Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
October 11, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: Life As We Know It finished in second place with $14.5 million. Do you see this as proof that Katherine Heigl's box office power is fading, or do you think this project didn't look 27 Dresses enough for fans?
Bruce Hall: Call me cynical - and everyone does - but I just don't understand Katherine Heigl's popularity. Maybe it is because I never liked Grey's Anatomy. In fact, I hated it and I hated it as much as I hated Scrubs. But no, it is more than that. I just don't find her likable or transcendent as an actress. For decades, serious film actors avoided television because television was considered beneath a true thespian. And of course before that, stage actors avoided film, mostly for the same reasons Thomas Jefferson could never get elected today. A whiny, nasal voice coupled with a paralyzing inability to speak well in public is death at the polls. But I digress.
Heigl was a prominent part of one of television's hottest shows, and was arguably the most marketable part of it as well. But she turned out to have limited appeal as an actress as well as a tendency to publicly shoot herself in the foot whenever there was a camera nearby. I have nothing against her personally, but I just don't get the hype. I think she might be a victim of the fact that the most visible character on the most popular drama on television at any given time is automatically crowned the Next Big Thing at the box office, and that probably isn't fair (pick your roles carefully, Jon Hamm). I think Heigl is a beautiful woman who does have talent, but she is more a product of the vehicles she chooses, and her ability to transcend that material is questionable.
I think she's the soup of the day, just like split pea used to be. And nobody likes split pea soup any more.
Edwin Davies: Considering how horribly unfunny the trailer was, how stupid the poster looked and how scathing the reviews have been, this result is higher than I thought the film would get, and that's probably due to Heigl's appeal, dubious though it may be. Considering that she was the only real name attached to the film - Josh Duhamel may have been one of the meatbags in the Transformers films but I don't think he can be blamed for their success and probably wasn't much of a factor - and the blah premise, the fact that she was able to draw nearly $15 million worth of cash is mildly impressive. It didn't break out to super big numbers because the set-up was tired and there was no gimmick to draw people in. Any moratorium on her career should be held off until she appears in another of the standard romantic comedies that she made her name with and it flops.
Tom Houseman: It's hard for me to judge the success of films like that, because I can never understand why anyone would ever go see them... ever. That being said, I think that Warner Bros. is probably disappointed by a number under $15 million. I do think that Heigl still appeals to a wide audience, and with the right project should be able to open big. I think that One for the Money, based on those Janet Evanovich books my sister was obsessed with, is the perfect vehicle for her. We'll see how that does next year.
Brett Beach: I may get some of my BOP karma revoked but I would consider watching this - in spite of Heigl and the fact that I strongly disliked the similarly themed Raising Helen - because I really like Josh Duhamel (it saddens me that he and Kristen Bell were both trapped in the uninspired When In Rome for they had a natural fizzy chemistry) and because it has a baby being cute. I swear I was sorta sappy before becoming a father but now it's just ridiculous. This opening is not that much more than Helen's which leads me to think that there will always be more money in a guy or guys attempting to raise a child vs. a single woman or a thrown together couple and that Heigl does need to pick her projects more carefully. Perhaps this One for the Money will allow her to play an aloof slightly unlikable character (which she does well) who DOESN'T become likable by the end? (I never buy the transformation.)
Matthew Huntley: First, does anyone want any project to look remotely look like 27 Dresses?
Anyway, if the project didn't look enough like that movie, it sure looked like a whole bunch of others, including the aforementioned Raising Helen, No Reservations, or any variety of romantic comedy. So I wouldn't attribute the soft opening to Heigl's waning popularity, necessarily (although I think that has something to do with it), but rather to the painfully generic premise/title and rather assuming ad campaign. Did anyone else find the trailers and TV spots to be annoying because they claimed to know what "life is really like"? I mean, you've got two great-looking people living in a humongous, hard-wood floor house in a suburb of New York City and their biggest problem is...raising a baby? What about all the other problems that go along with day-to-day life, minus the baby situation? It irks me when studios try to promote movies by claiming they're "realistic" when they're really just fairy tales. Who knows, maybe Life As We Know It is spot on for some people, but if it was, wouldn't more people have seen it?
Shalimar Sahota: It looks to me like someone thought up a semi-sequel to Knocked Up and decided, "Let's show audiences what Katherine Heigl would be like with a baby." The trailer suggests a routine rom-com, and it seems desperate for attention in having to provide cheap laughs by putting three unfunny jokes about "poop" in there. However, there's not much in the way of predictably light entertainment out there, or in the coming weeks, so it may just stand a chance of making its $38 million budget back.
Reagen Sulewski: I'm surprised at the relative failure of both of the top two films this week, but definitely at this one most of all. Perhaps Killers hurt Heigl more than we thought, but the combination of Heigl + baby comedy really should have hit regardless of whether the premise is old and busted or not (and it is). Saying audiences are tired of baby jokes is like saying they're tired of explosions - this just shouldn't happen. The most logical explanation is that the bloom is coming off Heigl's rose somewhat - expect a ridiculous amount of publicist-planted stories in the media about Heigl in the coming months.
Jim Van Nest: My thought is that all the people who want their "raising a baby" comedy decided to skip this and stay home to watch Raising Hope.
David Mumpower: In reading the earlier replies, I have the following to say:
1) People are describing the idea of Heigl with a baby as innately marketable. I do not see it that way. In fact, such a premise screams Mommy Dearest reboot to me. Then again, maybe the breast feeding might suck out some of her evil.
2) Projects want to be like 27 Dresses in that as awful as the film was (and it was in my bottom 10 for 2008), it earned $76.8 million. I think that points 1 and 2 tie together in that the appeal of romantic fantasy seems to be the idea of falling in love and getting married whereas the babies are where the fun of casual sex is signified as over. Right or wrong, that's probably true and before someone argues the point about Knocked Up, the funny trigger there was the doomsday scenario itself. It's different than the natural order of fall in love, get married, then raise children. Different actors are better suited for each of these phases and I think it's safe to say that Katherine Heigl is no Bill Cosby.
3) Who hates Scrubs? If you say something bad about Cougar Town or Clone High next, I'm going to make you watch 27 Dresses until you willingly swallow your own tongue.
4) Reagen is right that this is fallout from Killers to an extent. What Heigl's people have done is push her to the middle. She got lucky with Knocked Up then she picked the right projects in terms of marketability with 27 Dresses and The Ugly Truth. Rather than do something different, she chose or was pushed to do more of the same and saturation has set in. I think she has to do something surprising now in the same way that Anne Hathaway did Havoc and Brokeback Mountain in order to shake off the current typecasting. Then again, this may be all she can do.
5) I think Matthew's point is astute in that this reinforces that Hollywood cannot drive the conversation about what makes life hard. People already know these things and saying that someone who has everything on the surface might struggle with being a good parent in no way, shape or form makes them interesting as a movie premise without further explanation. There just didn't seem to be enough to sell here.