Movie Box Review

FilmDistrict has gone out of its way to identify co-writer/co-producer Guillermo del Toro with DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK, to the extent that from the marketing, one could easily fail to realize that the movie is actually directed by first-timer Troy Nixey.   Fair enough:  del Toro has made it clear that although he's not in the director's chair, this is a passion project for him, a remake of the 1973 ABC TV movie that terrified him when he was young.  However, if del Toro wants the association, he also has to take the blame for a dull and not particularly scary horror B-movie.

There are a couple of critical differences between the movie del Toro's made and the one that frightened him.  For one thing, the ABC thriller was a brisk 73 minutes long, to fit a 90 minute timeslot with commercials.  For another, the protagonist of the TV movie was the adult Kim Darby, playing the wife of a couple that moves into a spooky old house, where Darby starts hearing the voices of... something... that lives in the walls.  In del Toro's version, the heroine is the young girl Sally (Bailee Madison, who was one of Jennifer Aniston's kids in Just Go With It).  Sally is the daughter of architect Alex (Guy Pearce), who is divorced from Sally's mother.  Mom (an unseen presence in the movie) has the child on Adderall and has decided that she can't raise the girl any more, so she's unceremoniously delivered Sally to live with Alex and his interior designer girlfriend Kim (Katie Holmes).  They're restoring an old mansion where something terrible once happened, and soon enough Sally is hearing the voices in the walls, who claim to be her friends.

The movie's focus on young Sally makes Don't Be Afraid feel like a low-grade rip-off of del Toro's own great Pan's Labyrinth (there's a scene of Sally wandering in the maze-like back garden that's like a Pan's outtake).  But where Pan was a brilliant mixture of fantasy, political allegory and terror, Don't Be Afraid has nothing on its mind but haunted-house cliches and cheap scares.  Which is another problem, because Don't Be Afraid has exactly one shock that works, and you've already seen it.  It's in all the trailers, and even the TV spots:  Sally peers deeper and deeper into the covers on her bed, the folds of the blankets moving aside ever so slowly and gradually, until BOO!--a creature jumps into close-up while the soundtrack shrieks.  (There's also one notably gross scene at the very beginning that likely singlehandedly won the picture its R rating.)  That bedcovers bit comes about halfway through the movie, and after that things get even less scary:  once del Toro makes the mistake of actually showing the creatures, (spoiler alert) they look like nothing so much as the pixies unleashed by Kenneth Branagh in the second Harry Potter movie. 

Don't Be Afraid has some of the bells and whistles of old-time haunted mansion movies:  the handyman (Jack Thompson) who knows more than he's saying, the important dinner party that you know won't go well, the crucial materials about the past that have to be tracked down in the local (and oddly luxurious) public library.  Much of this is unintentionally funny, and nothing more so than the mythology of the creatures, when we learn what that is (it's got something to do with a black market for teeth, approved by a Pope).  The letdown extends even to the very end, when the voices of the creatures reveal something that's meant to be far more chilling than it actually is.  

Del Toro is the one who contorted this picture so that it would be reminiscent of Pan's Labyrinth, and it was a bad idea in terms of craftsmanship as well as substance and tone, since the new picture is inferior in every way:  whoever was responsible for the movie's look, whether del Toro or Nixey or a combination, has come up with a production design that looks soundstage-bound and photography that's dank without being creepily enveloping.  The acting is no better.  Pearce seems completely unengaged, and Madison spends the whole movie looking glum and/or fearful.  Holmes is a more engaging presence, and her character had the most possibilities, but there just isn't enough meat in the script for her to have any impact.  

Even leaving behind Pan's Labyrinth or the original TV version of the story, the remade Don't Be Afraid of the Dark doesn't have any of the wit or originality of Insidious, the haunted house movie FilmDistrict released earlier this year to remarkable success.   Guillermo del Toro would have been better off preserving his memories by popping the old movie into his DVD whenever he felt the urge to relive his movie-watching youth.

The full extent of theatre closings and other Hurricane Irene-related events isn't yet known, so projections may be high at this point.

