Usually, the summer is the bumper crop. The summer is the season of pointless remakes, noisy spectacles, and movies involving Tim Allen. The summer is nothing but inessential movies.

This year, though, there's not quite so many inessential movies as we've come to expect. Martin Lawrence, for example, is AWOL. Jessica Simpson's sitting this one out. The big blockbusters -- Mission: Impossible III, The Da Vinci Code -- have just enough talent attached to give them at least a whiff of promise. Or maybe we're just optimistic, given the splendor of spring.

Fametracker, however, will ferret out inessentiality wherever it is found, starting with the production schedule of the Wayans brothers. And, with a little digging, we found ten absolutely pointless, totally unappealing, entirely skippable films. And one film that will probably be funny but, let's face it, looks like shiny crap.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you don't see one movie this summer about Tokyo drift racing, or nagging wives put on mute, or "narfs," or, yes, snakes on a plane, or a midget posing as a baby, please make it one of these ten films. Thank you.

10. The Break-Up

Release Date: June 2
The Plot: Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston star in a romantic comedy about a couple that splits, but still shares the same condo.
The Pitch: Come for the stale comedy! Stay for the half-hearted effort to convince you that these two stars are an actual couple!
Why It's Inessential: This already unpromising movie, hobbled by vaguely unsavory efforts to get us to buy that Vaughn and Aniston are in love, seems now even more feeble after reported efforts to fiddle with the ending. Now they get together in the end! Or do they? Yes! Maybe!

9. Zoom

Release Date: August 11
The Plot: Tim Allen stars as Captain Zoom, a superhero recruited to train young heroes.
The Pitch: If you liked the very-similarly-themed Sky High, or the very-similarly-toned Galaxy Quest, or that recent movie in which Tim Allen played a man who turned into a dog, or any of the other Tim Allen comedies produced in the last several years, which may or may not have included Jamie Lee Curtis and/or the word "Kranks" in the title, then you'll love Zoom!
Why It's Inessential: Tim Allen now seems to be specializing in movies produced solely for undiscerning parents with throbbing headaches who need to get their kids out of the house for two hours, perhaps to prepare for a Bible study.

8.5 Cars

Release Date: June 9
The Plot: Animated cars teach us about life.
The Pitch: Bow to Pixar! Pixar is your master!
Why It's Inessential: Yes, okay, fine -- we love Pixar, too, and we know that they've never made a bad movie, and that they are genetically incapable as an entity of producing anything other than gleaming, inventive, funny, entertaining animated delights. But we're just going to say it now, and be done with it: the cars themselves look like shit. They do. Seriously. With the eyes? Happy Meal rejects. There, we said it.

8. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

Release Date: June 16
The Plot: Vroom! Drift!
The Pitch: This noisy movie is guaranteed to drown out your girlfriend's snoring!
Why It's Inessential: The history of the Fast And The Furious franchise: Paul Walker > Paul Walker > Lucas Black; Vin Diesel > Tyrese Gibson > Bow "Don't Call Me L'il" Wow; Michelle Rodriguez > Eva Mendes > Sung Kang; Jordana Brewster > Devon Aoki > "newcomer Nathalie Kelley." Plus, at least the first sequel had the good sense to call itself 2 Fast 2 Furious. If this were called Thrice Fast Thrice Furious, we'd swap it with Zoom.

7. Little Man

Release Date: July 5
The Plot: A jewel thief and little person (Marlon Wayans) poses as a baby to avoid the law.
The Pitch: Semi-retarded couple apparently adopts someone who's obviously not a baby and pretends he's a baby, to great comic effect.
Why It's Inessential: Well, if you could buy the hideously made-up Marlon and Shawn as white chicks in White Chicks, you may enjoy this film, which hinges on the idea that little people might be mistaken for babies. At least until you look in their diapers!

6. Snakes On A Plane

Release Date: August 18
The Plot: Snakes. On a plane.
The Pitch: Snakes on a motherfucking plane!
Why It's Inessential: We too enjoy the Interweb hype and homemade t-shirts and quasi-ironic excitement. But we know that, on opening day, after we've just sat through two hours of a movie that's very claim to fame is that the entire premise is contained in the title, we're not going to feel elated, or giddy, or satisfied. We're going to feel empty, and slightly ripped off, and so are you.

5. Lady In The Water

Release Date: July 21
The Plot: A janitor (Paul Giamatti) finds a mermaid (Bryce Dallas Howard) in a swimming pool. Wait -- our mistake. She's not a mermaid. She's a "narf."
The Pitch: From fright master M. Night Shyamalan comes the totally not frightening and possibly not twist-endingy story of a man who finds a mermaid in a swimming pool. Wait -- our mistake. She's a "narf."
Why It's Inessential: Because if it does have a surprise ending, it will undoubtedly suck. (We're all narfs!) And if it doesn't, that will suck even more, because you just sat through an unfunny version of Splash waiting for the big twist. Sorry, Mr. Shyamalan, but that's the price you pay when you deal with Mephistopheles. In conclusion: narf!

4. Click

Release Date: June 23
The Plot: Adam Sandler's got a remote control that makes people do things!
The Pitch: Woman are nags!
Why It's Inessential: Doesn't putting your wife on mute sound like a rejected Marmaduke gag? Doesn't this sound like a fake shitty movie dreamed up in a Bruce Wagner Hollywood satire? Doesn't the fact that it involves a character described in EW as "a loopy and dance-happy Bed Bath & Beyond employee named Morty (Christopher Walken)" sound like a long, complicated, but unmistakable way of saying "march to the box office, Sandler-worshipping automatons"?

3. X-Men: The Last Stand

Release Date: May 26
The Plot: Mutants under siege.
The Pitch: From the creators of Frasier and The Family Man comes the next chapter in the superhero saga you used to look forward to.
Why It's Inessential: Brett Ratner. Brett Ratner. Brett Ratner. (Kelsey Grammer.) Brett Ratner. (Kelsey Grammer.) What? Paul Walker was unavailable to play Wolverine?

2. Miami Vice

Release Date: July 28
The Plot: Vice, vice, vice, vice, vice (Miami!).
The Pitch: Michael Mann revives his groundbreaking '80s show, with less pastel and more cost overruns.
Why It's Inessential: Exhuming '80s-era TV shows and turning them into stunt-asted acton films, while popular and occasionally lucrative, is the very definition of inessential. Which is to say, don't hold your breath for your local news station to feature a story on a ninety-six-year-old man who lives on a boat with a dog named Tubbs and a cat named Castillo who says, "Finally, I can die. They made a Miami Vice movie!"

1. World Trade Center

Release Date: August 9
The Plot: Remember that thing? With the planes? And the buildings?
The Pitch: For Oliver Stone, there's no such thing as too soon.
Why It's Inessential: Because the current United 93 has been praised for sidestepping exploitation through the sensitivity, subtlety, and restraint of director Paul Greengrass. Because if you were playing a game called "Opposites," and the clue was "sensitivity, subtlety, and restraint," the answer would be "Oliver Stone." Because the idea of Oliver Stone doing for 9/11 what he did for the JFK assassination, Alexander the Great, and trashy white serial killers on the run makes you cringe, shiver, and weep. And then cringe again.