Unless you’re willing to count a notable (and decidedly political) return of the Man of Steel, this summer’s theatrical movie lineup has been less than super. It’s no big shock that, during blockbuster season, most of the films playing at your movie house probably won’t be top-quality fare. Summer is when audiences flock to the theater to escape the heat in air conditioning that they don’t have to pay for. And when the sidewalk is hot enough to melt the plastic on a Labubu, just about any movie is better than sweating it out under the sun.

But this summer’s batch of big-budget bombs is egregiously bad. There have been sequels, prequels and freakquels, and less than a handful of them have come anywhere close to decent. Younger viewers haven’t fared much better, either. Pixar’s output used

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