I THINK AMERICA would be a saner country if we all just admitted what box-office receipts have been telling us for years: We’re nothing but a bunch of whores. It kills me when some would-be cineaste sheepishly admits to me that he might take in The Hulk this summer. Yeah, put yourself out there, buddyyou’re really going out on a limb. I’m the first to confess that I plan to lay down and yell “Daddy!” for whichever tacky celluloid behemoth dangles something pretty in front of me. Why? For the same reason we approach total strangers at 1:53 a.m. in a bar on a Friday night: because, until we wake up the next morning feeling foolish and unclean, we have the delusion that they’ll give us exactly what we need at that moment. Anyone can shamelessly attend Terminator 3, but I’ll be rolling in the real garbage with the other dogs. I like to sit down with the Summer Movie Preview edition of Entertainment Weekly every year and mentally plan each time I’m going to degrade myself with a bag of dried popcorn and a $3.75 Mr. Pibb. I don’t bother making up false reasons to experience this trashlowest-common-denominator rationalizations are part of the liberating joy of summer moviegoing. My list this summer goes something like this:
Jeepers Creepers 2
What it is: A sequel to the genuinely scary 2001 piece of trash about a buglike, people-eating monster.
Reason I’m going: I like to see people get eaten.
See? Wasn’t that easy? Didn’t it feel good? And it works just as well with potential big-budget stinkers:
Hollywood Homicide
What it is: A “buddy movie” in which Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnett play down-and-out L.A. detectives who moonlight asstop! You’re killing me already!a real-estate agent and a yoga instructor, respectively.
Reason I’m going: The hope that the 6-foot-3-inch Hartnett will, at some point, be barefoot and doing the downward facing dog.
I feel tingly already. Let’s do another one:
28 Days Later
What it is: Danny (Trainspotting) Boyle’s movie about a deadly virus that turns ordinary citizens intothanks again, EW!”the blood-drunk walking dead.” Written by Alex Garland, the same guy who wrote 2000’s crap Boyle movie, The Beach.
Reason I’m going: What part of “the blood-drunk walking dead” did you not understand?
Oh, yeah, baby. You like that, don’t you? Try this:
Prozac Nation
What it is: Christina Ricci playing Elizabeth Wurtzel in a long- on-the-shelf adaptation of her “Look, Ma! I’m on Prozac!” confessional. Jessica Lange plays, uh, somebody.
Why I’m going: Jessica Lange gets better with age, and I’ve fantasized that she’ll play a tough-love counselor who shakes a drug-addled Ricci by the shoulders and screams, “Look at yourself!” before cracking her a good one right across the chops.
Want more? I thought you might.
Gigli
What it is: It’s pronounced “jeely,” and it’s the movie where J.Lo first met Ben Affleck; according to EW, she plays a lesbian contract killer helping fellow hitman Ben protect a mentally impaired kid.
Reason I’m going: Jennifer Lopez as a lesbian contract killer? Has someone been reading my diary?
Ohhhhhhhhhhh. I never thought it could be like this. Was it as good for you as it was for me? Thanks for coming over. You should probably go now. I have to go to work really early in the morning.
