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Your Weekly Guide to New Movies for
September 29, 2006
By Edward Douglas -
Greetings and welcome back to the Weekend
Warrior, your weekly guide to the weekend's new movies. Tune
in every Tuesday for the latest look at the upcoming weekend,
and then check back on Friday for final projections based on
actual theatre counts.
THE BATTLE CRY!
(If you have anything to say about this or anything else written in the column, feedback and Email is always welcome, and almost always responded to.)
I just don't understand why studios seem to
have so much trouble marketing horror-comedies.
And if you don't know what I'm talking about, just look at the treatment of movies like the "Project Greenlight" horror flick Feast or the way that New Line's Snakes on a Plane bombed this past summer, making only $15 million after some of the biggest hype for a movie maybe ever. Or you can go back earlier this year when James Gunn's Slither, a campy retro mix of ‘50s and ‘80s horror movies, failed to meet expectations.
It's funny to think that horror-comedy has fallen so far, when you realize that Wes Craven's Scream series, which spoofed ‘80s slasher flicks, is still one of the more successful horror franchises. On top of that, the directors of two of the highest grossing franchises in film history cut their teeth on independently-made horror-comedies. Yes, I'm talking of course of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson. Who would have thought that they would become two of the most in-demand directors after their low budget horror debuts? Shaun of the Dead is still one of the funniest movies I've ever seen, and yet it found a lot of its audience here after it was already out of of theatres.
The thing is that there are a lot of great horror-comedies still being made, and their chances at being seen worry me after seeing the treatment of some of the movies mentioned above. There's a great horror comedy that's done the festival rounds in the last year called Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (here's a review by my good friend Devin at CHUD), which has yet to get distribution although it crosses the mockumentary genius of Christopher Guest with the "reality horror" of Blair Witch Project. Two other recent horror-comedies have generated great word-of-mouth at festivals, the British Severance already getting released by Magnolia Pictures next year, and the New Zealand horror-comedy Black Sheep, which was almost a phenomenon at a recent festival, still hasn't been picked up for distribution. One respected journalist thought that the reason for this was because of its horror-comedy genre. And he has a good point.
If you think about some of the most financially successful studio movies of the last few years—that is, those which provided the most profit on the least investment—there are many comedies and many horror movies in that list, because both genres can be done fairly cheaply, so why is it so hard to market something that mixes these two genres? Maybe it's just too hard to make a movie seem funny and scary at the same time, especially when working with less than a minute for a TV commercial or slightly longer for a trailer, and often times, much of the best bits involve gore or foul language, which is hard to include in an all-ages environment.
Presumably, all of these movies will do better once they come to video, which is why so many of the flops from the ‘70s and ‘80s have since become cult classics worthy of lousy remakes, but honestly, these movies just aren't the same when you're watching them at home by yourself. You need a crowd that's really into the jokes and the gore, who understands that there's something inherently funny in dumb people getting killed by creatures or killers. It's such a big part of the experience, and it seems like studios would do well to sell THAT as a reason to go see a movie like Snakes on a Plane in the theatres.
Instead of hiding these movies from the public and critics, have early screenings mixing the two groups (preferably after 10pm, the best time to see them!) and then film the audience reaction for use in the commercials. It's not like that hasn't been done before, and for these kind of movies, what's going on in the audience is almost always as fun or entertaining as what's happening on the screen. If you take away that experience and start pushing the genre only towards the home/DVD audience, then you're just guaranteeing the death of the horror-comedy genre.
THE CHOSEN ONE:
THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND (Fox Searchlight)
Starring Forest Whitaker, James McAvoy, Kerry Washington, Gillian Anderson, Simon McBurney, David Oyelowo, Abby Mukiibi
Genre: Drama
Directed by Kevin Macdonald (One Day in September, Touching the Void); Written by Peter Morgan (also this week The Queen), Jeremy Brock (Mrs. Brown, Charlotte Gray, upcoming Driving Lessons, Brideshead Revisited)
Genre: Drama, Historical
Rated R (for Idi Amin is one badass dictator!)
Tagline: "Charming. Magnetic. Murderous."
Story: Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy), a young Scottish doctor, travels to Uganda to escape his unsupportive father and ends up becoming the personal family physician and confidante to the country's powerful and ruthless president, Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker), whose paranoia and savagery reveals itself over time.
REVIEW
INTERVIEW (with Forest Whitaker)
Dramas
set in Africa have become very common in recent years with movies
like Hotel Rwanda, The Constant Gardener and others,
but one story that hasn't been really told in this fashion is that
of Uganda dictator Idi Amin, who ruled the country throughout the
‘70s after a successful coup. Of course, the famous plane hijacking
that took place in Uganda's Entebbe Airport has been documented
in a number of movies, but The Last King of Scotland is very
different in that it looks at Amin's rule through the eyes of an
outsider, a Scottish doctor played by James McAvoy. Of course, this
is a completely fictionalized character, but a lot of the situations
were taken from first-hand accounts from Idi Amin's reign. Although
the movie is about McAvoy's character, the real buzz from the movie
comes from Forest Whitaker's amazing performance as Amin, which
runs the gamut from boyish exuberance to extreme paranoia and vicious
rage. It's the type of performance that will likely get Whitaker
an Oscar nomination, but it helps that he has a great script written
by two of Britain's finest screenwriter, Jeremy Brock who wrote
Mrs. Brown and Peter Morgan, who also wrote this week's The
Queen, which is likely to get Helen Mirren an Oscar nomination
as well. (See below)
More importantly, the movie is directed by Kevin Macdonald, the man behind Touching the Void, which I considered one of the best movies of 2003; it was an amazing achievement in recreating a South American mountain climbing expedition gone wrong. The Last King of Scotland is Macdonald's first straight dramatic feature, but even so, he uses some of the same techniques to make you feel that you're watching history.
I had a chance to talk with Macdonald a few weeks ago and the eloquent filmmaker told me how it was different making The Last King to his last movie. "Touching the Void I see as a documentary, but it's got dramatic elements in it, while this is probably the reverse of that," he told me. "This is a drama film that has got a real-life element in it, so it's almost the mirror image of Touching the Void. One of the things that I'm interested in is taking the audiences to a new place and taking them into a world that's unfamiliar to them and unfamiliar to me. There's a novelty to the texture of the place, that is an important part of my filmmaking process. With Touching the Void, I liked the idea of taking the audience up into the Andes and down into a crevasse, to places I've never been and didn't know what they would be like, and try to communicate what my experience was to an audience and the same thing here. We made the decision to shoot it in Uganda because people didn't know what Uganda was like. I wanted to say to people that here's a world that you don't know anything about. I think the documentaries and drama are quite similar apart from the actors' process. You're also surrounded by people who know more than you do in almost every department, so you've got your designer and a DP who are top of their field, so you don't have to make every decision yourself. You're taking their advice and using their experience, and when you get to the editing room, it's just like a documentary, you're just trying to tell the story and trying to create complex ambiguous characters."
Of
course, with such a great performance from Forest Whitaker, we had to
find out how he came up with the notion to cast him. "Once we finished
the script, I always knew we wanted James because he's so perfect for
the role. He's the best British actor under the age of 35, and this was
a chance for him to play his real Scottish accent, which he'd never done
before in a film," he began. "For Forest, it was hard, because I thought
originally that there wasn't going to be anybody for this part, because
they'd have
to be the right age to be a father figure towards James. He needs to
be big, because being big and imposing is so much a part of the personality.
He needs to be prepared to go spend three months in Uganda. He needs
to be an extravert and explosive, terrifying but also charismatic, there's
a lot of demands. I looked in Africa and I looked in Europe and then
I came to the U.S. and Forest was one of the people in the U.S. for me
to see, but I've never seen him do anything like this. I loved him in "Bird" and "The
Crying Game" but those are totally different kinds of performances. He's
known as the sweet, gentle, reserved internal person. And he came in
and spoke about how he understood the part and that he understood Amin,
and revealed even in the way he spoke about him a perspective on him
that I hadn't really quite got under the skin of. Then he said to me, ‘You
don't really believe I can do this, do you?' which is kind of an intimidating
thing for someone to say to you, then he read a scene and we were all
in the room absolutely shaking by the end of it. There was something
about the unbalanced nature, the way he does those frightening moments,
where you're never quite sure if he's going to tip over the edge. At
that moment, I just thought ‘Yes!' Anybody you work with, you want total
commitment and enthusiasm and with Forest, right from the first moment
I met him, it was obvious that he was going to give 150% of himself to
this. He worked so hard, immersed himself in the character and the world
of Amin, ate nothing but Ugandan food, spoke the entire time in his Amin
accent. He lived no life other than the life of Idi Amin for the entire
time. He was in Uganda for a month before we shot, and prior to that,
he had two to three months research, learning Swahili. As a director,
you can't ask for any more than that."
