THE LACKNESS

1. Hancock/Sony Wknd/$ 66.0 Total/$ 107.3
2. Wall-E/Disney Wknd/$ 33.4 Total/$ 128.1
3. Wanted/Universal Wknd/$ 20.6 Total/$ 90.8
4. Get Smart/Warner Wknd/$ 11.1 Total/$ 98.1
5. Kung Fu Panda/Paramount Wknd/$ 7.5 Total/$ 193.4
6. The Incredible Hulk/Universal Wknd/$ 5.0 Total/$ 124.9
7. Indiana Jones 4/Paramount Wknd/$ 3.9 Total/$ 306.6
8. Kit Kittredge: American Girl Wknd/$ 3.6 Total/$ 6.1
9. Sex & The City/New Line Wknd/$ 2.3 Total/$ 144.9
10. You Don’t Mess With The Zohan Wknd/$ 2.0 Total/$ 94.8


PALM-PENIS WAS TOO OBVIOUS

WARNING! HERE THERE BE SPOILERS!
Hancock opens at number one and this is the story of a non-comic book-based superhero. It’s also the story of a down-and-out one. Hancock is a surly drunk whose heroic efforts cause damage that tends to dwarf the crime or disaster he’s averting. Rather than simply lifting a car off the train tracks, he tosses the car onto another one and lets the train hit him, causing the entire thing to derail. Into this comes Jason Bateman as a decidedly altruistic public relations exec who thinks he can save Hancock. This leads to the discovery that Hancock isn’t so much a superhero but one of the last of a race of gods because the other survivor is Charlize Theron, who is now Jason Bateman’s wife. She also just happens to have been Will Smith’s wife for the last thousand years. Now, this causes all sorts of plot problems as when the gods are together they slowly become human so they can age and die. This never happened to them, because---well, we don’t know why. At she yells at him that she’s tried to get away from him for a thousand years, suggesting a millennium of a love/hate relationship. Then she tells stories of how, whenever they settle down, they’re attacked because they’re both vulnerable, so she wasn’t running from him after all. Strangely, even though she tells him she’s stronger and faster he seems to defend her alone during these attacks where he’s hurt. The last one was 80 years ago in Miami where he lost his memory thanks to a head wound. After that she let him go. So basically, all this time they’ve both been in LA, she’s known exactly what’s wrong with him and how to help him and never lifted a finger. And even though she’s keeping her powers a secret, she doesn’t hesitate to start public super-fight with him. But this isn’t the only problem. We’re supposed to believe that Will Smith and Charlize Theron were attacked in America in the 1800’s and the 1930’s because they had super-powers and not because they were, oh, say A BLACK GUY MARRIED TO A BLONDE! I guess racial violence would have been too much of a downer for a lighthearted summer film. The film also lacks a good villain. Oh, there’s a bad guy, but he’s like a lightweight Lex Luthor, when what we needed was another god, still around because, perhaps, he murdered his mate to stop from becoming human. This film had a nice premise, of the less-than-noble superhero and they should have stuck to it. This god-thing is a left-turn that completely drains the fun out of the situation as who can relate to a god? A foul-mouthed superhero that gets drunk and doesn’t give a shit? So much could have been done with that.

PUN CITY
Wall-E is down to number two and if Wall-E’s noises sound familiar it’s because they are voiced by none other than R2-D2 himself, Ben Burtt. Apparently a decidedly human air is still beyond computers and there’s something comforting in that. And if you didn’t know Pixar was affiliated with Apple computers, the fact that Wall-E gives off the Apple start up chime when he recharges should let you know. It’s also no accident that Eve looks a bit like an iPod as one of the iPod designers helped design her as well. I was almost expecting a bunch of flying toasters to show up as evil robots, but the closest thing to a villain in this the ship’s computer that looks like---you guessed it---Hal. He even has “secret orders” responsible, just like Hal and his voice is Sigourney Weaver. But my favorite robot isn’t Wall-E, but the cleaning robot, Mo, also voiced by Ben Burtt. Mo is obsessed with cleaning up after Wall-E the moment he sets foot onboard the ship and it’s this due diligence that leads to him saving the day. Gonna get me a Happy Meal so maybe I can get a little Mo for my desk. Heh. I said “Get a little Mo” which I’m sure was the point from the beginning.

