The Reason For The Season

Memorial Day is the day set aside by the United States to remember and honor those who have fallen in noble defense of this great nation. The debt we owe these great and wonderful people is more than we can ever pay, but we try to do it by taking the day off, eating hot dogs till we puke and playing miniature golf as I'm sure our soldiers would have wanted.

Another way we may homage to our heroes is to load the theaters up with with multiple blockbusters. How has Hollywood chosen to bring glory to Memorial Day this year? To find out, I once again go to the Tomatometer.

First up, we have Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, a title that's way too long so for the remainder of this post I will refer to it as Steve. Steve is a sequel to the big hit/lame movie, Night at the Museum, (to which I will now refer as Barry). I thought Barry was mostly a bore but the kids liked it so they didn't need me to make it a hit. If the current 48% rating is anything to go by, this one looks to be more of the same. This movie is a dilemma for me as I have a huge crush on Amy Adams and know that she will someday be mine if I give good reviews to everything she's in. This means I may ignore Steve altogether if it does end up sucking or else the review will be written by my Russian cousin Майкл Клер. The bad news for movie fans is that, at 48%, it is currently the frontrunner for this week's new releases.

Chiming in at number 2 is Terminator: Salvation. It's 35% rating is about what I have been expecting ever since I heard another Terminator movie was being made. The first strike against it is that it's directed by McG, who sucks. The second strike is that it's a sequel that didn't exactly have a huge groundswell of fans demanding it. Strike three is that it's the first in this series that doesn't concentrate on Schwarzenegger's Terminator character because he was too busy driving California's economy into the ground to participate in this*. Strike four is McG again who still sucks since I wrote about him the first time. I'm guessing that 35% rating will go even lower.

I can't really say that Dance Flick is in third place since it doesn't have a rating, at least not as of this writing. It's always a good sign when studios don't make their products available for mass critic screenings ahead of time, right? One of the few people who has seen it is Matt Pais of Metromix.com who gave it this resounding endorsement:

It stinks, but the Wayans family has done a lot worse.

Cool, first time feature director Damien Wayans can now go to his family and merrily chant, "I'm not the worst, I'm not the worst." Mix all this in with the fact that this is a parody film, a genre that last produced a decent movie about twenty years ago, and I am forced to come to the conclusion that the producers said to themselves, "Twenty years? This means the odds are due to change in our favor. Greenlight it."

This may be a good weekend to go see Star Trek again. Or, you know, honor some fallen soldiers. Whichever you think would be the most fun.

*I've heard he makes a cameo somewhere. If true, I'm betting it was the day he had to spend shooting his scenes that caused his state to collapse.