By Mike Hudson
Can summer really be almost over?
One look at the movies being released this week and it’s apparent that, for Hollywood at least, it’s already bitten the dust.
There are a few big names – Meryl Streep, Robert Redford and Mel Gibson to name three – but those names got big in the 1970s and 80s and have lost considerable luster in the new century.
Streep stars in “Florence Foster Jenkins,” a light comedy about a rich society matron who wants to be an opera singer despite the fact she can’t sing. Hugh Grant, who used to have something of a career himself, co-stars in this rather dreary sounding exercise.
The film is opening this week everywhere.
Redford plays an elderly woodcarver in Disney’s remake of “Pete’s Dragon,” about a young boy who runs away from an abusive foster home and strikes up a friendship with a dragon in the Pacific Northwest.
This will likely be the biggest opening of the weekend as grandmothers who remember when Redford was a heartthrob take the grandkids to be amused by the dragon part of the story.
It is doubtful, however, that it will be able to knock “Suicide Squad” or “Jason Bourne” from the top box office positions they enjoyed last weekend.
The stupidest sounding movie opening this weekend is the animated “Sausage Party,” which follows a sausage leading a group of supermarket products on a quest to discover the truth about their existence and what really happens when they become chosen to leave the grocery store.
I didn’t make that up. That’s really what it’s about. Somebody at Sony Pictures actually signed off on spending millions of dollars to make this.
Don’t mistake “Sausage Party,” which features the voices of Seth Rogan, James Franco and Kristen Wiig for a children’s move either. It’s rated R-17 and is strictly for adults because of strong crude sexual content, pervasive language, and drug use.
What were they thinking?
Finally, in “Blood Father,” a runaway turns to her reformed ex-con father – played by Mel Gibson — after she witnesses a murder. To protect his long-estranged daughter, he is forced to return to his criminal lifestyle.
While “Florence Foster Jenkins,” “Pete’s Dragon” and “Sausage Party” will be in wide release this weekend at a multiplex near you, “Blood Father” will be showing on a limited number of screens and you might have to look at bit if you want to see it.
To be honest, none of these movies sounds compelling in the least. While there might be a surprise or two before Labor Day, the summer blockbuster season has officially ended. This week’s mediocre entries confirm that Hollywood has shot it’s wad.
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