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Fametracker's Ten Least Essential Films of the Summer

Sure, you've already heard about Spider-Man and Signs and Minority Report and all the other big summer releases that you absolutely MUST! GO! SEE! NOW! But where can you find a comprehensive run-down of the summer's least essential movies? Yes, it's Fametracker's must-have list of must-miss flicks. No, we haven't actually seen any of these movies. Ask us again in September, and the answer will be the same.

10. Serving Sara

The Plot: Matthew Perry plays a process server, serving Elizabeth Hurley with divorce papers. (Get it? Serving?) But the next thing you know, they're off on a madcap, cross-country trip to save Hurley's fortune!
The Pitch: It's Midnight Run -- except instead of Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin, it's Matthew Perry and Elizabeth Hurley!
Did You Know...?: That Matthew Perry already made this movie, except it was called Almost Heroes, and it featured tri-cornered hats? That time, it wasn't funny either, and it even had Chris Farley falling over stuff.
Who Stands to Lose, Fame-Wise: Perry, who had better have a hit movie soon, or his post-Friends career will consist of The Matthew Perry Show on the UPN, premiering 2006.

9. The New Guy

The Plot: High-school nerd goes to prison, learns to be cool.
The Pitch: Eddie Griffin is also starring in Undercover Brother. But if you don't see one Eddie Griffin comedy this summer, make sure it's The New Guy!
Did You Know...?: That this movie features the first reunion of Tony Hawk and Lyle Lovett since Hawk jumped his skateboard through Lovett's hair during a prime-time ABC special in 1997?
Who Stands to Lose, Fame-Wise: The star, DJ Qualls, who is apparently an actor and not a DJ with a really stupid name.

8. Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course

The Plot: That grating Australian guy, Steve Irwin, yells a lot and wrestles crocodiles, one of which has apparently swallowed a top-secret beacon of some sort.
The Pitch: Just like the annoying TV show -- but fake!
Did You Know...?: That Steve Irwin was never allowed to see the film's script, for fear it might taint what he himself described as his "Steve Irwinism"?
Who Stands to Lose, Fame-Wise: Australians everywhere.

7. Corpus Callosum

The Plot: This film from Canadian artist Michael Snow is, according to The New York Times, "a 93-minute experiment in the manipulation of time and space, named for the connection between the left and right brains."
The Pitch: If you only see one movie about the corpus callosum all summer, make it Corpus Callosum!
Who Stands to Lose, Fame-Wise: All those other directors whose own experimental, right-and-left-brain time-and-space projects will now be put into turnaround.

6. The Adventures of Pluto Nash

The Plot: Murphy plays the owner of a nightclub on the moon, who's fending off threats from the space Mafia.
The Pitch: It's Eddie Murphy in his funniest bar-owner-in-space- fighting-the-moon Mafia movie yet! We've seen the future ­- and our prediction is hilarity!
Did you know...?: That this movie supposed to come in April 2001? But way back then, audiences simply weren't ready for this film's jarring and visionary take on the future, what with the space mobsters and everyone wearing glass bubbles on their heads and the fact that -- get this! -- Hillary Clinton's face is on the $10,000 bill!
Who Stands to Lose, Fame-Wise: Murphy seems bulletproof -- he can always make another talking-and-farting animal movie. But you have to feel for Rosario Dawson, who was supposed to be vaulted to fame after Josie and the Pussycats, and now gets saddled with a movie that contains a joke about Hillary Clinton's face being on the $10,000 bill.

5. K-19: The Widowmaker

The Plot: Nuclear sub captain saves the world, after long and terse arguments with mutinous underlings.
The Pitch: It's Crimson Tide, but Russian!
Did you Know...?: That you could sit down right now and storyboard this entire film from beginning to end? For example, you already know that there's going to be a scene where the sub drifts deeper and deeper -- and closer to the depth that will crush the hull! And a scene in which everyone stands around being very quiet and sweating and listening to hear if the threatening enemy has spotted their crippled sub. And a scene in which Harrison Ford argues with his various mutinous underlings -- the very mutinous underlings who will later praise Ford's courage and fortitude in front of some kind of naval tribunal. And there'll be a scene where an enemy sub launches a torpedo that will narrowly miss the sub, thanks to a wild, reckless evasive maneuver -- but wait! It grazed the hull! There's a leak in Section 8! There's men trapped down there! I don't care -- close that hatch, sailor! But there's men trapped down there! Close that hatch -- that's an order!
Who Stands to Lose, Fame-Wise: The hordes of faceless actors playing lookalike sailors in crewcuts who'll run around getting soaked and yelling at each other and then drown in Section 8, and you won't be able to tell one from another, so that you'll end up sitting in the theatre going, "Wait, so which one just drowned?" Or, worse, the person behind you will be saying that, loudly.

4. Merci Pour Le Chocolat

The Plot: It's a French thriller about some French people killing each other.
The Pitch: Hey America -- if you liked Chocolat, you'll love "Thank You for the Chocolate"!
Who Stands to Lose, Fame-Wise: Some French people, and people who think this is a sequel to Chocolat.

3. Like Mike

The Plot: Lil' Bow Wow stars as a kid who puts on a pair of magic Nikes and suddenly can play like Michael Jordan.
The Pitch: Magic Nikes Make You Play Good! Buy Nikes! (Also Gatorade!)
Did You Know...?: That this is yet another in the long line of movies that expect us to believe that, if a preadolescent kid suddenly showed major-league calibre athletic abilities, he'd be signed to the nearest pro team and allowed to compete with adults, rather than locked away in an underground government lab in New Mexico and studied around the clock like the genetic freak that he is? Just look what happened to the Dionne Quintupletss -- and they were just five girls who looked the same.
Who Stands to Lose, Fame-Wise: Lil' Bow Wow. Adolescence is looming. What's he going to call himself in three years? Medium Bow Wow? Lil' Fuzz-tache? Kris Kross, 2005?

2. Master of Disguise

The Plot: Dana Carvey plays Pistachio Disguisey, an Italian waiter who discovers that he can disguise himself as anything.
The Pitch: If you liked Opportunity Knocks and Clean Slate, then go out and round up all the other people who liked those movies, and you still won't be able to make this a hit!
Did You Know...?: That Pistachio Disguisey is not actually a common name among Italian-Americans, but was invented for this lovable character?
Who Stands to Lose, Fame-Wise: We'd say Carvey, but...well, you know.

1. Windtalkers

The Plot: Nicolas Cage plays a soldier assigned to protect a Navajo code talker in World War II.
The Pitch: It's like Face/Off, except with Navajo code-talking!
Did You Know?: That the movie is only forty-eight minutes long, but it runs over two hours because the entire thing is in slow motion?
Who Stands to Lose, Fame-Wise: Nicolas Cage, whose face in the movie's original trailers (it was supposed to be released last November) evoked audible laughter from movie audiences. The new trailers play up a more patriotic angle, adding the tag line: "America Gets the Last Word," which was chosen over the more controversial "America Gets the Last Word, But It's In Navajo, So No One Can Understand It, Except For Other Navajos."

- MFF