explosives. I understand it's probably cheaper and safer to use CGI, but doing some more things the old fashioned way would have helped capture the feel of the original movies. Instead, I felt like I was just watching another installment of "The Mummy,"(they are releasing another sequel to that later this summer).


Iron Man - Wow. Now that's how you do a good superhero movie: get some A-list actors, write enough witty banter without being too cheesy, and don't waste three quarters of the movie explaining the damn origin of how the hero came to be (they only waste about half the movie this time). In all honesty, I could have skipped the two movies above and just watched this movie three times. It was that damn good. SEE IT!


What I am looking forward to seeing:

The Incredible Hulk - I know it wasn't very popular, but I liked the movie done by Ang Lee a few years ago. I have to agree that this one looks like it's even better. It has a new cast, director, and storyline. At the end of the trailer, you can even hear a brief clip of the original theme music from the TV series.

Get Smart - I don't remember Anne Hathaway being this incredibly good looking in The Princess Diaries. Then again, I've never seen The Princess Diaries. Maybe I should have. Damn.

Wall-E - My girlfriend is all excited about this one, so why not?

Hellboy II: The Golden Army - I never read the comics, but I enjoyed the first one. So again, why not?

The Dark Knight - Yes. Yesssssss. YESSSSSSSSSSS!

Pineapple Express - Seth Rogen + stoner comedy = Box office gold.

Not much else to get excited about this summer: the aforementioned Mummy sequel, some comedy with Will Ferrel and John C. Reilly, a Ben Stiller comedy, and an animated remake of the Chris Farley classic, Beverly Hills Ninja.