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Somewhere, the Weinsteins are giggling.

Kim Hollis: Everybody's Fine, the Robert DeNiro comedy, opened to only $3.9 million. Is it fair to say that Miramax is going out with a whimper with this one?

Josh Spiegel: That may be too fair, frankly. Saddled with one of the two worst titles of a movie this year (It's Complicated being the runner-up), and some apparently misleading marketing, Miramax is not going out the way it came in. I'll avoid the obvious pun with the title, but...yeah, epic fail here.

George Rose: Saying this is a whimper is still being kind. We're talking about Robert DeNiro, Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale, and Sam Rockwell here. At the very least, I expected more than a $5 million opening out of DeNiro and Barrymore. Then again, the trailer of the movie claims the story is about a father trying to see his four children, yet there are only three children to be seen. That means the big surprise twist of the movie is going to concern that missing child and some sort of troubled past, right? YAWN! This is the holiday season, people! Consumers want tentpole blockbusters or inspirational stories, not sappy children crap. We want things we can see with our family, and the story of a broken family doesn't having me running for Fandango. Is this the case 100% of the time? No, or Precious wouldn't have become such a success. But at the end of the day, we can only handle a certain emotional load. Plus, we already know from the title that everyone is fine, so there's no rush to spend money to see what happens. I'm sure they'll still all be fine in a few months when it comes out on DVD.





Michael Lynderey: Miramax just gave up on Everybody's Fine. Maybe a platform release would have done this one better, but I think the film is basically a victim of being average on most levels. The reviews neither particularly loved it and nor trashed it, the cast are name actors but not break-out draws, and the movie feels familiar enough without being in any way a must-see. And in a season where Oscar buzz is expected for this type of film, having no discernible amount of it was a minus. A good comparison would be last year's Last Chance Harvey, which had a similar premise and better reviews - but still didn't much break out.

Sean Collier: I'm a little surprised at the failure, here. While it's the wrong weekend for any big release, this felt to me like Four Christmases last year - the easy, inoffensive holiday family choice with the big stars that would do just fine. They either woefully mistimed the release or saw some terrible things from test audiences and dumped it. This could've at least been a weekend-winning hit, but it seems something went very wrong.

Reagen Sulewski: A lot of that would be that no one had anything to gain from it, Sean. It's an orphan project at a studio that will be no more. What studio head in their right mind would throw marketing dollars at it?

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