Aieee! It's Summer!!

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HOPE FLOATS (May 29). Any actress' b.o. wattage is an on-off thing. Julia Roberts survived a dry spell, and--hello, anyone else out there?--Sandra Bullock returns to full-time twinkling in this romance, an antidote to last summer's torpedoed Speed 2. Let's hope this vessel floats.

DANCE WITH ME (July 31). Or: Shall We Dirty Dance in the Strictly Ballroom? Finally a film caresses Vanessa Williams as the star she should be. When she and her sexy partner (Chayanne) step out to Lectro Luv's Dream Drums, the body work jolts the viewer like a megadose of Viagra.

ALMOST HEROES (May 29). Film comedy used to be Cary Grant swapping highballs and epigrams with Irene Dunne. Now it's often un hommage au Three Stooges, starring Saturday Night Live alums. In this road farce the late Chris Farley pairs with Friends' Matthew Perry. You can watch him explode one last time.

IDIOTS' DELIGHT!!!

DIRTY WORK (June 5). SNL deportee Norm Macdonald trades in his Weekend Update chair for the role of an evil prankster in the revenge-for-hire business. Do let us know how it turns out.

DEAD MAN ON CAMPUS (July 24). "There will be some weird summer sleeper," says analyst Dixon, "and this could be it." Sleep as in The Big, since this is a black comedy about college kids plotting to drive a roommate to suicide so they'll get an A for grief. With perennial star-of-the-future Tom Everett Scott. Directed by Alan Cohn, who helped create MTV's The Real World, so we'll hope against hope.

JANE AUSTEN'S MAFIA! (July 24). This synoptic Mafia spoof, sort of a Godfellas, is from Jim Abrahams of the Naked Gun series. The trailer, which has 17 big laughs (out of a possible 22), tells us to "See it early. Avoid the Mob." We'll be there.

WRONGFULLY ACCUSED (Aug. 7). Geezers can be goofs too. Leslie Nielsen reunites with Pat Proft (who also worked on Naked Gun), for a parody of 63 recent crime thrillers. Fine, but aren't those films their own insidious parodies? And didn't Fatal Instinct send up the genre back in 1993?

STAR RE-TURNS!!!

THE TRUMAN SHOW (June 5). Truman Burbank is the only man on earth who doesn't know he's the star of a popular 24-hour soap opera. As Truman, Jim Carrey inhabits director Peter Weir's bogus universe with a heroic gentility. But will Carrey's rowdy fans skip Truman? Or will the audience that might appreciate an adult parable stay home because, hey, it's just a Jim Carrey movie? One industry savant says not to worry: this canny film will reach both groups and gross $200 million.

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (July 24). Tom Hanks, Hollywood's most improbably reliable box-office lure, hasn't starred in a film since 1995, so it's nice that his friend Steven Spielberg gave him this chance for a comeback, in a World War II G.I. drama with Matt Damon. The potential gross here is the same as for an old Hanks film. Big.

BULWORTH (May 15). When a star reaches that delicate age when he must be photographed through six layers of gel, he looks for youth by co-starring with it. As a bigoted Senator, Warren Beatty, 61, falls for Halle Berry, 29. Bless them both, but if Travolta couldn't sell political satire, odds are Beatty can't either.