Here is where it starts to get interesting…

After suffering through Scooby Duh and Bad Company and The New Guy and Windtalkers, the summer is beginning to look, much to my shock, like one of the best summers for quality movies in years.  While there is definitely an Undercover Brother-hating group out there, the film stands as a top-notch comedy for those of use who like the self-referential, stereotype-flaying stuff.  About A Boy and The Bourne Identity are solid hitting-for-average films of quality.  About A Boy hasn’t quite done the business that many hoped for and next weekend Bourne is going to become the second choice for audiences looking for thrillers after Minority Report.  Nonetheless, Bourne’s estimated $27.5 million start is encouraging.

Next weekend, there are two outstanding entries into the marketplace.  Disney hits for the fences with Lilo & Stitch, easily its best non-Pixar film since The Lion King.  And Steven Spielberg delivers what he couldn’t deliver last summer, a Stanley Kubrick movie that, in the end, turns out to be a Steven Spielberg movie after all.  It’s an amazing thing to type, but the least compelling part of this film is the action… it is, as Spielberg and Cruise have been telling the media and we have all been taking to be an excuse, a very smart, edgy piece of storytelling.  I can’t really write any more right now… respect for the critics embargo dates and all… but one more little tidbit… in the Top Six Oscar categories (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor), Samantha Morton joins Diane Lane as the only major summer contenders… though, depending on the awards weather, Spielberg and the movie itself could emerge, with Road to Perdition, as the rarest of Oscar birds -- summer heavyweights.

But there’s more… Men in Black II seems like it could be everything the original was.  Of course, if you didn’t get the first one, you are certainly not going to get the second one.  (Director Barry Sonnenfeld was in Tom King’s Friday WSJ column this week.  More on that below.)  If Reign of Fire is anything near as good as its poster, Disney may have a summer sleeper on its hands.  (If it’s not, it may have the next Dragonheart on its hands and Matthew McConaughey may be the next Dennis Quaid, looking for ways of getting his career rolling again.) 

The Road to Perdition is next and I think we are all expecting something worthy of all the talent involved. 

Although the junketeers’ word on K19: The Widowmaker is that it looks really good and that it’s ultimately just okay, it sounds like a good, solid middle-summer movie.  Opening that same weekend is Eight Legged Freaks, which is Dean Devlin’s return to hardcore genre filmmaking.  If too many idiots out there don’t try to rip the over-the-top, 50s style, monster movie use of CG as “bad work,” they will find a cotton candy summer treat.  It’s not as smart as Tremors and it’s not as verbose as Lake Placid… it’s a wide-eyed/eyes-covered thriller from the Joe Dante school that’s going to make 17-year-old Scarlett Johansen into the newest Maxim must-get.

In August, we get Shymalan’s Signs and Soderbergh’s Full Frontal.  We also get one of the most highly touted films of the summer, Rob Cohen and Vin Diesel’s XXX.   By August 16, we have summer separation.  John Stockwell’s Blue Crush hits as a cure for last summer blues and DreamWorks will try and find out how much Jackie Chan still has in the gas tank without Chris Tucker by his side.  But we also have two long-in-the-can car wrecks currently scheduled, The Adventures of Pluto Nash, the rare Eddie Murphy abortion, and Simone, the Andrew Niccols film about a CG created movie star that fools everyone, with Al Pacino as the puppermaster.

That’s 13 studio pictures that seem worth the bother this summer.  Spider-Man also counts.  That’s 14.   (Add Attack of the Clones and/or Unfaithful and/or The Sum of All Fears, if you so wish.  And keep an eye on Reign of Fire’s likely fall from grace.)  That’s a pretty damned good summer… certainly a lot better than last year’s massive film/massive disappointment weekly countdown.  And then there is the art house product, like Sunshine State, Sur Mes Levres, All About Lili Chou Chou and The Kid Stays in the Picture.

Sure, we’ve had the worst Woody Allen movie ever, many who despise Clones, a Spirit that came up lame, that terrible Company, an Austin Powers: Sequel That Scares Me (particularly with that horribly made Britney Spears Pepsi spot that uses an overused Powers gag) and the Windtalkers/Scooby duo that I am shocked is getting a half-hearted pass from so many respectable folks.

