SEARCH FOR A BLOCKBUSTER: SEVERAL FILMS MAY FIGHT FOR TOP HONORS THIS SUMMER

Everything from dinosaurs to gladiators to secret agents, violent storms, enemy submarines, cops with split personalities and college basketball players will be on the movie marquees this summer.

For once, no summer blockbuster promises to tower above the rest.

"Normally you have one big movie that everybody has to go see, like Star Wars' or 'Titanic,' with a lot of hype on it," said Kevin Dillon, manager of Cape West 14 Cinema. "Everybody says 'That's the one I've got to see this summer.'"

"This year, the field's kind of open for all the movies. There could be a movie that comes from the back of the pack and takes over the front that nobody even thinks about. There are a lot of titles, but no one specific movie that really outranks the rest."

The list of spring and summer releases is long and the reviews are mixed on most.

"Gladiator" has generally been given thumbs up. This alternate history tale of the battle for power and survival in the late stages of the Roman Empire features Russell Crowe as military hero Maximus and Joaquin Phoenix as Commodus, the diabolic and unbalanced son of the recently-deceased Marcus Aurelius.

"Erin Brockovich," starring Julie Roberts and Albert Finney, has been given top marks by most. The biggest gripe against the real-life story of a divorced mother-turned-law associate/reformer was Roger Ebert's assertion that Roberts' build and swooping necklines overpowered the rest of the story.

Locally, "Dinosaur" and "Mission: Impossible 2" have opened recently. "Dinosaur" is one of a nestful of animation-based films this summer.

"I'm sure 'Dinosaur' will be the big animated movie," Dillon said, prior to its opening. "There's a lot of buzz about 'Mission: Impossible 2' also."

Dinosaur is a state-of-the art story of a world of speaking, caring dinosaurs, facing the crises of a meteor striking earth. The story is said to have been bounced around the Disney studios since 1988 -- waiting on the technology to bring it to fruition.

"I've noticed that this summer different, in that there are a lot more animated products," Dillon said. "A lot of the companies now have their own animation division. In the past, basically Walt Disney had the animated movies. There is a lot more product out there, geared for the family."

Since the advent of the summer blockbuster with "Jaws" in 1975, studios have put out some of their best work for summer audiences.

"A lot of product is coming out this summer," said Dillon, who has been with Wehrenberg Theatres for 16 years. "It's always big for the movies because people have more free time to go do things. They tend to put out more movies in summer and at Thanksgiving and Christmas. You actually find more movies with some of the bigger names, like Mel Gibson in The Patriot' (coming in July) and Jim Carrey's Me, Myself & Irene.'"

Dillon has his own opinion as to the film that has the best chance at being a big-time winner in 2000.

"One of the big movies people are talking about is 'A Perfect Storm,'" he said. "They're calling it a 'Twister' on water. It could be the big summer movie."

Dillon said "A Perfect Storm," based on a real-life once-in-a-century storm in 1991, will open in Cape Girardeau around July 4. It stars George Clooney and "Marky Mark" Wahlberg as fishermen caught in a small vessel amidst 10-story-high waves and 120 mph winds.

Meanwhile, local audiences are watching Tom Cruise again play agent Ethan Hunt in "Mission: Impossible 2." Hunt leads his IMF team to re-capture and destroy a deadly German manufactured virus before it falls in the wrong hands. Veteran John Woo is the director, while the story is by Robert Towne, who wrote the screenplay for the previous (1996) MI movie.

Another action film has also gotten off to a hot start. "U-571," starring Matthew McConaughey and Harvey Keitel, jumped out of the box with $19.6 million over its first weekend. In this movie, an American crew on top-secret assignment attempts to sabotage a German U-boat during World War II. Instead the men have to escape enemy waters on the German craft.

