Best Case, Worst Case: Summer Afterthoughts

The Dark Knight comes out this week and you’re probably thinking, what the hell am I going to do the rest of this summer? Well, if this latest batch of movie trailers is any indication, not much. For this week’s “Best Case, Worst Case” I’ve decided to gather together the more questionable releases of the late summer, films I’ve deemed “summer afterthoughts.”

Poorly-timed big-budget flicks, nausea-inducing romantic comedies and morally objectionable children’s films, these are the sad selection of films that attempt to fill the gap between the summer blockbusters and the Oscar-baiting arthouse film season. These films simply can’t compete against the bigger fish in the cinematic summer pool, so a late July/early August release date seems appropriate. By the end of this tour through the dregs of Hollywood, it will feel less like an adventure and more like a Bataan Death March. Well, here goes nothing:

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Since the release of the first Mummy film in 1999, the series appears to have strayed drastically from its nominal villain. Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (effectively known as The Mummy 3) appears no different, supplanting the decrepit, bandage-bound antagonist with Jet Li, reprising his role from every film he’s ever been in.

The close proximity in release dates between this and Brendan Fraser’s other big-budget misadventure Journey to the Center of the Earth leads one to believe that the actor’s M.O. this summer was, “I’ll star in anything!“

Best Case: A decent, if confoundedly hollow, action-adventure in the spirit of Indiana Jones. The first film approached this only to falter down the stretch as the plot became increasingly predictable, but there’s no reason to think The Dragon Emperor couldn’t succeed where the other films failed. Right?

Worst Case: A clusterfuck of special effects and overindulgence (see, Van Helsing). The potential always exist with films like this to provide the audience with an abundance of eye-candy. Sometimes less is more, and films like The Mummy work best when presenting a great deal of restraint. Sadly, the trailer — complete with a CGI yeti, a three-headed dragon, a barrage of CGI arrows (for a film starring Jet Li, this is shamefully reminiscent of Hero) among other over-the-top oddities  — does not reassure us of this.

The X-Files: I Want To Believe

Whoa! Talk about time traveling back to the nineties. This film is at least a decade late, especially considering that there was already an X-Files movie released at a more appropriate time.

Best Case: Let’s put the goofy subtitle aside here and focus on the writing. The X-Files always featured top-notch writing and some truly compelling mysteries. With that in mind, the latest film has the ability to provide a much-loved series with a fitting coda. It will be interesting to see whether or not Chris Carter leaves his story open for yet another extraneous sequel or if he finally puts it to rest by tying up all the loose ends.

Worst Case: More of the same for a series that — like all long-running television shows — began to grow stale and repetitive in its twilight seasons. It’s hard to gauge from the trailer, but this film feels like a retread of the first film and, sadly, interesting casting decisions (one feels that Xzibit was brought on to the film simply for alliterative purposes. Remember this, Mr. Singer, when the time comes for X-Men 4) certainly can’t make up for shoddy screenwriting.

Mama Mia

Movies like this always perplex me. Is there some inherent humor in not knowing who your real dad is of which I’m not fully aware? I guess if you’re forced to pick your dad out of a lineup of three, that must be when the hilarity ensues.  It would all depend on the tone of the film and this one can go a number of ways: contrived dramedy, meretricious musical, conniving tear-jerker. Who knows? However, kudos to Merly Streep for demonstrating the positions she’s willing to put herself in for the sake of acting.

Best Case: I may not be qualified to venture a guess as to the best case scenario with this film. I don’t know, easy to fall asleep to? Bearable acting? Maybe the sound goes out at the particular screening I would hypothetically be attending? For me, the best case scenario would ultimately be not seeing this film at all. I think that’s a good place to leave it.

Worst Case: See the above description. I can’t seem to talk about this film in a positive context, so even an apparently objective take on it results in not-so-veiled criticism.

Beverly Hills Chihuahua

Assuming you watched the above trailer, there is absolutely no reason for me to describe this further. What you see is what you get. Horrible, horrible imagery that could have just as easily jumped from the pages of Dante’s Inferno, or been spliced in with the gruesome journey through hell in Event Horizon without anyone taking notice.

Best Case: N/A

Worst Case: Remember the penultimate scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where the Nazi’s finally open the Ark only to be struck by a blinding light that causes all their faces to melt? Well, I see this film having a similar effect on viewers. In fact, I suspect that the film itself doesn’t exist outside of the brief trailer that’s available (frankly, it just doesn’t seem possible). Instead it serves as part of some massive government conspiracy to harvest the ignorant people of the world (the only possible target audience for this putrid trash) by luring them into the theater and obliterating their already vacant minds with some sort of mind-control ray gun (perhaps, for sake of consistency, fired by a wily chihuahua, or in an act of boredom just some random scientist in a sterile lab coat) turning them into brain-dead combatants that are then sent overseas to fight in Iraq.

Sound far-fetched? Seriously, would the alternative (i.e., this film actually existing in a feature-length format) be any more believable? Oh God, I sincerely hope not.

Tags: Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Brendan Fraser's Poor Decision-Making, Eye-Gouging, Government Conspiracies, Mama Mia, Rapping Chihuahuas, Ray Gun, The Dark Knight, The Mummy, Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, torture, X-Files