[Summer Guide] Movies to Look Forward to Now That Indy and Carrie Bradshaw Have Used Up All the Hype

The less said about Eddie Murphy as a robot piloted by mini-Murphys in Meet Dave (July 11), or Mike Myers as The Love Guru (June 20), the better; I’d like to see them both run into the demented cannibal/butcher played by Vinnie Jones in Midnight Meat Train (July 11), a Clive Barker-penned horror tale the author calls the best adaptation of one of his short stories ever (that includes Hellraiser and Candyman). Aside from that, horror pickings this summer are pretty slim—Alexandre Aja’s loose remake of Korean ghost story Mirrors (Aug. 15) is the only other solid bet for gorehounds. It’s hard to know whether to expect decent scares from The X-Files: I Want to Believe (July 25), since its misguided marketing is thus far aimed strictly at the already-converted. Equally unpredictable is M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening (opening Friday), in which people mysteriously start committing mass suicide after being forced to watch a double-feature of The Village and Lady in the Water. Oops . . . did I just blow the big twist?

Iffy in the comedy field is Tropic Thunder (Aug. 15), with Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr. and Jack Black as Hollywood stars making a war movie who find themselves, Three Amigos-style, in the middle of a real jungle war. Yes, Downey looks hilarious as an actor so method he undergoes surgery to make himself black, but Stiller is directing, and his track record in that position (The Cable Guy, Reality Bites) isn’t exactly thrilling. A better bet for laughs is Step Brothers (July 25), with Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly as grown men who still live with their respective single parents and are forced to become disgruntled roommates when their parents marry. A huge question mark is Pineapple Express (Aug 8), a Seth Rogen stoner comedy from director David Gordon Green, whose usual milieu is moody, nearly non-narrative scenes from the South such as George Washington and All the Real Girls. He’s great at what he does, as is producer Judd Apatow, but can their sensibilities mesh?

Almost forgot—there’s a new Star Wars movie coming this summer! (That’s okay, so did everyone else.) In what may be a subtle joke about complaints that the prequel acting was wooden, the new computer-generated “Episode 2.5,” officially titled The Clone Wars (Aug. 15), renders its characters in a form that resembles wooden dolls. The plot involves a conspiracy by the evil Sith Lords to kidnap Jabba the Hutt’s son and frame the Jedi (subtle message to fans: If Jabba can get laid, so can you!). The movie is the kick-off to a TV series, so don’t expect story closure, new John Williams music, or any original cast members besides Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) and Matthew Wood (General Grievous).

If absolutely none of these movies is your thing, what can we tell you? There’s always the ABBA musical Mamma Mia! (July 18) and the latest adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (July 25), starring usual suspects Emma Thompson and Michael Gambon, sure to please audiences who like their onscreen emotions repressed and their accents English. If those don’t work for you, either, then it’s going to be a long summer. Try stepping outside occasionally.