Wednesday, June 13, 2001
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Wednesday, June 13, 2001 |
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Spamming the summer movies By BILLY MURPHY The summer movie season is upon us, and every week I find another great movie coming out that I want to see. Here are my thoughts and recommendations on ones I have already seen and a few I am waiting to see. The second installment of "The Mummy" seemed a little repetitive to me. I mean, this ground was covered before and the second time around it was just a redo of all the same devices. I kept feeling deja vu while I watched, sorta like a Jenna Bush news story. I guess I am getting to the age where if I wanted to embrace a half-dead ancient, with dank, wrinkly skin, I would just look in the mirror at 7 every morning. Actually, "The Mummy" is pretty good, typical, summer popcorn fair, with lots of surprises, mystery and special effects; sorta like Monica Kaufman's hairstyle. A great, fun surprise in this early summer season for me has been "The Animal." Rob Schneider, the former "Copy Guy" from Saturday Night Live, plays a hapless policeman (is there any other kind in the movies?) who, because of an accident, has most of his body parts replaced with that of animals. It's sort of "The Bionic Man" meets "Old McDonald." Colleen Haskell from the first "Survivor" comes along for the ride and crazy, silly fun ensues. I think this is the movie that Tom Cruise dropped out of because of his breakup with Nicole Kidman. A movie to avoid like the plague is "Evolution." It never makes much sense to me. It has these dinosaur-like creatures that are too easily killed by some hapless college professors (are there ever any other kind?). It's comes across like bad "Ghostbusters" only if you took out the comedy actors and substituted FBI agents who worked on the Timothy McVeigh case. This movie was as boring as the PGA without Tiger Woods. If you are in the mood to see a good old-fashioned musical in the vein of "The Sound of Music," only replacing the children with prostitutes, then "Moulin Rouge" is the movie for you. Actually this PG-13 movie is pretty tame and lacks any of the ribaldry, debauchery or nudity found in your typical 17-year-old's summer vacation to Mexico or Panama City Beach. I have never liked Nicole Kidman much. For one, I have little patience for perfect eyes, skin and hair and, two, I think she is the reason Tom Cruise dropped out of "The Animal." Yet, I always like her movies and this one is especially good, in a love story, VH1 video kind of way. Thinking I was going to see a movie about oyster harvesting, I wandered into "Pearl Harbor." There were these low-flying airplanes zooming by with people scampering, confused, in all different directions. Then I thought it must be a documentary on the Delta Airlines story. The story actually follows a group of wisecracking guys and girls trying to find love before they get shot down in their prime. I thought it was "Friends" going out onto the streets of New York City. Anyway, the movie was plenty entertaining with more pain and suffering than a NASDAQ investment firm. As far as movies that are yet to come out, here are my one-sentence synopses: "Tomb Raider": "The Mummy" meets "The Matrix." "Planet of the Apes": New Jersey during a Soprano family reunion? "Swordfish": John Travolta tries to make it working for Red Lobster. "Jurassic Park III": From the viewpoint of the T-Rex, we taste like chicken. "Dr Doolittle 2": When good pets go bad and learn how to swear. "A.I.": Steven Spielberg makes a boy into a robot; the overmedicated Ritalin story. There are many too many more to mention, so I won't. That's it for now. [Visit Billy Murphy on the Internet at www.ebilly.net.]
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