The Jay’s 2006 Summer Movie Preview Extravaganza!!! Part 1

It is finally here. Thousands of man hours, hundreds of terabytes of computer space, millions of phony celebrity interviews, hundred of millions of budget dollars, and in the end, 75 movies. All designed to hold you, thrill you, kiss you and kill you. It’s the Summer Movie Season and all is right with the world.

Over the next four months every studio in the world will beg you to see their movies. They’ll give away free tickets, they’ll advertise on your favorite shows, they’ll whore their stars out on every two bit journo beat west of the Atlantic. They will go so far as to actually make good movies, in an attempt to trick you into the theater. And it will all work. Out of the 75 movies, more than a quarter will gross over $100 Million, with another quarter scoring more than $60 Million. A quarter will bomb spectacularly, but that’s OK, because we want them to. We will spend more than $3 Billion to watch these blockbusters, hoping in vein to see anything worthy of a ten dollar ticket, three buck pack of Twizzlers and maybe / hopefully / probably not, a quiet theater. We will wait in line, we will read reviews, we will argue with our friends, we will buy the merchandise, and in the end, inevitably, we will watch the movies. It’s the Summer Movie Season and all is right with The Jay’s world.

As a service to all my readers, I have compiled a list of all the major (and some of the minor) movies of the Summer and capsuled them, letting you know the good, the bad and the box office prediction. We’re tackling May and June today and July and August on Friday. Since this piece is much longer than it has any right to be, let’s can the preview and head right to the feature.

The Jay’s 2006 Summer Movie Preview Extravaganza!

May 5th

Mission: Impossible 3

The Cast: “Batshit Crazy” Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Michelle Monaghan, Felicity and Capote

The Plot: Tom Cruise tries to make us forget how crazy he’s become and tries to remind us how good of a movie star he is. Also, Phillip Seymour Hoffman tries to explain this paycheck. And I’ll go out on a limb and say there’s probably gonna be a scene or five where Tom fakes like he’s somebody else and then rips a mask off to reveal it’s really him. Because that device worked so, SO well in the last one.

The Good: Director J.J. Abrams knows what he’s doing with the spy genre (Alias). Michelle Monaghan and Keri Russell are primetime multi pre-approved hotties. Also, the first M:I kicked a lot off ass.

The Bad: But M:I 2 sucked donkey balls. Tom Cruise is crazy, no matter how good of a movie star he is. And J.J. Abrams also wrote that infamous Superman Returns script, so his blockbuster cred is pretty low.

The Prediction: $165 Million – The Cruiser still has it.

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Art School Confidential

The Cast: John Malkovich, A bunch of art school rejects

The Plot: A kid with no talent tries his hand at art school. There’s probably a cute artsy chick involved. And Malkovich probably plays a kooky teacher. Assumptions are cool.

The Good: When Malkovich turns it on, there’s no one better (In the Line of Fire).

The Bad: This film’s from the same group that did Ghost World and Bad Santa, two films I despise more than Million Dollar Baby and refuse to re-watch.

The Prediction: $25 Million

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Hoot

The Cast: Luke Wilson, The kid from Jack and Bobby

The Plot: A group of kids defend owls from land development and extinction. Luke Wilson plays the slowest-witted sheriff ever.

The Good: Most of the time Luke does better movies than his brother, The Butterscotch Stallion. Also, owls are kinda cool. One of my favorite Disney characters was Archimedes the Owl from The Sword in the Stone.

The Bad: When was the last time a movie about an endangered animal was any good? And no, I don’t count Vin Diesel in The Pacifier.

The Prediction: $28 Million – Not quite March of the Penguins.

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May 12th

Poseidon

The Cast: Josh “Stealth” Lucas, Snake Plissken, Richard Dreyfuss, Jacinda Barrett, and The ugly chick from the Black Eyed Peas

The Plot: The wave from The Perfect Storm knocks over the ship from Titanic. A bunch of B-List actors try to convince director Wolfgang Peterson not to kill them off in the first reel. Josh Lucas probably the wins.

The Good: Kurt Russell and Richard Dreyfuss are always fun to watch. Wolfgang Peterson knows a thing or two about making good summer movies (Air Force One, Outbreak).

The Bad: Fun Poseidon story: I was watching the UCLA vs. Florida NCAA Championship game with a bunch of friends when the trailer for this movie came on. One of my friends turns to me and says: “Is this a remake of Titanic?” That can’t bode well for this movie.

The Prediction: $154 Million – It’s this year’s The Day After Tomorrow.

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Just My Luck

The Cast: La Lohan, La Lohan’s Bad Press, La Lohan’s Tremendously Oversized Ego

The Plot: La Lohan has good luck. Some random actor has bad luck. They mack, and their lucks switch. La Lohan thinks she’s Lucille Ball and does a bunch of mediocre physical comedy. They hook back up, and all is right with the world. Oh, and her skin color changes in every scene because she was in and out of rehab during the filming of this movie.

