SUMMER MOVIE OLYMPICS: PART I

Let me start this off by making a confession: I am a sucker for summer movies. By the time May rolls around every year, I am primed and ready for whatever ridiculous, overproduced, underwritten, high concept, CG fest Hollywood has to offer. Remake of The Poseidon Adventure? I'm there (tune in next week for an update on how that one goes.) X-Men sequel that will inevitably be disappointing because a director whose work I know I hate has been brought in to replace the guy who made the first two solid movies? I'll be there at midnight opening night. A "Miami Vice" movie? Just tell me when I can preorder tickets on Fandango and I'll be there. Hell, I'll probably end up seeing "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" in theatres. The point is, there is no movie that is too stupid, too loud, too poorly edited, too free of story to keep me away.

And it's not like I usually end up happy for doing this to myself- most of the time, I walk out of the theatre with an empty feeling. Maybe I see these movies because the promise of explosions still gets me excited (even though the actual explosions don't do it for me the way they once did.) But, just when I am ready to give up, there is that one great thrill ride that defines the entire summer for you forever. In 1993, it was "Jurassic Park," the single most important movie I have ever seen- it was the reason that I ended up going to film school. Every summer, there is that movie that reminds you why you see why you go to the movies in the first place, and reminds you how awesomely satisfying a good explosion can be. Last year it was the dark and totally badass "Batman Begins."

So after that long winded intro, I'll get to the point. Ladies and gentlemen, the first blockbuster of the season has rumbled into theatres. And I can say this with confidence- "Mission: Impossible 3" is not going to make anybody's summer unless you happen to be Tom Cruise. And judging from the early box office returns and the fact that he has a huge back end deal on the movie, even he is not going to be too pleased in the long run.

"M:I3" is about as stupid and annoying as movies like this can be. It's a loud, obnoxious, franticly edited mess that, in it's own defense, is a slight improvement over "M:I2." This movie is a pure and clear example of a superstar's ego run amok. Tom Cruise is living in his own fantasy world, and he has turned the movie into his own personal quest to show the world what a macho badass he is. Katie Holmes is apparently not enough of a beard*- he needs to outrun missiles to prove to us all just how much of a man's man he is. His exploits in the movie seem to have come from the head of a twelve year old who has had one too many cans of coke. Everything is big, loud, and intense- but isn't it supposed to be at least a little bit fun?
The two big disappointments on this one are JJ Abrams and Philip Seymour Hoffman. I'll get to Hoffman first- casting him as the movie's villain was brilliant. The guy is far and away one of the best actors working today. But he just wasn't compelling at all. It's not his fault- somebody forgot to write a character for him. He is one of the most generic villains I've seen in awhile, and when he finally gets dispatched, it's intensely anticlimactic. Maybe if he had played the villain as Truman Capote, then that would have had something that would have at least amused me.

As for JJ- I am a huge "Lost" fan. Coming off the first amazing season of that show, I was ready to be blown away by what JJ could do with a bigger budget and cooler toys. But he wasn't able to make the leap from the small to the big screen gracefully- he tries hard to inject some emotion into the movie by adding a romantic subplot, but it falls distressingly flat. He never figures out how to make us care about the central relationship in the context of a two hour movie, and that's a problem- because all of Cruise's actions are motivated by the love for his wife. He steals a weapon of mass destruction and delivers it to the bad guy- just to save her. And his friends help him. WTF? There is really no flow to the story- or whatever story there is to speak of. But, like Hoffman, I can't really say I blame JJ for failing this mission- see you thought I wasn't gonna make one of those lame play on words like every other review of the movie has. I really showed you, huh? But really, it's not JJ's fault (and I'm not saying that just because I'd kill for a job on "Lost" and I am trying to cover my ass. Really, I'm not.)

The blame falls squarely on the shoulders of Cruise. I have never seen a movie that is a more blatant example of an out of control ego in my life. This is Tom Cruise's self indulgent love letter to himself. It's the cinematic equivalent of watching Cruise talk to himself in a mirror, performing shirtless karate poses, crying, and masturbating vigorously while yelling that "Everyone loves me so fucking much! I am so straight and America's women love me! I am such a badass man's man, I am so in shape, and I know everyone thinks I'm great! Psychiatry is bad!" After his bizarre year of jumping on Oprah's couch, calling Matt Lauer "glib," hiding Katie Holmes away for her entire pregnancy, purchasing an ultra sound machine (by the way, what is he gonna do with that now that the baby has been born? Is he selling it on E-Bay?) and telling the world about how he was going to eat the placenta, it's just surreal to try and watch him play a character in this movie. Just like in most of his movies, he is incapable of making us believe he is anybody but Tom Cruise, and that's a problem for an actor. He runs like a madman, he cries, he jumps from one of the tallest buildings in the world, and he does it all with that patented Tom Cruise intensity. It's simply exhausting watching him try to will us into loving him as much as he loves himself.

*So I've gotten a lot of people asking me what a "beard" is. Basically, it's everything that you probably think Ms. Holmes is to Mr. Cruise (classy New York Times style name dropping, huh?) I think you people are clever enough to read between the lines*.

*And if you can't read between the lines- Tom Cruise is totally gay, dude. And everyone, himself most of all, should just get over it.