That being said, this was never going to be a good weekend at the boxoffice:  in late August, the studios don't open their heavy hitters.  What audiences there are continue to flock to THE HELP, which should go over $100M by the end of this week, and has little real competition for its target audience over the next several weekends.  The question that won't be answered for a few months is whether the picture will be able to keep enough momentum going to propel itself into serious awards contention.

None of the new releases this weekend will make a lot of cash, so success or failure will have more to do with their costs.  On that scale, OUR IDIOT BROTHER, despite its relatively lowly gross, may not be as big a failure as it seems:  The Weinstein Company paid $6M for distribution rights plus a marketing commitment of $15M, and if the film can eke its way to the $24M Mitch Metcalf predicts, there might be enough for a small profit, particularly because it has a very cable-TV-friendly cast.  

DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK, on the other hand, cost a reported $25M to produce, and FilmDistrict's marketing campaign probably wasn't smaller (and may have been larger) than Idiot's, putting it deeper in the hole.

As with most of the product produced by Luc Besson's company, COLOMBIANA's success will be largely based on its international results; its projected $28M US gross won't even bring it to breakeven.

All of the terrible 3D reboots from last weekend collapsed even further this time around:  don't look for further chapters in the CONAN THE BARBARIAN, SPY KIDS or FRIGHT NIGHT sagas.  ONE DAY didn't show any positive word of mouth either.

A few limited releases expanded this weekend and saw decent numbers.  SARAH'S KEY increased its theatre count by about 35% and held steady (meaning its per-theatre number slipped), while SENNA nearly doubled its count (still at only 34) and saw its total rise modestly, a similar result.

It's particularly important to note the effect of Irene on the new, very limited releases:  Vera Farmiga's excellent HIGHER GROUND was looking to gross $13K or so at each of its 3 theatres, but 2 of those theatres are in Manhattan, and if they're closed or deserted, that will obviously have a serious effect on the weekend total.  Similarly, the very good CIRCUMSTANCE, about rebelling teens in Iran, was headed to a good $8K or so in each of 6 theatres, but half of those are in the NY area. 

Labor Day is historically the one holiday weekend when Americans don't go to the movies, and consequently, 2 cheap horror movies lead the pack with APOLLO 18 and SHARK NIGHT 3D.  Also, Focus had a minor success last Labor Day with a Wednesday opening for THE AMERICAN, so they're going to try the same slot for THE DEBT, another international action film.  But without George Clooney in the lead--and with the probability of blah reviews for a movie that's been sitting on the shelf for a year--they may not duplicate that feat.

UPDATE:  The Reporter has some early Friday numbers, and the storm's effect can already be seen at the boxoffice.  THE HELP seems likely to win the weekend as expected, but with a lower-than anticipated $12-13M.  COLOMBIANA was in second on Friday, heading for a weekend of perhaps $10M.  DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK and RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES could follow with around $8M each, slightly ahead of OUR IDIOT BROTHER with about $7M.  Of course, extrapolations of Friday numbers to the weekend are more difficult than usual because of the uncertainty surrounding Hurricane Irene, so those numbers may well shift as the weekend continues.



The effect of Hurricane Irene on movie boxoffice this weekend is, of course, the least of the devastation the storm could cause.  Nevertheless, several Hollywood studios seem likely to be part of the collateral damage over the next few days.  The Hollywood Reporter says that Clearview Cinemas is shutting all its theatres (which cover the Philadelphia to NY area, including Manhattan's flagship Ziegfeld Theatre) for the weekend, while AMC will be closed in the Virginia, Baltimore and DC areas on Saturday, and additional closings on Sunday may well follow the storm as it moves north.  Regal Cinemas, the largest chain in the country, is also considering closings.  

One estimate has the boxoffice declining 10-20% for the weekend due to the storm.  Hardest hit will be Sony, The Weinstein Company and FilmDistrict, with their openings of Colombiana, Our Idiot Brother and Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, respectively (those numbers were expected to be weak anyway--see Mitch Metcalf's weekend boxoffice predictions); the holdover business for Dreamworks/Disney's The Help, which was expected to win the weekend, will also likely be affected.

