Hey there America, thanks for showing up for yet another dose of Entertainment Police magic. It looks like summer snuck up on us while we were passed out in the hammock, and that can only mean one thing: vaguely justified bikini features on Entertainment Tonight! Actually, that's a lie, summer probably means more than that to certain types of people, like the blind and sheepfuckers. And for the intents and purposes of this column it means summer blockbuster season! In case you've been out on the range a little bit too long, this is the time of year when Hollywood rolls out its big guns in an all-out war to gouge those greenbacks out of our tight little wallets. Who's got the biggest guns, besides that chick from
The Skulls II? Roll your eyes over part one of our Summer Preview to find out:
In Theaters
Bad Company
I suppose it was only a matter of time before we saw Steven Seagal ass-kicking his way through the hallways at Enron, but I was still surprised at how fast they turned this one out. They must have these scripts sitting around in Mad-lib form somewhere.
The Bourne Dentist
Matt Damon is Richard Bourne, a man who was born (get it?) to scrape plaque off of molars, but highly secretive government agents are out to stop him for reasons that only the screenwriter understands. Pretty good as far as dentist-thrillers go, and I liked Damon's Bond-like use of dental apparatus to get him out of tight jams. Kind of like Bond himself in
It's Never Too Late to Die and
Fancypants. The best thing about the movie, however, was the fact that they vetoed the original title at the last minute:
Rinse, Spit or Die. Hallelujah. That would have been the worst title since
James Bond in… Overkill.
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
Talk about some divine Ya-Yas. This would qualify as must-see TV if it were on television and television showed knockers. Yeah.
Enough
Those Hollywood big-shots were apparently as fed up with all of this Jennifer Lopez bullshit as you and me, so they finally decided to lay the franchise to rest with one gonzo exploding-building, axe-in-the-skull, flaming-motor-home "the bitch ain't comin' back" finale. Very satisfying for those of us who thought they should have killed her off after
The Wedding Planter.
Harvard Man
Sarah Michelle Gellar, the curvy bass player for heavy-metal sloths Slayer, dons the press-on mustache for some cross-dressing
Just One of the Guys mayhem at America's favorite party school. Probably the best metal band date movie since Ministry's
Sorority Girls.
The Importance of Being Ernest
Hell yeah. It's about time Hollywood laugh machine Ernest P. Worrel returned to the big screen, I was beginning to think he'd died or something. Some might argue that all of Ernest's movies are the same, and on the surface that may appear to be true. Boy meets girl, boy drops girl into a vat of raw sewage, boy falls off ladder and boy saves a bunch of little kids from some kind of snot-covered goblin.
But it's in the subtle undertones that the differences are found, and this soul-searching epic about a septic-tank scrubber who is mistaken for the president is clearly Ernest's strongest work to date.
Insomnia
Can't sleep? Then maybe you should move to Alaska or Norweg or some place like that. I hear it never gets dark there, so you can stay up all night cleaning your gun or whatever they do up there all night. Maybe watching polar bears tear into the soda machines, something. I'm not sure, I fell asleep during the movie.
Scooby, Don't!
Everyone's favorite cartoon leg-humping machine is back in his big-screen debut. Unless you've ever watched the cartoon on one of those huge projection televisions, that's admittedly a pretty big screen right there. But for the rest of us with shitty 10" Sanyo TV/VCR combos, this is our first chance to see Scooby humping the president's leg all larger than lifelike.
Spirit: Stallion of the Cinnamon
I almost choked on a licorice whip when I saw the trailer for this one. Could this be for real? I thought horse pictures died with
The Black Stallion and
Return of the Bride of the Black Stallion 2. And not only was this a horse picture, but an ANIMATED horse picture to boot. And not only an animated horse picture, but an animated horse picture with a name that sounded like the title of a Jewel song. Holy shit! This could be worse than
Glitter! Thankfully for everyone implicated in the credits, this turned out to be another great Mel Brooks spoof, with a clever red salmon of a trailer that should trick more than a few ten year-old girls into paying to see a movie about debutants having sex with horses.
The Sumbitch on All Fours
Ben Affleck takes a turn for the wolf in this poorly-timed "Werewolf in the South" picture. Believe me, I'm as excited as the next guy about the prospect of seeing some nutfuck werewolf with poofed-up hair taking a bite out of some saggy good-old-boy behind, but in the current national climate, are we really ready to laugh about bloodthirsty man-wolves again? As
Teen Wolf, Too,
Wolf, and
Airwolf all proved, a novel spin isn't always enough to keep the public coming back for more man-dog mayhem. Having Ben Affleck being torn from ass to appetite by berzerk werewolves, now that's an idea that could have drawn a crowd. Or perhaps a movie about the same.
Undercover Brother
If you've ever told a younger sibling so many monster stories that they were afraid to come out from under the covers at night, then snuck under their covers while they were sleeping, farted, and then left, this is the movie for you. You know who you are.
Windtalkers
Though some may lament the trend, with more and more movies being packed with fart jokes these days it was all but inevitable that someone would eventually make a movie that was all fart jokes. And who better to do it than John Woo, director of such foreign fart classics as
Con Air and
Hard Boiled Eggs? The film starts out by showing the members of the Windtalker family coming to grips with their exceptional flatulent skills in a hilarious montage. Carl Windtalker's accidental ass-blasted recital of
Sweet Child O' Mine at a baseball game will separate the snobs from the slobs in the audience, but if you make the cut you should have a good time. It's hard not to smile at the family's internal communication through a rudimentary language of intestinal blurts, and uncle Frank's scented Moose call will delight audiences, though it may scare children under the age of four. Coincidentally, some guy sitting in front of me added to the realism by cutting one loose during the film, making for a full sensory movie experience. I'll never eat Jujubees again, but I can't say that it didn't add to the film. I'm a little worried about Taco Bell's plans for a Windtaco tie-in, since I don't want to be caught in one of those places the first time somebody needs to make a run for the border after downing a sack full of those things.
That's it for now, folks. Tune your browsers this way in a month's time to take a gander at the other half of the skinny on what'll be crawling up your local theater's ass and dying this summer. Until then, this has been Entertainment Police, and you've been reading.
