Monday Morning Quarterback Part I

By BOP Staff

October 11, 2010

You can't beat him.

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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.)




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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.


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