IT’S A BLACK THING; YOU WOULDN’T UNDERSTAND
Wanted is down to number three and if there is no other reason to see this movie, it’s to hear Morgan Freeman utilize his dulcet tones to say, “Kill this muthafucka here.” That’s almost worth the price of admission. It’s a different type of “muthafucka” than Samuel L. Jackson and because you don’t expect it from the man who drove Miss Daisy and played God, it’s twice as funny. Not to mention, Samuel L. Jackson wouldn’t have been thrilled to share the set with rapper, Common, who appears here as the assassin known as Gunsmith, whom, like Angelina Jolie is underutilized. I think he speaks twice. You put a real actor out of a job for that?

MORE PROOF HOW MUCH SEASON TWO SUCKED
Get Smart is down to number four and how can you not advertise that not only is Hiro from Heroes in this, but blow the simultaneous DVD release about his character in this movie (Get Smart’s Bruce & Lloyd Out of Control)? Did any of you know that before I told you? Exactly. Someone needs to be fired, because this movie is not exactly a flop.

BOY WONDERS NEEDED TO SAVE MOVIE FRANCHISES
Kung Fu Panda is down to number five, followed by The Incredible Hulk at number six and at the rate it’s going seems to be headed towards a pretty much equal take as the first Hulk movie which means maybe the audience for The Hulk just ain’t that big. Of course the one thing missing from both films is the character of Rick Jones, who in the comics is the reason Bruce Banner becomes exposed to gamma rays to begin with. See, the reason the “kid sidekick” exists (it began with Robin The Boy Wonder) is to allow the primary audience to be able to see themselves in the adventure. Iron Man really didn’t need it because the Robert Downey Jr performance is one of a big kid himself, whereas Edward Norton desperately needed some youthful comic relief. We’d be talking about a different gross if Zac Efron had been allowed to play Rick Jones, the wisecracking grad student helping Bruce Banner out. You know I’m right.

WE HATE SHIA LEBEOUF
Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull holds at number seven and it seems that Grandfathers-Who-Refuse-To-Accept-Their-Age and Ugly-Dweebs-Who-Aren’t-As-Cool-As-They-Think-They-Are are making a stand by keeping this movie around. And how many people do you think got that Indiana Jones’s son renames himself “Mutt” the same way Indiana Jones took the name of the family dog?

“SHE WAS AN AMERICAN GIRL…”
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl finally enters the top ten at number eight and if you think Transformers was just an excuse to sell toys, then meet the female counterpart. This is based on a phenomenally successful line of very expensive dolls called American Girl who became a target of the far right wing because they gave money to something called Girls Inc which they accused of teaching “radical feminism and lesbian values.” This means they support being something more than barefoot and pregnant, which Jesus apparently hates. And the very fact this movie exists pretty much let you know that little boycott failed. You can put it next to their attempted boycott of Disney for not banning “Gay Day” as learning some things you just can’t fuck with. And what’s our rule about appearing in kid’s films and horror movies? Well, it should come as no surprise former almost stars Chris O’Donnell and Julia Ormand are here playing the parents to Kit Kittredge, who is played by an actual star in Abigail Breslin.

MY HATE IS LIKE A TWINKIE, UNDYING
Sex & The City holds at number nine and the rumors about there being a Friends movie to cash in on the success of this are just that, a rumor. Thank god. Yes, I’m still holding a grudge against this show for being straight and white. And before someone levels the charge against SATC, if Friends had been set in the same demographic this was set in (moneyed, upper east side) I wouldn’t expect it to have a lot of minorities either. But SATC was filmed in NYC so the Great Melting Pot was always part of the landscape of the show. Hell, Big was seen dating a Black girl the second episode. Compare this to that piece of shit show where even the delivery people were cute blondes.

THE END
Finally, Don’t Mess With The Zohan holds on to number ten.

