Movie Nation

Avoiding Adam Sandler films is a lot easier than it used to be. Basically, he’s moved (with his aging fanbase) to Netflix, and the most prominent theatrical releases he’s in have him doing a goof Dracula voice for Sony Animation.

So Thanksgiving came early this year.

But as feeble as his Sony Animation “Hotel Transylvania” comedies can be, a sentient adult can find pleasures in the dazzling design, the occasionally witty sight gag and the ever-shifting state-of-the-art that such films advertise.

Kids? They’re just waiting for the next fart joke.

Starting “Hotel Transylvania: Summer Vacation,” the third film in this Sandler voicing Dracula-as-a-hotelier-and-doting-dad comedy series with a dazzling, photo-real train chugging from Bavaria to Budapest is impressive. The cruise ship featuring in the [plot — a summer cruise –looks like “Titanic” might in a James Cameron-directed Bullwinkle cartoon.

Director Genndy Tartakovsky emphasizes sharp angular lines — characters framing each other and the scene with their bent and lean body shapes — and snap-action, whiplash-quick character jumps and jerks.

The story, which packs the lovelorn Vlad, his daughter (Selena Gomez) and assorted friends from his Hotel Transylvania to a cruise in the Bermuda Triangle for a little flirting and dodging holly stakes to the heart, is almost interesting.

And there’s a commitment to the vocal performances, as if the collect-the-check years are over and Sandler and his cronies realize they’ve got to put the effort in, if only in front of a microphone, from now on.

It’s just the jokes that aren’t funny — not even to the supposedly undemanding (very young) audience these films are tailored to. Well, aside from the farts.

See Vlad have lilting accent issues with a (Sony) phone’s vocal assistant.

“I’m lonely.”

“I understand. I’ve ordered you baloney.”

A prologue on that train established Vlad the Impaler’s long history fending off the Van Helsings, vampire hunters from way back. But today, Vlad’s just a lovelorn widow, happy his daughter has married, but despondent that “you only get one ‘zing’ (love at first sight) in your life.”

His daughter misreads this as “You need a vacation.” But his pals who come along (David Spade as The Invisible Man, Steve Buscemi as Wolf Man, Keegan-Michael Key as Murray the Mummy, Kevin James as Frank (N-Stein), etc., all figure it’s a chance for romance.

“This isn’t The Love Boat.” No, it’s not funny, but it’s a very representative line from this very limp script.

Vlad “zings” for the captain of the Legacy (Just call it Titanic already), voiced by Kathryn Hahn. Unfortunately and unbeknownst to him, she’s just the latest Van Helsing to take a crack at killing Drac. Unfortunately for the film, she’s rather colorless as a voice actress and the character isn’t the least bit funny as a villain.

There’s a little “Nemo” in the scuba diving monsters vacationing scene, a visual pun from “300” in the way they slo-mo topple off the “cliff” of the ship’s stern, and a touch of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in Van Helsing’s quest for some magical talisman from Atlantis that will give her family the edge in its fight with the supernatural.

What’s closer to funny are the bits floating around the film’s periphery. Joe Jonas voices an amusingly on-key lounge-singing Kraken.

The Mexican monster Chupacabra (Jaime Camill) sidles up to the bar and orders a drink — a goat in a martini glass.

Mel Brooks is back as the grandpa vampire — nothing funny to say, but all the witches on board chase him.

And one and all are “slaves to the rhythm,” little dance interludes that are as catnip to tiny tykes as fart jokes.

Messages in the movie are in sync with the shirtless, cabana boy monster-twinks of the lost continent resort of Atlantis — “We’re here, we’re hairy, and it is our right to be scary.”

All of which is a roundabout admission that there’s not a “zing” in this thing. But it is pretty to look at.

MPAA Rating:PG for some action and rude humor(Jaime Camil

Cast: The voices of Adam Sandler, Selena Gomez, Kathryn Hahn, Molly Shannon, Steve Buscemi, Kevin James, David Spade, Mel Brooks, Jim Gaffigan, Joe Jonas, Fran Drescher

Credits:Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky, script by Genndy Tartakovsky and Michael McCullers. A Sony Animation release.

Running time: 1

The word “opportunist” gets kicked around a lot in “Whitney,” director Kevin Macdonald’s new onstage/backstage, warts and all documentary about Whitney Houston.

This family member tosses it at that family member, or girlfriend, music industry professionals slap it on Houston’s father, her family entourage, so many of them on her payroll treating her like, as one eyewitness puts it, “their ATM.”

Some reviews of the film apply it to director Macdonald, for focusing on the sensational, the sordid and the before-our-eyes tragedy of Houston’s very public decade-long decline and death in 2012.

