Are you ready for the big summer blockbuster season? Translated: Have you bought sufficient quantities of air sickness bags? I wish I had the good fortune to be reviewing those, instead of clunkers that have already died at the box office. But good things come to those who wait, and the bad things to DVD quite soon. I’ll get to them in time. For now, let’s see future Target discount selections…

The 40-Year-Old Virgin
And what, exactly, is so funny about a 40-year-old virgin? Maybe he’s just too absorbed in his work to go out and have wild sex parties. Maybe he’s yet to meet his intellectual equal. You know what? Forget it. Movies this insulting to a perfectly respectable demographic of our country aren’t even worth reviewing. Complete garbage. Starring that guy from TV’s crappy American The Office.

Fever Pitch
Sure, it’s a movie—if you can call this a movie. Jimmy Fallon, the always intolerable Saturday Night Live player, plays an always intolerable Red Sox fan in a story that’s supposed to be cute and funny but is more reminiscent of every scene in every other Farrelly Brothers movie. Ah, the Hollywood star fades so fast. A few years ago they could snap their fingers and get Jim Carrey. Now Jimmy Fallon has to be cajoled into their movies. They traded dick jokes for sentimentality, and made me even more nauseous in the process.

Mindhunters
Any more by-the-numbers a thriller would look like a learn-to-count film for preschoolers. A group of FBI behavioral profilers are caught in a game of mouse-and-mouse with a movie-style psychopath, who’s quite clever and just wants to torment them, even if it would be easier and more psychopath-like to just attack them and cut them to pieces. How long did this movie sit on a studio shelf? I’m not sure, but it did stink like mothballs.

Pooh’s Heffalump Movie
Winnie the Pooh was neutered, bland entertainment back when kids were used to seeing people get murdered and beaten to death in their cartoons. Yet somehow, even in this day and age, when all children’s entertainment is castrated, Pooh remains duller than ever. The audiences at a showing of Pooh’s Heffalump Movie were in a catatonic state children haven’t been seen in since TeleTubbies left the air. I myself was nearly lost forever to this film’s coma-inducing power, but the cleaning lady happened to pull the plug while vacuuming, freeing me from its spell. I warn you all not to rent it, and whatever you do, do not mix it with alcohol or medication.

Finding Neverland
A film tailor-made for everyone who thought, “I would love to see a biopic about how a writer comes up with the idea for his masterpiece, and yet take nothing away from the experience.” Possibly directed by a robot, although they gave it the cleverly human-sounding name Marc Forster. It doesn’t do anything particularly wrong; it doesn’t do particularly anything. Even Johnny Depp, who can make a memorable performance in detritus like Pirates of the Carribean, is just there in this film. Many critics will respect what it’s about, and the fact it doesn’t seem to fail in specific ways, but even the people who worked on it wouldn’t pick it as their favorite film of 2004, it’s simply too forgettable. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve seen it already, and are merely getting it confused with some other movie. This is the one about the Peter Pan author, not the one about the blind piano-player. C’est la vie. At least they acknowledged there are people who write books, that’s something commendable.

National Treasure
A lovely, pleasant surprise—a film so damned bad you could mock it down to each and every single frame. Nicolas Cage is a historian (ha!) whose family has been assigned the task of protecting the secret gold of our forefathers (ha ha!) which can be found by a map written on the Constitution (ha ha ha!). The studio wanted to make a film of The Da Vinci Code, but since the author wanted money to adapt the laughable book, they made their own laughable rip-off, which should hold us over until the real laughable adaptation finally gets made. This is yet another Cage/Jerry Bruckheimer collaboration, which lends further credence to my theory that Jerry Bruckheimer hates Nicolas Cage and wants to destroy his career. See The Rock, Con Air, and Gone in 60 Seconds for more proof. But whatever you do, don’t see this.

The Wedding Crashers
Vince Vaughan and Owen Wilson, two guys who couldn’t carry movies by themselves, are tossed together as business associates who attend weddings to pick up women. A real raucous comedy with a heart of tin, Wedding Crashers is the kind of enduring romantic comedy like 40 Days and 40 Nights that Hollywood aims right for the sweet spot of 18-34 year-old males— yep, you got it: Their wallets. The chemistry is alright, though. Maybe if they had gone the whole Brokeback Mountain route with these two they might have made an interesting movie. Perhaps we’ll see it in the sequel, Wedding Crashers 2: Ass Crashers.

That’s it for me. I could amaze you with some clever departing wisdom, but I fear this string of movies has succeeded in making me semi-retarded. I can still wash windows and pump gas—they’re designed to leave menial labor skills intact, I believe—but doing much else is extremely difficult. Maybe I can recover by next edition if I give up watching film altogether until then. Wish me luck.