Those creepy pedophiles at Disney have done it again, as Hannah Montana and her hillbilly overbite had a huge $34 million win at the box office in what was Hollywood’s biggest Easter weekend ever. 4 Fast 4 Furious dropped 59% from last week’s record opening to land in number two, followed by Monsters vs. Aliens, Observe and Report, and Knowing (full top 10 after the jump).
Among this year’s releases, five films have already jumped the $100 million mark domestically vs. just one last year (”Horton Hears a Who”). The $100 million-plus club includes “Fast and Furious,” “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” ($143.2 million), “Monsters vs. Aliens” ($141 million), “Taken” ($140 million) and “Watchmen” ($105.9 million).
With “Observe and Report,” Rogen delivered his lowest opening outside of “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” which opened to $10.1 million last year on its way to cuming $31.5 million domestically. Warners said the R-rated film won’t be a financial loser since it was produced for less than $18 million. [Variety]
The beauty of Hannah Montana is its utter half-assedness. I can only imagine the pitch meeting. Okay, people, I need ideas! Let’s see… little girls seem to enjoy pretending that they’re celebrities. Anyone? Come on, no one has an idea? What about you, Evans? EVANS: Um…. how ’bout a show… about a little girl… …who’s a celebrity? (four-second silence) Evans, you’re a GENIUS!
THE END. They broke for lunch after that, because developing it any further would’ve just been extra work. Epilogue: Everything worked out and those guys got rich. I f*cking hate kids.
Opening this weekend:
Observe and Report, opening today from director Jody Hill, has been billed as “the Taxi Driver of mall cop movies.” (Whereas Paul Blart Mall Cop was more like the Big Momma’s House of mall cop movies). The question remains: is it any good? Relax, stupid, that’s what I’m gonna tell ya!
It might be an oversimplification to say that if you like Hill’s HBO series Eastbound and Down that you’ll like Observe and Report. The protagonists are similarly messed up and the tone is similar, but Danny McBride is a lot better at playing this kind of outrageous, over-the-top character. He and Will Ferrell might be the only two guys in Hollywood who’ve ever pulled it off. And that’s not a knock on Seth Rogen. In some ways it’s actually to his credit - he’s almost too believable to play a character so inconsistent.
Rogen plays a schlubby Travis Bickle - unstable, self-serious, loves power over others, lives with his mom, and is in love with the slutty pill-head makeup girl played by Anna Faris - a dead ringer for your sister. It’d probably be a waste to give you any more of the plot than that, except to say that the first half hour of this movie is truly atrocious. I like the f-word a lot more than most people, but that doesn’t make Seth Rogen and Aziz Ansari screaming “F*CK YOU!” “NO, F*CK YOU!” at each other for five minutes funny. It’s not. I’d rather get punched in the dick. After the slow start, the humor finally gets its panties off in the scene in which Rogen goes on a date with Faris, who single-handedly rescues the entire first half of the movie.
After the jump, I’ve got the red-band trailer for Observe and Report, a mall-cop comedy from Foot Fist Way director Jody Hill starring Seth Rogen and Anna Faris. It’s a real shame that Paul Blart came out earlier and stole their thunder, but not surprising considering it looks like in this one they at least bothered to write a script instead of just filming Kevin James’s pants falling down for two hours.
