Monday Morning Quarterback

By BOP Staff

April 27, 2009

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Perhaps the correct answer is Secret Option E: Jerry O'Connell

Kim Hollis: Whose career gets the biggest bump from Obsessed - Ali Larter, Beyonce or Idris Elba? Or none of the above?

Josh Spiegel: Idris Elba or none of the above. Ali Larter and Beyonce Knowles have had plenty of face time in pop culture, the latter moreso. We may see Beyonce in more movies in the coming years, but I don't see this movie completely jump-starting that end of her career. Elba, however, was a relatively unknown actor (exception being those who saw him in HBO's brilliant "The Wire"), but within the last two months, he had a major guest role on The Office and now he's billed first (on the posters, at least) of the number-one movie of the weekend. He either gets a boost from this film (and a deserved one, even if the film's not high art) or no one gets one.

Pete Kilmer: I think this helps all of them. Beyonce gets a boost for being in a hit movie after bombing recently, Ali Larter gets some movie shine, and Idris Elba gets the biggest boost with this movie hitting and a terrific run recently on The Office. They all win.




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Reagen Sulewski: Oh, this is Beyonce's win, all the way. Larter will never be lead material, Idris is kind of generically handsome and his name is non-memorably weird, but Beyonce got to prove that audiences will root for her. Of course, it all goes to hell if she ends up going Whitney on us.

Jason Lee: I agree with Reagen and Pete. Beyonce (like Zac Efron before her) now falls into the category of "This person can open a movie." I doubt that anyone truly could have attributed the success of Dreamgirls or Austin Powers in Goldmember to her prior to this.

Brandon Scott: No doubt Beyonce will get the credit but ultimately, I believe in time we will see this was more marketing/exciting trailer/black and white races that made the movie, rather than the actors involved. I am an Elba fan and it's good to see Larter having a long career, but Beyonce is the one who will get the most juice out of this, whether deserved or not. Things like this kind of seem bittersweet in a way, because I like feeling connected to "finding an actor" like Elba through "The Wire" and his work in RocknRolla. When an actor gets bigger, as apparently he is on The Office now and with this film opening big, we lose some of that...he's our guy sort of feeling. I don't know, maybe it's me, but I am happy that this movie did well...that is until I see it and probably come away disappointed, but there's always hope.

Kim Hollis: I'm going to go with none of the above. I believe this was a case of right place, right time, and it's not really a situation where people were rushing out to see one of these actors in particular. I would liken it instead to the Ashley Judd sort of thing that happened with Double Jeopardy. People weren't really going out to see Judd in that film, but rather to see a woman get some sort of vengeance. I think this is sort of a similar situation where the subject matter was interesting to a lot of people.


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