"We were a very low budget film and obviously, it's expensive shooting abroad taking a lot of people, so we ended up taking about 40 people and then hired another hundred or more people there in Uganda," Macdonald said about the working conditions in the country. "That was challenging at times, because there they haven't had any experience working in film or TV. At the same time, it was really rewarding and kept you on your toes all the time, and the great thing I found was that by the end of it, we had trained up a crew that now knows what they're doing in various departments. Because I come from a documentary and I'm used to thinking on my feet, I quite liked the fact that there was always a degree of uncertainty about what was going to happen, and if people were going to do what they were meant to do. When you're using real army people who've never been a real movie theatre and who've come from the north of Uganda where civil war is going on and seen some terrible things, you get them on your set, you're never quite sure what they're going to do, and they don't necessarily take direction. But sometimes, you get some fantastic bits of authenticity out of them. They were also so excited to have a film coming there, that they embraced the idea of the film and telling this Ugandan story. It surprised me in a way that there was no sense of ‘Why are you coming in from the outside and telling our story?' The President said that it needs to hang onto its history in order to move forward into the future, and that's why he supported the film and allowed us to use the army and the Parliament buildings, close down the main street. He gave us a letter saying that whatever we wanted to do, within reason, just show them this letter and they'll let you do it.' Although filming in Uganda was logistically hard, it gave you things like you'd always be meeting people who knew Amin, the people in the crew had experiences of the period, who could constantly be telling you, ‘No, that's not the right way to do it. They wouldn't say it like that.' And Forest could visit ministers and friends of Amin's and James could go to a Mission Hospital. You were soaking up the reality and I think that makes a big impact on the story."
To see for yourself what he's talking about, you can see The Last King of Scotland, when it opens in select theatres on Wednesday.
NEW THIS WEEK:
Welcome to "Dude, Where's My Ashton Kutcher?" Week!
THE GUARDIAN (Touchstone
PIctures)
Starring Kevin Costner, Ashton Kutcher, Neal McDonough, Melissa Sagemiller, Clancy Brown, Brian Geraghty, Sela Ward
Directed by Andrew Davis (Chain Reaction, Collateral Damage, Holes, Under Siege, Above the Law, Code of Silence, The Running Man); Written by Ron L. Brinkerhoff
Genre: Action, Drama
Rated PG-13 (for I have nothing witty to say here…boy, this gag is getting tired)
Tagline: "When lives are on the line, sacrifice everything."
Story: Ben Randall (Kevin Costner) starts teaching an elite training program for Coast Guard Rescue Swimmers after losing his entire crew in a helicopter crash, where he ends up meeting a cocky young swimmer named Jake Fischer (Ashton Kutcher). The two form a bond as they go to the Bering Sea in Alaska to help rescue people.
Mini-Review: What starts out as a stirring tribute to the men and women of the Coast Guard with some fairly exciting sea rescues, quickly turns into a typical military cadet drama with a lot of corny situations, that training section of the movie going on for way too long. Surely, Costner has played this same part many times before, and while Kutcher isn't bad during the first two-thirds of the movie, being mostly believable as a cocky swimmer, he lacks the credibility to make us believe that he could actually rescue someone at sea once he goes into action. If nothing else, he has some enjoyable romantic scenes with Rachel McAdams lookalike Melissa Sagemiller, but for the most part, we've seen this type of relationship in every military movie since An Officer and a Gentleman. Even worse, The Guardian is one of those movies that can't figure out how to end, at least not on a high point, instead dragging on with one needless epilogue after another, each one worse than the last. Fans of Costner and Kutcher have probably forgiven them for much worse, though. Rating: 5.5/10
After first reading the plot description for this movie, I thought, "Hm… this is a movie about lifeguards" but the trailer makes it look like your typical mentor-rookie military action-drama that we've seen so many times in the past, a few years ago in The Recruit or earlier this year, with Touchstone's Annapolis, starring James Franco. With all of the water in the trailer, it also looks like something that Wolfgang Peterson might have directed if they didn't have director Andrew Davis spearheading this one. He certainly has a lot of experience with the action-drama having helmed movies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Steven Seagal, not to mention Harrison Ford's The Fugitive, before switching gears with the Disney-Walden Media family hit Holes in 2003.
The key is that this one teams the hunky heartthrobs from two generations, Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher, which is why The Guardian is likely to appeal more towards women, both young and old, than some might expect, even though this sort of action-drama is usually targeted specifically towards the guys. Costner has done many of these kinds of movies—okay, get the Waterworld jokes out of the way—though this is new terrain for Kutcher, whose only real venture into drama was the 2004 sci-fi thriller The Butterfly Effect, which became his second January #1 after Just Married the year before. (You can read a lot more about Kutcher's career down in the Star Spotlight below, if you so choose.)
While Kutcher's star has been on the rise, Costner's career has stalled a bit with the 51-year-old former star appearing in less and less movies and fewer of them achieving the type of blockbuster status of his earlier films like Dances with Wolves (for which he won 2 Oscars), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves or The Bodyguard, all $100 million grossing hits. His last significant hit was three years ago with the Western Open Range, which he also directed and four years before that, he had Message in a Bottle, which also made around $50 million. In between, he's had a few movies that did okay but also a number of flops like 3000 Miles From Graceland. Costner has cut back on action movies like The Guardian in recent years, instead doing romantic comedies like The Upside of Anger and Rumor Has It, so for older guys and gals, The Guardian might seem like a bit of a return… though you have to wonder whether they really want to see a 50-year-old Costner in action. Age certainly hasn't improved Harrison Ford's movie career or his success at the box office. (See this year's Firewall for proof…but don't actually SEE it.) Unfortunately, The Guardian looks a lot like the kind of action movies we saw so much of in the ‘80s and ‘90s—maybe that's a good thing for nostalgia's sake, but probably not.
The best thing going for The Guardian, besides the exemplary Disney marketing campaign which included sneak previews last Saturday, is that it's the kind of movie that can appeal to a wider range of ages and audiences, not just older guys, but also women and girls, which will make it a good choice for those who aren't being forced to bring their kids to see Open Season this weekend. Of course, teen guys and gals would probably rather go with something like School for Scoundrels over something that looks like a movie made for their parents, which might hurt The Guardian with Kutcher's female teen audience. Then again, there should be enough others looking for a stirring action-drama like The Guardian.
Disney has already announced that Touchstone Pictures would be cutting back on production next year, but if The Guardian is as successful as last year's Flightplan, starring Jodie Foster, or Step Up last month, maybe they'll reconsider.
Why I Should See It: The ladies should be happy seeing Costner and Kutcher in the water, presumably in tight swim suits; guys should enjoy a bit of extra lovin' for bringing their ladies to see that.
Why Not: Costner will never get away from the negativity towards Waterworld, and let's face it, there's a lot of water in this movie, too.
Projection: $19 to 21 million opening; $55 million total.
OPEN SEASON (Sony)
Starring (the voices of) Martin Lawrence, Ashton Kutcher, Gary Sinise, Debra Messing, Billy Connolly, Jon Favreau, Patrick Warburton, Jane Krakowski, Gordon Tootoosis, Georgia Engel
Directed by Roger Allers (The Lion King, writer The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, The Emperor's New Groove), Jill Culton (writer Monsters Inc.), Anthony Stacchi (Antz); Written by Steve Bencich and Ron J. Friedman (Brother Bear, Chicken Little)
Genre: Animated, Family, Comedy
Rated PG (for the usual farting, belching and double entendres)
Tagline: "The Odd Are About to Get Even"
Story: Boog (voiced by Martin Lawrence) is a grizzly bear who has been living a cushy garage with no survival skills, but he's convinced by a fast-talking deer Elliot (Ashton Kutcher) to go out into the wild, just as open season begins and the duo have to work with the woodland creatures to protect each other from invading hunters.
