A bleak Christmas for Hollywood

Look down the list of movies coming out this Christmas season, and you're bound to see a few strange things. There's a rectangular sponge who tries to save the world from a piece of plankton. There's a zany in-law who's kept some rather odd souvenirs from her son's circumcision. And there's Colin Farrell doing his best Fabio impression in a skirt while fighting an army of murderous elephants.

It's going to be a cold, dark December.

Because I'm a movie critic, winter is typically my favorite season. All of the major Hollywood studios usually save their best films for the Christmas season.

So what went wrong this year?

The first problem is that there are no dependable sequels to count on. The most reliable and worthwhile franchises (Lord Of The Rings, Harry Potter) have either run their course or don't have a movie coming out this Christmas. Instead, moviegoers are left to subsist on the likes of The Seed Of Chucky, the latest in the increasingly unctuous Chucky franchise. In Seed, Chucky's wife gives birth to a baby doll who starts chopping up unsuspecting victims.

I don't understand how some stupid little doll attacking people is supposed to be scary. Okay, so those Cabbage Patch dolls who can go to the bathroom by themselves and follow you with their glass eyes are a little creepy, but they're easy to deal with. Just drop kick their little plastic butts onto the roof of your house and you won't ever have to see them again. Why doesn't anybody just smack Chucky with a baseball bat? I mean, c'mon, the thing is two-feet tall. He needs three booster seats and a stack of phone books just to get high enough to reach a vital organ when he's stabbing a person.

The Seed Of Chucky isn't even the worst sequel this year. Don't forget Meet The Fockers, a whole movie built around a last name that's funny cause it's almost a curse word (hee, hee, hee, they said fock).

There's usually also a healthy dose of epic action films released during winter. No such luck this year. Without a Lord Of The Rings 4: Frodo's Revenge to cling to, action junkies will have to satisfy their cravings with the likes of National Treasure. In the latter, Nicholas Cage plays a treasure hunter who fights bad guys while still finding time to romance a museum curator (Diane Kruger) who looks a heck of a lot better in a pair of hip-hugging jeans than any museum curator I've ever seen.

Then there's the obligatory movie based on an annoying children's cartoon. This year, the category is filled by The Spongebob Squarepants Movie, a film about a sponge that has adventures with his friends. What frustrates me about this movie is all the unanswered questions: Do I hear that sponge talking because I'm crazy, or can everyone hear him speak and gargle that annoying laugh of his? What is a squirrel doing at the bottom of the ocean? And why is the sponge's home a focking (hee, hee, hee, I said fock) pineapple under the sea!?

All in all, it's shaping up to be a pretty awful winter movie season, unless horrific baby dolls, semi-curse words, rampaging elephants or talking sponges happen to be your thing. If that's the case, then you've got bigger problems than the two months of cinematic torture that are sure to ensue.