The summer is nearly over, which means Hollywood packs in their tentpole blockbusters and rolls out their high-minded Oscar bait. But what does Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers think about the fall slate, and which films excite him most? Click above to find out, and check out the full Rolling Stone fall movie preview below.

• Fall Movie Preview: The Smart Season

Steve Coogan pens his own wacky high school musical as an out-of-place drama teacher in "Hamlet 2," while Rainn Wilson writes his rock & roll destiny as a has-been drummer leading a band of high school kids in "The Rocker." Peter Travers reveals which new comedy is worth the trip to the theater.

So I ask you: How did Mamma Mia, with film legend Meryl Streep trilling ABBA songs on screen, become a hit? And how did the director Phyllida Lloyd, who mounted the smash stage production that's still running on Broadway and all stops on the globe, allow Streep to sing her big number, "The Winner Takes It All," with her hair blowing in her face and mouth? Wait, I'm getting off track. How has Mamma Mia! managed to take in over $100 million at the movie box office? Is it the success of the stage show? Is it seeing Streep pull out all the stops? Is it female audiences starved for something about them that isn't Sex and the City? I can buy all those reasons. But please don't tell me it's the ABBA songs, sung bright (Streep, Christine Baranski), bad (Dominic Cooper) and bloody awful (PIerce Brosnan). On screen, at least, you have Greece and famous faces to distract you. But on CD the songs, overdubbed and overorchestrated, can drive you nuts. They sound like commercial jingles played on a continuous loop until you want to scream or leap off a tall building screaming, "MAKE IT STOP!" And yet the Mamma Mia soundtrack is currently the best selling CD in America. No shit. I want to know why. Watching Mamma Mia made me think of the state of the Broadway musical, the kind with original songs and not a jukebox compendium of ABBA, Billy Joel, Elvis or the Four Seasons. Is the original musical dead? The answer is NO, and I have three terrific examples, all available on CD:

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It had to happen, and now it has. The Dark Knight has lost the No. 1 spot after five weeks at the top. The victor is Tropic Thunder, Ben Stiller's comic bite on the Hollywood hand that feeds him. But don't get too excited. The Dark Knight took the No. 2 spot with $16.8 million, bringing its total so far to $471.5 million, passing the $461 million earned by the original Stars Wars to become—ta-da—the second biggest box-office hit in like EVER! Only Titanic with its $600 million total remains an obstacle—an insurmoutable one, I'd bet. But Stiller—the director, producer, co-writer and star— deserves his place in the summer box-office sun. There had been talks of picketing stemming from the use of the word "retard" in a scene in which Robert Downey, Jr., in blackface as an Aussie actor getting into character as a African-American soldier, tells Stiller about the dangers of going "full retard" if you want to win an Oscar. Nearly two dozen advocacy groups for the intellectually disabled protested. But the publicity made no dent at the box office, maybe because the target of the joke is not the mentally challenged but the egotism of Hollywood actors. Tropic wasn't able to match the $41.2 million five-day opening for Pineapple Express the previous week, and its $100 million production cost gives it a tougher time making a profit than Pineapple, which cost under $30 million. But consider another factoid: Tropic Thunder built its audience over the five days, while Pineapple Express dwindled, leaving us with the question that really counts:

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The summer is almost over, but the big ticket movies are still rolling out of Hollywood. This weekend pits the action satire Tropic Thunder against the Woody Allen sex comedy Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Click above to see which flick Peter Travers would plunk down his movie dollars for if he had to pay for movies.

Box office news is still the same. Nothing can topple The Dark Knight from the No. 1 spot, though the stoner comedy Pineapple Express, which cost a mere $27 million to make, took in a smoking $40 million in just its first five days and easily finished at No. 2. Next week, Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder hopes to catch the Knight slowing down in his fifth week. I think maybe. What's your guess? What I know for sure is that the shocking deaths of Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes over the weekend represent a major loss to the entertainment world. That the two costarred in Soul Men, scheduled for release in November, is a tragic irony. And a good reason to recall the best of Hayes and Mac on film.

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With Robert Downey Jr. on the cover of the current issue, Peter Travers takes a look at some of the actor's best work, from Less Than Zero and Chaplin to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Zodiac ("Nobody can do obsessed like Robert Downey Jr."). Plus, another look at Downey in Iron Man, where he gave a performance that reinvented the entire superhero genre. Click above to watch the video.

• Robert Downey Jr.: The Man Who Wasn't There

What makes Pineapple Express, starring Freaks and Geeks castmates Seth Rogen and James Franco one of the greatest stoner movies of all time? Peter Travers breaks it all down in his weekly video review.

• Review: Pinapple Express (3.5 stars)
• Killer Buds: The Story Behind Pinapple Express
• The Stoner Movie Hall of Fame

These Monday box-office reports seem to be playing the same news on a continuous loop. Once again, The Dark Knight kills the competition. In its third week, Batman squeaked past the mucho-hyped debut of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor to win the No. One spot. It's $42.5 million for the Mummy, $43.8 million for the Bat. Of course, Tomb should be entombed by next week when word of mouth kicks in about how tired and stupid the third Mummy flick is. The Dark Knight, now nearing $400 million at the ticket windows will still be raking it in. As it should. The triumph of the summer's best live-action movie brings up a crucial acting question that needs the asking:

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