Now where have I heard that premise before? Talking animals living in captivity, being pampered and taken care of, forced to survive out in the wild. Hm… let me see. Could it be 2005's DreamWorks' hit Madagascar? Or maybe it was Disney's 2006 knock-off The Wild? Then again, one might also remember seeing this premise reversed for this past summer's animated comedy Over the Hedge, which had wild woodland creatures discovering the suburbs.
Based on the cartoon humor of executive producer Steve Moore ("In the Bleachers"), Open Season is Sony's second play of the year into the world of animation, and this time, they decided to go to the studio that has had the most success in the field by grabbing a script from the writers of Chicken Little and Brother Bear, and then teaming Roger Allers, director of Disney's biggest non-CG animated hit The Lion King, with Jill Culton, another Disney/Pixar writer and artist to try to have the same kind of success they did.
So with that in mind, they got together an impressive voice cast including Martin Lawrence, who is coming off a bit of a comeback with the hit sequel Big Momma's House 2 earlier this year, and Ashton Kutcher, who we already talked about for The Guardian and in the Star Spotlight below. (Chances are that Kutcher's fans will want to see him rather than just hear his voice.) There are a lot of others, none of them getting credit in the trailers or commercials—many of them doing their first animated work—like Gary Sinise, Debra Messing of "Will & Grace", Scotsman Billy Connolly, actor/director Jon Favreau, Patrick Warburton AKA "The Tick" and Jane Krakowski of "Ally McBeal."
Open Season was originally intended to be Sony's first full-length animated feature, and it was the first one done completely in-house, but it was delayed until the fall, which allowed Imageworks' performance-captured Monster House to come out first. It opened with about $22 million this past summer and ended up with less than $70 million. Fortunately, it came out before two other computer animated films that didn't even do that well, but it still wasn't even close to the kind of money made by Disney and DreamWorks with most of their movies.
We could be seeing a general fatigue with the computer animated genre, especially since there have been more of computer animated movies this year than any previous year, with few of them making the kind of money pulled in by the Shrek movies or anything from Pixar. This year's only successful animated movies were the sequel Ice Age: The Meltdown and the ubiquitous Pixar release Cars. Even DreamWorks, who released the highest-grossing computer animated film of all time, didn't have nearly as much success with Over the Hedge. Much of it can be due to the fact that there are so many computer-animated movies that they're not nearly as special or unique as they once were, and have become fairly commonplace.
The same could be said for the talking animals genre of animation. Sure, talking bears are always lovable, going back to Disney's original Jungle Book and their more recent Brother Bear, but The Country Bears, based on the theme park ride, pretty much bombed, and the once tried-and-true talking animal genre may be seeing its last days.
Fall isn't the best time to open a family or kids film either, because they don't get very much business on the weekdays. DreamWorks' Shark Tale was a rare exception, but there hasn't been a very successful family film since Nickelodeon's Barnyard two months ago, and even that wasn't as big as other computer animated films this year, maybe since it came out after two weekends in a row of animated films.
Open Season is definitely going to see a bigger promotional play by Sony to make sure that every single kid and parent knows about it, probably more than Monster House, and it'll be getting an even wider release, while also opening in IMAX 3-D, which potentially could increase the business, even though it didn't help Warner Bros.' The Ant Bully, which opened a week after Monster House, to become one of the biggest animated bombs of the year.
Why I Should See It: The former Disney team behind this movie should be able to bring some of the same animated magic.
Why Not: Computer generated talking animals are almost as played as computerized ants. And how can this movie possibly do well without the voices of Wanda Sykes, Catherine O'Hara or Fred Willard? Aren't they contracted to have voices in every single animated movie?
Projection: $26 to 28 million opening weekend; $90 million total.
SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS (MGM/Dimension)
Starring Billy Bob Thornton, Jon Heder, Jacinda Barrett, Michael Clarke Duncan, Sarah Silverman, David Cross, Horatio Sanz, Matt Walsh
Directed by Todd Phillips (Old School, Road Trip, Starsky and Hutch); Written by Todd Phillips and Scott Armstrong (Old School)
Genre: Comedy
Rated PG-13 (as if it could be anything else?)
Tagline: "Nice Guys Graduate Last"
Story: Roger (Jon Heder) is a male New York meter maid with very little confidence who has had a lifelong crush on his neighbor Amanda (Jacinda Barrett). In order to win her over, he takes a class from the mysterious Dr. P (Billy Bob Thornton) who teaches pantywaists to be playboys. When Roger turns into a successful graduate, he learns how competitive Dr. P can be, as he decides to also chase after Amanda.
Mini-Review: How a movie with appearances by David Cross, Sarah Silverman, Luis Guzman and Matt Walsh isn't the funniest movie ever made is pretty incredible. Oh, maybe that's because it stars Jon Heder and Billy Bob Thornton, who are only as funny as their material and end up playing the same doofus and foul-mouthed @sshole they've played too many times before. At least things get a little more interesting when they face off against each other with some amusing physical comedy, but Heder proves that he can't carry a movie himself, and definitely not as a romantic lead. As with his role in High Fidelity, Todd Louima almost steals the movie every time he opens his mouth, but instead of making more of that, Todd Phillips goes to his big gun AKA Ben Stiller to try to save the movie, but it doesn't work. If you've seen the trailer, you've probably seen enough. Rating: 5/10
Insuring that there isn't a week this year where there isn't a remake, here is another one, this time of the obscure ‘60s British comedy School for Scoundrels, and in a nutshell, this comedy remake will pit Napoleon Dynamite against Bad Santa in hopes that the fans of both comedies will turn up to root on their favorite. Sure, it's high concept all the way, although there may be enough different comedy elements, like romance, that might make it a bit deeper than other recent comedies.
Maybe that's because at the helm is director Todd Phillips, who first got attention in 2000 with the summer college comedy Road Trip, featuring then hot Tom Green, which made almost $70 million, followed two years later by the bigger high concept comedy hit Old School, starring Vince Vaughn, Luke Wilson and Will Ferrell. Having two back-to-back comedy hits helped get Phillips the gig directing Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson in the comedy remake of ‘70s cop show Starsky & Hutch, which ended up making $88 million after an impressive $28 million debut in its spring release. So basically, Phillips is going back to school with this new comedy that will try to offer the same comedy magic as his previous films.
This time around, Phillips doesn't have two bonafide box office stars, but he does have two actors who have made their marks in comedy, both in the last three years, although Billy Bob Thornton obviously has had a much longer career than Jon Heder, who may forever be known to everyone under the age of 30 as Napoleon Dynamite, after starring in the surprise sleeper hit comedy that came out of the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. In the time since then, Heder appeared in Reese Witherspoon's romantic comedy Just Like Heaven and was teamed with Rob Schneider and David Spade for the baseball comedy, The Benchwarmers, which should have bombed, but actually made $57 million this past spring. Next year, Heder has a bunch of other movies including Blades of Glory with Will Ferrell, which should continue to build his comedy rep.
Billy Bob Thornton's comedy career has been spottier with his biggest comedy being the holiday dark comedy Bad Santa, which made $59 million three years ago, but playing a similar role in the 2005 remake of Bad News Bears didn't have nearly as much success and the crime comedy The Ice Harvest later that year outright bombed. While Thornton has starred in many non-comedy hits like Michael Bay's Armageddon and the football drama Friday Night Lights, he has starred and directed way too many movies that were dumped to video or cable without a theatrical release.
School for Scoundrels also features the second love interest role of the month for Australian model-actress-reality star Jacinda Barrett, who co-starred with Zach Braff in The Last Kiss. Seeing how that movie did—$8.5 million in its first ten days—it's doubtful she can bring many people to the box office.
Although there's a lot of potential humor from Todd Phillips' latest, there's something a bit familiar about the comedy. Part of it is reminiscent of last year's Just Friends, a relative bomb for Ryan Reynolds, but the competition between the two main actors is also a bit like the Adam Sandler-Jack Nicholson pairing in Anger Management, though neither Heder nor Thornton are quite the draws of either one of those popular actors.
Like The Guardian, this received Saturday night sneak previews in 1500 theatres (that's a lot) in hopes of building up word-of-mouth, plus it's getting one of the wider releases by Dimension Films and their distribution partner MGM. In general, there isn't that much advance buzz about it, even after those sneaks, at least compared to other comedies this year, mainly because Dimension took their time before they started to promote it.
