Well, it’s about a month into the summer movie season (if you consider Iron Man 2 the official inauguration anyhow) and so far, we’ve been relatively lucky in the arena of cinematic beasts.

Oh sure, no one really expects critical masterpieces at this time of year but quite often, we’re more vulnerable to see something like Battlefield Earth than Citizen Kane.

Well, until now perhaps.

With this weekend’s release of both Marmaduke (which I feel comfortable calling “Marma-doo-doo” instead) and the Ashton Kutcher/Katherine Heigl comedy Killers, this could be the start of the slide. 

Not that the rest of the summer will be filled with junk mind you.  On the contrary, there will be plenty of exciting and slick movies out there for deserving audiences.  In fact, Killers and Marmaduke’s weekend competition, Get Him to the Greek and Splice, are both quite excellent movies and well worth your attention.  Believe me though, not every film will be worth your dime this summer.

Most notable is Killers probably because the studio has even decided to avoid screening this one in advance for critics and press – always the sign of a pretty stinky pile.

Well, I’ll reserve my judgment.  I won’t say anything bad about Killers until it’s been given its due diligence.  BUT, that won’t keep me from lifting some comments from IMDB’s message board and reprinting them here.  After all, if the people can’t get the critics’ quotes brought to them, perhaps the people’s quotes should be brought to the critics:

“I don't understand all the backlash already for a movie that hasn't even come out yet! Sheesh!” – vins_gurl18

“Neither of these two are good actors and I would never pay to see a film they are in unless it was FREE on cable!!”
– ZorbaTheGreek224

“I hope this bombs, so the studios never make another movie like this ever again.”
– TheMovieGenius