But to average one good movie a week during the summer… one a week that is better than its advertising… it’s a nice change of pace, don’t you think?  What went right?

TK OH’ED:   I am pleased to be able to write that Tom King has done something great… he stayed out of his own column and gave the floor to Barry Sonnenfeld, one of the industry’s few great interviews.  It’s in the Wall Street Journal, so if you don’t have a subscription, you are out of luck.  (Here’s the link.)  The genius of Sonnenfeld is that he really doesn’t answer the questions that King asks.  And the “genius” of King is that he prints the questions as though he’s gotten the answers he was going after.

For instance, King asks, “By all accounts the negotiations to make MiB II were torturous.   Once the studio made the deal, what was the biggest challenge?”  I’d be willing to be that the “Once the studio made the deal” part was added later, because T.K. doesn’t get a word about the negotiations to make MiB II.  In fact, he gets a classically Sonnefeld story about trying to get the trainer to teach the dog to talk.   Likewise, King elicits the Sonnenfeld chestnut about how Will Smith got in the original… he and Sweetie in bed together and Sweetie suggesting Will… but leaves out the gag about his penis being named “Will.” 

And Sonnenfeld drops this paragraph that makes him hard to dislike, in spite of Big Business:  “What made me want to do the movie was one line where Will's character says, "I always thought my third-grade teacher was from Venus." And Tommy says, "Mrs. Edelson. It was Jupiter, actually. Well, one of the moons." That was the only thing about the script that interested me. For me, "Men in Black" is my deep belief that everything that anyone tells you is wrong. I also believe none of us know anything, but you gotta pretend you do. So that's where I am. I don't really know what's going on, but I'm going to pretend.”

He then goes on to explain why he likes to keep his movies shorter than longer, why he likes Big Trouble and the problem with the internet these days:  “I totally encourage free speech and anarchy; unfortunately, in this case it's hurting me. The irony is that movie-fan Web sites, which are run by people who love movies, are actually making movies worse. Imagine if an author had to write his novel as if each word he wrote was the last pass he was ever going to get on it. What happens is that your movie ends up getting  reviewed before it's a movie. It's become a total nightmare.  I have never screened "Men in Black II" with an audience of more than 80 people, and the 80 people are secretaries or friends of people who work at the studio. I really need to be in a room with 400 people watching my films.”

I guess that I tend to like people who agree with me and Sonnenfeld makes the argument against test-screening reviews and script reviews as well as anyone could.  There is a flip side, which is that these early reviews stand as a barrier against the bad product out there and that we deserve to know the truth, rather than just sucking up the marketing.  But none of the test-screening review-based sites has solved one problem… what is truth?  Whose truth?  And even if they are “right,” is it fair to filmmakers to review process?  And as for the protection argument, let’s look at the score sheet… Scooby Doo, estimated $56.4 million start… Batman & Robin, $43 million start, back when $43 million was a real opening… Godzilla, $44 million start.  

We never protect the public from anything.   At some point, they decide for themselves.  (Don’t you love when I write about you as though you aren’t them?)  Every weekend is a crap shoot.  Tracking is wrong all the time.  But while we are busy hating NRG for making the test screening process into a cluster fuck, printing test screening reviews which are inherently skewed by the fact that the “reviewers” not only have to have internet access and a knowledge of test review sites, but have chosen to write in, we fail to realize that we have become a much  bigger problem than NRG.  We all want to throw our perceived weight around when we love a film or hate a film, but the end result is that studios now spend much of the energy… energy that we used to wish they spent on making better movies… on us.

But I didn’t mean to get off on a Dennis Miller here…

SPEAKING OF AIN’T IT COOL:  It’s always a nice surprise when Drew McWeeney and I hit the same notes.  When he isn’t acting as high and mighty as he feels I am acting, he’s a smart, interesting guy with a lot of similar interests to mine.  Why, if he were a woman, he’d still be much bigger than me… no.  Anyway, his comments on Scooby do the job.  Click here to take a look.

