M-22-Film-Preview THE DOOR IN THE FLOOR OPENS WEDS., JUNE 23   A WHILE BACK ...

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THE DOOR IN THE FLOOR

OPENS WEDS., JUNE 23

A WHILE BACK I picked up a copy of The New Yorker and read the submissions guidelines for short fiction. It read, "We are seeking unique and original works that focus exclusively on a middle-aged academic whose marriage falls apart while he and his withdrawn wife are on vacation in Cape Cod."

Wow! Hold on to your tweed, folks! No wonder people who take a copy of The New Yorker to the toilet don't emerge for hours. Some say it's because they pass out in their own eye-snot, but I say, "Prove it."

What does this have to do with movie previews? Stick with me, folks.

It's summer blockbuster season, so that means Hollywood rolls out all the formulaic hick-flicks for the lowest common denominator, which means that the League of Extraordinary Middlebrows gets to harrumph indignantly about how there aren't enough "intelligent adult" movies for people like themselves, which means that Hollywood's subsidiaries throw out the inevitable summer yawner-drama to soak the Washington Week demographic. And what you get is crap like The Door in the Floor opening up alongside crap like The Chronicles of Buttocks. Same coin, different sides.

This offensively long preview proudly proclaims that the movie is "based on the critically acclaimed novel by John Irving." Yikes! Fire! Run for the exits! I didn't know that the First Amendment protected this kind of incendiary language—I counted at least six people in my theater who threw out their backs after hearing the name "John Irving."

Irving's pseudo-edgy, pseudo-grotesque novels once made him the Danny DeVito of the New Yorker posse. Now I guess Irving's a little older and a little wiser, toning down the incest and blowjob jokes because he's ready to handle the really weighty stuff.

What weighty stuff is that, you ax? Welp, wouldncha know it, this movie's about a middle-aged literary type whose marriage with his withdrawn wife falls apart at their coastal New England vacation home. And here's the twist: Irving throws in a coming-of-age plot to spice things up. Wow! I didn't know you could do that! Them's fireworks, folks! If a New Yorker short story were a disaster flick, then The Door in the Floor promises to be The Day After Tomorrow of "intelligent adult" yawner-dramas. Expect howling tornadoes of epiphany, hurricanes of nuance and tsunamis of revelation (of the dark-family-secret variety) as you, the intelligent adult viewer, get literally whipped around in your seats.

Don't believe me? In the preview, the coming-of-age kid says to unhappily married Kim Basinger, "I want to know more about you."

And Basinger replies, "You know too much already."

I take that as a direct hint from the movie's star. Which is why I'm staying away.

MARK AMES