Summer Cinema

Insight on the News, June 18, 2001 by Gary Arnold

Shrek and Pearl Harbor ... what else is Hollywood offering filmgoers this season?

The number of confirmed release dates this summer is down a bit from previous years, hovering in the 60s rather than the 80s. Since the opening of four or five pictures a week tends to overwhelm even active moviegoers, a modest reduction in volume is welcome.

Moreover, the object lesson of last summer was the head-to-head bookings of The Patriot and The Perfect Storm during the Fourth of July weekend. Hollywood now considers it bad form for potential blockbusters to play wrecker with each other. The Mummy Returns had the first weekend in May to itself, launching the season with boffo box office.

Thus, Evolution and Swordfish get to work the farcical and thriller sides of the street, respectively, on June 8. Evolution from DreamWorks teams David Duchovny, Julianne Moore, Orlando Jones and Seann William Scott to save Earth from alien life-forms hitchhiking on a meteor. In Swordfish, criminal mastermind John Travolta is matched with Halle Berry while kidnapping and blackmailing computer-ace Hugh Jackman.

It seems impossible to avoid competition, however. Atlantis and Tomb Raider double up on adventure weekend, June 15. The first is a Disney animated feature with a boyish protagonist who resembles Harry Potter, and the second showcases Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft, the heroine of the video game series.

Overall, science fiction will be represented generously in theaters, perhaps anticipating the return of another Star Wars installment in 2002, when competitors may be tempted to concede the genre to George Lucas. This summer, director John Carpenter even defies the "Mars jinx" with something called Ghosts of Mars, which envisions endangered human colonies on the planet, opening Aug. 24.

Steven Spielberg's sci-fi tearjerker, A.I., probably will track a bit differently than John Singleton's ghetto tearjerker, Baby Boy, on June 29. Jurassic Park III and the remake of Planet of the Apes have separated themselves by a week, opening July 20 and 27, respectively. That leaves the other conspicuous remake of the season, Rollerball, in a somewhat congested field Aug. 17 -- opening with American Outlaws, Captain Corelli's Mandolin and All Over the Guy, among others -- but none share a genre, strictly speaking.

The summer lineup contains seven sequels. That seems to be overdoing it, especially when you ponder numbers such as American Pie 2 and Jason X, alluding to the reincarnated fiend of the old Friday the 13th horror series, now projected into the 25th century. Eddie Murphy's return in Dr. Dolittle 2 on June 22 should not interfere with the potential audience for a hot-rod crime thriller, The Fast and the Furious, an amusing rhetorical throwback to an earlier tradition of exploitation.

Several robbery gangs will be active this summer. The most promising appears to link Robert De Niro with Edward Norton and Marlon Brando in The Score, directed by Frank Oz. Interracial comic sidekicks will proliferate: Martin Lawrence and Danny DeVito in What's the Worst That Could Happen?; Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker in Rush Hour 2, a better excuse for a sequel than most; and Bill Murray, Chris Rock and Laurence Fishburne on the soundtrack of Osmosis Jones, which combines live action and animation to tell the story of a white blood cell's race to hunt down a deadly virus.