“Mustang, this is Big Top, bringing out the full package,” coincidentally, is also what I say into a walkie-talkie right before I get arrested for indecent exposure.

As you can see, the trailer has just hit for Antoine Fuqua’s Olympus Has Fallen, starring Gerard Butler as a Secret Service agent stuck in the White House after terrorists take over and Speaker of the House Morgan Freeman has to become acting president. If you ask me, Morgan Freeman becoming president seems like a win-win for everyone, but according to screenwriters Creighton Rothenburger (HOLY LACROSSE NAME, BATMAN!) and Katherine Benedkt, this is considered “conflict.” Moreover, this seems to have everything you’d expect in an action movie:

It’s Die Hard in a _____!

Explosions.

CUT TO: “…Oh. My. God.”

But what it isn’t is White House Down, the original Die Hard-in-the-White-House movie starring our boy Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx (yes, this is a real movie, with Independence Day‘s Roland Emmerich directing). Does Olympus Has Fallen have C-Tates as agent Cole Baretta? Does it have Chet Haze as Cole Baretta’s protege, agent-in-training JJ Streetz? Does it have Cole Baretta’s partner, a talking pit bull voiced by Pit Bull? Does it have zombie attacks, or the ghosts of Tupac and Biggie showing up to give Cole Baretta advice like Obi-wan Kenobi? No, it has none of these things. Granted, unless Sony gives Burnsy that re-write job he’s been pushing for, neither will White House Down. But White House Down gave us the room to dream, and that’s what’s important. So Antoine Fuquoff with this non-C-Tates-having garbage.

Please break, dock.

It didn’t take very long for a “respectable” and “legitimate” film critic to finally “like” Gerard Butler’s new epic flop Playing for Keeps, but the film has taken a step forward from a 0% Rotten Tomatoes score to 2%. The critic in question is Leonard Maltin, who wrote this of Jessica Biel’s latest paycheck:

It won’t be up for any Oscars, nor will it score points for originality, but it’s harmless enough fare for its target audience.

Translated: “It sucked, but not enough that bored single women and housewives wouldn’t kill themselves if they had to sit through it.”

That said, enough people were either scared away by that horrible RT score or they just had enough common sense to watch the commercial or trailer and know that this paint-by-numbers romantic comedy probably isn’t even worth waiting for on Netflix. (I’ll let you know the answer to that soon enough, as Playing for Keeps is the only movie remaining on my Must Watch list for the 2012 Worst Movies feature, and thank God. I’m seriously in pain from this year’s awful mess.)

The incredible latest edition to the James Bond franchise, Skyfall, remains at the top of the box office this week, as it earned another $11 million, bringing the grand total to $261 million. Playing for Keeps was the top earner for new films with a lousy $6 million earning it the sixth best gross of the weekend overall. Meanwhile, Hyde Park on Hudson earned $83,300 on 4 screens, giving it a meaningless but awesome per screen average of $20,825. Hey, I’m just trying to find anything positive in an otherwise goober of a weekend.

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“And the audience is supposed to believe a pro soccer player would settle down with one woman.”

Opening Everywhere: Playing for Keeps, Hyde Park on Hudson

Maybe Opening Somewhere: Deadfall

FilmDrunk Suggests: Of the eight films opening this weekend – and I say opening as in they’re available this weekend, because some of these will never see the dark of a theater – one has a positive Rotten Tomatoes score. That film is The Fitzgerald Family Christmas, which was written and directed by my cousin Edward Burns, and I have never heard of that, nor do I expect to see that posted outside my movie theater. So as I spend even more of my precious hours watching the f*cking worst films I’ve ever seen for your entertainment, I need you all to will Cincinnati Bengals receiver AJ Green to good health. Positive energy, folks. That’s what will win me money. Thanks.

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For the past few years, I’ve been convinced that Gerard Butler, Clive Owen, and Anna Faris are all in a contest to see which super-likable actor can ruin their career by choosing horrible projects the fastest. Gerard Butler may have just taken a slight lead with Playing for Keeps (co-starring Jessica Biel, pictured below, for obvious reasons), which is currently tracking 0% fresh on

…flat, hacky, unfunny dreck… with an uncomfortably flagrant misogynistic streak. -Christy LeMire, AP

“Playing for Keeps” isn’t content just to be a generic romantic comedy. nstead, not only is it not funny and not particularly romantic, it treats women like idiots. the script, by Robbie Fox, is lazy; characters disappear for long stretches (who can blame them?), only to show up again when some ridiculous plot contrivance requires it. Simply put, it’s a mess. -AZ Central

…a sloppy, poorly focused comedy -ReelReviews

You don’t often find a romantic comedy that has no idea what it’s supposed to be doing. -NOWToronto

The story is surprisingly – almost painfully – hackneyed, with the fine cast giving consistently one-dimensional turns. It is perplexing as to how such an unambitious, paint-by-numbers work got made. Actually, it is not even a current paint-by-numbers effort, because most contemporary romances involving once-connected-now-separated couples are a bit more sophisticated and worldly. -Austin Chronicle

Butler’s latest putrefying corpse is “Playing for Keeps,” a movie that answers the question: Is it possible for a sex farce and a family drama to be one and the same movie?
The answer is no. Contrived and phony from beginning to end. -St. Paul Pioneer Press

At the end of this embarrassing movie, you feel that the director has not only wasted the talents of half a dozen good actors, but has also wasted vast amounts of money–and our own precious time. -Emmanuel Levy

…a mushy-headed vehicle for what are supposed to be a lot of high-voltage star turns. Nothing much makes sense, but look at all the celebrities. -Canada.com

Having given Greer a pity screw and let Zeta-Jones wrap those Entrapment legs around his neck, Muccino insists the audience take George at face value when he assures Stacie—while she’s at the final fitting for the dress she intends to wear while marrying Mr. Safe Choice, like, tomorrow—that she was always the only one for him. Playing for Keeps (which went into production under the title Playing the Field, and the disparity between the two says everything about the movie’s emotional dissonance you need to know) is knee deep in “don’t hate the player, hate the game” territory, no more so than when George nearly loses it all in the 11th hour because of the one woman he didn’t f*ck. -Slant

Yeah, but what about when he fights the giant spider in the third act? Yeesh, there’s just no pleasing some people.

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Here’s the trailer for Chasing Mavericks, starring Gerard Butler as an old salty surfer dude teaching his young padawan how to surf the mythical waves of Mavericks, a big-wave surf spot in Half Moon Bay that people didn’t really know about until the early nineties. Butler almost drowned shooting the movie, and must have balls like cinder blocks because I’d piss my pants just looking at a Mavericks wave, let alone getting in the water and actually trying to ride one. The other surfers would probably complain about all the crying. (Then again, there’s supposedly a smaller, inside break at Mavericks, which I hope was the one Butler was trying to surf).

Aaaaaanyway. The movie. You know how sometimes a movie’s dialog will sound more like the screenwriter pitching the movie than supposedly real people talking to each other? Yeah, it’s kind of like that.

“Have you ever felt like you were meant for something more?”

“That wave is a myth!”

“This is gonna change everything. -What if you’re wrong? -What if I’m right?”

“There are all kinds of sons, Rusty. Some are born to you. Some just occur to you.”

“This is about more than just surfing. It’s about finding that one thing in life that sets you free.”

Right, because when I think surfers, I think very verbose, I think articulate speakers, coherent, adept at metaphors… “It’s like I searched for the world’s biggest wave, and what I found was even bigger, you know? It’s like, maybe it wasn’t just the waves that were crashing around me, it was my life, you know?”