Dumbledore’s Corpse Eaten By Guinea Pigs, Potter Enslaved
Monday morning means box office. And a hot stateside Monday morning means US summer box office. Which means big, depressing numbers for big, depressing movies. Like G-Force, a Jerry Bruckheimer-produced sorta-animated movie about guinea pigs. Yes, guinea pigs.
1) G-Force — $US32.2. million
As we bemoaned earlier, the success of this film likely means that there will be many, many more awful animation/live-action hybrids to come. Oh, look! Here’s one already! The thing about these movies that’s really annoying is that because there are live action elements in them, the filmmakers seem to feel like, for some reason, they can be a bit more risque. Because, what?, adults are going to go because they want to see Jason Lee embarrass himself? Whatever the reasoning, it ends up with us having to see poop eating and stuff. Jokes that the classy Pixar and its classy-wannabes would never stoop to. Because animation is art. And live-action is everything else. So live-action/animation is… just pure shit. I mean poop. Eat it.
2) Harry Potter and the Dumbledore Dies — $US30 million
Not that this movie is doing bad or anything. It’s already grossed like $US220 million in the States, not to mention the foreign box office, but still… This thing couldn’t beat motherfucking G-Force? ‘Tis a sad day for Potterville. Maybe number six is just too dark. What with the gloom and emotions and turmoil and people dying and stuff. Good thing no one dies in the last bo—… Oh. Oh wait. Shit. I mean poop.
3) The Awful Truth — $US27 million
Even though this movie seems toxic and horrid, it still did pretty well. Even though Katherine Heigl has, somehow, squandered most of the good will she earned before/during/after Knocked Up, it still did pretty well. Even though Gerard Butler is nothing more than a poorly-accented talking leg of mutton, it still did pretty well. Even though John Michael Higgins and Cheryl Hines were crying all the way to the bank on this one, it still did pretty well. Even though there is no discernible reason why anyone, short of self-loathing masochists, would want to see this apparently dreadful “film”, it still actually did really well. Poop. I mean shit.
4) Orphan — $US12.8 million
DO NOT READ IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW THE SUPER SECRET SPOILER ENDING. But why wouldn’t you want to? Because it is awesome. Orphan is a movie about a secret dwarf who kills people. It is not about a creepy demon kid. It is not about a ghost possessing a child. It is not about a weird cult that pretends to be an orphanage. Nope. Orphan is about a secret hooker 33-year-old dwarf who kills people. It did pretty OK for a horror B-movie in the thick of gushy summer. A movie about a nearing-middle-age Estonian dwarf who kills people did pretty well against a movie about computer guinea pigs who solve crimes for real humans. SHIT.
11) (500) Days of Summer — $US1.63 million
Ohhh twee indie success! Though only open on less than a hundred screens, this gimmicky and highly cultivated feature is doing a nice, tidy little business. We here didn’t care for it as much as we hoped to. It just felt… way too forced. And really derivative (in a bad way) of the farrrrr superior Eternal Sunshine. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is like having a delicious chocolate-chip sundae talk to you, and other things look really pretty too, but as a whole it’s just a far more conventional film than it seems to think it is. (It clearly thinks very highly of itself. And, sadly, it shouldn’t.) Ah well. Good for it anyway.
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
@Imogen Quest (was Percy Bishounen Shelley): No shame here either. Nom nom nom nom.
Harry Potter still hasn't opened in most IMAX theaters, hence the drag this weekend and the almost-but-not-quite-record-breaking... opening. Once Transformers takes a hike and HP hits the IMAX screens this week, the numbers will probs show an upswing in week 3 over week 2.
@Slap Bet:
"Gross?" Actually, they're delicious with some rice and black beans on the side.
Traveling through the Andes, you see the locals cutting roadside grass to feed their guinea pigs. Because you feed them grass, cuy is a cheap source of protein up in the mountains.
But I will admit that I wish they'd remove their cute little heads before they put them on the plate.