I found “Whitney” to be shockingly emotional just in the way it presents this once-in-a-lifetime voice, her seemingly effortless talent and the personal cost a life of secrets, disappointments and addiction. She found fame beyond modeling with her gift-from-Mama (Cissy Houston) voice, and drugs long before Bobby Brown.

The most damning revelation in the film is that the girl nicknamed Nippy who grew up to be the greatest pop starlet of her era wasn’t just self-destructive. As in the much-honored Amy Winehouse doc “Amy” of a few years back, our heroine is shown to have had a lot of enablers, chief among them, like Amy, her own father — John Houston.

She lit up rooms, concert stages and “The Bodyguard” with her smile, stormed the pop charts with her talent and stared down accusations from a homophobic African American community that she was gay, or “too white.”

Yes, it’s fun to recall that “opportunist” Rev. Al Sharpton led a boycott, calling her “White-ney,” in the ’80s, and that the shill was the first guy on the phone to be interviewed by CNN when she died. She had to declare she wasn’t gay on chat shows and that she wasn’t an addict to Dianne Sawyer, lying both times.

She was booed at the “Soul Train Awards,” dated footballer Randall Cunningham and was “dogged” by Robert DeNiro. Her first love and longtime protector and most trusted confidante, Robyn Crawford, was eventually chased out of her life by her controlling Dad and ego-bruised, and bruising husband Bobby Brown.

She was, by any objective measure, a fatally disastrous parent.

But her vocal range dazzled, her smile invited all in and if you ever doubted her crossover appeal, there was that Gulf War era Super Bowl appearance where her “Star Spangled Banner” moved all of America to tears.

When she was in trouble, churches held prayer vigils to pray for her recovery, rehab and restoration.

Macdonald, still best-known for “The Last King of Scotland,” but who did the equally thorough Bob Marley bio-documentary “Marley,” sums up this life within its very personal parameters. He interviewed scores of friends, employees, collaborators, relatives and business partners, from the prickly Bobby Brown to record label chief L.A. Reid and “Bodyguard” co-star Kevin Costner.

Personal assistant Mary Jones will break your heart with the tears she still sheds over Houston’s inglorious end.

Whatever pushback this film is getting should be taken with a grain of salt. The denial of this gospel singing daughter of a gospel singer’s problems, flaws and complicated love life within that corner of African America is both dated and delusional. She was “fluid” in her sexuality, negligent as a parent and incapable of “praying away” the addictions that tie themselves to too many of those gifted with the kind of fame she dealt with.

A confidante who recalls her visits with Michael Jackson, because sometimes each tabloid famous famous singer needed just to be in the room with someone facing the lonely world through exactly the same eyes, is terribly touching.

Macdonald uses news footage of her era to illustrate the passage of time, and home videos, “backstage” documentary footage never meant to see the light of day (Janet Jackson/Paula Abdul bashing), grainy home video and movies to tell her story. If the film has a serious shortcoming, it is Poverty Row studio Roadside Attractions’ not digitally cleaning this stuff up. It’s an ugly looking film, and the murky video gives it a seamy “True Crime” TV documentary feel.

I recall talking with Macdonald when “Last King of Scotland” came out, asking him off-handedly what he was doing next and being shocked that the Scotsman was planning an epic look at the life, music and legacy of Jamaican reggae icon Bob Marley. I interviewed him again when the film came out and asked why he’d want to endure the “What could YOU know about Bob Marley?” abuse that was sure to follow.

Oh, he reassured me, he’d only go through THAT for a “singular talent, a huge figure in the culture” like Marley.

With “Whitney,” you appreciate Macdonald’s own talents, his eye and ear for icons and his unflinching way of challenging (we hear pointed questions for Brown and others, off-camera) the people who knew her to give him the straight dope — not just sycophantic, self-serving plaudits.

Houston was a real mess, to be sure — probably abused as a child, certainly abused as a wife, ill-used by her crooked Dad, not saved by friends, family or the industries that made fortunes off her. But she was a “singular talent, a huge figure in the culture.” “Whitney” is a touching naked look at how that American Tragedy played out. 

MPAA Rating:  R for language and drug content

Cast: Whitney Houston, Bobby Brown, Gary Houston, Mary Brown, Kevin Costner, L.A. Reid, Lynne Volkman Credits:Directed by Kevin Macdonald. A Roadside Attractions release.

Running time: 2:00

Food for thought — Sony Animation and Netflix are the Axis of Evil, propping up the corpse of Adam Sandler’s lazy, lowbrow screen comedy career.

