Waiting for WALL•E.

Admittedly, what follows is a miniscule sample, but Hollywood's summertime offerings over the next couple of weeks are beginning to look rather thin, if not downright grim. You might want to steer clear of a multiplex until June 27, when Pixar's WALL•E rolls in.

Then again, who knows. By the time enough reviews of the following three heavyweights appear, the summer might appear brighter after all.

"The aesthetic dexterity and psychological depth of Ang Lee's Hulk is corrupted by Marvel's 'reboot' of the superhero franchise, Louis Leterrier's intermittently kinetic but depressingly shallow The Incredible Hulk," writes Nick Schager in Slant. "In response to complaints that Lee's unjustly excoriated 2003 effort was too talky and slow, Leterrier swings the pendulum to the opposite side of the spectrum, delivering a slam-bang spectacle so lacking in weight that, until the impressive finale, the film seems downright terrified of character and relationship development, as if too much conversation or - gasp! - subtextual heft will immediately alienate coveted young male fanboys."

"M Night Shyamalan's latest, an ecological thriller, will definitely not sit well with everyone," writes The Visitor, reviewing The Happening at Twitch. "While high on suspense, the film mixes comedy and terror so much that at some point, we get confused whether we're suppose to laugh, scream or cry. And that makes it a very, very strange piece of work.... But all the good stuff doesn't take away the fact that the whole is less than the sum of its parts."

"It seemed like a natural," sighs John Anderson in Variety. "Redo Get Smart, the landmark 60s TV spy spoof, with Steve Carell. Who better to update Maxwell Smart - the idiot-savantish secret agent originated by Don Adams - than The Office' master of disassociative, self-effacing humor? But in the end, a bigscreen version of television's Get Smart had issues to address - the hero was too one-dimensional, the female lead too adoring, the Cold War too over. So helmer Peter Segal's formulaic takeoff is neither fish nor fowl, not quite faithful to the show, but not quite bringing it into the 21st century either."

Posted by dwhudson at June 10, 2008 3:34 PM