Why I Should See It: Billy Bob Thornton and Jon Heder have a funny schtick and pitting them against each other sounds like pure comedy genius, especially with Todd Phillips at the helm.
Why Not: Both actors have also taken on numerous bad movies, and there's little to say that this one is different even with Phillips.
Projection: $11 to 13 million opening weekend; $35 million total.
THE QUEEN (Miramax)
Starring Helen Mirren, Michael Sheen, James Cromwell, Sylvia Syms, Alex Jennings, Helen McCrory, Roger Allam, Tim McMullan
Directed by Stephen Frears (Dirty Pretty Things, Mrs. Henderson Presents, High Fidelity, The Grifters, many more); Written by Peter Morgan (The Last King of Scotland—also out this week)
Genre: Drama
Rated PG-13 (for we won't be seeing Queen Elizabeth II cussin' or strippin'…that might be a bit much.)
Tagline: "Tradition Prepared Her. Change Will Define Her."
Story: After the death of Princess Diana, Queen Elizabeth II (Helen Mirren) retreats into Balmoral Castle with her family, leaving a deeply worried prime minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) about how she'll ever be able to reconnect with the people of her country.
REVIEW (Coming Soon!)
Just a year after British filmmaker Stephen Frears directed Dame Judi Dench to her fifth Oscar nomination with the WWII musical drama Mrs. Henderson Presents, he pairs with another one of England's finest Helen Mirren for a politically tinged drama that is likely to be a heavy presence at the Oscars next year. Who knows? Maybe it will finally get Stephen Frears his long-deserved Oscar, because he's made many great movies since being nominated for one back in 1991 for his crime-drama The Grifters and he's made a number of strong movies since then. In 2000, he reunited with John Cusack for an Americanized version of Nick Hornby's novel High Fidelity, followed a few years later by the thriller Dirty Pretty Things, which was not only Audrey Tautou's first English role, but also the debut of actor Chiwetel Ejiofor.
Frears' main star Helen Mirren has appeared in many of those great British indie comedies like Greenfingers and Calendar Girls, but she's best known on these shores for her Oscar-nominated performance in Robert Altman's Gosford Park, her second nomination after co-starring in The Madness of King George. The Queen has already played at a number of film festivals like Telluride and Venice, where Mirren was honored for her performance, and it kicks off this year's New York Film Festival before opening the next day in New York theatres. It's a similar approach that was taken two years ago with Mike Leigh's Vera Drake, which did get its star Imelda Staunton an Oscar nomination, and The Queen should do the same for Helen Mirren.
Why I Should See It: It's reported that Helen Mirren gives the performance that will win her the Oscar this year or at least get her nominated.
Why Not: The movie might be way too British-centric, and some may have problems with a movie that questions royalty.
STAR SPOTLIGHT: Ashton Kutcher
In just eight years, 28-year-old Ashton
Kutcher has attained a degree of fame and success that few other
actors his age have realized. Surprisingly, not a lot of that has come
from movies, since Kutcher has only really made 8 or 9 movies during
that time.
After an early career as a fashion model, Kutcher was discovered in 1988 and introduced to the nation as the dimwitted Michael Kelso in the FOX sitcom "That ‘70s Show", which quickly put him on the map. In 2000, Kutcher appeared in a number of movies, a couple small roles at first but culminating by teaming with American Pie's Seann William Scott in Dude, Where's My Car? The character Kutcher played wasn't too far removed from Kelso, and though the movie opened softly, it found a strong audience of teens over the holiday to become a cult classic.
It would be over two years before Kutcher would be seen on the big screen after that, as he kicked off 2003, appearing with then girlfriend Brittany Murphy in the romantic comedy Just Married, a #1 movie with $17.5 million which far exceeded expectations. Later that year, Kutcher would appear opposite Tara Reid in the long delayed My Boss' Daughter, which wasn't able to find nearly as much success. Oh, let's not mince words; it bombed. But Kutcher was back later that year in an uncredited role in Steve Martin's comedy remake Cheaper by the Dozen; it was a huge holiday hit, grossing over $120 million.
A month later, he appeared with Amy Smart in the time traveling thriller The Butterfly Effect, which also opened at #1 with $17 million, while giving the young actor a chance to show off his more dramatic side. Around that same time, Kutcher started to produce his own hidden camera prank show on MTV called "Punk'd" which just helped to increase his popularity among young audiences, and he used that opportunity to finish his lengthy run on "That ‘70s Show."
2005 followed Kutcher's normal path of having a hit followed by a bomb. First, he teamed with Bernie Mac in another comedy remake, Guess Who (loosely derived from Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?) which made over $20 million on Eastern weekend and just under $68 million total. A month later, the romantic comedy A Lot Like Love teamed Kutcher with Amanda Peet, but that failed to find much success, making in total what Guess Who made opening weekend, in preparation for what would become the worst summer in years.
Around this same time, Kutcher was all over the tabloids when he started dating significantly older actress Demi Moore AKA Bruce Willis' ex-wife, something which seemed to be done simply for publicity, until they ended up getting married almost exactly a year ago this week. Sounds a lot like love to me.
The last time a star appeared in a live action and animated movie in the same weekend was over Memorial Day weekend last year when Chris Rock provided one of the main voices for DreamWorks' Madagascar and starred with Adam Sandler in the remake of The Longest Yard, both which ended up making more than $50 million over the extended weekend. While Ashton Kutcher's two new movies might not make $50 million combined, it will still be seen as a mark of his star power if both movies do well.
And if you don't know what I'm talking about, just look at the treatment of movies like the "Project Greenlight" horror flick Feast or the way that New Line's Snakes on a Plane bombed this past summer, making only $15 million after some of the biggest hype for a movie maybe ever. Or you can go back earlier this year when James Gunn's Slither, a campy retro mix of ‘50s and ‘80s horror movies, failed to meet expectations.
It's funny to think that horror-comedy has fallen so far, when you realize that Wes Craven's Scream series, which spoofed ‘80s slasher flicks, is still one of the more successful horror franchises. On top of that, the directors of two of the highest grossing franchises in film history cut their teeth on independently-made horror-comedies. Yes, I'm talking of course of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson. Who would have thought that they would become two of the most in-demand directors after their low budget horror debuts? Shaun of the Dead is still one of the funniest movies I've ever seen, and yet it found a lot of its audience here after it was already out of of theatres.
The thing is that there are a lot of great horror-comedies still being made, and their chances at being seen worry me after seeing the treatment of some of the movies mentioned above. There's a great horror comedy that's done the festival rounds in the last year called Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (here's a review by my good friend Devin at CHUD), which has yet to get distribution although it crosses the mockumentary genius of Christopher Guest with the "reality horror" of Blair Witch Project. Two other recent horror-comedies have generated great word-of-mouth at festivals, the British Severance already getting released by Magnolia Pictures next year, and the New Zealand horror-comedy Black Sheep, which was almost a phenomenon at a recent festival, still hasn't been picked up for distribution. One respected journalist thought that the reason for this was because of its horror-comedy genre. And he has a good point.
If you think about some of the most financially successful studio movies of the last few years—that is, those which provided the most profit on the least investment—there are many comedies and many horror movies in that list, because both genres can be done fairly cheaply, so why is it so hard to market something that mixes these two genres? Maybe it's just too hard to make a movie seem funny and scary at the same time, especially when working with less than a minute for a TV commercial or slightly longer for a trailer, and often times, much of the best bits involve gore or foul language, which is hard to include in an all-ages environment.
Presumably, all of these movies will do better once they come to video, which is why so many of the flops from the ‘70s and ‘80s have since become cult classics worthy of lousy remakes, but honestly, these movies just aren't the same when you're watching them at home by yourself. You need a crowd that's really into the jokes and the gore, who understands that there's something inherently funny in dumb people getting killed by creatures or killers. It's such a big part of the experience, and it seems like studios would do well to sell THAT as a reason to go see a movie like Snakes on a Plane in the theatres.
Instead of hiding these movies from the public and critics, have early screenings mixing the two groups (preferably after 10pm, the best time to see them!) and then film the audience reaction for use in the commercials. It's not like that hasn't been done before, and for these kind of movies, what's going on in the audience is almost always as fun or entertaining as what's happening on the screen. If you take away that experience and start pushing the genre only towards the home/DVD audience, then you're just guaranteeing the death of the horror-comedy genre.
