..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

WEEK TEN
Men In Tights

The Summer of Crass Cash continues…

Where to start on Superman Returns? It's terribly cast, poorly conceived, extremely light on action, features a romance that is not remotely romantic, doesn't feature a single memorable, "gosh, that was great" repeat-to-your-friends moment in a positive way (the blunder bits start early and often), will be crushed by Pirates of The Caribbean II and played out completely before August 1.

Aside from that…

The thing is, it is not rip-your-eyes-out-of-their-sockets bad. It is S.O.B. for the summer of 2006. (If you don't know what that means, read up on your Blake Edwards.) On the Shitty Summer Movie Scale, I would rate the major films that I have seen (leaving out any negative I might feel towards Cars or Over The Hedge) so far:

1. Poseidon
2. The Da Vinci Code
3. Mission: Impossible III
4. The Break-Up
5. Superman Returns
6. X-Men 3

As you probably realize, three of those six are over $100 million domestic, two of those three should pass $200 million domestic and Superman Returns is likely to join the $100 million group before July 2 or 3. This movie is going to open and open big.

That said, opening is never about the movie. And in this case, it will be interesting to see whether what I am calling "The Anne Thompson Rule" is in effect. What that means is that Anne often shoots from the organ just below the hip when it comes to movies that may have a strong female appeal and, truth be told, I am always looking over one shoulder when she gets on that tear. I am not a girl. My teenage niece doesn't tell me nearly as much as Anne's teen daughter - who is probably too sophisticated and smart to be a perfect guide to predicting box office.

But I do get teen boys, in spite of underestimating their interest in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen a couple of years ago. And teenage boys are not going to be clamoring for a whole lot of repeat viewings of Superman Returns.

Here's the deal. When Bryan Singer was faced with creating a Superman movie while the sets were being built in Australia, it appears that he and his writers, Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris, looked at the first Superman film and to start mining it for ideas and gags, like an animated short team might… "How about if there is an explosion under Metropolis and the fire shoots up into the street and Superman's super breath puts it out and then blows up in the street?" Great! "People falling out of the windows like people out of the World Trade Center on 9/11." Check! "And let's explain how Superman got to earth, because not every kid saw it, but let's not really explain because others did." Okay!

There are no less than 20 direct visual, story, or direct dialogue quotations from the original two films here. But there are some huge blockades to this working. Kate Bosworth is 23 years old. Baby Routh is 26. So by building the story around, in part, a 5-year-old child, the movie is telling us that a 21-year-old Superman had sex with a barely 18-year-old Lois Lane in Superman II. They also are telling us that a 23-year-old got a Pulitzer Prize and it doesn't really go to her head… because unlike Margot Kidder's Lois Lane, Kate's Lois is niiiiiiice. And while looking back at Superman identifying Lois' panties as pink may seem old fashioned and sweet, there is not a moment of even that level of good spirited sexiness in this movie.

Thing is, I would have welcomed a movie that reset the Superman story with younger players. Why not? The casting of Kate Bosworth is looking as faulty as the casting of Emmy Rossum and Jacinda Barrett in Poseidon. In fact, aside from Frank Langella, who gets nothing to do anyway, there is barely a single good casting decision. Routh might be okay, but we'll never know until he stars in something else, because he was clearly doing a word-for-word, smirk-by-smirk imitation of Chris Reeve here. (He gets in one speech at the very end that sounds like he might be speaking in his own personal voice.)

But all that said, a young cast would have been cool. What kind of woman gets a Pulitzer at 23 and how does it affect her? How much has she given up relationshi-wise for the sake of her son that she had at such a young age? How much female attention would even a geeky guy who looks like Brandon Routh get in Metropolis? Etc, etc, etc. If you want to make a movie about younger people, you have to make it about younger people.

Still, all these problems might have been overcome by a few great action set pieces or a really interesting twist or a villain who was a real genius and/or interested in more than being a bully or a romance that could bloom and not be held back by a competing relationship that is ill defined and endlessly uninteresting or really, anything that made this movie stand out as special - other than a lot of money spent on effects and advertising glamour level cinematography.

It's not a hideous piece of crap. It really is about a step behind X-Men: The Last Stand, equally poorly directed, equally missing complexity, equally not up to the standards of the first two films, but with less interesting characters and absolutely zero sense of humor about itself.

There is a list of flaws and a couple of things in the film that actually offended me that I could mention... but I will restrain myself until we can take this discussion to The Hot Blog after more readers see the film.

I expect that people will say they like the movie, critics will generally be kind to the movie, and that audiences will find themselves talking about Little Man instead of Super Man by the middle of July.

On a much smaller scale of disappointment is Nacho Libre, which fulfills the promise of the commercials, trailers, and video confessionals for about one act… and then does nothing but vamp for another hour or so. ("You Will Believe A Man Can Fart!")

I was excited as anyone to see this film. Napoleon Dynamite took a while to really grow on me, but it did. And I think School of Rock is a minor classic of happy cinema. Loved the materials. Willing to take the ride with Jack Black. Count me in.

But the bottom line is, there is only one idea here and, as charming as Jack Black is as Nacho, there simply isn't anywhere to go in a PG movie presented by Nickelodeon.

I'm not really giving anything away by telling you that the story is about Nacho, an orphan raised by padres, who becomes a middling man of God himself, and dreams of being a famous luchadore. That might be a first act, but it's about half the first act here. Nacho's training as a luchadore is part of the first 30 minutes here. And then… rinse and repeat.

There is a nun flirtation, but a PG movie isn't going there. (Nun debauching is funny. At the very least, getting her into a ring girl costume in support. But nope.)

Jack Black is very funny when he gets lost in his success. No real opportunity here. We tire of rooting for him to succeed before he really succeeds. And while sharing his first money with the orphans is sweet, that's a joke that's not going anywhere other than repetition.

Yes, the movie looks a lot more professional than Napoleon Dynamite. It should. It costs more than 30 times as much to make. Yes, this humor is about moments that you take away from the theater, not the storytelling. And yes, there are some very funny, very memorable bits here. But the question on Nacho Libre is not whether it will draw the already converted into the theaters. It will. And it should.

And box office watchers should feel good about this movie opening anywhere near $20 million and totaling out at anything over $50 million. That is a great success for this little quirky thing. Anything more than that is gravy, gravy, gravy.

But I do wish I could say I enjoyed the movie more.

(New Line won't be able to get much of a read on the possibilities of their Tenacious D movie from Nacho unless it breaks much bigger than I expect it will. What New Line will get is the opportunity to be the company with Jack Black's first balls-to-the-wall, hard R rated comedy. And if Nacho does the $45m-$60m I expect it will, that may be a great selling point.)

Basically, this all returns us back to the summers of the past, where the critics basically whine and the box office is basically strong. There are only two real hopes for critics to really love a commercial success and those are Miami Vice and World Trade Center. Let's all keep our fingers crossed.

This Week's Box Office Chart

THE BOX OFFICE CHARTS
Week Nine - 6/8
Week Seven - 5/25
Week Six- 5/18
Week Five - 5/11
Week Four - 5/4
Week Two - 4/20
Week One - 4/13

THE COLUMN
Week Nine - 6/8
Week Eight - 6/1
Week Seven - 5/25
Week Six - 5/18
Week Five- 5/11
Week Four - 5/4
Week Three - 4/27
Week Two - 4/20
Week One - 4/13

- Email David Poland