Nice guy. Met him, once, when he was still humble and putting forth the effort to talk to print journalists. He started shying away from that early, and no number of “You’ve never seen Adam Sandler like this” pictures — “Punch Drunk Love” to “Spanglish” to “This is 40” to “The Meyerwitz Stories” — raised his confidence to the level of “let’s talk to somebody other than Conan/Dave/Jimmy” et al.

Has he ever returned to “SNL?”

Anyway, his latter career has been a string of “make work” projects for his cronies (Spade, Quinn, sportscaster Dan Patrick) until he was sentenced to Netflix.

And cartoons. These cartoons. Lowered expectations, approaching each film as a small child, I find, helps. A small slow child…

Deadline.com, one of the places I go for Box Office projections and updates — has been steadily walking back its “EXCLUSIVES” about what “Ant Man and the Wasp” was going to pull in this weekend.

The fourth Marvel release this year “might hit $120, 130,” was the call last weekend, early this week.

Thursday, that dropped to “$94-100.” Then $88.

Now, “$81 million” is their very bestest “exclusive” projection, based on a good Thursday and a less than overwhelming Friday. That’s a nice uptick from 2015’s “Ant Man.” But a seriously plummet in what was almost certainly Disney/Marvel’s high flying expectations, based on everything else they’ve thrown against the way this wall this year.

They’re walking expectations backward on this so fast you’d swear it was an Olympic event.

“Ant Man and The Wasp” is shaping up as Marvel’s “Solo,” a sort of humbling sidebar the march to total Marvel box office dominance. It’ll open far less than “record breaking,” and die a quicker than expected death. My “exclusive.”

“The First Purge” is pulling in fans and over-performing. A decent Tuesday night, big Wed. and solid Thursday have this blackspoilation installment in the political satire splatter/slasher film series looking at clearing $30, maybe hitting $35 by midnight Sunday. It cost $13, so understandably, Universal and the production team are on a champagne bender (or should be) with that news.

That should soften the blow that the steep fall-off in interest in “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” engenders. “Incredibles 2” passed it late week, and stands to edge the dinosaurs this weekend, even though “Incredibles” have been in theaters a week longer.

“Sicario 2” is taking a 50% hit, “Uncle Drew” a 60% plus one.

“Deadpool 2” is winding up its Top Ten run short of $325, “Tag” is about to clear $50, “Ocean’s 8” won’t reach $150 (not bad, $135 all-in, I figure, in a week or two).

And “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” added hundreds of screens and will crack the top ten. See it if you’re suffering from blockbuster fatigue. 

Deadline.com is projecting “Ant Man and The Wasp” managed over $11 million on Thursday, which puts it on track to do $95 million.

Great, right? Sure, “Guardians of the Galaxy” numbers, double “Ant Man” which did over $6 on a Thursday three years ago. Better than “Doctor Strange.”

Except that this one had pre-weekend projections of over $110, as high as $130. It could still wind up there, but I saw it with a half-house paying audience in Flyover, America, Thursday night. That audience, myself included? “The Quiet Ones.” I figure word-of-mouth on this one could label it “Wait for Netflix.”

Marvel is WAY overdue for its “Solo.” I panned it. And I was far FAR from alone. 

It’ll do decent box office. If the last two tedious “Avengers” could make bank, why wouldn’t it? The “audience” is a little late on the “Hey, these are all pretty much the same, the brand is totally watered down and the directing and acting are boilerplate. And the scripts?” Late late late to get the hint.

“The First Purge” cost about $13, has a political satiric edge and a blacksploitation vibe, and did $2.5 Tuesday night, over $9 million Tuesday night/Wed. 

Maybe $30, $35 by midnight Sunday? Winna winna chicken dinner.

I’ll update this as all of Thursday’s numbers roll in.

I think I’ve posted one trailer for this one already, the movie about the bums’ rush Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice and Powell gave America and the world in their rush to turn a Saudi/Pakistani-Afghan-enabled attack on America as an excuse to invade Iraq.

But the DC-based newspaper wire service (a former employer of mine) has posted a timeline of the groundbreaking reporting on that which drives the movie, reporting that America mostly chose to ignore, as it did all the Russian collusion stuff leading up to the 2016 election.

Here’s the trailer for “Shock and Awe,” which opens July 13 in some markets.

Yeah, it’s a daft-looking all-star film fantasy spinoff of the tale that inspired the Holiday Ballet that You Must See Because it’s Good For You. Keira and Dame Helen.

And Morgan Freeman.

Awk-WARD.

“Ant Man,” the popcorn shrimp of summer popcorn pictures, becomes “Ant Man and The Wasp” as a sequel — twice the super-heroes in the title, less than half the laughs and thrills.

