CATWOMAN

Update on the entry from the other day: Look, I have the Catwoman trailer of awful awfulness. It's less than a mb, if I recall correctly. If you have webspace and would like to host it, I can send it to you. Let me know.

THUNDERBIRDS

I have absolutely no experience with the TV show, except for having seen a couple of clips, tops, so I had no idea what the actual premise of the movie would be. The trailer does a good job of setting it up--the Tracy family has been captured, or something, and "Who rescues the rescuers?" Well, the one son left behind. And his friends, who seem to be... much younger than he is.

The weird thing is how easily it seems to slip into this Spy Kids/Cody Banks territory. It's basically three precocious kids who have to save people from Ben Kingsley. And once I realized that... meh.

Oh, and using the Pirates of the Caribbean score? No cigar, guys.

SPIDER-MAN 2

This one's a pirated trailer--I'm going to guess from ShoWest--but it's really, really good. Or maybe I'm just a sucker for Carmina Burana-ripoff style music. But it does a really good job of setting up the essential conflicts of the story--Peter doesn't want to be Spider-Man anymore, Mary Jane's getting married to someone else, the James Franco character whose name I forget is still pissed off, and then Alfred Molina and his octopus arms kidnap Mary Jane. I'm not saying this is the best trailer ever, but this is what we need more trailers to do: set up conflicts that will make the viewer want to go to the theater and see them get resolved. Not tell me the whole story. Not give away all the good jokes. Just tell me exactly what I need to know, no more, no less, to get me in that seat.

Oh, and the last shot sets up a scene with Franco I'm now dying to see.

CATWOMAN

Oh, my God, this is so bad. The girlish voiceover is bad, the tagline ("THIS SUMMER... THE CITY IS FULL OF RATS") is bad, the sushi and cream jokes are bad, the music is bad, the last shot is bad, and we knew the costumes were bad. And it's coming out in July. I am telling you, unless someone gets in there and does triage on this thing, Catwoman is this year's Gigli.

WHITE CHICKS

Ladies and gentlemen, we have another winner. The WORST PREMISE FOR A MOVIE EVER EVER EVER has officially been found. Raise your hand if you're surprised that the Wayans brothers are behind it. Nobody?

Shawn and Marlon Wayans play two FBI agents who are forced through some idiot circumstance to pose as white chicks.

WHITE CHICKS.

I usually try and think twice before using the caps lock key for emphasis but I am truly at a loss for words here. Now, if you haven't seen the trailer yet (lucky you), think this through for a moment. There are two ways to make a couple of black guys look like white chicks. The first is essentially whiteface, using pancake makeup or something to lighten their skin. Any rant regarding how appalling that would be would surely be inadequate, so I won't bother. But this movie uses the second possible way, which is with rubber masks.

YES. RUBBER MASKS.

Shawn and Marlon Wayans wear rubber masks that are supposed to make them look like white women, except that they end up looking like the love child of Michael Jackson and Michael Myers. In drag. As the creator of Nun-Clown, let me be the first to tell you that this is the most disturbing sight my retinas have had the misfortune to witness in a hell of a long time.

So anyone who is foolish enough to see this movie will undoubtedly be subjected to the usual plot points that accompany plots like these -- you can rest assured that one of them will fall in love with an actual woman they encounter while undercover as a woman, plus there is all the offensive racial "humor" the Wayans will be sure to heap on there.

I'm not uptight, and I don't consider the subject of race to be off-limits for comedy, but what bothers me about the trailer for White Chicks is more than that: the premise ISN'T...FUCKING...FUNNY. The sight of the Wayans brothers wearing rubber masks to look like white chicks doesn't make me laugh, it makes me sick to my stomach. The whole concept is terrible, not because it's racist, but because it's not funny.

That's the most offensive thing about any bad comedy.

VAN HELSING

I'm probably not the best person to ask if this is a good trailer or not, because I have all sorts of love-hate baggage regarding this movie. As in, I love all the actors involved, I love the character, I love the Dracula mythos, and GABRIEL? HIS NAME IS GABRIEL? SHE'S WEARING PANTS? And then I fall over in a frothing rage. So. Yeah.

And I'm still going to go see this movie, and I'm probably going to enjoy it. From this trailer, you see more of the characters and more of the plot and it looks a lot of fun. So don't mind me over here in the corner, rocking back and forth, muttering about Kate Beckinsale's pants. Really. I'll be all right.