Monday Morning Quarterback Part III

By BOP Staff

August 6, 2015

Tom, what have you programmed that robot to do?

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Kim Hollis: I'm hard-pressed to pick anyone other than Cruise. Are there actors I like better (as people and whom I just enjoy watching in general)? Certainly. But I effectively grew up with Cruise. He was doing high school movies when I was in high school, and when I think back on it, I don't believe there's another actor with so many films that I've seen in theaters. I think Risky Business was my first R-rated movie in a theater, and I remember the exact location where I saw it.

Choosing a favorite is awfully hard, as I have different reasons for liking different movies. The aforementioned Risky Business isn't honestly one of his best in quality, but I have an affection for its weird Tangerine Dream score and the final line ("Looks like University of Illinois!"). Jerry Maguire is an absolute delight. I've probably re-watched The Firm and Interview With the Vampire more than any of his other movies. With all that said, I do expect that over time my answer would be Edge of Tomorrow.

Kim Hollis: Vacation, the new reboot for the franchise that has Rusty Griswold as the head of the family, earned just $14.7 million from Friday-to-Sunday and $21 million since debuting on Wednesday. What do you think of this result?

Jason Barney: Vacation is going to end up being a dud, sorta. Summer comedies can perform well at times, but the overall cost of this one, close to $30 million, is interesting considering the opening weekend. It started where it needed to, high in the top 10, and numbers against the budget are pretty good but….

I wonder if the opening weekend will be the peak of the film. Reviews are unkind and I would expect the drops to be pretty significant in the next couple of weeks. This weekend brings four wide releases, so Vacation will get lost in the shuffle pretty quickly.




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Ben Gruchow: On the one hand, I'm sort of surprised that the opening is this high...not so much because the movie got a negative critical reception, but because the buzz leading up to release declined/flatlined considerably. I was seeing a three-day landing somewhere around $12 million and the five-day around $17-18.

On the other hand, it's not like the original Vacation got much love critically when it was released, either, and exit polling indicated that the age bracket under 35 responded a good deal more favorably to the movie than the crowd over 35; adding to this, Dumb and Dumber To was released last year with a multi-decade gap between films and the return of two original stars (Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo technically return with this movie), and it managed a $36 million opening. That can't really be used as a comparison figure here because of the Wednesday opening; if we use past Wednesday openings for poorly-reviewed comedies, we're looking at the three-day opening representing somewhere between 22 and 30 percent of the final gross, which would put Vacation somewhere around $50-$65 million for a total domestic gross. I choose to think it'll fall in the low end of that range because I still believe humanity is inherently good because of the audience and review score, but even that's likely enough to justify a sequel with a similar budget.


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