Time to stretch whatever you need to stretch, America, we’re gearing up for the Summer Blockbuster season. Take your time, though, since nothing looks worse on a time-off request form than the term “pulled scrotum.” Ouch. Once you’re good and loose we’ll warm up with a few of the opening salvos in this summer’s “War Against Just Staying Home and Downloading MP3s All the Time,” as the industry has dubbed it. Or as we like to call it here, “Operation: Rehash.”

In Theaters

The Lizzie McGuire Movie
Leave it to Disney to put a happy-assed spin on anything, including the bitch who chop-sueyed her family with an axe and then wrote a song about it. Equal parts American Bandstand Psycho, Britney’s Dance Barmitzfa and every Nickelodeon movie ever, the film is a singing, dancing, cute-boy-kissing good time that pauses briefly for ass-chopping parent slaughter mayhem between the mall shopping spree and a hilarious visit to Buckingham Palace. It’s all in good fun, but I warn you that if this one does well, an animated Disney musical about the Holocaust is sure to follow. Scoff all you want, but I’d bet cash money they’ve got sketches of singing showerheads and songs like “Life’s a Gas” waiting in the wings.

Owning Mahowny
Eventually you have to stop numbering Police Academy sequels since people are going to start thinking the title refers to the name of a submarine or something and get confused. So you have to applaud the producers of the series for heading that train-wreck off at the pass by naming Police Academy… whatever number this is Owning Mahowny instead. Sure, the premise is some bullshit about an eligible-bachelor auction gone wrong, but at least they had the good sense to leave Steve Guttenberg in the deep freeze and instead tap pudgy white chameleon Philip “Feed Me Seymour” Dustin Hoffman for the role. The resulting movie still sucks, but it sucks in a different way than you’d expect.

The Real Cancun
Just when you think the girls have gone as wild as they’re going to go, the big smut machine in the sky serves up another steaming helping of underage skank. The real question isn’t when we as a culture are going to get enough of seeing the same drunk 17-year-old’s well-traveled funbags. It’s when are the religious weirdos going to run out of abortion clinics to bomb and have to turn their attention to Sony and Bicardi, the major contributors to this home video skankery? Unfortunately it won’t happen any time soon, not while being opposed to anything disgusting is still considered unpatriotic. Instead, I predict 10 years from now we’ll have a reality show about these loose co-eds trying to keep their fiancées from catching wind of the cock-soaked debauchery of their youth at their own bachelor parties. Now there’s some potential for drama.

Whale Rider
Probably as topical as a movie can get, this tear-jerker revolves around one grieving family’s battle to collect on their departed father’s life insurance policy, even though he voided the thing by eclipsing the policy’s gross tonnage ceiling as specified in the little-known “Whale Rider” of the title. A probing drama that asks important questions about where to draw the line between just really goddamned fat and legally culpable obesity. In the end, we learn that a person who’s made themselves too fat to breathe is still a person, and love knows no gross tonnage ceiling.

X2: X-Men United
Even a cynical Hollywood insider such as myself dropped his Maxim when he heard they were doing the sequel to Spike Lee’s Malcolm X as a comic book action movie. That takes some serious AC/DC-sized balls, my friends. Even Ben Kingsley’s nasty turn in the controversial Gandhi sequel Sexy Beast pales in comparison to these robust cajones. Man. But in all fairness, when you think about it, the notion of racial justice being restored in America by a crew of ass-kicking circus freaks of confusingly mixed ancestry just seems like common sense. Sure, they made both magnet-assed Malcolm and his wheelchair-bound arch-nemesis Professor MLK a little too white in an attempt to sell them to suburban moviegoers, but if people are going to insist that skin color doesn’t matter, then they really shouldn’t complain when everybody in the movies is white. That’s a little hypocritical when you think about it. Regardless, even with the unfortunate product tie-in angle of making Werewolf a pilot for United Airlines in his spare time, the film did kick a lot of ass-shaped racial injustice.

And that’s the that we were here to deal with this week, Americanos. Now you’ve got only 14 short days to prepare yourself for your next dose of Entertainment Police, so get preparing! If you don’t think that’s enough time, well that’s just tough. I used to accept reader requests to postpone the column in the past, if they were for a good reason, but it soon degraded to requests like “You suck!” and “Up your mother’s ass!” so now we just stick to the strict biweekly schedule. Sorry a few rotten apples had to ruin the pie-pocket for everyone.

April 28, 2003
Anger Management, Bulletproof Monkey, Holes, House of 1000 Islands, Identity

April 14, 2003
Bend it Like Beck’s Ham, The Core, Head of State, A Man Apartment, Phone Booth

March 31, 2003
Ass! Ass! National Tango!, Bringing Down the House, Dreamcatcher, The Hunted, Piglet’s Big Movement, Tears of the Sun, Willard

2003 Oscars Special!
Oscar fever is upon us, ladies and gentlemen, and fear not: that puss-like discharge is a completely normal symptom.

March 3, 2003
Dark Blue, Old School, Spider, Studyhall Junkies, The Time-Life Christmas of David Gale

February 17, 2003
Cherdevil, How to Lose a Gut in 10 Days, The Jungle Book 2

February 3, 2003
Final Destination 2, The Recut, Shanghai Knights

January 20, 2003
Darkness Falls, A Guy Thing, Kangaroo Jack, The Hours, National Security

January 6, 2003
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Just Married Ashton Kutcher, Love Liza, The Pianist

December 23, 2002
25th Hour, Catch Me if You Can, Gays of New York, Lords of the Ring: The Out-of-Towners, Max

December 9, 2002
About Shit, Cannibalize That, The Hot Chick, Maid in Manhattan, Star Trek: Eminemisis

November 25, 2002
Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nuts, Diet Another Day, Extreme P.O.S., The Friday After Next Friday, Wes Craven Presents: They...

November 11, 2002
8 Miles of M&Ms, The Santa Clause 2, Punch-Drunk Love, I Spy, Femme Fatale

October 28, 2002
Auto Focus, Formula 51, Ghost Ship, Jackass: The Movie, The Truth About Charlie, Waking Up in Reno With Billy Bob Thornton