Summer movie extravaganza '06

Was a time when I could idle away the summer checking out summer movie dreck with nary a concern for bazooka barfing infants distressing fellow filmgoers, but that time has passed. However, I somehow managed to see two suitably underwhelming summer features that may have to suffice as my entire moviegoing summer.

Firstly we shall discuss The Lake House. Why did I see this? Well, I am in the habit of seeing at least one lame chick-type flick per summer, being that I am a chick. Probably the same reason men all uniformly laugh at previews for idiotic and repetitive SNL-spinoff comedies like Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. It's a gender thing.

Did it suck? But of course. I was a little pleasantly surprised by the casting of a 40-year-old actress in the lead romantic role, but aside from that, it was stock schlock, complete with whispering Nick Drake ballads on the soundtrack. The movie is kind of a lame little epistolary, an offline "You've Got Mail," featuring the exchange of notes via a magical mailbox stationed outside of a glass-walled shack on some lake outside of Chicago, ergo, "the lake house." Keanu Reeves gives his trademark affable, yet balsawood performance, with a side order of man-crying, and Sandra Bullock is suitably button-nosed, but the whole thing is just a little mass-produced, soggy and tasteless, like one of those weird McDonald's apple pies that comes in a sleeve. I'm not saying I wouldn't eat one, but you know what I mean.

Onward.

Under the identical circumstances in which I saw its predecessor, I found myself watching PotC II with parental units visiting from distant lands. I had low expectations going in, as the whole PotC thing is another one of those candy-coated corporate vehicles Johnny Depp has taken on of late, and the first movie was rotten with unconvincing CGI skeletor FX. It is no secret that I hate bad CGI, and was dismayed, in the case of PotC II, to be subjected to three hours of hugely unconvincing computer handiwork standing in for character development-- essentially, brine shrimp digiwolves.

Did I mention the film was three hours long?

In short: digiprawns. Jamaican soothsayers. Slapstick cannibal antics. Barnacles. Relentless, earth-toned murk. Random sub-plots. Thick, gelatinous helpings of aquatic-themed CGI.

Conclusion: it sucked with the G-force traction of the Kraken's maw.