The Good: La Lohan can do comedy (Mean Girls).

The Bad: La Lohan is so tragically immersed in being La Lohan that she doesn’t seem pay particular attention to the scripts she chooses (Herbie: Fully Loaded?). Besides, we see her in the news every day, why would we willingly hand over ten bucks to see in her some garbage teen movie?

The Prediction: $44 Million

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Goal!

The Cast: Someone who isn’t either of the guys from Y Tú Mama Tambien

The Plot: FIFA gives America one last shot to fall in love with Fútbol. America promptly shuts down the MLS and deports the AYSO. Nobody tells America what to do!

The Good: Soccer is a great spectator sport, no matter what the entire nation thinks. And hopefully this will boost attendance for AYSO, a great youth soccer league that has touched the lives of thousands of suburban kids.

The Bad: Did I mention that no one in America watches soccer? We don’t even call the sport by its real name. We kinda suck in that regard.

The Prediction: $13 Million – No goal.

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May 19th

The Da Vinci Code

The Cast: Tom Hanks, Tom Hanks’s Hair, Amelie, Mr. Jennifer Connelly, Magneto and Alfred Molina

The Plot: Tom Hanks attempts to prove that he can do action. His hair attempts to prove it’s not a joke. The rest of the two hours is filled with a bunch of religious hooey. Do I really need to give a description of the plot? Like there’s anybody in the world who hasn’t read this book.

The Good: Director Ron Howard and Tom Hanks are a great team (Splash, Apollo 13), the cast is uniformly excellent and the trailer kicks ass.

The Bad: The recent plot theft trial and religious backlash haven’t helped the film’s cause. And did I mention the hair? Also, it’s possible that since everyone in the world has read the book, no one will want to see the movie. Angels & Demons was way better, anyway.

The Prediction: $217 Million – The movie wins by a hair.

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Over The Hedge

The Cast: The Voices of: Bruce Willis, Gary Shandling, Steve Carrell and The Shatner

The Plot: A bunch of CGI characters voiced by celebrities get into wacky hijinks. Which is basically the plot of just about any animated movie.

The Good: Bruce Willis will always be “The Good” in any project he does. And Denny Crane (a.k.a. The Shatner) has been a pantheon good times presence since the mid-90’s when he embraced how hammy he is and stopped railing on sci-fi nerds.

The Bad: Do we really need another “CGI characters get into wacky hijinks” movie? Isn’t the twenty five we already have enough?

The Prediction: $87 Million – The kids need something to do, and the parents need something to make their kids shut up. It’s a beautiful thing.

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May 26th

X-Men: The Last Stand

The Cast: Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Gandalf the Grey, Capt. Jean Luc Picard, and Hottie Famke Janssen

The Plot: Brett Ratner screws up the X-Men Franchise. A bunch of mutants show off their special effects, I mean, superpowers. Also, Hugh Jackman kicks a bunch of ass.

The Good: Did I mention that Hugh Jackman kicks ass?

The Bad: The Ratner. Every fanboy in the world is on pins and needles to see if he screws up their beloved X-Men franchise. I had been on his side since the beginning, as I had mistakenly assumed that when he took over the film from Matthew Vaughn with two weeks until principal photography, that he had merely inherited a troubled sequel. But now I know that he overhauled the script, cut out Nightcrawler, helped design the awful Juggernaut costume and stupidly made Beast an action hero instead of the scientist he’s supposed to be. Though I will admit, I was stoked when the first trailers started coming out and there was nothing too offensive in them. But then I saw that clip on Leno the other day where Wolverine beheads a Sentinel, and now I have no faith for the Ratner. X-3 will still make buckets of kaysh, but it will most definitely blow.

The Prediction: $147 Million

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June 2nd

The Break-Up

The Cast: Vince Vaughn, the actress formerly known as Mrs. Brad Pitt

The Plot: The Once and Future Rachel Green tries to forget that she traded down from Brad Pitt to Vince Vaughn and Vince Vaughn tries not to look confused that Owen Wilson isn’t in this movie. And somewhere in the film they break up, then get back together and Vince says some crazy stuff that isn’t nearly as good as “Just the tip. Just for a second. Just to see how it feels.”

The Good: Vince Vaughn is the best comedic actor working in film today. Jennifer Aniston, when she’s doing romantic comedy, is often a joy to watch. I’m also a fan of the fact that the producers haven’t tried to milk the real life relationship between Vince and Jen nearly as much as some other celebrity couples movies. Which bodes well for this not being a repeat of Gigli.

The Bad: When Jen isn’t feeling it (Derailed), she’s painful to watch. Also, aren’t we all just a little tired of her? Even Oprah’s stopped calling her.

The Prediction: $110 Million – Vince is still the man.