It’s the most underwhelming of the year’s endless parade of comic book blockbusters, limply-scripted, emotionally lacking and perfunctorily-acted. Any pleasure one took from Paul Rudd‘s gee-whiz “LOOKIT what I can do” turn in his first performance (performances) in the part is washed away long before he takes a dip in San Francisco Bay. Expecting Evangeline Lilly to do half the lifting is the worst kind of wishful thinking.

If you can’t find somebody more original than Walton Goggins (“Tomb Raider,” “Maze Runner,” “Hateful Eight”) to be your villain, try again.

If you can’t cut a trailer that doesn’t give away EVERY sight gag, don’t bother.

If you can’t think beyond that hoary dialogue cliche when the team is stumped about a place to hide or a new character to save them, hire five better writers than this.

“Well, there is ONE place.” “Well, there is ONE person.”

Ant Man Scott (Rudd) is still under house arrest for what he and “Cap” (Captain America) and their team did to Berlin fighting The Avengers. The inventor of the shrinking tech Pym (Michael Douglas) and his Wasp daughter (Evangeline Lilly) are on the lam.

But they have a multi-story lab that shrinks to the size of a carry-on, and a Hot Wheels carrying case full of snazzy vehicles they can blow up to usable size. And they have a mission — find Professor Pym’s missing wife, mother of Hope (Lilly), who disappeared into The Quantum Realm, shrunken so small you can barely tell she’s played by Michelle Pfeiffer.

Scott might know where she is. That ankle monitor the FBI (Randall Park) has on him? A trifling inconvenience, as indeed are the Feds in general.

More of a problem is Sonny Burch (Goggins, the Tiffany Haddish of screen villains), a black market technology trader who covets that lab. Even more problematic is Ghost, this masked thief (Hannah John-Kamen) who is impossible to fight, because she’s…a ghost.

It’s a film of LOOooong bursts of exposition — delivered by Park, Douglas, Lawrence Fishburne, etc. — and precious few laughs. Rudd, an Apatow Pack alumnus, where “The Best Joke on the Set Wins,” gets a screenwriting credit (with four others). None of them can find much of anything funny for him to do or say.

Michael Peña, back as ex-con sidekick Luis, has the funniest scene, an antic interrogation that begins with a spirited patter-debate on whether there is such a thing as “truth serum.” He delivers back-story and exposition in a breathless Red Bull/cocaine jag inspired by the drunken lip-synced voice-overs of TV’s “Drunk History.” It’s hysterical.

The rest? A little novelty, a cute kid (Abby Ryder Forson), and endless sight-gags dealing with scale — tiny to HUGE, microbe to giant, human to hobbit.

There are pointless, humorless arguments over the whether the correct phrase is “land this fish” or “land this bird,” and Hope remembering the wardrobe “where I hid EVERY time Mom and I played hide and seek.”

Rudd’s wittiest comeback? “It seems to you didn’t really get the GIST of the game.”

Lilly has even less to say, and isn’t the least bit amusing saying it.

Good things come in small packages and life’s little pleasures are to be treasured, but “Ant Man and The Wasp” — together, equal-billed and boring — are too little of a good thing.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some sci-fi action violence

Cast: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Peña, Walton Goggins, Judy Greer, Bobby Cannavale, Michelle Pfeiffer, Lawrence Fishburne and Michael Douglas

Credits:Directed by Peyton Reed, script by Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Paul Rudd, Andrew Barrer, Gabriel Ferrari. A Marvel/Walt Disney release.

Running time: 1:58

Matt Dillon is the kindly doctor who takes in the mixed-race orphan (Ryan Potter) who pines for the pretty blonde (Olivia Ritchie) at the plantation down the road in this (August 17 release) drama.

Jim Caviezel plays a tippling physician who gets in the way of True Love.

Hard to get a feel for this David L. Cunningham film, though its themes suggest an earlier era in interracial romance “forbidden love” in the movies. Quaint, even,

A healthy evening opening across America for “The First Purge” comprised about $2.5 million in ticket sales, per Deadline.com. 

It might manage $30 million or so on its opening half-week and weekend.

“Ant-Man and The Wasp” is set for yet another epic worldwide opening, $85-100 in North America alone.

Reviews have been kind, but with the string of over-performing comic book films this year. will audiences shell out for yet another? Of course they will.

“Incredibles 2” and “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” and May’s holdovers made this the biggest June ever, and biggest second quarter of the year ever at the box office. That follows a first quarter driven by “Black Panther” and “Avengers: Infinity War.”

Quite a change from last year’s “Is this the end of cinema?” collapse.