THE CHOSEN ONE:
THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND (Fox Searchlight)
Starring Forest Whitaker, James McAvoy, Kerry Washington, Gillian Anderson, Simon McBurney, David Oyelowo, Abby Mukiibi
Genre: Drama
Directed by Kevin Macdonald (One Day in September, Touching the Void); Written by Peter Morgan (also this week The Queen), Jeremy Brock (Mrs. Brown, Charlotte Gray, upcoming Driving Lessons, Brideshead Revisited)
Genre: Drama, Historical
Rated R (for Idi Amin is one badass dictator!)
Tagline: "Charming. Magnetic. Murderous."
Story: Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy), a young Scottish doctor, travels to Uganda to escape his unsupportive father and ends up becoming the personal family physician and confidante to the country's powerful and ruthless president, Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker), whose paranoia and savagery reveals itself over time.
REVIEW
INTERVIEW (with Forest Whitaker)
Dramas
set in Africa have become very common in recent years with movies
like Hotel Rwanda, The Constant Gardener and others,
but one story that hasn't been really told in this fashion is that
of Uganda dictator Idi Amin, who ruled the country throughout the
‘70s after a successful coup. Of course, the famous plane hijacking
that took place in Uganda's Entebbe Airport has been documented
in a number of movies, but The Last King of Scotland is very
different in that it looks at Amin's rule through the eyes of an
outsider, a Scottish doctor played by James McAvoy. Of course, this
is a completely fictionalized character, but a lot of the situations
were taken from first-hand accounts from Idi Amin's reign. Although
the movie is about McAvoy's character, the real buzz from the movie
comes from Forest Whitaker's amazing performance as Amin, which
runs the gamut from boyish exuberance to extreme paranoia and vicious
rage. It's the type of performance that will likely get Whitaker
an Oscar nomination, but it helps that he has a great script written
by two of Britain's finest screenwriter, Jeremy Brock who wrote
Mrs. Brown and Peter Morgan, who also wrote this week's The
Queen, which is likely to get Helen Mirren an Oscar nomination
as well. (See below)More importantly, the movie is directed by Kevin Macdonald, the man behind Touching the Void, which I considered one of the best movies of 2003; it was an amazing achievement in recreating a South American mountain climbing expedition gone wrong. The Last King of Scotland is Macdonald's first straight dramatic feature, but even so, he uses some of the same techniques to make you feel that you're watching history.
I had a chance to talk with Macdonald a few weeks ago and the eloquent filmmaker told me how it was different making The Last King to his last movie. "Touching the Void I see as a documentary, but it's got dramatic elements in it, while this is probably the reverse of that," he told me. "This is a drama film that has got a real-life element in it, so it's almost the mirror image of Touching the Void. One of the things that I'm interested in is taking the audiences to a new place and taking them into a world that's unfamiliar to them and unfamiliar to me. There's a novelty to the texture of the place, that is an important part of my filmmaking process. With Touching the Void, I liked the idea of taking the audience up into the Andes and down into a crevasse, to places I've never been and didn't know what they would be like, and try to communicate what my experience was to an audience and the same thing here. We made the decision to shoot it in Uganda because people didn't know what Uganda was like. I wanted to say to people that here's a world that you don't know anything about. I think the documentaries and drama are quite similar apart from the actors' process. You're also surrounded by people who know more than you do in almost every department, so you've got your designer and a DP who are top of their field, so you don't have to make every decision yourself. You're taking their advice and using their experience, and when you get to the editing room, it's just like a documentary, you're just trying to tell the story and trying to create complex ambiguous characters."
Of
course, with such a great performance from Forest Whitaker, we had to
find out how he came up with the notion to cast him. "Once we finished
the script, I always knew we wanted James because he's so perfect for
the role. He's the best British actor under the age of 35, and this was
a chance for him to play his real Scottish accent, which he'd never done
before in a film," he began. "For Forest, it was hard, because I thought
originally that there wasn't going to be anybody for this part, because
they'd have
to be the right age to be a father figure towards James. He needs to
be big, because being big and imposing is so much a part of the personality.
He needs to be prepared to go spend three months in Uganda. He needs
to be an extravert and explosive, terrifying but also charismatic, there's
a lot of demands. I looked in Africa and I looked in Europe and then
I came to the U.S. and Forest was one of the people in the U.S. for me
to see, but I've never seen him do anything like this. I loved him in "Bird" and "The
Crying Game" but those are totally different kinds of performances. He's
known as the sweet, gentle, reserved internal person. And he came in
and spoke about how he understood the part and that he understood Amin,
and revealed even in the way he spoke about him a perspective on him
that I hadn't really quite got under the skin of. Then he said to me, ‘You
don't really believe I can do this, do you?' which is kind of an intimidating
thing for someone to say to you, then he read a scene and we were all
in the room absolutely shaking by the end of it. There was something
about the unbalanced nature, the way he does those frightening moments,
where you're never quite sure if he's going to tip over the edge. At
that moment, I just thought ‘Yes!' Anybody you work with, you want total
commitment and enthusiasm and with Forest, right from the first moment
I met him, it was obvious that he was going to give 150% of himself to
this. He worked so hard, immersed himself in the character and the world
of Amin, ate nothing but Ugandan food, spoke the entire time in his Amin
accent. He lived no life other than the life of Idi Amin for the entire
time. He was in Uganda for a month before we shot, and prior to that,
he had two to three months research, learning Swahili. As a director,
you can't ask for any more than that." "We were a very low budget film and obviously, it's expensive shooting abroad taking a lot of people, so we ended up taking about 40 people and then hired another hundred or more people there in Uganda," Macdonald said about the working conditions in the country. "That was challenging at times, because there they haven't had any experience working in film or TV. At the same time, it was really rewarding and kept you on your toes all the time, and the great thing I found was that by the end of it, we had trained up a crew that now knows what they're doing in various departments. Because I come from a documentary and I'm used to thinking on my feet, I quite liked the fact that there was always a degree of uncertainty about what was going to happen, and if people were going to do what they were meant to do. When you're using real army people who've never been a real movie theatre and who've come from the north of Uganda where civil war is going on and seen some terrible things, you get them on your set, you're never quite sure what they're going to do, and they don't necessarily take direction. But sometimes, you get some fantastic bits of authenticity out of them. They were also so excited to have a film coming there, that they embraced the idea of the film and telling this Ugandan story. It surprised me in a way that there was no sense of ‘Why are you coming in from the outside and telling our story?' The President said that it needs to hang onto its history in order to move forward into the future, and that's why he supported the film and allowed us to use the army and the Parliament buildings, close down the main street. He gave us a letter saying that whatever we wanted to do, within reason, just show them this letter and they'll let you do it.' Although filming in Uganda was logistically hard, it gave you things like you'd always be meeting people who knew Amin, the people in the crew had experiences of the period, who could constantly be telling you, ‘No, that's not the right way to do it. They wouldn't say it like that.' And Forest could visit ministers and friends of Amin's and James could go to a Mission Hospital. You were soaking up the reality and I think that makes a big impact on the story."
To see for yourself what he's talking about, you can see The Last King of Scotland, when it opens in select theatres on Wednesday.
NEW THIS WEEK:
Welcome to "Dude, Where's My Ashton Kutcher?" Week!
THE GUARDIAN (Touchstone
PIctures)Starring Kevin Costner, Ashton Kutcher, Neal McDonough, Melissa Sagemiller, Clancy Brown, Brian Geraghty, Sela Ward
Directed by Andrew Davis (Chain Reaction, Collateral Damage, Holes, Under Siege, Above the Law, Code of Silence, The Running Man); Written by Ron L. Brinkerhoff
Genre: Action, Drama
Rated PG-13 (for I have nothing witty to say here…boy, this gag is getting tired)
Tagline: "When lives are on the line, sacrifice everything."
Story: Ben Randall (Kevin Costner) starts teaching an elite training program for Coast Guard Rescue Swimmers after losing his entire crew in a helicopter crash, where he ends up meeting a cocky young swimmer named Jake Fischer (Ashton Kutcher). The two form a bond as they go to the Bering Sea in Alaska to help rescue people.