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June 9th

Cars

The Cast: The Voices of: The Butterscotch Stallion (a.k.a. Owen Wilson), Paul Newman and Bonnie Hunt

The Plot: Pixar creates another digital masterpiece, this time about a racing car that gets stranded in a desert town and must relearn it’s love for driving. Paul Newman is prominently involved (warrants mentioning).

The Good: Pixar is batting a 1.000 with their movies. This one doesn’t look to break the streak.

The Bad: Cars aren’t nearly as cuddly as monsters, toys or plushy fish. Kids may be turned off by a subject matter they have no real understanding of.

The Prediction: $205 Million – Pixar is incapable of failure.

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A Prarie Home Companion

The Cast: Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, La Lohan, Tommy Lee Jones

The Plot: A long list of well known actors try their hand and singing, country wear and public radio. Director Robert Altman tries not to grope La Lohan. La Lohan tries to prove she still cares about acting.

The Good: The cast is amazing. Yes, even La Lohan

The Bad: I could care less about the radio show the film is based on. Robert Altman is hit or miss, and he’s due for another miss.

The Prediction: $34 Million – La Lohan gets a bit of cred, the movie gets a little coin.

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The Omen

The Cast: Liev Schreiber, “Sucky” Julia Stiles, some creepy kid

The Plot: 20th Century Fox realized they needed a horror movie for their summer line up and threw a dart at the horror shelf in their vault. Apparently, they hit The Omen. Now Liev Schreiber gets to raise an evil kid who may in fact be the devil.

The Good: Like I’ve said before, this movie is a fantastic advertisement for birth control.

The Bad: Horror movies are already played out this year, and May has just barely begun. Horror remakes are even more spread thin, as The Hills Have Eyes failed to match the box office of the other big horror films in 2006 (Even the inexorable Hostel did better.). This may be a case of the studio thinking the brand has more value that it actually has, otherwise known as The King Kong Corollary.

The Prediction: $57 Million – Not evil enough. The margarine of evil. The Diet Coke of evil. Just one calorie, not evil enough.

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June 16th

Nacho Libre

The Cast: Jack Black, Jack Black’s Rockin’ Mullet and Stache

The Plot: Jack Black straps on some spandex, grows a mullet and a sweet stache and becomes a masked Mexican wrestler. Hilarity (obviously) ensues.

The Good: The concept screams awesomeness. And director Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite) knows a thing or two about making a goofy character into a beloved pop culture icon. I fully expect Nacho Libre to join such recent pantheon movie characters as Ron Burgundy, the Wedding Crashers guys and Austin Powers

The Bad: Sometimes JB can be a wee bit grating (King Kong).

The Prediction: $87 Million – Nachooooooooo brings home the gold.

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The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

The Cast: Not Paul Walker, Not Vin Diesel, some other people

The Plot: A bunch of posers in cars they could never afford drive around doing tricks that would actually get them killed, arrested or nauseous in real life. Presumably a really good white guy driver gets himself caught in the underground Tokyo racing world, and since this is Hollywood that will probably involve the Yakuza. There will probably be a hottie Asian love interest whose brother is our hero’s main rival. After beating the brother in an exhilarating car race and saving his life in the process, the brother will grudgingly accept our hero and give his blessing to date the hottie Asian love interest. These things write themselves.

The Good: Fast cars are cool. Hottie Asian love interests are cool. This franchise is, more often that not, fun to watch.

The Bad: It’s a bit disconcerting to see the stars of the franchise continually leaving to do crappier movies. Eight Below didn’t do THAT well, why couldn’t Paul Walker have come back? Maybe he knew something that we don’t.

The Prediction: $67 Million – Not so furious anymore.

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The Lake House

The Cast: The Esteemed Mr. Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock

The Plot: Keanu and Sandra get into a gimmicky romance where they spend the entire movie trying to not get together. In the end, they get together. Hope I didn’t ruin that for anyone.

The Good: Keanu is my man, and Sandra is the Queen of romance movies. Also, we know they have chemistry to beat the band (Speed) so it’s just a matter of the script being good enough to deserve the reunion of these great actors.

The Bad: The trailer was underwhelming, as was the poster.

The Prediction: $105 Million – In a summer devoid of romance, this benefits from a lack of suitable The Notebook-like competition.

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June 23rd

Click

The Cast: Happy Gilmore, Christopher Walken (!), A Christopher Walken Monologue by Christopher Walken, Kate “This time not in a full body leather jumpsuit” Beckinsale

The Plot: The Man Who Was Billy Madison watched that Michael Keaton movie Multiplicity and thought it was great and stole the idea. So this time, instead of there being multiple Sandler’s to make his life easier, there’s an all-powerful remote control that he can use to mute, pause, rewind and fast forward his life, which he gets from Christopher Walken (Who’s essentially just playing the same character he did in the Jack Black / Ben Stiller abortion, Envy.). Hottie Kate Beckinsale devamps to play his wife. Complications ensue when the remote begins to think for itself and starts taping over his copies of Little Nicky and Mr. Deeds. Hilarity (most likely) ensues.

