Bad scene, boss

9. You saw that same explosion last week.
Explosions—like widths of ties, skirt lengths and hairdos—follow cycles of fashion. What this means is that at any given time, from film to film, all the explosions will be the same. Now I enjoy a human barbecue as much as the next fella, but of late, there’s just been too much burning flesh on screen. Of course, it is computer-generated imagery. In the old days, they really blew stuff up or burned it. Nowadays, they can disassemble the universe any darn way they want to, all on a hard disk bunkered down in some anonymous building in the Valley.

8. Your butt has turned to 75 pounds of cold, wet sand. Because what started early this morning is still on the screen. Look at Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End—it’s 168 minutes long. You could read a book in that space of time. Spider-Man 3 is 140 minutes! Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is about 2-1/2 hours as well.
And, the longer the movie, the hungrier you get and the more you notice that …

7. The cost of refreshments for a family of four could build a small hospital in Darfur. It’s criminal what they’re making off popcorn, which on a per-ounce basis may be the most expensive legal substance in the world.

6. You hated the Howdy Doody show back when it was on TV in the 1950s and now they’ve made a $180 million movie out of it!
Well, no, of course they haven’t; they’ve only made movies out of every other lame ‘50s-’60s-’70s TV show. They’ve also made movies of other movies, which are called sequels. They’ve made movies also out of comic books, bad bestsellers, video games and even amusement park rides. But the brand-name thing is still a summer tip-off. I count 13 brand-ID’d movies coming out in the next few months, ranging from the fourth go-round of the Die Hard franchise to the inevitable Harry Potter reappearance (… and the Order of the Phoenix).

5. You can’t remember if Johnny Depp is imitating Keith Richards or if Keith Richards is imitating Johnny Depp.
Hired by Disney in the original to play a dashing, vivid heroic pirate, Jack Sparrow, Depp confounded everyone by offering up a decadent Keith Richards impersonation, sending up the great Rolling Stones’ cadaverous visage and debauched self-awareness.

4. You notice it’s not loud enough. It’s never loud enough.
Why do they play these things so softly? This is a real puzzle. But it seems in movie after movie, the actors are muttering, the plots are lost in the mumbles and make no sense…

3. When the star was on Letterman, he came on after the woman who thought she’d found a Rembrandt in her aunt’s closet. The talk shows, which play a major part in publicizing pictures. It’s actually kind of sad-funny, watching these poor stars lug their shticks from network to network, trying the same jokes for Jay as they do for Dave, then rerunning them on Larry, who never gets them anyway.

2. Not enough drunken-sailor orgies of taboo words.
The big summer doozies are designed to appeal to everyone, which means the polite, the safe, the unsurprising. Whoever said it had to be so intellectually drab?
And finally, the No. 1 Sign You’re in a Bad Summer Movie:

1. Two words: Adam Sandler. I refer you to I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.
Stephen Hunter (LAT-WP)