SUDDENLY THIS SUMMER

By RICHARD CORLISS

Let's see if we have this right: Sean Connery is a cute medieval dragon who breaks into Alcatraz. Psycho groupie Robert De Niro tracks Flipper all the way to Alaska. Schwarzenegger takes the Brady Bunch into Witness Protection. Danny DeVito and Shaquille O'Neal--twins! Bill Murray goes bowling with his pet elephant. A tornado spits a giant spaceship onto the White House lawn and out steps the most destructive alien force the world has ever known: Jim Carrey.

This, at least, is the impression a viewer gets after seeing the trailers--the two-minute previews--for this summer's major-studio films. For months these promos have clogged theaters, an early goad to the moviegoers' want-see. When a trailer works, it can give its film the hint of blockbuster. The Independence Day spot has done that and more. Its shots of citizens staring up at an ominous spacecraft became famous so quickly that it inspired a rival promo: a spaceship lands and disgorges the Brady Bunch for A Very Brady Sequel.

The Brady brood aside, this summer has no sequels. Which doesn't mean that movie palaces will be awash in originality--only that the creaky formulas will have new labels and that familiar stars will be modeling the retro fashions of '96.

Will the films be good or bad, hits or humiliations? We haven't seen the films, but we have seen the trailers--Hollywood's most reliable morning line. So here goes. These predictions are for entertainment purposes only. Not responsible for wrong guesses. We reserve the right to change our minds later. And, please, no wagering.

BOYS WITH BIG TOYS

TWISTER (opens May 10). Second-unit ingenuity spurs a destructo-fest, as naughty tornados send cars crashing and rip the roofs off barns. One suspects that, as a movie monster, this killer twister may be a dud: it has no personality and can't sneak up on you. But with the heft of Steven Spielberg, Michael Crichton and Jan de Bont (Speed) behind it, Twister could suck hot air and still gross a quick $100 million.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE (May 22). For all the bustle and flash in the trailer for this high-tech retake of the '60s series, the revelation that smites you is: Tom Cruise has a very large nose. This might not matter, since he also has a very large fan base; in the past decade his films have averaged $100 million U.S. gross. See that and raise you $50 million for this Mission.

DRAGONHEART (May 31). Can Dennis Quaid ever star in a hit movie? Maybe, if he plays a medieval bounty hunter and his sidekick is a chummy beast animated by suave computer graphics and voiced by Sean Connery. It's Braveheart meets Pete's Dragon: burly whimsy on the hoof.

THE ROCK (June 7). Connery, visible this time and wearing his full toupee, is a hermit con who helps hip-geeky Nicolas Cage storm Alcatraz to prevent some bad guys from doing really bad things. The trailer makes it look like another exercise in chatty machismo from the Simpson-Bruckheimer team (Crimson Tide).

ERASER (June 21). All action, no talk, the way a Schwarzenegger trailer should be. In this reverse twist on Total Recall--he wipes out your real past instead of remembering a fake one--Arnie saves nice people and blows stuff up. Worth seeing, if only to find out if Hollywood has finally decided to make Vanessa Williams a movie star.

INDEPENDENCE DAY (July 3). Illegal aliens invade Congress; President unites America by marshaling a counterattack. Satire or prophecy for campaign '96? Or just a safety valve--a chance to vent our paranoia in the 'plexes, where it belongs.

SONS OF FLUBBER

THE NUTTY PROFESSOR (June 28). How has morphing devolved in the five years since it was displayed in Terminator 2? Into comedy, of course. Because of it, Eddie Murphy's 67th comeback film may actually be a hit. In this remake of Jerry Lewis' 1963 Jekyll-Hyde comedy, Eddie is a pleasant, grossly fat scholar whose thin evil twin is, it seems, Eddie Murphy. Anyway, it looks funny. Murphy often does when he disappears into a character instead of strutting his own.

PHENOMENON (July 3). The morphing is metaphorical here: a regular Joe (Travolta) is zapped with psychic powers and an Einstein IQ. Naturally, he's a freak to be avoided, except by one (Kyra Sedgwick) who loves him. Sounds sappy, but could work: director Jon Turteltaub has fashioned some improbable hits (Cool Runnings, While You Were Sleeping), and Travolta is a perpetual charm machine.

MULTIPLICITY (July 12). Life is too much for one man (husband-father-careerist Michael Keaton). So, aided by weird science, he becomes three men--himself and a couple of clones--two of whom he can't trust. The trailer suggests that director Harold Ramis is revisiting what he did in Groundhog Day: underplaying a man's pleasure, then exasperation, in the face of the miraculous.

