Despite their epically sleazy the-soldiers-who-defend-your-freedom-want-you-to-see-it marketing campaign, Paramount made $56.2 million on their G.I. Joe movie. The sad thing about even the most blatantly phony, transparent pandering is that it usually works. Oh hey look, Toby Keith bought a new cowboy hat. Anyway, it’s not Transformers money, but it’s enough for execs to say “well look how well G.I. Joe and Transformers did!” as they try to defend their decision to greenlight the next movie based on a board game or parlor trick. Thing is, though G.I. Joe and Transformers are technically based on a toy, they also both had old cartoons and the accompanying nostalgia on which to draw. If the View-Master movie does anywhere near this kind of business, I promise I’ll chug a pint of hobo piss.
Elsewhere, Julie and Julia was number two with $20.1 million. Surprising that there were so many people that couldn’t just wait to see it on a plane. Hard to tell if it will hold or drop immediately, but critics are already calling it the plane-yest movie of the summer.
Most everything else made a not-particularly-noteworthy $7 or $8 million (though Funny People declined a sharp 65%). And pour a little beer out on a hooker for The Hangover, which dropped out of the top 10 for the first week since its release. Though at -35%, it had the smallest decline for wide releases for the fifth weekend in a row, and still managed the number 11 spot. It just goes to show, people really want to see Zach Galifianakis get blown by an old chick.
Funny People is the best thing Adam Sandler’s done in 10 years and it still made $11 million less than I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry in its opening weekend, which is why I don’t clean up dog poop and purposely piss on the seat in public restrooms. You deserve this, America. Regardless, its $23.4 million debut was good enough for number one on this year’s worst box office weekend overall.
But those sh*tty box office numbers are good news for anyone hoping to see some flaming turds get stomped, and get stomped they did. The $45 million budgeted (yet oddly direct-to-DVD-looking) Aliens in the Attic debuted at $7.8 million — suck it, Fox — while Jerry Bruckheimer’s $150 million G-Force (which had three fart jokes in the trailer) still has a long way to go with its total now at $66.5 mil. Fingers crossed that continues to go down faster than Brett Ratner on a plate of taquitos. Katherine Heigl’s epic snatch napkin The Ugly Truth also fell 53% in its second weekend, down to $13 million. Meanwhile Harry Potter performed respectably, and I managed to totally not care about it for the second week in a row.
Opening this weekend
Funny People
No, it’s not as funny as Knocked Up, it’s 20 minutes too long, and I realize you probably won’t like it as much as I did. Nonetheless, it’s a real movie, which is rare, and it’s the best thing Adam Sandler’s done in ten years. And on the other hand, so’s your face.
The Collector
I can’t believe someone had the balls to put “From the writers of Saw IV, V, and VI” in the trailer. Gee, guys, that’s quite the plug. This summer… from the makers of speed bumps, techno, and stubbing your toe on the f*cking coffee table… The only way the bad guy could have a more stupid looking mask is if he made it out of Colin Hanks’ face.
Not Quite Hollywood
This documentary about the obscure-yet-awesome genre of Ozploitation films only opens in New York and LA, but the filmmakers sent me a cool playlist of Ozploitation flicks to attach after the jump. They did my work for me. And I like that.
Christ, I should be working at the Enquirer with these headlines. Anyway, we all remember when Katherine Heigl whined because Knocked Up was sexist, right? Good. Well Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow recently went on Howard Stern, who naturally asked them about her. They responded by saying the obvious things, but it was still cool because Katherine Heigl is a bitch.
Rogen says he doesn’t see how Heigl’s new comedy, The Ugly Truth, makes women look even better. “That [movie] looks like it really puts women on a pedestal in a beautiful way,” he quipped.
Added Apatow, “I hear there’s a scene where she’s wearing … Underwear …with a vibrator in it, so I’d have to see if that was uplifting for women.”
Even more baffling, said Apatow, “We never had a ‘fight’” with Heigl while filming. “Seth always says, it doesn’t make any sense - she improvised half her s***,” Apatow said. [USWeekly]
And then Rogen was all, “Yeah dude, it’s like she doesn’t even have a BRAIN!” and I looked over and he was totally holding his nuts so it looked like a brain. So hilarious, bro, you should’ve been there.
I hate that Funny People is 25 minutes too long, because it does a couple of amazing things. From his album They’re All Gonna Laugh at You through a few years after Happy Gilmore, Adam Sandler was a comedy God. I laughed so hard the first time I heard “The Buffoon and the Dean of Admissions” that I farted placenta. But at some point around ‘97, he seems to have decided he didn’t give a sh*t anymore and started doing a string of increasingly sappy, unfunny paycheck abortions like Click and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. The only glimmers of talent came in dramatic roles like Spanglish and Punch Drunk Love, in which he proved he could act, but didn’t really seem like himself, like he was just trying to prove a point.
Funny People not only reminds us what Sandler looks like when he’s doing honest comedy — and by that I mean comedy that he himself finds funny rather than “You want me to do a silly voice again? Fine, I’ll do the a voice again. Lap it up, you pigs.” — but combines it with the Sandler who can act. Not only that, the story is the kind of pointed, meta-fictional take on his life that JCVD could’ve been for Van Damme if it hadn’t devolved into such a pretentious euro wankfest. I hate to be a reactionary, but while I was writing this I noticed other people calling Funny People Entourage with Cancer, and I felt compelled to point out all the differences between this and Entourage.
1. Decent writing
2. Decent acting
3. Conflict
4. Likable characters
5. The celebrity character in Funny People is famous for having an actual skill
6. The minor characters are trying perfect an actual skill, and aren’t driven by the sole desire to be famous, or to hang out with famous people, or to help the main character get more famous
7. No one talks about shoes or cars, not even once
