Bad Habits - Summer movie meltdown - August 08 2001

I am easily amused. It doesn't take much to keep me occupied. I recently enjoyed spending time with my 2-year-old niece, who played the same Elmo songs over and over and over. A change of lyrics, a change of vocal tone, some dancing thrown in, and really, it can be a totally different experience each time.

If only it were that way for my summer movie experiences. I keep going to different movies (I dare not call them films) with different titles, but I keep seeing the same substandard fare. Who is writing this stuff? It's so obviously and glaringly bad that you have to wonder just what's going on in Hollywood. I thought there was competition in the movie industry, but I think it's to see who can make the worst movie and still gross the highest opening weekend amount. Maybe the horrid quality of most of the flicks out there is just a cruel trick. Or maybe they think we're very stupid. Either way, you don't have to be a cameraman to know which way the scene goes.

I kicked off my summer fare with Tomb Raider and have followed that with Kiss of the Dragon, Legally Blonde and Jurassic Park III. I don't want to hear the lame excuse of, "Oh, action movies aren't known for their good dialogue." That may be true, but the dialogue in Kiss of the Dragon and Tomb Raider was mind-numbing. Someone had to work hard to come up with dialogue that bad. It was as if the writers were parroting real action flicks. But the parrot was apparently very sick.

Tomb Raider was OK in the action department. The Cambodian temple scenes were nice, very Raiders of the Lost Ark. But, not only were the words for the simpleminded, all of the "bad" characters were dressed in black and often smoking cigarettes — a sure sign of evil. To her credit, Angelina Jolie held the flick together, though I could have done without Jon Voight, looking oddly like Hemingway in Africa, playing her father, Lord somebody, in the movie.

I was psyched for Kiss of the Dragon. Jet Li, Luc Besson — how can you go wrong? Ah, but you can. The action was mostly good — except for the graphic stabbings, neck breakings and machine gunnings. I like my action a little happier, a la Jackie Chan or Bruce Willis. The story was not only unbelievable, but was so mean-spirited that I didn't even want to pretend to believe. But then it tried to tug at your heartstrings — it had a child in an orphanage for Christ's sake! Gimme a break. By the way, Kiss of the Dragon features Bridget Fonda doing her worst acting job ever. And that's saying something. If I'd been Jet Li, I would have left Bridget Fonda's whiny ass on the streets of Paris.

Legally Blonde has a lot of funny moments. It is marred mainly by not enough Reese Witherspoon/California-girl-at-law-school antics and too much subplot. It saddens me that this movie made it to the big screen without someone - anyone — putting the kibosh on the totally-out-of-place dance scene at the nail salon. What the hell was that? That was the main comment I heard when exiting the theater. I also could have done without the tacked-on explanatory ending. By that point, I think even the Star 94 monkey who was at the screening had gotten the feel-good point. Sheez.

I was tricked into seeing Jurassic Park III, but that's a story for another time. Having not seen the other Jurassic Park movies, I thought I was ready for anything. I was not ready, however, to believe that Tea Leoni would ever be married to William H. Macy. I'm still traumatized by his characters in Fargo and Happiness. However, the most jarring part was when the movie ended abruptly and without fanfare. The doctor said, "I hear the ocean." They exited the jungle onto the beach where the Navy whisked them away, along with my seven bucks.??