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- <text id=93TT1747>
- <title>
- May 24, 1993: Rating the Hot-Weather Hopefuls
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993
- May 24, 1993 Kids, Sex & Values
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- CINEMA, Page 72
- Rating the Hot-Weather Hopefuls
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p>Hollywood hopes to have a G (great) summer with a lot of PG
- pretty good) movies
- </p>
- <p>By RICHARD CORLISS--With reporting by Ginia Bellafante/New York
- </p>
- <p> Summer movies arrive this year wearing a big Smile button. In
- a kinder, gentler mood (and facing a shrinking, glutted market),
- moguls have resolved to appeal to the widest possible audience.
- So the violence in action movies gets toned down one calculated
- notch, to snag a PG or PG-13 rating, and sex is soft-focused
- into romance.
- </p>
- <p> The industry's favorite new four-letter words are kids and love.
- Children have prominent roles in a half a dozen summer films,
- and one look at the demographic charts tells you why. "Baby
- boomers are having children," notes Universal boss Tom Pollock,
- "and once those kids hit 5, parents want to take them places."
- To the multiplex, he hopes.
- </p>
- <p> And while kids look for a new Aladdin or Home Alone, grownups
- will roam for romantic fare like the recent hits The Bodyguard
- and Indecent Proposal. That's why some industry swamis have
- picked Sleepless in Seattle, a sprightly romance, as the season's
- surprise hit. (Others chose Rookie of the Year and Free Willy.)
- And the only way that Jurassic Park and Last Action Hero could
- surprise Hollywood is if they don't hit the $100 million mark
- in their first four weeks of release.
- </p>
- <p> Like summer rock concerts, summer movies will offer volume,
- volume, volume. More than 60 pictures will clog the cinemas.
- Paramount production chief Sherry Lansing is counting on hit
- films to breed other hits. "If people can't get into a popular
- film," she says, "they don't go home; they go to another one
- instead." But what movie to go to? In this summer swarm, you
- can't tell the major players without a scorecard. Here's ours.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
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