Our Favorite Summers: 1988

The summer of 1988 may not jump right out to you as one of the greatest summer movie seasons of all time, but it did help set up a number of trends that are still extremely popular to this day, aside from being responsible for a healthy crop of good, solid fun-filled, lazy-day classics. I was 11-years-old when the summer of 1988 reached my household, and even though I was young and hopeless, my movie-obsessed parents still brought me to see any and every film they deemed suitable.

It was also around 1988 when I actually started to pay attention to the movies I was watching; I started to remember them and talked them up to my friends as soon as I arrived home. (Yes, I know, you all probably envisioned me exiting the womb while quoting Woody Allen in my thick New York accent, but there were more important things than movies to my 11-year-old self, like G.I. Joe action figures, junk food and Saturday morning cartoons. But at some point these entertaining movie theater moving picture shows actually began to have an impact on my young, naive brain, and I totally credit the summer of 1988 as being the year everything began to change.

The lineup went as follows (BOLD titles went on to become life-long favorites):

May 6: The summer of 1988 began with three relatively lame wide releases: Dead Heat, Salsa: The Motion Picture and Shakedown. But what this weekend did give us was a young Viggo Mortensen in his second film, Prisoner, which entered the world on a measly 42 screens. Dead Heat, however, starring Treat Williams and Joe Piscopo, is kind of a guilty pleasure.

May 13: Ron Howard teamed with George Lucas on a film I've always adored: Willow. Some people trash this piece of cutesy fantasy from Lucas, but I've always thought it was something special. Warwick Davis has continued to land work over the years, and most recently he's starred in all of the Harry Potter films as Filius Flitwick.

May 20: On this weekend in 2009, Terminator Salvation will storm its way into theaters. But back in 1988, it was all about Jason Voorhees as Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood opened on over 1700 screens and was the weekend's only major release (unless you're counting the craptastic Gary Busey flick Bulletproof). It's funny that here we are 21 years later, and Jason Voorhees is still scaring it up in theaters. We must like this guy, huh?

May 25: Hollywood heads into Memorial Day Weekend with a fairly tame line-up, both sequels: Crocodile Dundee II and Rambo III. Both came out on a Wednesday, and while I remember seeing the former in theaters, the latter later entertained me more on VHS.

June 3: Finally, the big guns began to arrive. The month of June started with one of Tom Hanks' greatest comedies: Big. Surprisingly, Warner Bros. decided to combat the Hanks classic with the Chevy Chase comedy, Funny Farm. Guess which film did better? After I watched Big for the first time, all I remember was desperately wanting to play on that big piano -- like I was flabbergasted to find out that something like that actually existed. And when I traveled to F.A.O. Schwartz years later, there it was -- and there I was, shoving some little kid to the side so that I could fulfill some bizarre childhood fantasy.

June 10: Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin teamed up on Big Business, about two sets of twins switched at birth. Remember that one? Poltergeist III joined that film, along with the forgettable action-thriller The Presidio, starring Sean Connery and Meg Ryan. In very limited release, however, we had that strange Christopher Walken movie, Puss in Boots. I wonder which flick the stoners were seeking out?

June 17: Here we go -- check out this triple feature of awesomness: Bull Durham, The Great Outdoors and Red Heat! They don't make weekends like that anymore. Out of the three, The Great Outdoors probably stuck with me the most, only because I'm a comedy guy and it didn't get any better than John Candy and Dan Aykroyd in their prime. But is this the summer's strongest weekend? Let's move on ...

June 24: Ooooh, it's starting to get hot outside -- this weekend brought us one major wide release, but it was a doozy: Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Obviously I don't have to tell you what kind of a game-changer this film turned out to be, and it was so much fun to watch live-action mixed with animation that I made my mom take me to see this at least three times that summer. Freaking LOVED Roger Rabbit! And I didn't notice this until I watched it recently on TV, but Zemeckis and Alan Silvestri used tiny pieces of the score from Back to the Future in Roger Rabbit. They're different, yes, but extremely similar. Listen up next time you're watching.

June 29: Talk about the summer of comedies, this weekend brought us another lone wide release: Coming to America, starring Eddie Murphy. Obviously one of Murphy's best comedies, I shall always remember this film for the spirited McDonalds rip-off and the jerri-curl afros. Also on in extremely limited release was Rented Lips, starring Robert Downey Jr. and directed by Robert Downey Sr.

July 8: Another giant weekend for comedies! Man, I wish we still cared enough about comedy to spread it all over our summer calendar. This weekend saw Arthur 2: On the Rocks, License to Drive (!), Phantasm II and Short Circuit II all arrive in theaters. So we got a few mediocre sequels and my favorite Corey Haim and Corey Feldman movie. C'mon, after watching this -- who didn't dream about dating a girl named Mercedes (played by newbie -- and hottie -- Heather Graham)?

July 15: Ready for this one? On July 15, we got a Bambi re-issue and The Dead Pool (Clint Eastwood, Liam Needson) opening wide. Then, on 21 screens, we got Die Hard ... and on 3 screens we got A Fish Called Wanda. Can I get a WTF is up with that? Two unbelievably awesome films (and instant classics) opened up on a combination of 24 screens. Insanity!

July 22: Again with the comedies (we loved comedies in the late 80s) ... this weekend brought us Big Top Pee-Wee, Caddyshack II (both pretty crappy sequels), along with one of my favorite comedies of all time: Midnight Run, starring Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin. In this day and age, the studios would never open three comedies opposite one another in one weekend, but in the 80s everyone said f*ck it!

July 29: Tom Cruise returned to woo audiences (and Elisabeth Shue) in Cocktail, Stanley Tucci opened Monkey Shines on over a thousand screens, and, um, did anyone actually see the New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking in theaters? ... Ahem, I did.

August: What can I say -- August was (and still is to a certain degree) a dumping ground, and we didn't get much out of this month back in 1988. The best of August came in smaller, guilty-pleasure packages with films like The Blob (August 5), Clean and Sober (August 12), Tucker: The Man and His Dream (August 12), Young Guns (August 12), Married to the Mob (August 19) and The Last Temptation of Christ (August 12), which opened on a total of nine screens.

Overall, it was a fine summer for those who love comedies. And as someone who adores the genre, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out where that love and passion came from. It came from summers like this one; summers filled with forgettable and memorable comedies of all different shapes and sizes. I dug it. Did you?

(P.S. I still can't believe they opened Die Hard on only 21 screens. For shame!)