We don't mean to brag, but we have a pretty good track record of picking the Least Essential films of the season. Of the movies included on our 10 Least Essential Spring Movies '03, for example, one was Boat Trip, one was View From the Top, one was never released (the Meg Ryan boxing film, Against the Ropes) and one...well, one has postponed the unleashing of its staggering inessentiality until the summer, as you will see below.

Such procrastination will cost a movie, however, since the summer season is chockablock with inessential offerings. It's a season of such essential inessentiality that we had to squeeze two extra movies into an already overcrowded top ten. As such, our #1 least essential movie of the spring could only manage to be the #3 least essential movie of the summer. And it isn't the only entry that you'll think you've seen before.

Here, in ascending order, we present the ten best reasons for you finally to sign up for that Pilates class, volunteer to teach literacy, or do the hundred or so other things you could be doing besides watching these films, most of which are sequels to movies you wished you hadn't watched the first time:

10. Marci X

Release Date: August 22
The Plot: Lisa Kudrow plays an uptight woman who inherits a record label that represents a foul-mouthed rapper (Damon Wayans).
The Pitch: White people! Black people! What is up with that?!
Why It's Inessential: Sure, the "Uptight White People Learn to Live With Jive-Talking Black People" plot might seem a little "played out." But if anyone can mine this territory for new insights and laughs, it's got to be the comedy tandem of Kudrow and Wayans. She's ditzy, but in an entirely different way than all her other characters have been! He's charming and sassy and black! One thing's for sure, though -- they won't end up kissing!

9. Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde

Release Date: July 2
The Plot: Reese Witherspoon returns as Elle Woods, the lovable, fashion-obsessed bubblehead who stumbled into Harvard Law School back in the first movie and showed all those uptight brunette lesbian bitches what was what.
The Pitch: This time, she's a congresswoman's assistant. Uptight brunette lesbian bitches of Washington, DC, watch out!
Why It's Inessential: See, it's become so hard to enjoy a movie on the hotel's pay-per-view, knowing that this slight little comedy is going to be crammed down your throat for at least two more installments over the next three years. Coming next summer: Sweet Home Alabama 2: Hooked on Crackers.

8.5. When Harry Met Lloyd: Dumb and Dumberer

Release Date: June 13
The Plot: Just like Dumb and Dumber, but without the...you know, stars.
The Pitch: Ha! We'll show you, Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels! You think we can't make a successful long-delayed sequel even though the original stars won't participate? Tell that to the producers of Grease 2!
Why It's Inessential: Now all of America can feel like that mid-sized city that gets the touring production of a hit Broadway show, but instead of the Broadway stars, like Bebe Neuwirth or Nathan Lane, the show features ex-cast members from M*A*S*H*.

8.25. Bad Boys II

Release Date: July 18
The Plot: Martin Lawrence and Will Smith return in a sequel to their 1995 kind-of hit.
The Pitch: PAKOW! [Sound of explosions.] KAM KAM KAM! [Sound of gunshots.] YAYAYAYAYA! [Sound of Martin and Smith, trading quips.]
Why It's Inessential: 1995? Isn't there a statute of limitations on sequels? And if not, why not?

8. American Wedding

Release Date: August 1
The Plot: Jim, Stifler, Schneider, Rebus, the band-camp girl, and that other guy return for more hilarious, teensploitation hijinks, in this case apparently involving a wedding. Hey, Jim -- watch out for that cake! Don't fuck it!
The Pitch: It's all the fun of Pie Fucker and Pie Fucker 2: The Fuckening, but with the added star-wattage of Nikki Schieler Ziering.
Why It's Inessential: Attention, Jason Biggs and Seann William Scott: Look around. Now ask yourself: Why are Tara Reid and Mena Suvari not here? Is Tara Reid's career going so well? Now ask yourself: So then what am I doing here, exactly?

7. 2 Fast 2 Furious

Release Date: June 6
The Plot: Paul "Blond Keanu" Walker returns for more fast, furious car-driving.
The Pitch: There's only one way to stop crime in Miami: really fast car-driving.
Why It's Inessential: "This is a whole different movie because I'm doing it," director John Singleton told Entertainment Weekly. "In the early part of my career I was very concerned with being taken seriously as a filmmaker and I accomplished that. So now I can just have fun." Screening tonight at the Whitney Museum of American Art: The John Singleton Film Retrospective. Showtimes: Poetic Justice 7:15; Higher Learning 9:20; "Remember the Time" video (w/ Michael Jackson) in the atrium, every ten minutes on the hour.

6. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Release Date: July 9
The Plot: Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom take to the high seas with their crew of bad-ass pirates.
The Pitch: Okay, sure, every pirate movie since Captain Blood has been a disaster, up to and including Walter Matthau's Pirates and Geena Davis's Cutthroat Island. But this one is based on a ride at Disneyland! This is a story that demands to be told! You know: the story of that ride at Disneyland!
Why It's Inessential: We like Johnny Depp and we kind of, for some strange reason, hope this is good. But we simply cannot resist saying it: Arr, mateys! Flop ahoy!

5. Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life

Release Date: July 25
The Plot: Lara-Croft-Tomb-Raider is back, doing similar things to the things she did back in that first movie, which absolutely sucked.
The Pitch: Indiana Jones with boobs, part deux. The producers have promised more boobs and less sucking. Given their failure to warn us of the orange-alert levels of sucking in the first movie, we are unmoved.
Why It's Inessential: Downside: the first film was so bad that it literally hurt our feelings. Upside: look forward to an entire summer of "Cradle of Life" jokes, starting right here. We'd like to crawl into Lara Croft's cradle of life! Hello!

4. Daddy Day Care

Release Date: May 9
The Plot: Eddie Murphy stars as an out-of-work dad who starts a day-care centre with other out-of-work dads, including Steve Zahn.
The Pitch: You put that down now! Hey, has anyone seen little Timmy? Yowch, who set my pants on fire? Braaaap! [Sound of farting.]
Why It's Inessential: Really, if they told you that SARS was being pumped through the ventilation system into every theatre in which this was being shown, would you be any less likely to go see it? Besides, it will one day be available on DVD, along with Showtime, The Adventures of Pluto Nash, and I Spy, as part of an Eddie Murphy limited-edition crap pack.

3. From Justin to Kelly

Release Date: June 13
The Plot: Increasingly musty stars of original American Idol in much-delayed beach romance with ever-shortening title.
The Pitch: Wait a second -- wasn't this movie supposed to be released on April 25? Why do you taunt us this way, Hollywood? And while we're on the subject, where's that much-anticipated action film starring the cast of Survivor: Africa?
Why It's Inessential: Is it too late to cut in some footage of Clay Aiken and Ruben Studdard? Perhaps this movie should never be released, but instead put into a time capsule as a kind of practical joke on the citizens of the future.

2. Gigli*

Release Date: August 1
The Plot: Ben Affleck plays a conflicted hitman who becomes even more conflicted when a lesbian hitwoman (Jennifer Lopez) is dispatched to take over from him but then he and she fall in love together.
The Pitch: Originally notable as the film in which the now professionally betrothed Affleck and Lopez first met; now notable as the film that's rumoured to be so bad that the gnomish cheerleaders at Ain't It Cool News called it "unreleasable."
Why It's Inessential: Well, it's kind of essentially inessential, if it's really as bad as it is rumoured to be, which is Shanghai Surprise-level bad. The only way the schadenfreude could be more delicious is if the citizenry of the United States rose up, kidnapped Lopez and Affleck, put them in a rocket together, and shot them into space. In any case, Gigli, or whatever it ends up being called, is destined to be only the second best "I made a lesbian fall in love with me" movie of Affleck's career. So what could possibly be more inessential than that?...
*current title as of press time

1. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

Release Date: July 2
The Plot: Ahnuld is back! Acting like a robot! But this time it's on purpose!
The Pitch: "Hey guys -- they've sent an even deadlier Terminator back to kill John Connor! And she's a chick! The only way to save John Connor -- again -- is to resurrect one of our old Terminator nemeses to protect us! But this time, let's resurrect a sixty-year-old Terminator, just for kicks!"
Why It's Inessential: A fifty-five-year-old Arnold Schwarzenegger, fighting a woman. Boy, we just can't wait for that first time he gets a really good shot at her noggin. Kick her ass, Arnold! But first, make sure to grab that ass and make a few lewd jokes about your "terminator." Maybe something like "I'll be in back." In the first movie, the fact that Schwarzenegger was cast as a homicidal robot was meant as a sly joke. Somehow, it turned into a career.