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Scott Lumley: I haven't seen the movie, but I am really looking forward to catching it. And with that in mind, I'm not going to comment on whether or not Jim Carrey may be sliding down the ladder into obscurity.

(Pause)

Okay, screw that. I'll comment. You people are all crazy! Every trailer I saw for this movie looked ridiculously funny and it's a pure comedy for Carrey, so it should be a money machine. It obviously hasn't been that money machine this weekend, and I'm a little mystified by that. We do have the Christmas holiday weekend coming up, and this is as pure a holiday weekend as you can really get with Boxing day falling on a Friday and the segue right into Saturday.

I would say this result has a lot to do with last minute Christmas shopping, the absolutely BRUTAL weather and possibly a little bit of movie fatigue. This is going to be one of those films that will post better results next weekend than it did this weekend. I'm thinking a result in the $20-$25 million range, maybe more, followed by some decent legs.

Tim Briody: On the surface it's of course massively disappointing, but keep some perspective in that it's December and Christmas is a few days away. It's going to have some very good numbers over the next two weeks. It's easy to forget that Fun With Dick and Jane earned $110 million. Yes Man will pass that with ease.

Sean Collier: A "long, slow, agonizing slide of fading talent and stardom," eh, Joel? At least he can join a support group with Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy. Meet Dave, The Love Guru and Yes Man: three 2008 comedies with former superstars that dramatically underperformed. Yes Man managed a somewhat respectable opening - probably due to being the only halfway decent film of the bunch - but still, there's a trend here. Memo to old dogs: learn new tricks.

Reagen Sulewski: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's not say things we can't take back. Meet Dave was Pluto Nash-esque in its performance, while Love Guru didn't even earn back half its budget domestically. With the help of the Christmas season, Yes Men should at least find its way to $75-80 million.

I think there's a couple things at play here. On the surface, it seemed really reasonable that after such a long time out of the public eye (he's the anti-Sam Jackson in some respects), going back to square one with his film career was what the doctor ordered. The problem with that seems to be in misjudging whether people really cared about the old Jim Carrey.

David Mumpower: "...last minute Christmas shopping, the absolutely BRUTAL weather and possibly a little bit of movie fatigue." Let's all thank Mr. Lumley for throwing out every tired cliche studio bosses use as excuses for a film's lackluster performance. Of course, the weather had no discernible impact on the other releases in the marketplace - look at the depreciation for the in-release title and absolutely nothing is out of line - so the first two excuses are already dismissed out of hand. Then, let's consider for a moment the idea of movie fatigue and how that would be impacted by the last couple of weeks of The Day The Earth Stood Still's under-performing preceded by two non-openers finishing in first and second the prior week. We can safely rule out movie fatigue there. What have we learned in doing so? That's Yes Man has disappointed to the point that we're breaking out the biggest excuses in the game to cover up its failure. Reagen is right that Yes Man can still wind up north of $75 million due to the holiday box office inflation tide that raises all boats, but much more was expected of this title. Warner Bros. wanted a better result here, and they didn't get it.

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