Mini-Review: What starts out as a stirring tribute to the men and women of the Coast Guard with some fairly exciting sea rescues, quickly turns into a typical military cadet drama with a lot of corny situations, that training section of the movie going on for way too long. Surely, Costner has played this same part many times before, and while Kutcher isn't bad during the first two-thirds of the movie, being mostly believable as a cocky swimmer, he lacks the credibility to make us believe that he could actually rescue someone at sea once he goes into action. If nothing else, he has some enjoyable romantic scenes with Rachel McAdams lookalike Melissa Sagemiller, but for the most part, we've seen this type of relationship in every military movie since An Officer and a Gentleman. Even worse, The Guardian is one of those movies that can't figure out how to end, at least not on a high point, instead dragging on with one needless epilogue after another, each one worse than the last. Fans of Costner and Kutcher have probably forgiven them for much worse, though. Rating: 5.5/10
After first reading the plot description for this movie, I thought, "Hm… this is a movie about lifeguards" but the trailer makes it look like your typical mentor-rookie military action-drama that we've seen so many times in the past, a few years ago in The Recruit or earlier this year, with Touchstone's Annapolis, starring James Franco. With all of the water in the trailer, it also looks like something that Wolfgang Peterson might have directed if they didn't have director Andrew Davis spearheading this one. He certainly has a lot of experience with the action-drama having helmed movies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Steven Seagal, not to mention Harrison Ford's The Fugitive, before switching gears with the Disney-Walden Media family hit Holes in 2003.
The key is that this one teams the hunky heartthrobs from two generations, Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher, which is why The Guardian is likely to appeal more towards women, both young and old, than some might expect, even though this sort of action-drama is usually targeted specifically towards the guys. Costner has done many of these kinds of movies—okay, get the Waterworld jokes out of the way—though this is new terrain for Kutcher, whose only real venture into drama was the 2004 sci-fi thriller The Butterfly Effect, which became his second January #1 after Just Married the year before. (You can read a lot more about Kutcher's career down in the Star Spotlight below, if you so choose.)
While Kutcher's star has been on the rise, Costner's career has stalled a bit with the 51-year-old former star appearing in less and less movies and fewer of them achieving the type of blockbuster status of his earlier films like Dances with Wolves (for which he won 2 Oscars), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves or The Bodyguard, all $100 million grossing hits. His last significant hit was three years ago with the Western Open Range, which he also directed and four years before that, he had Message in a Bottle, which also made around $50 million. In between, he's had a few movies that did okay but also a number of flops like 3000 Miles From Graceland. Costner has cut back on action movies like The Guardian in recent years, instead doing romantic comedies like The Upside of Anger and Rumor Has It, so for older guys and gals, The Guardian might seem like a bit of a return… though you have to wonder whether they really want to see a 50-year-old Costner in action. Age certainly hasn't improved Harrison Ford's movie career or his success at the box office. (See this year's Firewall for proof…but don't actually SEE it.) Unfortunately, The Guardian looks a lot like the kind of action movies we saw so much of in the ‘80s and ‘90s—maybe that's a good thing for nostalgia's sake, but probably not.
The best thing going for The Guardian, besides the exemplary Disney marketing campaign which included sneak previews last Saturday, is that it's the kind of movie that can appeal to a wider range of ages and audiences, not just older guys, but also women and girls, which will make it a good choice for those who aren't being forced to bring their kids to see Open Season this weekend. Of course, teen guys and gals would probably rather go with something like School for Scoundrels over something that looks like a movie made for their parents, which might hurt The Guardian with Kutcher's female teen audience. Then again, there should be enough others looking for a stirring action-drama like The Guardian.
Disney has already announced that Touchstone Pictures would be cutting back on production next year, but if The Guardian is as successful as last year's Flightplan, starring Jodie Foster, or Step Up last month, maybe they'll reconsider.
Why I Should See It: The ladies should be happy seeing Costner and Kutcher in the water, presumably in tight swim suits; guys should enjoy a bit of extra lovin' for bringing their ladies to see that.
Why Not: Costner will never get away from the negativity towards Waterworld, and let's face it, there's a lot of water in this movie, too.
Projection: $19 to 21 million opening; $55 million total.
OPEN SEASON (Sony)Starring (the voices of) Martin Lawrence, Ashton Kutcher, Gary Sinise, Debra Messing, Billy Connolly, Jon Favreau, Patrick Warburton, Jane Krakowski, Gordon Tootoosis, Georgia Engel
Directed by Roger Allers (The Lion King, writer The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, The Emperor's New Groove), Jill Culton (writer Monsters Inc.), Anthony Stacchi (Antz); Written by Steve Bencich and Ron J. Friedman (Brother Bear, Chicken Little)
Genre: Animated, Family, Comedy
Rated PG (for the usual farting, belching and double entendres)
Tagline: "The Odd Are About to Get Even"
Story: Boog (voiced by Martin Lawrence) is a grizzly bear who has been living a cushy garage with no survival skills, but he's convinced by a fast-talking deer Elliot (Ashton Kutcher) to go out into the wild, just as open season begins and the duo have to work with the woodland creatures to protect each other from invading hunters.
Now where have I heard that premise before? Talking animals living in captivity, being pampered and taken care of, forced to survive out in the wild. Hm… let me see. Could it be 2005's DreamWorks' hit Madagascar? Or maybe it was Disney's 2006 knock-off The Wild? Then again, one might also remember seeing this premise reversed for this past summer's animated comedy Over the Hedge, which had wild woodland creatures discovering the suburbs.
Based on the cartoon humor of executive producer Steve Moore ("In the Bleachers"), Open Season is Sony's second play of the year into the world of animation, and this time, they decided to go to the studio that has had the most success in the field by grabbing a script from the writers of Chicken Little and Brother Bear, and then teaming Roger Allers, director of Disney's biggest non-CG animated hit The Lion King, with Jill Culton, another Disney/Pixar writer and artist to try to have the same kind of success they did.
So with that in mind, they got together an impressive voice cast including Martin Lawrence, who is coming off a bit of a comeback with the hit sequel Big Momma's House 2 earlier this year, and Ashton Kutcher, who we already talked about for The Guardian and in the Star Spotlight below. (Chances are that Kutcher's fans will want to see him rather than just hear his voice.) There are a lot of others, none of them getting credit in the trailers or commercials—many of them doing their first animated work—like Gary Sinise, Debra Messing of "Will & Grace", Scotsman Billy Connolly, actor/director Jon Favreau, Patrick Warburton AKA "The Tick" and Jane Krakowski of "Ally McBeal."
Open Season was originally intended to be Sony's first full-length animated feature, and it was the first one done completely in-house, but it was delayed until the fall, which allowed Imageworks' performance-captured Monster House to come out first. It opened with about $22 million this past summer and ended up with less than $70 million. Fortunately, it came out before two other computer animated films that didn't even do that well, but it still wasn't even close to the kind of money made by Disney and DreamWorks with most of their movies.
We could be seeing a general fatigue with the computer animated genre, especially since there have been more of computer animated movies this year than any previous year, with few of them making the kind of money pulled in by the Shrek movies or anything from Pixar. This year's only successful animated movies were the sequel Ice Age: The Meltdown and the ubiquitous Pixar release Cars. Even DreamWorks, who released the highest-grossing computer animated film of all time, didn't have nearly as much success with Over the Hedge. Much of it can be due to the fact that there are so many computer-animated movies that they're not nearly as special or unique as they once were, and have become fairly commonplace.
The same could be said for the talking animals genre of animation. Sure, talking bears are always lovable, going back to Disney's original Jungle Book and their more recent Brother Bear, but The Country Bears, based on the theme park ride, pretty much bombed, and the once tried-and-true talking animal genre may be seeing its last days.
Fall isn't the best time to open a family or kids film either, because they don't get very much business on the weekdays. DreamWorks' Shark Tale was a rare exception, but there hasn't been a very successful family film since Nickelodeon's Barnyard two months ago, and even that wasn't as big as other computer animated films this year, maybe since it came out after two weekends in a row of animated films.
Open Season is definitely going to see a bigger promotional play by Sony to make sure that every single kid and parent knows about it, probably more than Monster House, and it'll be getting an even wider release, while also opening in IMAX 3-D, which potentially could increase the business, even though it didn't help Warner Bros.' The Ant Bully, which opened a week after Monster House, to become one of the biggest animated bombs of the year.