The Good: Sandler usually delivers a solid comedy. And nothing in this world is better than a kooky Christopher Walken doing one of those monologues he’s so good at.

The Bad: When Sandler is bad (The Longest Yard, Deeds, Little Nicky), he’s downright unwatchable.

The Prediction: $126 Million – Ding ding went the trolly, Click click went the box office.

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Garfield’s A Tale of Two Kittens

The Cast: The Voices of: Bill Murray, Bill Murray’s bank account, and also Jennifer Love Hewitt

The Plot: Bill Murray realized he had a house payment due, and since his paychecks for Broken Flowers and Lost in Translation weren’t that big, he agreed to do an unnecessary sequel to a first film that didn’t even do that well at the box office. Breckin Meyer inexplicably continues to get high profile work, this time here again as Jon, Garfield’s owner. And Love Hewitt takes some time from her busy ghost whispering schedule to cameo as the hot neighbor and maybe leverage the performance into a FHM cover shoot that we all used to enjoy back in the late 90’s.

The Good: Bill Murray, despite his pension for selling out to bad Hollywood tripe (Osmosis Jones) is still one of the best comedians working today.

The Bad: This should be its own column. Let me throw out a couple just off the top of my head: Breckin Meyer sucks, the CGI Garfield is terrible, the interaction with the live-action Odie is a mess, the fact that Jennifer Love Hewitt despite her breast intentions cannot act to save her life, and that Bill Murray is doing this for the paycheck and not hiding that fact. Seems like a terrific film, doesn’t it? Makes you want to start a countdown website and build a community of fellow Garfield 2 lovers.

The Prediction: $57 Million – Put the cat in the bag and pitch it off a bridge.

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June 30th

The Devil Wears Prada

The Cast: Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Hopefully Anne Hathaway’s Twins

The Plot: Anne Hathaway (and the twins) gets a job at a fashion magazine that is definitely not Vogue (for legal reasons) and is mentored by a heinous, evil boss played by Meryl Streep as definitely not Anna Wintour (again, for legal reasons). Vincent Chase shows up sans Turtle and Johnny Drama to seduce our little Havoc star.

The Good: Hathaway is on the short list for current primetime pre-approved hotties. Meryl, when she plays evil (The Manchurian Candidate), is a ton of fun to watch. And any excuse to see Entourage cast members in other roles is good by me. Also, apparently, this is an adaptation of a best-selling book. So some chicklit fans are probably excited about that.

The Bad: The movie’s rated PG-13 so the likelihood that Anne’s gonna pull a Brokeback on us are slim to none. Since she’s not that good an actress, this does not bode well for the film’s chances to get me and every other man in the world, into the theater. They better hope our girlfriend’s are mighty persuasive.

The Prediction: $68 Million

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Superman Returns

The Cast: Not Christopher Reeves (a.k.a.Brandon Routh), Kate Bosworth, and Keyser Soze

The Plot: Bryan Singer got bored of making good X-Men movies and decided to try his hand at making a better sequel to Superman then that awesome Richard Pryor one (j/k). So he thankfully declined to cast Josh Hartnett and instead pulled some guy off a farm, stuck him in an odd, new fangled Supes suit, got Keyser Soze to come out of hiding and play Lex Luthor and then ripped the surfboard out of the Bosworth’s hands and strapped her into a Lois costume. And so now we get to see an all (badly done) CGI Superman. Apparently, in this remake / sequel / re-imagining / pretend movie where Superman 3 and 4 never happened, Supes returns to metropolis from a five year sabbatical in space to find that Lois has a kid and a fiancée, Lex is still up to no good and that bloggers have taken his job at the Daily Planet forcing him to whore himself out to rich Park West women. I may have made the last part up.

The Good: Bryan Singer and Kevin Spacey are a tremendously potent combination; and Spacey as Luthor is not just obvious casting, it’s perfect casting. And say what you will about the look of the suit and the bad red cape effects, Brandon Routh looks good as Clark Kent and will be a good Superman. People forget but Chris Reeves was also a nobody before he was Superman. Warrants mentioning.

The Bad: But in a movie that revolves around making their main character a special effect in his own right, the effects better be good. And anyone that has seen the official trailer knows they didn’t nail it. Singer may have the best superhero script ever made, but if his Man of Steel doesn’t look better than the 1970’s optical effect Superman, than he’s in trouble.

The Prediction: $245 Million – Super, but not that Super.

That’s it for now. We’ll tackle July and August in Part 2 of The Jay’s 2006 Summer Movie Preview Extravaganza!!!

Bangarang!