Monday Morning Quarterback Part I

By BOP Staff

January 25, 2010

Laissez les bon temps rouler!

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Reagen Sulewski: I'm honestly kind of shocked at this, as this seemed like someone's idea of a joke premise for movie, with painfully awful looking effects. I suppose it had the benefit of never having been done before, as "religious-themed action gross-out" is a really narrow genre, but you would think audiences had some semblance of taste. Every clip of this I've seen inspired unintentional laughter. In other words, they did pretty good to get this much, which would have won the weekend were it not for the phenomenon of Avatar.

David Mumpower: What impresses me about this result is that it's the third release in this vein in January. In order to succeed in a situation like that, a title has to give potential consumers confidence that it brings something new and different to the table. Legion accomplished that through some unique visuals cleverly highlighted in the ads.

Max Braden: I think about $15 million of that was just because of the monster granny in the trailer.

Jason Lee: I think Max is right. Just imagine how much money The Proposal would have made if Betty White had taken a bite out of Ryan Reynolds' neck.




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Fairies are not the new vampires.

Kim Hollis: Tooth Fairy, Fox's attempt to punish society, opened to $14 million. Why couldn't audiences handle the tooth?

Shalimar Sahota: Because Fox failed to hand out anesthetic with each ticket, making the experience so painful that critics hated it (currently 15% at Rotten Tomatoes), and audiences learned to stay away from it. However, there's not much for kids to choose from in the coming weeks, so they're likely to want to put their parents through torture.

George Rose: I think Fox's audience is finally getting tired of being treated like idiots. I loved Alvin and the Chipmunks like a crack fiend when I was a kid and had tons of their merchandising. It was that sort of devotion that led me as an adult to excuse the monster success of the first movie, which is basically a giant middle finger pointed at anyone with a brain. I figured the world had learned. I mean, after all, we did manange to evolve from apes. How could we not take the first Alvin movie as a learning lesson and evolve into beings that knew not to trust Fox's films targeted at the younger demographics? Well, because the words Squeakquel and Chipettes do magic for marketing. I hope they profited big time off of it because audiences don't seem to be happy being duped twice and they'll need that money to recoup this loss. Hmmm, maybe the Hollywood Gods are starting to listen to my prayers in 2010. It's about time.

Josh Spiegel: Well, The Rock - sorry, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson...or is it just Dwayne Johnson now? - has always been a modest draw to the box office, but not a consistently solid performer. The fact that the movie looked terrible (even if it's got Julie Andrews and Office co-creator Stephen Merchant) doesn't turn kids away, but maybe kids, like Johnson's character, don't really care or believe in the tooth fairy. Or, maybe they realize that this movie is the Santa Clause all over again (in more ways than one, considering that the third film's director was this movie's helmer). Whatever the case, I feel like this movie's tepid performance is all because of a solid lack of interest.


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