Why I Should See It: The former Disney team behind this movie should be able to bring some of the same animated magic.
Why Not: Computer generated talking animals are almost as played as computerized ants. And how can this movie possibly do well without the voices of Wanda Sykes, Catherine O'Hara or Fred Willard? Aren't they contracted to have voices in every single animated movie?
Projection: $26 to 28 million opening weekend; $90 million total.
SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS (MGM/Dimension)Starring Billy Bob Thornton, Jon Heder, Jacinda Barrett, Michael Clarke Duncan, Sarah Silverman, David Cross, Horatio Sanz, Matt Walsh
Directed by Todd Phillips (Old School, Road Trip, Starsky and Hutch); Written by Todd Phillips and Scott Armstrong (Old School)
Genre: Comedy
Rated PG-13 (as if it could be anything else?)
Tagline: "Nice Guys Graduate Last"
Story: Roger (Jon Heder) is a male New York meter maid with very little confidence who has had a lifelong crush on his neighbor Amanda (Jacinda Barrett). In order to win her over, he takes a class from the mysterious Dr. P (Billy Bob Thornton) who teaches pantywaists to be playboys. When Roger turns into a successful graduate, he learns how competitive Dr. P can be, as he decides to also chase after Amanda.
Mini-Review: How a movie with appearances by David Cross, Sarah Silverman, Luis Guzman and Matt Walsh isn't the funniest movie ever made is pretty incredible. Oh, maybe that's because it stars Jon Heder and Billy Bob Thornton, who are only as funny as their material and end up playing the same doofus and foul-mouthed @sshole they've played too many times before. At least things get a little more interesting when they face off against each other with some amusing physical comedy, but Heder proves that he can't carry a movie himself, and definitely not as a romantic lead. As with his role in High Fidelity, Todd Louima almost steals the movie every time he opens his mouth, but instead of making more of that, Todd Phillips goes to his big gun AKA Ben Stiller to try to save the movie, but it doesn't work. If you've seen the trailer, you've probably seen enough. Rating: 5/10
Insuring that there isn't a week this year where there isn't a remake, here is another one, this time of the obscure ‘60s British comedy School for Scoundrels, and in a nutshell, this comedy remake will pit Napoleon Dynamite against Bad Santa in hopes that the fans of both comedies will turn up to root on their favorite. Sure, it's high concept all the way, although there may be enough different comedy elements, like romance, that might make it a bit deeper than other recent comedies.
Maybe that's because at the helm is director Todd Phillips, who first got attention in 2000 with the summer college comedy Road Trip, featuring then hot Tom Green, which made almost $70 million, followed two years later by the bigger high concept comedy hit Old School, starring Vince Vaughn, Luke Wilson and Will Ferrell. Having two back-to-back comedy hits helped get Phillips the gig directing Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson in the comedy remake of ‘70s cop show Starsky & Hutch, which ended up making $88 million after an impressive $28 million debut in its spring release. So basically, Phillips is going back to school with this new comedy that will try to offer the same comedy magic as his previous films.
This time around, Phillips doesn't have two bonafide box office stars, but he does have two actors who have made their marks in comedy, both in the last three years, although Billy Bob Thornton obviously has had a much longer career than Jon Heder, who may forever be known to everyone under the age of 30 as Napoleon Dynamite, after starring in the surprise sleeper hit comedy that came out of the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. In the time since then, Heder appeared in Reese Witherspoon's romantic comedy Just Like Heaven and was teamed with Rob Schneider and David Spade for the baseball comedy, The Benchwarmers, which should have bombed, but actually made $57 million this past spring. Next year, Heder has a bunch of other movies including Blades of Glory with Will Ferrell, which should continue to build his comedy rep.
Billy Bob Thornton's comedy career has been spottier with his biggest comedy being the holiday dark comedy Bad Santa, which made $59 million three years ago, but playing a similar role in the 2005 remake of Bad News Bears didn't have nearly as much success and the crime comedy The Ice Harvest later that year outright bombed. While Thornton has starred in many non-comedy hits like Michael Bay's Armageddon and the football drama Friday Night Lights, he has starred and directed way too many movies that were dumped to video or cable without a theatrical release.
School for Scoundrels also features the second love interest role of the month for Australian model-actress-reality star Jacinda Barrett, who co-starred with Zach Braff in The Last Kiss. Seeing how that movie did—$8.5 million in its first ten days—it's doubtful she can bring many people to the box office.
Although there's a lot of potential humor from Todd Phillips' latest, there's something a bit familiar about the comedy. Part of it is reminiscent of last year's Just Friends, a relative bomb for Ryan Reynolds, but the competition between the two main actors is also a bit like the Adam Sandler-Jack Nicholson pairing in Anger Management, though neither Heder nor Thornton are quite the draws of either one of those popular actors.
Like The Guardian, this received Saturday night sneak previews in 1500 theatres (that's a lot) in hopes of building up word-of-mouth, plus it's getting one of the wider releases by Dimension Films and their distribution partner MGM. In general, there isn't that much advance buzz about it, even after those sneaks, at least compared to other comedies this year, mainly because Dimension took their time before they started to promote it.
Why I Should See It: Billy Bob Thornton and Jon Heder have a funny schtick and pitting them against each other sounds like pure comedy genius, especially with Todd Phillips at the helm.
Why Not: Both actors have also taken on numerous bad movies, and there's little to say that this one is different even with Phillips.
Projection: $11 to 13 million opening weekend; $35 million total.
THE QUEEN (Miramax)Starring Helen Mirren, Michael Sheen, James Cromwell, Sylvia Syms, Alex Jennings, Helen McCrory, Roger Allam, Tim McMullan
Directed by Stephen Frears (Dirty Pretty Things, Mrs. Henderson Presents, High Fidelity, The Grifters, many more); Written by Peter Morgan (The Last King of Scotland—also out this week)
Genre: Drama
Rated PG-13 (for we won't be seeing Queen Elizabeth II cussin' or strippin'…that might be a bit much.)
Tagline: "Tradition Prepared Her. Change Will Define Her."
Story: After the death of Princess Diana, Queen Elizabeth II (Helen Mirren) retreats into Balmoral Castle with her family, leaving a deeply worried prime minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) about how she'll ever be able to reconnect with the people of her country.
REVIEW (Coming Soon!)
Just a year after British filmmaker Stephen Frears directed Dame Judi Dench to her fifth Oscar nomination with the WWII musical drama Mrs. Henderson Presents, he pairs with another one of England's finest Helen Mirren for a politically tinged drama that is likely to be a heavy presence at the Oscars next year. Who knows? Maybe it will finally get Stephen Frears his long-deserved Oscar, because he's made many great movies since being nominated for one back in 1991 for his crime-drama The Grifters and he's made a number of strong movies since then. In 2000, he reunited with John Cusack for an Americanized version of Nick Hornby's novel High Fidelity, followed a few years later by the thriller Dirty Pretty Things, which was not only Audrey Tautou's first English role, but also the debut of actor Chiwetel Ejiofor.
Frears' main star Helen Mirren has appeared in many of those great British indie comedies like Greenfingers and Calendar Girls, but she's best known on these shores for her Oscar-nominated performance in Robert Altman's Gosford Park, her second nomination after co-starring in The Madness of King George. The Queen has already played at a number of film festivals like Telluride and Venice, where Mirren was honored for her performance, and it kicks off this year's New York Film Festival before opening the next day in New York theatres. It's a similar approach that was taken two years ago with Mike Leigh's Vera Drake, which did get its star Imelda Staunton an Oscar nomination, and The Queen should do the same for Helen Mirren.
Why I Should See It: It's reported that Helen Mirren gives the performance that will win her the Oscar this year or at least get her nominated.
Why Not: The movie might be way too British-centric, and some may have problems with a movie that questions royalty.
STAR SPOTLIGHT: Ashton Kutcher
In just eight years, 28-year-old Ashton
Kutcher has attained a degree of fame and success that few other
actors his age have realized. Surprisingly, not a lot of that has come
from movies, since Kutcher has only really made 8 or 9 movies during
that time.After an early career as a fashion model, Kutcher was discovered in 1988 and introduced to the nation as the dimwitted Michael Kelso in the FOX sitcom "That ‘70s Show", which quickly put him on the map. In 2000, Kutcher appeared in a number of movies, a couple small roles at first but culminating by teaming with American Pie's Seann William Scott in Dude, Where's My Car? The character Kutcher played wasn't too far removed from Kelso, and though the movie opened softly, it found a strong audience of teens over the holiday to become a cult classic.
