Meanwhile, Back in the Trailer Park...

Now that cold and flu season is coming to an end (even if it's still going around at work and I feel kinda oogy today) and the weather is more consistently warm (even if it's about 20 degrees colder today than it was yesterday), I'll be getting out to see more movies than I had this winter. The goal was to beat last year's total of 26 movies seen on the big screen. And goals are good, right? Well, with all the snow and sneezing, I fell behind--I've "only" seen six movies (Sweeney Todd, Cloverfield, The Other Boleyn Girl, Diary of the Dead, Smart People and Iron Man), which is more than most people I know have seen so far this year, but that pace would put me well behind last year's total.

This renewed effort to get out and catch up on my moviegoing just happens to coincide with the beginning of the summer movie season, when one bloated blockbuster after another lumbers through the local multiplex. I've seen some of the previews, and they're not exactly inspiring:

Speed Racer. I loved the cartoon when I was a kid and, as an adult, bought the first DVD set when it came out. After watching a few episodes, though, I realized that what looks cool when you're 10 often looks more like 10 miles of ass when you're all grown up. The Speed Racer cartoon has limited animation, bad dubbing and batshit crazy plots that make little to no sense. Even if it had been beautifully animated and brilliantly written, though, the preview for the "live-action" (i.e., real actors working in front of green screens) version by the Wachowskis (creators of the terrifc Matrix and its two vastly disappointing sequels) would still give me a ringing headache. The CGI effects used to recreate the racing scenes are poorly animated, brightly colored nightmares--just sitting through the trailer damn near caused me to have a seizure. Sitting through the movie itself would likely kill me (or, at the very least, my soul).

Speaking of soul-killing...

The Love Guru. I'm one of the few people on the planet who didn't find the Austin Powers movies especially funny, though I did like the first Wayne's World very much. But Mike Myers' The Love Guru looks not only unfunny, but painful. If a two-minute preview doesn't contain a single laugh and many wince-worthy moments, what is the full-length feature like? You'll have to tell me--I won't be there.

Speaking of painfully unfunny...

You Don't Mess with the Zohan. I've never understood the appeal of shrieking manchild Adam Sandler, but his movies do well at the box office--at least as long as he's not trying to be serious. (The only movie of his that I've enjoyed is Punch-Drunk Love, which was semi-serious and gave context for his "hilarious" anger. Naturally, it tanked.) You Don't Mess with the Zohan is meant as a comedy, I think, although it's hard to tell from the trailer, where Sandler speaks in a "funny" voice as a terrorist-turned-hairdresser. I assume this means that Sandler will burn off any gay-panic jokes he didn't manage to wedge into I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry and that we'll be treated to yet another Rob Schneider cameo. I'd rather be shot in the forehead with a nail gun than see this movie.

All is not lost, though. I have seen a couple of previews for movies that look like they might not suck harder than an industrial-strength Hoover. Granted, they're both sequels--one long overdue--but at least the trailers do what trailers are supposed to do: Whet my appetite to see them, instead of euthanising it.

The Dark Knight. This isn't the easiest preview to watch, due to the prominent presence of the late Heath Ledger, but it looks like the followup to Batman Begins is just as thoughtful, exciting and moody as the original. Plus, large chunks of it were shot in Chicago, so I'll be getting yiffy over local landmarks as they flit across the screen. "The Board of Trade Building--yay, Art Deco!"

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Ungainly title and elderly action star (seriously, Harrison Ford is 65, people) aside, this looks like a whole lot of fun. Throw in Karen Allen (reprising her role from Raiders of the Lost Ark and looking damn cute doing it) and Cate Blanchett (as a Nazi...er, Communist in a Louise Brooks bob), and you've pretty much guaranteed my ass will be in a seat at a theater showing this flick.

I'm pretty sure I'll be able to catch up on my filmgoing in the next couple of months and pass last year's total by a movie or two--and, in the process, I'll probably see more trailers that will make me question the existence of (or, at the very least, the attention span of) God.