By DANNY GALLAGHER

After four, long, excruciatingly painful months, the summer movie came to a slow, lingering death except all the major moviemakers are still alive and the audiences were the ones that experienced the slow, lingering death.

The theaters were so filled with rotting corpses, they stunk up everything from the overpriced concession stands to the epileptic seizure causing arcades. The screening rooms looked like an extra audition for George Romero's "Land of the Dead."

Of course, the smell was so similar to the stench wafting off the films that were playing, no one really noticed.

Like most summer movie seasons, there was the occasional screen shiner that didn't stink like roadkill covered in melted limburger cheese. In fact, a select few were quite the opposite such as the blockbuster "Spider Man" and "Shrek" sequels, director Adam McKay's friggin' funny film "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" and the super scary Sundance shark shrieker sleeper "Open Water."

But like the number of bad movies outweighed the good ones in the same way Al Roker outweighs the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

It's happened so many times every summer, you can set the lunar cycle by it. It's happened to me so many times, I can tell which movies are going to suck like Jenna Jameson in a 7-11 Slurpee drinking contest before I even see them. That's why, at the beginning of the summer, I put myself to the test.

Based on their titles, casts and descriptions listed in the Boston Globe's annual summer movie preview, I picked nine summer movies that were sure to get some of the worst reviews of all time since George Lucas needed another "Star Wars" meal-ticket to feed his elephant-like appetite.

The gauntlet I laid down for myself went like this: I'd choose nine sure-fire stinkers and compare my choices with the collection of reviews gathered by Rotten Tomatoes.com, which rates films as "fresh" or "rotten" based on the percentage of good and bad reviews each film receives. For a film to be "rotten," the percentage of good reviews had to be less than 60 percent. But in order to earn a point against Hollyweird, each of the films would have to receive less than 30 percent.

But because I'm a cocky critic, I'm going to lower the bar even further. Each of these films can't get anymore than 20 percent.

So take a deep breath, hold on to your butts and smile wide you son of a bitch because here we go...

"Soul Plane" - This pick was a no brainer because Tom Arnold plus fading rap star plus a cast of actors and extras who got rejected for the "Whazzzzzzzup" guys in the Budweiser commercials will always equal suck, even if you multiply it by zero. My favorite review goes to Sarah Chauncey of Reel.com who writes, "How bad is 'Soul Plane?' It stars Tom Arnold - and he's not the worst thing in it." Man, I hope Sarah's single because I'm so turned on right now.
BAD REVIEW TOTAL: 17 percent.
ADVANTAGE: Me. I'm out of the gate faster than Seabiscuit in two pairs of Chuck Taylor All Stars.

"The Day After Tomorrow" - This political disaster in more ways than one was a shlockfest of epic proportions brought to you by the same people who stained your minds with duds like "Independent Day" and the "Godzilla" remake. It predicted global warming would take place in three seconds, blanket the world in snow and get Dick Cheney to admit he was wrong - in other words, it's a fantasy movie.
BAD REVIEW TOTAL: 46 percent.
ADVANTAGE: Hollyweird. We're all tied up and I don't mean in the fun sense.

"Garfield: the Movie" - Like I said in my initial review, I hated to give this a psychic thumbs down because along with "Calvin and Hobbes" and "GI Joe," it was a comic strip I grew up reading every Sunday morning and a cartoon I grew up watching every Saturday morning. But if this movie was this bad, just imagine how much they'll ruin those memories for me. Next thing you know, they'll do a movie about the time in the sixth grade when I lost bladder control while playing a tree stump in the school play.
BAD REVIEW TOTAL: 13 percent.
ADVANTAGE: Me. I'm back on top, not that way you sickos.

"Around the World in 80 Days" - This Jackie Chan remake distributed by the Walt Disney Company screamed of so much suck that nearly no one in the country watched it and it tanked at the box office. That means the brainless screwheads in Florida didn't even go to see it. I'm guessing most of them got confused at the ticket counter and thought they were paying to see the Pat Buchanan biopic.
BAD REVIEW TOTAL: 13 percent.
ADVANTAGE: Me. That's 3-1. I wish I had these kinds of odds at the singles' bar or the nursing home.

"White Chicks" - I haven't seen a Wayans Brothers movie since they made "Don't Be a Menace to the Movie Going Public Because They'll Destroy Your Career Faster Than a Big Screen Remake of 'My Mother, the Car'," and I didn't see this one. But I actually had high hopes for it during the week before it's release since it had a smidgen of a chance of dealing with race relation issues and poking some much needed fun at America's legions of stuck up, snobby Bush Twin mutations. I was more wrong than the guy who let Bill Hicks open for Raffi.
BAD REVIEW TOTAL: 12 percent.
ADVANTAGE: Me. The score's 4-1, and, unlike when I walk to the refrigerator, I haven't even broken a sweat.

"Catwoman" - My love Halle Berry got clobbered by the critics worse than Reginald Denny at a brick layers' convention, and I'm too torn up about it to continue. Excuse me, I need to go cry for my baby.
BAD REVIEW TOTAL: 10 percent.
ADVANTAGE: Me. 5-1, but at what cost?

"Alien Vs. Predator" - It sounded like the greatest fight since Lindsey Lohan and Halle Berry threw down in a cagematch in a pit of jelly in my head, but there wasn't much else for the audience to enjoy. Sure, there were some funny moments like the acting, the story, the plot, the script, the dialogue, the music and the direction but I didn't pay to see a comedy.
BAD REVIEW TOTAL: 21 percent.
ADVANTAGE: Hollyweird. The count is 5-2. You win this round, but unlike Ashton Kutcher's career, it's not over yet.

"Cheer Up" - Wonder why you didn't hear about this movie this summer? That's because, just like the "Rollerball" remake, studio executives decided to move it from it's July release date to the dreaded month of January. In case you don't remember, it stars Tommy Lee Jones as an FBI agent who has to guard a group of University of Texas cheerleaders from hitmen after they witness a murder. The studio's message about how much this film sucks couldn't be clearer if they decided to burn down the campus where they filmed it just to keep the suck virus from spreading.
BAD REVIEW TOTAL: (no reviews were available)
ADVANTAGE: Push. Don't worry, we'll get them after the new year.

"Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid" - Take a sucky movie, make a sequel about and what do you get? Obviously, an equally if not suckier movie. Even the giant CGI snakes were going on talk shows and telling everyone how much they hated having to do this movie because they needed the money to hold them off until the next "Indiana Jones" sequel comes along.
BAD REVIEW TOTAL: 27 percent.
ADVANTAGE: Hollyweird. That brings us to 5-3. Eh, I don't think I could beat a giant bloodthirsty snake in person let alone on the screen unless it was a pants wetting contest.

And in the final stretch at the end of the final lap, the "Tale of the Tape" (with apologies to Nick Bakay AKA don't sue me) shows that yours truly is the winner. Thank you, thank you. Please hold your applause untll...oh who am I kidding? Lay it on me people. I'm such an applause whore, I should be writing this on a street corner.

I hope this goes to show not just how lame, but most of all, predictable the summer movie seasons have gotten. You can see stinkers coming from a mile away that they ruin the anticipation of going to the movies that used to make the summer so much fun. I, for one, wish it would stop.

But as long as I'm doing this column and it's providing me with more material than the next Carrot Top movie, I guess it's OK for now.

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©2004 by Danny Gallagher

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