Stay with SHOWBUZZDAILY all weekend for updates about the weekend boxoffice and how it's being affected by Irene.

For a movie from the Luc Besson House of Action, COLOMBIANA is surprisingly listless and dispirited.  Besson first came to prominence as a director, with pictures like Subway and The Big Blue to his credit; then in 1990, he hit the jackpot with La Femme Nikita, which not only became a genre unto itself (spawning a US remake and at least 2 TV series), but led to Besson's far more profitable career as a producer.  His EuropaCorp is behind over 100 movies, including such hits as the Transporter series, Taken, and District B13, which reliably combine reasonable budgets, high-octane action and international elements for fairly consistent global success.  (As a director, Besson's work is more wide-ranging, and includes action pictures like The Professional and The Fifth Element, the black-and-white art film Angel A, the family animations of the Arthur series, and historical epics like the Joan of Arc flop The Messenger; his latest film The Lady, a 2 1/2 hour biography of Burmese political activist Aung San Suu-Kyi, premieres at the Toronto Film Festival next month.)

Colombiana fits comfortably within the EuropaCorp subgenre of trained-assassin-seeks-revenge (aka This Time It's Personal), but there's something off about it.  The picture gets off to a good start, with 9 year old Cataleya (played by Amandia Stenberg; her character is named after an orchid that figures into the plot) enduring the sight of her parents killed before her eyes by evil Marco (Jordi Molla).  She makes a fairly dazzling escape laced with parkour stuntwork, and calmly, singlemindedly, does whatever it takes to make her way to the US and her gangster uncle Emilio (Cliff Curtis).  Then 15 years pass, and Cataleya grows up into the unexpectedly dull Zoe Saldana, who looks amazing--although so thin that one wants to see her eat a pizza or a Ring Ding--but hasn't the faintest whiff of a personality beyond the grim, dogged desire to avenge her family.  (Deadpan humor, a quality Saldana seems to lack, is an underrated asset in this violent genre; one of the reasons people like Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis and Jason Statham--not to mention Angelina Jolie--have done so well over the years is that they carry a self-mocking air with them into battle.)

The movie's plot (the script is by Besson and longtime collaborator Robert Mark Kamen) is both overcomplicated and nonsensical:  it assumes that even though Cataleya's enemies have been moved to the US by the CIA, the most efficient way for her to track them down is to become a professional hitwoman and slaughter dozens of people they know in addition to the hits she's hired to do.  The murders, too, are overelaborate, with killings by pet shark and slithery intrusions via heating duct. (Can we have a moratorium on the heating duct route into impossible-to-enter locations, by the way?  Die Hard was 23 years ago, and the device is officially tired.)  Meanwhile, on the off-days when she isn't killing people, Catalaya has an excruciatingly boring romance with Danny (Michael Vartan), a sensitive aspiring artist--of course--who isn't allowed to ask her any questions about herself.

After that first burst of action, the movie doesn't liven up again until its last reel, when Cataleya finally finds the villains who killed her family.  She has an exciting, Bourne-influenced fight with Marco at close quarters that gets the pulse racing for a bit, but even then the picture follows it by dispatching another foe with a lazy and contrived call-back to a gag from earlier in the movie, and then it still won't roll end credits until we have to suffer through another Vartan scene. 

Colombiana was directed by Olivier Megaton (the name is a nom de film), who previously helmed Transporter 3 for Europa; although he handles the set-piece action sequences well enough, he doesn't race quickly enough through the storyline, unwisely allowing us to register its silliness and the flatness of the dialogue; aside from Curtis and Lennie James as a canny FBI agent, he doesn't get much from the actors, either. 

We don't expect much from a movie like Colombiana, but a fast pace and a likable lead are indispensable.  Colombiana doesn't have either of these, and despite the high body count, it's mostly a yawn.  Without a doubt, though, Luc Besson and his EuropaCorp assembly line are already busily churning out next year's product to lure our ticket dollars.