@Smitros: Is this going to be a repeat of the Finding Nemo tragedy when millions of children flushed their fish to freedom? Except this time they will be dropping them out of planes with flimsily-constructed parachutes.
@thesurlyintern: Ditto. I wouldn't even mind if he grew that cute long hair back...
DahlELama
@Spirit Fingers: Re: G-Force: Thank you.
@Imogen Quest (was Percy Bishounen Shelley): I am sexually attracted to him and I totally watched 3rd Rock. Not sorry.
@power_stroke: Cuy are considered quite the delicacy in peru. In fact, they're often times the most expensive thing on the menu. gross
@TubOfTaft: Your mistake has set us up for brilliant box-office success: We'll make a series of movies for the kiddies starring the murderous magical meretricious guinea pig. Then, 15 years later, we'll use the old nostalgia gimmick to create a series of ironic and meta horror films in which the people from the original series are killed by the movies themselves. It'll be a big hit with twenty-somethings.
I'll give you 6 points on the back end if you can serve as the misplaced modifier consultant.
@kimsama: Oops, grammar fail. The pig hookers do the killing.
TubOfTaft
Is this really the last week of Richard's recaps? Because I'm not sure what I'm going to do without them. They're the only sanity I can think of in the "is Iron Man in it?" world in which we live.
Urbania
@smithhimself: Love of guinea pigs and love of tapas are not mutually exclusive. Ever been to Huacho?
power_stroke
@TubOfTaft: Will the movie kill people with magic, or will the guinea pig hooker? Please clarify so I can pitch this to a studio.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is like having a delicious chocolate-chip sundae talk to you
He is so pretty. Which makes me feel like an old perv, because I remember him on 3rd Rock from the Sun, but never mind.
Smithhimself enjoys his guinea pigs grilled or deep fried.
If G-Force has a second strong weekend, he's organizing a "cuye" party at his local Peruvian restaurant.
I'm eagerly anticipating next summer when a movie staring a guinea pig hooker kills people with magic. All in Disney Digital 3-D of course.
TubOfTaft
Remember, kids, real guinea pigs don't fly, and they're social animals who like to live with at least a few of their own kind.
Considering the trailer practically told you that Orphan was about a psycho dwarf, I don't think it's a spoiler. The trailer went out of its way to let you know this was some crazy twist that you would never guess, which actually made it quite easy to guess. If the girl isn't an apparition, and if she isn't a psycho kid, then she is obviously a psycho dwarf. I guess the hooker part is a fun addition, but some sort of mental/physical abuse was obviously implied. The only spoiler of this movie is its implication regarding Sarsgaard's career.
FaceMelter
Though I will most definitely not see The Awful Truth, I feel the need to defend Gerard Butler. There is nothing poor about a Scottish accent, and there's no way a talking leg of mutton could have carried 300.
This, my friends is G-Force. I have no idea what the whole hamster thing is. The only part that makes sense here is the whole poop thing, because in my experience that's what over sized rodents do, they poop. All the time. Everywhere. And if you don't clean their cages frequently, they smell like a 7th grade gym locker encasing trapped fart air. But yah, nice unsanitary pets for kids, I guess.
(Possible spoilers, if you care)
Orphan didn't suck quite as much as I thought it would. I will say that unfortunately Peter Sarsgaard was a shambling shame the whole movie. I usually love his twistedness, so I totally thought he was evil until his hairy, pasty, lackadaisical family-man bloat indicated surely that he would be felled somehow by the succubus in the lamest way possible. Done!
Spirit Fingers
@Private Hangnail: Aaww, nice kitteh!
@Private Hangnail: Whose breath smells like low tide at the end of the world.
That is beautiful.
Maybe because I live with a pet I don't understand the appeal of CGI animal films. For example, the charm of a sass talking gerbil is somewhat reduced by my actual 16 year-old cat, who sometimes craps on the floor and whose breath smells like low tide at the end of the world.