THE LACKNESS
Not breaking the top ten in its limited art house release is The Wackness, yet another movie about “the summer where everything changed.” I never had a summer where everything changed. Not even when my brain bled, but I’m just dense that way. In this case the summer is NYC in1994, before cell phones became everyday and Giuliani was cleaning up the city of squeegee men and its character. The person being changed here is a teen dope dealer named Josh Shapiro, who is getting counseling from one of his customers in exchange for weed. The doctor is played by Ben Kingsley, who like most movie shrinks is more messed up than his patients. Kingsley is also stepfather to Shapiro’s crush, played by Olivia Thirlby, who was Ellen Page’s best friend in Juno. Sadly, it never really clicks as evocative of ’94 despite the music, big gold earrings on girls and use of slang (not to mention a shout out to Notorious BIG as the “new shit” by Method Man in a small role). A Forrest Gump billboard here and an OJ Simpson headline there set to A Tribe Called Quest simply is not enough to invoke a mood of the past. First of all, you don’t do early 90’s without Mary J. Blige! Now, he gets points for going mostly East Coast, not the least of which was Craig Mack, ‘cause “Flava In Your Ear” was the shit (but you gotta have the remix), but this was also the time of Uptown Records with Jodeci and Heavy D. Also, I don’t know Drake & Josh, so watching Josh Peck as a teen weed seller doesn’t seem that shocking to me, but he does a convincing job of playing a lonely teenager and he’s a native New Yorker so much of his performance rings true. Like Wanted the movie starts off with a narration that it drops after the first ten minutes and you can tell that it was simply too difficult for the writer to maintain, when in better hands it would have remained consistent and given the film a much needed extra layer. The person it was too difficult for was writer/director Jonathan Levine, whom I’m sure thought he had a “summer where everything changed” but given the lack of depth here I’m pretty sure it was just “the summer where he first got laid” and maybe if he just accepted it was that, he wouldn’t have attempted so much pathos here. And yes, this is the film where Ben Kingsley makes out with Mary Kate Ashley, but it’s actually organic to the plot of Kingsley’s own failing marriage to Famke Janssen and if you want to be annoyed by something, be annoyed by the idea he could even be with someone like her, and not making out with Mary Kate’s flakey pothead character. But I do give it points for looking like NYC in a way that only a real New Yorker would make it look. In anyone else’s hands, the douchebag guy that Thirlby is normally with would be some WASPy blonde. Here he’s Asian and is the same of obnoxious, rich douchebag.

IN SHORT: UNTUCKED DRESS SHIRT ON DATE = LOSER
So, my plans for the long weekend were pretty much to frozen margarita it every night and catch up on little tasks I’d always meant to do. The funny thing is, doing the first pretty much means you won’t do the second. In any case for the first two nights my plan was pretty flawless, then fate reared its ugly head and Chasing Amy called to invite me out to a party. I refused, having already begun my drinking, but she guilted me because one of her boyfriend’s buddies has a very obvious crush on her and I was called upon to provide another defensive layer. The party started at 9:00 but we didn’t arrive until midnight and it was shockingly just about over. But this was a theme. On the way there I saw a group of bachelorette party women already heading home and a woman dressed to the nines being reluctantly dropped off at the door by some loser wearing the nighttime “uniform” of the modern man: jeans and untucked dress shirt. I’m sorry, but if that’s all you do to go out, you don’t deserve to get laid. Same for the women. If your night out wear is heels, jeans and camisole , then you deserve some douche in jeans and an untucked dress shirt. At least get something in a color or a fucking shirt that’s designed not to be tucked in. Not the same shit you’d wear to work with a tie. In any case, the party seemed mostly over, but there were a few people playing Guitar Hero and there was plenty of good cheese left, so I was not entirely unhappy. Since giving up gaming years ago, I’d never played Guitar Hero, which has become something of a phenomenon, appealing the air guitarist in all of us. Maybe having played guitar helped, but I found it easy and a bit dull. Give me a game with a car and a gun strapped to the hood. You know, something I really can’t do. The party was filled with guys who fancied themselves DJ’s so at a certain point the music was turned up for some French girls who wanted to dance. Now, it’s a statement of both the geek I’ve always been and always will be and the snob I’ve always been and always will be that I instead chose to drink and play MarioKart. Choosing a videogame over a girl is obviously the geek in me, but the snob in me was not having them trying to dance to the crappy DJing that was going on. And being French is no excuse. The music was sucking and what he was trying to do it by mixing was only making it worse so any self-respecting person would have kept still. I mean, isn’t the first rule of DJing the same as being a doctor: first do no harm? So, I drank the good wine (Layer Cake a red that’s as sweet as a Riesling) ate the good cheese and duck brie and played MarioKart. Chasing Amy, on the other hand, discovered the drum machine and could not, would not let it go. Hey, it’s not like she could make the music worse. And it’s just a coincidence that when the goat cheese ran out I decided to leave. I mean it was 4:00 am. I would have left anyway.

