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.
Wow, there are some turkeys opening this week, folks. I’m going to continue to recommend Up, Anvil, and The Hurt Locker. Nonetheless, OPENING THIS WEEKEND:
The Ugly Truth
Katherine Heigl stars in an intelligence-insulting rom-com. If you’ve seen the orgasm scene and you’re still considering seeing this, congratulations, I hate you. Wanna save yourself 10 bucks? Just look at the two pictures above back and forth really fast as you gradually lose the will to live.
G-Force
Fart jokes in the trailer, y’all! Speaking of two pictures that communicate an entire movie, the best part of the press tour for this one was Nic Cage looking like this:
…while sitting next to this: 
Orphan
SECRET DWARF HOOKER!!! Need I say more? I actually kind of want to see this now. …Hold me.
In the Loop
I haven’t covered this one much because the trailer bugged the living hell out of me. But I’m told part of the reason for that is that the movie has an epic amount of swearing in it and is actually quite good. I can’t confirm that it’s good, but I love swearing. Check out this speech by Patton. Now there was a guy who could swear.
Nic Cage recently sat down with MTV, who asked him about the possibility of Ghost Rider 2. Cage was cagey (hee hee, wordplay!), but says he wants it to happen, and thinks it should be less a sequel and more a “reconceive.” Yay, I love it when he nouns verbs!
MTV: So what exactly would you want to re-conceptualize?
Cage: I would make it much less of a western, and more of an international story. [Ghost Rider was a western? -Ed.]
MTV: So you’re more interested in Europe, and the church, and that sort of a thing?
Cage: Yeah.
So there you have it, Nic Cage wants to make a movie about a biker with a flaming skull, reconceived in such a way that it would involve the Catholic Church. But honestly, the best part of this interview was Nic Cage looking this thoughtful:
While sitting next to this picture:
So tell us, Mr. Cage, what sort of Eastern philosophies did you draw on for your role as Speckles the Star-Nosed Mole? Was it a method performance? Did you do a lot of Tai Chi? Perhaps a master cleanse to clear your mind? Please, take us into your process.
This is the trailer for Jerry Bruckheimer’s kid movie G-Force. It went 18 seconds before a product placement, 28 before pointlessly pimping a pop song out of context, and had only two poop jokes and one fart sound effect. Impressive, Jerry, I know how much restraint that took.
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G-Force, Jerry Bruckheimer’s movie about guinea pig spies (featuring Nic Cage as the voice of Speckles, the star-nosed mole) has a poster, and it’s every bit as nauseatingly pandering as you’d expect. Sunglasses on forehead? Check. Guinea pig with faux hawk? Check. Gun fingers? You betcha.
For some reason I feel compelled to articulate why I so f-cking loathe Jerry Bruckheimer to the core of my being, so here goes: it’s not just that he makes crappy movies, because a lot of people make crappy movies. It’s that his movies are so transparently contrived, so unabashedly and efficiently formulaic; it’s like he just studies whatever godawful sh-t is making money at the time and with no sense of personal taste whatever, steals elements from each to construct a newer, slicker, stinkier piece of sh-t. And it’s not about “hating the player,” it’s about expecting the player to have one speck of personality, one single solitary molecule of individuality. It’s his utter disdain for his audience, and not in an interesting, David Lynch sort of way either. The subtext of everything he makes is, “Hey, you pigs like sh-t, right? Well here’s a whole heapin’ trough full! Git r done!”
So there it is, Bruckheimer. You can take your millions of dollars and you can just go suck eggs while I celebrate this moral victory in my cum-stained underpants.