Other potential winners include Carrey's "Me, Myself and Irene" and Spike Lee and Sam Kitt's "Love and Basketball." "Me, Myself and Irene" sees Carrey play a Rhode Island state policeman with a split personality, escorting a woman across country. Both sides of his split personality fall in love with the confused woman.

Lee and Kitt, meanwhile are offering up "Love and Basketball," the story of two childhood rivals (male and female) who take their love of basketball through high school, college and the professional level, while also falling in love with each other.

Dillon doesn't see the lack of one dominant film as being a bad thing at all, for theater chains.

"I believe it will even out," he said. "When you have the big blockbuster, you may have two-to-three movies that generate most of the attention for the period. When you have a lot of movies like this summer, when there's not one single people want so see (more than the others), you may see an increase in attendance, because people want to see several of them."

He believes several films this summer could hit the coveted $100 million mark.

Among the other movies coming out this summer that are generating a lot of attention this year are:

* "Titan A.E." (20th Century Fox) In the far future after Earth was destroyed by an attack (in 3028) by an alien race called the Drej, a human teen-ager named Cale (voice of Matt Damon) seeks a mysterious "earthship" called The Titan that may hold the key to saving mankind from a collective fate as nomads and refugees. Other voices include Drew Barrymore and Bill Pullman.

* "Gone in 60 Seconds" (Touchstone Pictures) Academy Award winners Angelina Jolie and Nicolas Cage star for producer Jerry Bruckheimer in the story of automobile aficionado Randall "Memphis" Raines (Cage), a car thief of legendary proportions. After Randall abandons his life of crime and leaves everything and everyone he loves to find a different life, he is eventually lured back into his old ways -- in order to save his brother's life.

* "Shaft" (Paramount Pictures ) With Samuel L. Jackson in the starring role and John Singleton directing, "Shaft" is a new approach to one of the great film icons of the 1970s. He's tough, he's smart, he's cool -- just what you'd expect from a man whose uncle and mentor is John Shaft, who, now as then, is played by Richard Roundtree. Also starring in the Paramount Pictures presentation are Vanessa Williams, Jeffrey Wright, Christian Bale, Dan Hedaya, Busta Rhymes and Joni Collette.

* "Chicken Run" (DreamWorks) Trapped behind barbed wire, fearing for their very lives, Rocky, Ginger, Bunty, Babs and Fowler hatch a desperate plan to fly the coop at Tweedy's Chicken Farm in this children's story of poultry in motion. "Chicken Run" marks the first full-length feature from England-based Aardman Animations, the Academy Award-winning team behind the popular "Wallace and Gromit" shorts. Mel Gibson, Julia Sawalha and Miranda Richardson head the voice cast.

* "The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle" (Universal Pictures ) Universal Pictures' and Tribeca Productions' The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle is an innovative and irreverent live-action/animated comedy adventure based on Jay Ward's classic cartoon, which combines the talents of Robert De Niro as the insidious Fearless Leader, Jason Alexander as the evil Boris Badenov and Rene Russo as the seductress Natasha Fatale. In addition to cameos from such names as Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Carl Reiner and others, the trio are joined by a CGI-created Rocky and Bullwinkle from the wizards of Industrial Light & Magic.

* "Godzilla 2000" (Columbia Pictures ) A late summer (Aug. 11) release, Godzilla 2000 pits a 180 foot-high Godzilla against an alien life form aroused from its 6,000-year sleep in the depths of the Japan trench. Two hundred meters wide and shaped like a rock, the alien flies over the Japanese archipelago and attacks Godzilla, who has just crushed the entire city of Nemuro, Japan. The stage is set for an unprecedented battle between Godzilla, the UFO and the Japanese citizens of Shinjuku.

* "Big Mamma's House" (20th Century Fox) When a street-smart FBI agent (Martin Lawrence) is sent to Georgia to protect a beautiful single mother (Nia Long) and her son (Paul Giamatti) from an escaped convict, he is forced to impersonate a crass Southern granny known as Big Momma in order to remain incognito.