It would be over two years before Kutcher would be seen on the big screen after that, as he kicked off 2003, appearing with then girlfriend Brittany Murphy in the romantic comedy Just Married, a #1 movie with $17.5 million which far exceeded expectations. Later that year, Kutcher would appear opposite Tara Reid in the long delayed My Boss' Daughter, which wasn't able to find nearly as much success. Oh, let's not mince words; it bombed. But Kutcher was back later that year in an uncredited role in Steve Martin's comedy remake Cheaper by the Dozen; it was a huge holiday hit, grossing over $120 million.
A month later, he appeared with Amy Smart in the time traveling thriller The Butterfly Effect, which also opened at #1 with $17 million, while giving the young actor a chance to show off his more dramatic side. Around that same time, Kutcher started to produce his own hidden camera prank show on MTV called "Punk'd" which just helped to increase his popularity among young audiences, and he used that opportunity to finish his lengthy run on "That ‘70s Show."
2005 followed Kutcher's normal path of having a hit followed by a bomb. First, he teamed with Bernie Mac in another comedy remake, Guess Who (loosely derived from Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?) which made over $20 million on Eastern weekend and just under $68 million total. A month later, the romantic comedy A Lot Like Love teamed Kutcher with Amanda Peet, but that failed to find much success, making in total what Guess Who made opening weekend, in preparation for what would become the worst summer in years.
Around this same time, Kutcher was all over the tabloids when he started dating significantly older actress Demi Moore AKA Bruce Willis' ex-wife, something which seemed to be done simply for publicity, until they ended up getting married almost exactly a year ago this week. Sounds a lot like love to me.
The last time a star appeared in a live action and animated movie in the same weekend was over Memorial Day weekend last year when Chris Rock provided one of the main voices for DreamWorks' Madagascar and starred with Adam Sandler in the remake of The Longest Yard, both which ended up making more than $50 million over the extended weekend. While Ashton Kutcher's two new movies might not make $50 million combined, it will still be seen as a mark of his star power if both movies do well.
|
Title |
Release Date |
Theater Count |
Previous Box Office (in millions) |
Weekend Box Office (in millions) |
Average |
Total Box Office |
|
A Lot Like Love |
4/22/05 |
2,502 |
$7.58 |
$3,028 |
$21.84 |
|
|
Guess Who |
3/25/05 |
3,147 |
$20.67 |
$6,569 |
$67.96 |
|
|
The Butterfly Effect |
1/23/04 |
2,605 |
$17.07 |
$6,551 |
$57.65 |
|
|
Cheaper By the Dozen |
12/26/03 |
3,298 |
$8.18 |
$27.56 |
$8,356 |
$128.03 |
|
My Boss's Daughter |
8/22/03 |
2,201 |
$4.86 |
$2,206 |
$15.55 |
|
|
Just Married |
1/10/03 |
2,766 |
$17.55 |
$6,345 |
$56.13 |
|
|
Dude, Where's My Car? |
12/15/00 |
2,087 |
$13.85 |
$6,634 |
$46.72 |
|
|
Down to You |
1/21/00 |
1,970 |
$7.60 |
$3,858 |
$20.04 |
ALSO IN LIMITED RELEASE:
Dito Montiel's autobiographical drama A GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS (First Look Media), a hit at this year's Sundance Film Festival, explores Montiel's years growing up in the crime-ridden streets of Astoria, Queens. Shia Labouf plays the author during his teen years, while Robert Downey Jr. assumes the role for the present-day Dito, returning to Queens for the first time in fifteen years. The movie also stars Step Up's Channing Tatum and Rosario Dawson.
Alex Kendrick's drama FACING THE GIANTS (Samuel Goldwyn) is about Christian high school football coach Grant Taylor who faces domestic problems while worrying about the parents of the kids in his team, the Shiloh Eagles, dismissing him for the team's consecutive losing seasons. In desperation, he looks to God to help him and his team to overcome the odds against them.
After playing at the Tribeca Film Festival, Steven Cantor and Matthew Galkin's documentary loudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies opens in New York and L.A. It follows the influential Boston alternative rock group's 2004 reunion tour after 12 years, having seen a huge explosion in popularity in those years.
Opening at the Quad Cinemas in New York, Julián Hernández's BROKEN SKY (Strand Releasing) is about a love triangle between three young men at a university.
THIS WEEKEND IN BOX OFFICE HISTORY:
I've decided to temporarily scrap this section and incorporate the information into other sections, because there seems to be little relevance between the next few weeks' movies and previous years at the box office.
LET'S LOOK AT THE NUMBERS: (final update 9.28.06)
As September comes to a close, it will be the first time in a number of months where three movies opened in more than 3,000 theatres, something that could prove fruitful for all of them (and the waning box office), or it could mean there will be a lot of empty theatres this weekend.
Sony Pictures' second computer animated feature Open Season, featuring the voices of Martin Lawrence and Ashton Kutcher, will be taking advantage of the lack of family films in theatres with an ultra-wide release which should allow it to have a strong showing over the weekend. Likewise, the pairing of Ashton Kutcher with Kevin Costner in the action-adventure The Guardian should have enough interest among other audiences, especially women, to give Open Season a run for its money on Friday, though it will likely lose the weekend to the family film.
Another clever face-off is that of Jon "Napoleon Dynamite" Heder vs. Billy Bob "Bad Santa" Thornton in the Todd Phillips directed comedy remake, School for Scoundrels, which will mainly be catering to the teen audience, though losing some of that business to the other two movies.
In some ways, this weekend is likely to mirror the weekend in early October '04, where DreamWorks' Shark Tale went up against the firefighter drama Ladder 49 with John Travolta and Joaquin Phoenix, though in that case, the former had the voices of Will Smith and Angelina Jolie to bring in teens and non-parents. Expect the margin to be a lot closer between Ashton Kutcher's two movies this weekend.
There's a strong chance that this weekend will top last year's September closer where Touchstone's Flightplan, starring Jodie Foster, remained on top for a second weekend in a row with $14 million, while Joss Whedon's Serenity opened with a disappointing $10 million and the Jessica Alba-Paul Walker underwater thriller Into the Blue bombed with just $3 million less. The disappointing $71 million take for the top ten would lead into a dismal October where few movies would make more than $16 million in any given weekend.
|
TW |
LW |
Title |
Weekend (in millions) |
Change |
# Of Theaters |
Average |
Week |
|
1 |
New |
Open Season |
$27.2 |
N/A |
3,833 |
$7,175 |
1 |
|
2 |
New |
The Guardian |
$19.4 |
N/A |
3,241 |
$5,986 |
1 |
|
3 |
1 |
Jackass Number Two |
$14.9 |
-49% |
3,063 |
$4,878 |
2 |
|
4 |
New |
School for Scoundrels |
$12.2 |
N/A |
3,000 |
$4,033 |
1 |
|
5 |
2 |
Jet Li's Fearless |
$5.7 |
-46% |
1,820 |
$3,132 |
2 |
|
6 |
3 |
Gridiron Gang |
$5.0 |
-48% |
3,033 |
$1,649 |
3 |
|
7 |
4 |
Flyboys |
$3.5 |
-42% |
2,033 |
$1,722 |
2 |
|
8 |
7 |
Everyone's Hero |
$2.8 |
-40% |
2,201 |
$1,272 |
3 |
|
9 |
8 |
The Illusionist |
$2.3 |
-31% |
1,319 |
$1,744 |
7 |
|
10 |
5 |
The Black Dahlia |
$2.2 |
-51% |
2,002 |
$1,099 |
3 |
|
11 |
6 |
All the King's Men |
$1.8 |
-50% |
1,520 |
$1,184 |
2 |
|
Est. Weekend Total |
Est. Avg. Drop-Off |
Est. Average PTA |
Next week, the month of October kicks off with Martin Scorsese's The Departed, a Hong Kong remake starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson and more; New Line's horror prequel The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning; Dane Cook and Dax Sheppard fight over Jessica Simpson in the comedy Employee of the Month.
Copyright 2006 Edward Douglas
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