Summer season for flicks begins

Summer may still be more than a month away, but when the doomsday epic Deep Impact hurtles into the nation's multiplexes today, Hollywood's summer movie season officially gets under way.

Between now and Labor Day, every weekend will see the release of at least one potential $100 million-grossing blockbuster, with an emphasis on apocalyptic sci-fi and razzle-dazzle special effects.

Will there be anything different about this year's crop of overproduced popcorn flicks? Well, maybe. Movie analysts claim the industry's recent trend of bolstering its spectacles with better-developed characters, richer human emotions and more polished story values will escalate this summer. The studios have figured out from their returns since about mid- '96 that audiences are bored silly with mindless violence and purposeless explosions. And this notion was boosted by the megasuccess of Titanic, which is perceived to be as much love story as sinking ship. As for trends, there are at least five films set in the `70s (including The Last Days of Disco, 54, Slums of Beverly Hills) and an unusual number of Airplane!-like comedies -- including a Leslie Nielsen spoof of The Fugitive ( called Wrongfully Accused), a Jim Abrahams spoof of The Godfather (called Jane Austen's Mafia) and a David Zucker spoof of sports movies (BASEketball). Also on the release schedule are a trio of unusual star vehicles that have an Oscar-size buzz about them: The Truman Show, a serious- minded Jim Carrey fantasy directed by Peter Weir; Bulworth, a Warren Beatty political comedy about a U.S. senator with the same disease of truthfulness that afflicted Carrey in Liar Liar; and Saving Private Ryan, a World War II drama directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks.

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