Monday Morning Quarterback Part II

By BOP Staff

August 9, 2011

No, I would never bet on baseball.

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They should have just replayed 17 Again. It would have been better. For BOP's Kim Hollis.

Kim Hollis: The Change-Up opened to $13.5 million. Is this a good enough result for a bromance?

Tim Briody: It opened exactly the same as Hall Pass, which is probably what it deserved, although that might be too much of a compliment to Hall Pass.

Brett Beach: I consider this a disappointment and I don't think there are many ways to spin it positive. As the last of the "summer of raunch" contenders to unfurl, it looks like it will be the lowest grossing by a mile. Reynolds and Bateman are as hot as they have been in their careers, and even with them both in films earlier this summer (and Green Lantern underperforming), they still should have helped pull in a launch in the low-20 millions. Why so low? I think the trailers didn't sell the funny (and if you stop to think about it, the two are a little too similar for a body switch to really be all that meaningful) and it suffered a bit from seeming like Hall Pass ("magic" access granted to cheat around). For a bromance? It throws beneath I Love You, Man (in which Paul Rudd's character is for all intents and purposes, me) and won't have the legs, either. $40 million if it's lucky.




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Joshua Pasch: This is most definitely not a big enough opening, and I think Bateman, Reynolds, and the studio would agree. Both of those guys just took big wallops to their star power, especially Reynolds, who now has two duds in just as many months.

I do think this was more a victim of scheduling, and would have been well served to have waited for an October or even holiday release after the extensive number of R-rated comedies in the last two months (Hangover2, Horrible Bosses, Friends With Benefits, Bad Teacher, and Bridesmaids). Seriously, each of those movies has performed on a range of above average to exceptional. My take is simply that a lot of people said to themselves "well, this looks funny, but, meh, we just saw all of those other incredibly similar, solid, but not great R-rated comedies...maybe this one we can just Netflix or Redbox down the road."

I also happen to think 30 Minutes Or Less will suffer a similar fate next weekend.

Edwin Davies: This is definitely not a good enough result, either for a bromance or in comparison to the deluge of raunchy product that we have seen over the last couple of months. Ultimately, the problem with this film was that the trailers didn't do enough to make it look funny and didn't really establish what the stakes were for either character. They just seemed to say "hey, they trade bodies and stuff happens", whereas any half-decent body swapping film has some problem that the characters have to overcome (just think of Freaky Friday and the demands of a young girl having to do her mother's job and the mother having to survive high school). Without that, and without solid enough jokes to make up for the lack of conflict, it just didn't measure up.


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