The First Annual Critics’ Summer Movie Face/Off

Oft expectation fails, and most oft there

Where most it promises.

--William Shakespeare, “All’s Well That Ends Well”

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Nothing riles excessive filmmakers, spendthrift studio heads and overpaid stars more than critics who ignore the genius of their work and instead review their budgets. And in a summer when nearly a dozen movies cost more than $80 million, we’ve reviewed a lot of budgets.

It’s only natural. When a golfer buys a highly engineered driver with a titanium head the size of Wisconsin and a sweet spot said to be wider than Hershey, Pa., he expects to enjoy the game more. When he doesn’t, he breaks the club over his knee. Bad review.

Same thing with critics and summer movies. Yes, it’s the intellectual off-season, and some lowering of expectations is essential. But how low do you go against the soaring prices of movies and admission tickets and against the knowledge that in not too many summers past, and for lots less money, Hollywood did so much better?

Steven Spielberg, who once enriched us with such well-told summer tales as “Jaws” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” is now happy to take the money and run, on the back of a galumphing dino-cow like “The Lost World.” Twentieth Century-Fox, whose “Star Wars” series filled both kids and adults with awe, this season brought us those asinine shipwrecks “Speed 2: Cruise Control” and “Out to Sea.” Warner Bros., which gave us the marvelous first “Superman,” has now given us, one hopes, the last dreadful “Batman.”

Screenwriter Paul Schrader says that Hollywood has devoted so much effort and so many resources to “de-educating” the audience that we’re now dumb enough to take whatever is offered and enjoy it. The box office, and too many of the reviews, bear him out. It seems that critics have also been worn down by the process and are now looking past the patronizing content to praise movies they know will be forgotten by Labor Day.

* Robert Zemeckis’ “Contact” is a good movie, if you overlook its grade-school redaction of Carl Sagan’s densely philosophical novel and pretend--because Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey couldn’t--that it’s also a moving love story.

* John Woo’s “Face/Off” is an absolute hoot, if you’re able to focus only on the hip performances of John Travolta and Nicolas Cage and ignore altogether the numbingly excessive and mostly irrelevant action sequences that are the Hong Kong director’s stock in trade.

* P.J. Hogan’s “My Best Friend’s Wedding” is a real romantic charmer, if you are made faint by Julia Roberts’ flash-flood smile and forget she’s playing an irredeemable, mean-spirited, narcissistic twit who will do anything to win some guy who wouldn’t even be a prize in a Cracker Jack box.

* Disney’s “Hercules” is a fabulous animated musical, if you’re comparing it to last year’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and if you forgive it all those obnoxiously cute promos for “Hercules” after-market merchandise.

* Barry Sonnenfeld’s “Men in Black” is worth $7.50, if you’re starved for clever effects and don’t mind the absence of plot, character development or suspense.

* “Conspiracy Theory” and “Air Force One” are terrific, if you want to see Mel Gibson at his loosest and Harrison Ford at his stiffest in star vehicles that have less story credibility than O.J.’s “Colombian necktie” defense.

* “Con Air,” the year’s wildest turkey, would make for a stimulating two hours of entertainment, if you were watching it free in your solitary confinement cell in a Turkish prison. Maybe.

Being generous--that is, comparing this summer to last--Hollywood’s overall output may qualify as “acceptable.” Only “Con Air,” “Batman & Robin” and “Speed 2” deserve to be tortured and killed. But for the costs involved, “acceptable” shouldn’t be acceptable. If they’re going to spend $80 million to $140 million on a picture, why not include a compelling story, as well as a tricky premise? Why not characters, as well as stars? Would a few subplots and a little relevance--just the least food for thought is all we ask--really cost them at the gate?

Hollywood used to worry about runaway productions; now it is one. The escalating competition for “event” movies, with the urge of studio executives to prove they have the biggest one, has raised the stakes to dizzying heights. The summer season has become a poker game in which the ante is $60 million and it takes 3,000 screens or better to open.

It’s obvious from this summer’s movies that the filmmakers are having to actually invent scenes in order to spend all their money. How many millions were wasted on that totally gratuitous midnight motorcycle race in “Batman & Robin”? Or on those multiple endings to “Con Air,” “Speed 2” and “Face/Off”? Or on that comically absurd “Godzilla Does San Diego” bit in “The Lost World”?

Action sequences, small or large, should advance the story and/or develop character. On that score, this summer’s most compelling and best assembled picture is Jonathan Mostrow’s “Breakdown.” Using almost no special effects, it follows a man’s panicked search for his wife in the Southwestern desert, each step a reasonably logical extension of the last. It’s riveting because it is emotionally honest.

Many of the season’s most expensive action set pieces are empty spectacles, action for action’s sake, and we stare at them with a kind of visceral awe, like the apes gawking at the monolith in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001”--not because they mean anything to us, but because they’re so damn big!

Credit where due: Wolfgang Petersen made the action count in “Air Force One” and kept us too busy to worry about the improbabilities of the story line. So did Richard Donner with “Conspiracy Theory.” And young James Mangold pulls off the impossible with “Cop Land,” making it seem almost reasonable that Sylvester Stallone is in a movie with Robert De Niro.

But there are few genuine accomplishments to note in the summer of ‘97, and with the box-office grosses as encouragement, Hollywood figures to keep making them bigger and dumber. Ultimately, critics will have no choice but to review summer movies in relation to their budgets. That will be the only story.