​Holiday movies: What's good at the multiplex?

The "Pursuit of Happiness" is right there in the Declaration of Independence, so on this Independence Day, has our David Edelstein happiness at the movies?

When it comes to seeing movies in theaters this Fourth of July, it's a great time ... to barbecue. I like smoking a fatty brisket for 12, 14 hours. You get the meat to 200, 205, with that nice crunchy bark... But I'm not the barbecue commentator. I'd like to be, though, because the movies have been -- what's the word I'm looking for?

Bad!

Take "Independence Day: Resurgence." Or don't. Say what you will about the 20-year-old original; its makers loved pulverizing Earth with their new computer technology. This one's so lackluster it's like being hit with a snooze ray.

"Free State of Jones" is much more admirable, but not much better. It's an attempt to show American history in a new, more nuanced way, with ever-eccentric Matthew McConaughey as a poor Southerner who throws in with slaves against the Confederate landowning class.

It's passionate, it's far-reaching, it's full of clunky sermonizing!

There's more anti-slaver politics in "The Legend of Tarzan." It's about a child of English aristocrats who's raised by apes but doesn't turn out dear like Mowgli in "The Jungle Book." He's a badass killer.

Alexander Skarsgard is an ideal Tarzan/Lord Greystoke. But Tarzan's childhood is all choppy flashbacks. It's like a sequel to a movie never made.

And the story is formula dreck.

There's one, count 'em, new movie that's delicious -- or, rather, delumptious, because the Big Friendly Giant, a.k.a. "The BFG," has his own squiggly words. He's computer-generated, but his moves were modeled by Mark Rylance, who also does his voice -- a melodious Cockney cracked by age, a mix of weariness and childish wonder.

Rylance makes this adaptation of Roald Dahl's book sing, along with director Steven Spielberg, who plays amazing tricks with size. The BFG dwarfs the little orphan heroine, but is dwarfed by other giants, who like to eat girls and boys (human beans, they say...).

It's a labor of love, though it sometimes wears that love laboriously: When the BFG and Sophie hunted "Phizzwizards," I got a little snoozy-woozy. But you gotta love the scenes where the Big Friendly Giant drinks something called frobscottle that makes you happily break wind, which the BFG calls "whiz-pop."

A perfect movie for July 4th -- full of proud gastrointestinal fireworks!