It Was The Summer Of 2009: “Oh Yeah, Me & The Movies And ’69, I Mean, 2009…

Man we were killin’ time, we were young and restless We needed to unwind, I guess nothin’ can last forever, forever, forever…

Summer is essentially over and the numbers are in. Warner Brothers is the studio winner and will have racked up around $970 million by the end of the weekend thanks to “The Hangover” and “Harry Potter 12.” Paramount is $830 million dollars poor enough to still push “Shutter Island” onto 2010 so they can Oscar-focus on “Up In The Air.” Heads will roll at Universal who limps in with a sad, $353 million (the total special effects budget of the negro robots in “Transformers 2”). All of this according to THR‘s end-of-the-summer dollars report. So as we slowly set off into the sunset of this rather mediocre summer —which still did great numbers, but from a critical perspective was a lot of ass — we look back on the Summer of 2009. For some reason or other…

Biggest Flop: “Land of the Lost”
A.k.a. the summer movie most compared to “The Love Guru” (in terms of an esoteric notion concocted by a comedian too overwhelmed by hubris to realize what a terrible fucking idea it was). Will Ferrell’s confused mess of a $100 million exercise in futility didn’t know if it wanted to be- a kiddie flick with computer-animated dinosaurs, some kind of bizarre raunchy comedy (complete with a diminutive monkey man who humps people), or a zeitgeist-tapping retro throwback. That confusion was transferred to both critics and audiences, and the movie crashed and burned. Loudly. In the end it was everything, and it was nothing. Not even the usually peerless Danny McBride walked away unscathed.

Worst Piece Of Tripe Of The Summer: “Transformers 2” – Before we rip Michael Bay’s bloated, borderline racist, two and half hour waste of celluloid to pieces, we want to preemptively tell the fanboys we had no beef with the first film. We wanted to see robots beating the hell out of each other, and that’s pretty much what we got. What’s more, Bay thankfully kept plot to a minimum allowing the expensive special effects to do their thing. But whatever goodwill we lent Bay the first time around, he squandered with the hulking slog that comprised “Transformers: ROTF.” The film struggled to find a tone right from the get go, veering from dumb slapstick comedy, to tepid political thriller, to a centerfold shoot, to lame teen drama from scene to scene little rhyme or reason. Hey! A scene of Megan Fox bending over! Whoa! Some little robot runs into things! OMG! Shia and Megan are totes in love! When it comes right down to it, Transformers: ROTF was nothing but a one-hundred and fifty minute quest for Shia to learn to say “I love you.” Awful. But the film is only made worse, by being one of the biggest smashes of the summer, guaranteeing that Bay will once again be given a big box of cash to unleash more nonsense onto cinema screens. Thanks a lot America.

Movie That Was Almost Worse Than the Worst Movie of the Summer: “Terminator Salvation”
Most of the critical ire this summer was directed at Michael Bay’s loud, proud “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” even though, racial stereotypes aside, the movie did have a handful of gleefully inventive action sequences and a giant robot that ate a pyramid. If only such candy-colored accomplishments popped up in McG’s big, lousy “Terminator Salvation,” which is the most drab, dramatically inert movie to ever feature giant killer robots. How McG, with a whole host of talented screenwriters, could concoct a movie set in the “Terminator” franchise’s future but have less oomph than the snippets we saw at the beginning of the previous films, is beyond comprehension. This thing had more plot holes than plot points, and unlike Bay’s calamitous beast, actually thought it was about something.

Biggest Disappointment: “Public Enemies”
Michael Mann, Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, Billy Crudup and a panoply of great actors in a 1930s gangster period piece, holy shit. What’s not to love? But then we remember we saw the enervating, slow-moving, mostly-going-nowhere picture that was also unfortunately shot in butt-ugly digital (bad period-piece aesthetics). The film did have some majestic moments, the last act of the two and half hour film was thrilling and operatic and the technical aspects and methodical eye for detail was superb as usual, but it wasn’t quite the slamdunk we were hoping for. Financially it’ll probably break even when it hits DVD and years from now bored revisionists with too much time on their hands will hail it as a masterpiece (much like the overrated “Heat” has gone from good, but difficult film to Mann rosetta stone over the years).

Mild Indie Box-Office Disappointment: All things considered, Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker,” did OK. $11 million dollars domestically, $12 million world-wide. It didn’t do as well as some Iraq-war movies (“In The Valley Of Elah,” $29 million), but it did fair better than “”Stop Loss” ($11 million worldwide), “War Inc.” ($1.2 million worldwide) and “Redacted” ($779,60) so that’s something. Still we were hoping the electrically charged picture — more a rare, smart action thriller, then Iraq War film — would connect with mainstream audiences in a bigger way. Hopefully there’s still Oscar hopes to be had.

Biggest Conversation Starter: “Inglourious Basterds”
So Operation Kino was a success, huh? Financially, yes. Critically? Hmmm… While the movie may have lived up to the towering promise of the screenplay we all read last summer, “Inglourious Basterds” was at least good for one thing — long, reference-entrenched debates on the movie’s merits and shortcomings. No other movie seemed to bring about more discussion, both on movie blogs like Jeffrey Wells’ Hollywood Elsewhere and in direct communication with other people (there were differing opinions here on The Playlist too) [ed. all of you are wrong], than Quentin Tarantino’s splat-stick revisionist historical epic. All points of view were argued over, as the conversational tug-of-war that is Tarantino continued (dried up hack recycling old movie tropes or cutting edge filmmaker — you decide!) No matter what you think of the film, you’ve got to give him credit — he gets people talking, seriously, about film.

Comedic Bomb Of the Summer: “Year One”
If and when Judd Apatow ever has a chance to rewrite his resume, surely he’ll take his producing credit off this one and hopes nobody notices. The fond return of the avuncular and sweet Harold Ramis? Oof, dude better stick to little cameos. “Ghostbuters” fans better hope he’s not the one directing “Ghostbusters 3” cause if he is, they’re fucked. “Year One” was a lame-duck comedic wet fart from start to finish with almost no redeemable qualities. Also, it’s sort of sure-fire proof that McLovin’ should stay affectionately remembered as McLovin’ and never, ever, ever act again.

We’ll also try and not let the words “G.I Joe: The Rise of Cobra,” or “Halloween II” pass through our lips. The less said, the better. As commenters pointed out, “District 9” was the Biggest Pleasant Surprise Of The Summer (congrats to Blomkamp) and “The Hangover” was the Comedy Of The Summer (at least financially — was funny, but certainly no masterpiece), but it’s also nothing you don’t already know. Plus we got lazy. — Kevin Jagernauth, Drew Taylor, Gaylord “Parnassus Lover” E-I-C.