FUNNY PECULIAR

SPY HARD (May 24). Leslie Nielsen in another spoof--not by the brothers Zucker, but you wouldn't guess that from the trailer. This one is James Bond with some Speed gags thrown in: the bus driver is Ray Charles ("Next stop, Melrose--I think"). No way to tell if the humor is sustained, since any farce will have enough decent gags to stock a trailer.

THE CABLE GUY (June 14). Then again, the $20 million that Columbia paid Jim Carrey to appear in this comedy of obsession looks like the summer's canniest investment. With loose-dentured diction and bodice-ripping devotion, he leeches onto mild-mannered Matthew Broderick. Only a genius of goonery, an Ace Caricatura like Carrey, could play an egregious pest and make him appealing--at least for the 2 min. 25 sec. of the trailer.

STRIPTEASE (June 28). It's not Showgirls, the trailer is at pains to tell you; it's Get Shorty: a slapsticky gangster comedy, but with plucky, bosomy single mom Demi Moore. And without Travolta. Burt Reynolds may steal scenes as a randy Congressman, but that's not why Columbia paid Moore $12.5 million for the film. Why do we get that sinking feeling?

KINGPIN (July 12). One of three summer sport comedies, along with Eddie (Whoopi Goldberg as coach of the New York Knicks) and Tin Cup (Kevin Costner as a golfer). This one could be the Color of Money of bowling--former pro Woody Harrelson recruits Amish phenom Randy Quaid for a big payday. But the Farrelly brothers (Dumb & Dumber) ain't Scorsese. For a start, they have a fascination for prosthetic-hand gags; there are nine, just in the trailer. Rude and obvious. We laughed nine times.

LARGER THAN LIFE (July 19). Bill Murray, who looks great as the villain in Kingpin, here goes on a cross-country trek with an elephant. Murray's a terrific comic actor, but really, road movies are the pits unless it's the late '60s, the elephant is a mule, and Jack Nicholson is along for the ride.

THE GHETTO FOR GROWNUPS

MOLL FLANDERS (June 14). Robin Wright is Defoe's heroine whore who, one man says, "taught me the true meaning of courage." The man is Morgan Freeman, who has become the movies' wise, tired conscience, which makes this feminist romance automatically worth seeing.

A TIME TO KILL (July 12). John Grisham's update of To Kill a Mockingbird, about a black man on trial for killing a white rapist, looks like an earnest debate in unyielding close-up. The cast is led by three smart stars (Sandra Bullock, Samuel L. Jackson, Kevin Spacey), so for now we'll give it a pass.

COURAGE UNDER FIRE (July 12). Denzel Washington, who 12 years ago played a G.I. under investigation in A Soldier's Story, is the righteous sleuth this time in a Desert Storm inquiry involving Meg Ryan. Solid stars, both. But when a trailer revs up its heroic music and asks, "What is courage? What is honor? What is truth?" you may ask yourself: Am I quite noble enough to see this movie?

THE FAN (July 26). A weird guy (De Niro) stalks a star (Wesley Snipes). That's it, at least in the high-concept, low-content trailer, which is all sweat and slow menace. We guess it's the same plot as The Cable Guy, perhaps with fewer laughs.

THE CHILD WITHIN

No, it's just too painful. Space and a tender constitution forbid us to itemize the blandishments of all those morality movies (Flipper, May 17; Alaska, July 14; Kazaam, July 17; The Adventures of Pinocchio, July 26; The Spitfire Grill, August 23, et al.) about misunderstood kids with Dondi eyes and platinum hearts who learn The True Meaning of Friendship from a MENSA-level dolphin, a genie played by Shaquille O'Neal, an adorable polar bear or Martin Landau as Geppetto. For two other childlike films, adults (and adult-like children) may have a hope.

THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (June 21), the Disney animated feature that recasts Quasimodo as a semi-cute young fellow who learns the T. M. of F., also promises the vaulting swank of Alan Menken at his most pop-eratic and the saving japery of three witty gargoyles.

MATILDA (August 2), about a girl's revenge on her cruddy parents and evil schoolmistress, has the potential delectations of a Roald Dahl story and Danny DeVito's knowing comic direction. DeVito also plays Matilda's dad, expectorating lines like, "Why wudja wanna read, when ya got the television set sittin' right in frunnaya?" Or, we might add, when ya got a 'plex-full of icky kids' films.

You're right, we're unfair. Those other children's movies--no, all the summer movies--could be masterpieces. What do we know? We just saw the trailers.