PAGE SIXED:  I am always perplexed by the nature of entertainment coverage.  There are a lot of reporters with very, very limited knowledge of film or of the film business.  But their editors… they know even less.  In the Saturday New York Post, Page Six reports that Megan Turner got a quote about a sequence in Minority Report in which Tom Cruise has his eyes held open by a scary metal apparatus.  The story starts, “Tom Cruise had an "Eyes Wide Shut" moment while filming…” yada yada yada.  Should you be allowed to write about movies if you haven’t ever seen A Clockwork Orange?  And how does a backdoor reference to Kubrick get into the story and still no one gets the connection?  The scene is perhaps the most Kubrickian in a movie that is so very Kubrick-like.  Argh!!!!

READER OF THE DAY:  KerChief writes about Windtalkers:  “I had no intention of seeing it, but the Matt Damon flick was sold out.  Perhaps I read too many negative reviews and therefore had rock-bottom expectations, but I have to say "Windtalkers" is nowhere near the unmitigated disaster you and others have pinned on it. It's not a great movie, but it's better than the last two major war films I've suffered through. "We Were Soliders" was oppressively preachy and infuriating, as well as nauseating. I was in the minority on "Black Hawk Down", I was impressed by its technical achievements but it was torture to experience, a blistering, pummeling, screeching cacophony of misery. "Windtalkers" had its moments of cliche and an overbearing "message", but it was tempered by some decent character exchanges and one legitimately suspenseful sequence (Cage and Beach pretending to be a Japanese solider and prisoner to get a hold of the enemy radio).”

And A Scooby defense from The Houston Lay Down:  “I can't begin to tell you how much I'm looking forward to your spin on the smash opening weekend for "Scooby-Doo." Let's see: How do you denigrate a $56-million gross? Will you tell us that it should have really been $60 million? $70 million? Or will you claim $56 million is a highball estimate, and the final number will be "only" $55 or so?

Or maybe you'll borrow a page from the "Attack of the Clones" haters and emphasize that box-office success or audience approval is no measure of quality. (Which, of course, it quite true.)

The simple truth is, "Scooby-Doo" is an amusing trifle that inexplicably brought out the most excessive vitriol in many critics -- most critics? -- while smartly connecting with its target audience. I can understand vicious assaults on nose-burning stinkers like "Bubble Boy" and "Freddy Got Fingered," or art-house frauds like "The Believer" and "Donnie Darko." But why was there so much hatred directed at this relatively innocuous fluff? I mean, the "worst movie of the year"? Puh-leeeze! Haven't you seen "Deuces Wild" yet?”

E ME:  Opening weekend… for Scooby Doo or any movie, whether it’s one I like or hate… has NOTHING to do with quality.  It’s always (well, 99.8 percent of the time) about marketing and expectations.  Second and third weekend numbers tell the story.  If Scooby becomes a $200 million movie, I will have to say there was an audience for it that likes it... and not just 10-year-olds.  If it drops to $25 million next weekend, then tops out at $125 million… still a dog with fleas.  Likewise for Bourne, which I liked a lot -- if it doesn’t get to at least $90 million, it will be a sign that after a surprisingly strong opening sampling, audiences didn’t really care.  I hope that Bourne will be the second movie of 2002 to open under $45 million and to hit $100 million.  (With an estimated 30 percent drop for The Sum of All Fears this weekend, it looks like that film will pass the $100 million mark.)  And I wouldn’t be upset if Scooby was the first film of the year to open over $45 million that didn’t hit $170 million domestic. 

The rules are a little different for films that don’t open as well.  The way the release schedules are now, it can be difficult for a film to find legs without a fairly large early sampling.  But no, I have no need to twist box office figures to go after Scooby Doo.  And if the accusation is because you are still cranky about Spider-Man, I have acknowledged its dominance in the last week or so…

Anyway… have I stirred any hope in any of you for a better summer?  Does each of you have at least ten summer movies that you can point to happily this summer?