“I WANT TO RIDE MY BICYCLE/I WANT TO RIDE MY BIKE…”
One of the reasons I was trying to bunker down on Saturday night was because I was exhausted, having just ridden my bike in from Brooklyn. Yes, I have a bike. Coincidentally, Chasing Amy tried to get me to buy one with her earlier this year, but I was simply not dropping hundreds of dollars on something I’d probably never use, not even for the beautiful Captain America riding jersey it would justify me having. Then came the lack of improvement from the last two months of kung fu. I mean, yeah, I can see that I’m getting stronger. I can now do all 80 of the conditioning kicks without wussing out and some of the brutal ab workouts aren’t as hard as they used to be, but I’m not getting any thinner and man boobs are still a part of my reality. Then I read this article in Shape Magazine (shut up, we have a free subscription) written by, of all people, Maggie Estep. If Jonathan Levine really wanted to invoke the 90’s he’d have had some of that little poetry renaissance that was going on at the time that she was a part of. Nuyorican Café anyone? In any case, her article made it sound great and this would give me something active to do on the weekends that was easy. I wouldn’t need any mental discipline at all. I mean, it’s bike riding. So, I began to troll Craig’s list looking for a cheap bike. And I mean cheap. $100 was my limit. This was only going to be a weekend bike only and by weekend I mean Saturdays, so I wasn’t going to get roped into this insane bicycle culture where even wheels cost thousands of dollars. I consulted the husband of one of my former Wild Child girls (she’s now married with child in NJ) and he’s a serious biker, racing and shit like that. He advised me against some initial choices. I didn’t want a normal ten-speed (aka a road bike), because I’m in NYC. I learned the bike of the urban dweller is the hybrid, which is a cross between a mountain bike and typical ten-speed. But if I couldn’t get that, I’d settle for a mountain bike type of deal, because, let’s face, they look nice, whereas a ten-speed suggests some vegetarian pussy in a goofy-ass helmet. And no, I do not where a helmet. It looks too stupid. I’m one of the cavalcade of idiots who goes without, but don’t pretend we don’t look better, ‘cause we do. I finally found one I liked for $75, which sent me out to Parkside, Brooklyn at the ass end of Prospect Park. After waiting half an hour the guy showed up and essentially pulled a bait ‘n switch on me. Those bikes were gone, but he had one now for $90. It was still in my price range and otherwise I hauled my ass out there for nothing so I took it. It’s some sort of 21-speed Harley Davidson promotional number with a 7005 Series aluminum frame (which may need something to someone, but not to me), which was fine considering I almost went for a Dr. Pepper promotional bike. I rode it home through Prospect Park and discovered quickly how in shape I was not. When did bike riding get so damn difficult? There’s a long incline in Prospect Park that I made it halfway through before I had to walk the damn thing, as old people and kids went whizzing past me. Once past it, I went through the park, and into the wilds of Brooklyn, coincidentally past the place where I’d been drinking with my Jezebels. I was initially nervous about being on a bike in New York traffic for the first time in 20 years, but in no time I was running red lights and riding against traffic like everyone else. And I was able to do something I hadn’t done in the almost 25 years I’ve been here: go across the Brooklyn Bridge. But when I got across it was about 8:30 and I was dead. I became another regular NYC character when I then took my bike on the subway at city hall. But I’m gonna need a new seat because the portion of my ass near the “taint” is fucking killing me. No longer will I mock goofy, padded biker shorts. I may have to invest in a pair. But not before I get that Captain America biking jersey.