Summer movie guilty pleasures
I can’t defend them, but I’ll watch them any time I get the chance.
The term “guilty pleasure” can mean different things to different people. To some, a guilty pleasure must be a categorically bad movie you just happen to enjoy. To me, bad isn’t a prerequisite. I define it more as “a movie I don’t want to defend.” You can like it or not. I don’t care either way.
For this installment, I chose five guilty pleasures I personally associate with summer. Consider some form of heat to be a requirement here.
One Crazy Summer (1986)
This mostly forgotten teen comedy stars John Cusack and Demi Moore as a couple of recent high school grads vacationing on the island of Nantucket. They fall in love, quarrel with the snobby kids and compete in a climactic regatta using a yellow sailboat equipped with the stolen engine of the villain’s sports car. Oh, and Bobcat Goldthwait runs around doing weird Bobcat Goldthwait things.
I remember this movie playing on repeat in my house as a kid, I thought because my older brother liked boats or whatever. He now claims that he never cared for the flick, and that I’m the sailboat-obsessed Wilson brother. Whatever, I think he’s embarrassed. I’m fine thinking that this movie rules.
Days of Thunder (1990)
For a brief period as a kid I wanted to be a professional race car driver. Nowadays I prefer my wife to do all the driving. Anyway, I remember this electric, Tony Scott sports drama for its ultra-cool cast (Cruise and Kidman! John C. Reilly! Michael Rooker! Randy Qua…oh wait…) and especially that part of the movie where Tom Cruise smashes the race car around the track to the tune of “Gimme Some Lovin’.”
Hey, with the success of “Top Gun: Maverick,” could it be time for Cruise to resurrect Cole Trickle?
Little Big League (1994)
Keep your “Sandlot” and “Rookie of the Year” to yourself, because, for me, the go-to kid baseball movie is this one about young Billy Haywood and his stint as owner/manager of the Minnesota Twins. As a kid who spent summers visiting family in Minnesota, I loved this movie for the landmarks, chiefly the Metrodome and Valley Fair.
You know what? Aside from the obvious insanity of a kid managing a professional baseball team, this is actually a pretty grounded sports drama with some genuinely exciting baseball action. Plus people around these parts will appreciate the pivotal cameos by Ken Griffey Jr. and Randy Johnson.
Congo (1995)
After Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park” reshaped the blockbuster landscape in 1993, Hollywood tried to adapt every Michael Crichton book available in order to find the next big science-fiction franchise. “Congo,” directed by Spielberg’s longtime producing partner Frank Marshall, tries to make ultra-smart, killer gorillas as compelling as ultra-smart, killer dinosaurs.
Well, the results are decidedly cheesier, but man, what a relentless run of jungle-set action sequences, led by a reliably serious Laura Linney and a delightfully eccentric Ernie Hudson. Plus a talking gorilla who likes martinis, Tim Curry mustache twirling and, pound-for-pound, the best one-scene performance ever as delivered by Delroy Lindo. Stop eating his sesame cake!
The Mummy (1999)
I’m a sucker for the old Universal Monster movies, and I believe I saw Boris Karloff in 1932’s “The Mummy” before the likes of “Dracula” and “Frankenstein.”
Well, the 1999 version of “The Mummy” is nothing at all like those classic movies. Busy, loud and heavy on now-dated CGI effects, the Stephen Sommers action-adventure trades dread for cheese, and the body count reaches the thousands thanks to boobytraps, curses, bugs, mummified guards, guns (of course) and a giant face made out of sand.
The reason it works is Brendan Frasier at the top of his goofball, leading-man game. Every silly line of dialogue just works with Frasier, and it’s still fun to see Rachel Weisz in a lively early performance.
Whatever you do, avoid the sequels like the Imhotep Plague.
• • •
Tyler Wilson is a member of the International Press Academy and has been writing about movies and pop culture for Inland Northwest publications since 2000, including a regular column in The Press since 2006. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.