OUR IDIOT BROTHER - Watch It At Home:  Sitcom On A Big Screen

Although it premiered at Sundance, OUR IDIOT BROTHER was an "independent film" only in a technical sense:  it was produced on a relatively low budget and didn't have US distribution in place.  (Harvey Weinstein picked it up at the Festival.)  Its sensibility is firmly mainstream, and certainly its cast--Paul Rudd, Zooey Deschanel, Elizabeth Banks, Rashida Jones--could have and frequently do star in major studio productions.  It's easily the mildest and friendliest of the summer's R-rated comedies.  (If you're in NY or LA and want to see a true independent film this weekend, seek out Vera Farmiga's remarkable directing debut Higher Ground, which will be opening in very limited release.)

In a different era, you'd call Ned (Rudd), the hero of Brother, a holy idiot.  These days, he's a stoner.  Ned lives with his girlfriend (Kathryn Hahn) and his dog Willie Nelson in upstate NY, farming organically and selling a little weed.  As you know from the TV spots, Ned is such a nice guy that when a local cop (in uniform) says he's having a tough week and could use a few joints, Ned sells them to him--and goes to jail.  Once free, he's turned away by his girlfriend (that's OK, but she also keeps his dog), and Ned's family has no choice but to reluctantly take him in. 

Ned's sisters are schematically as Type A and cynical as Ned is dozy and trusting.  Miranda (Banks) is a junior Vanity Fair writer who's so busy scheming to get ahead that she doesn't notice the love interest (Adam Scott) under her nose; Liz (Emily Mortimer) is obsessed with keeping her children letter-perfect and blind to the blatant affair her documentarian husband (Steve Coogan) is having; Natalie (Deschanel) acts self-destructively instead of committing to her true love (Rashida Jones).  The women pass Ned from one to the next, which conveniently allows him to cheerfully and negligently mess up all their lives, mostly just by being himself--but of course when he's done, they all wind up happier and more fulfilled than they'd been before. 

There's never much doubt where Our Idiot Brother is going, but getting there is a loose, enjoyable ride.  (In Sundance, the movie had an oddly curt last minute that didn't quite send people out with the smiles they were led to expect, and Harvey Weinstein has remedied that.)  The movie has a genuinely sweet sensibility (the film itself is a family affair, directed by Jesse Peretz and well-written by his own sister Evgenia Peretz and her husband David Schisgall), and even the most obnoxious character--that would probably be Coogan's--is allowed to score some laughs.  Everyone in the cast is great company; no one particularly stretches or showcases new skills, but they interact with assurance and what seems to be great affection for one another.  As director, Peretz makes a solid recovery from The Ex, which could never reconcile its sitcom tone with a plot that needed to be darker.  Here Peretz commits completely to positivity, and the result is buoyant.

Our Idiot Brother is by far the most pleasant movie of the weekend, and sight unseen, one is willing to wager that it's a better time than the low-rent action movie (Colombiana) and horror thriller (Don't Be Afraid of the Dark) that are its wide-release competition.  On the other hand, would you feel awful if you waited a few months and got it from your Netflix queue?  A Ned-like amiable shrug is the appropriate response:  Whatever you feel, man.

There's not much to add about the weekend grosses that hasn't been said (see Mitch Metcalf's round-up report here), so let's take a look at who, apart from the studios themselves, did and didn't have a fun weekend:

Women of THE HELP:  Emma Stone isn't likely to get Oscar consideration for her performance, being the "White Actress in an African-American Story" (for a particularly egregious example of this criticism, see Patrick Goldstein's column today--as a rule of thumb, if you have to cite Armond White as back-up for your argument, you may want to rethink the debate).  But she's still the biggest name in a smash hit, and her supporting role in the sleeper CRAZY STUPID LOVE doesn't hurt either--assuming that the Spider-Man reboot doesn't go splat next summer, she'll have as much claim as anyone to the currently vacant title of America's Sweetheart.  Meanwhile, Viola Davis has a big decision to make:  campaign for the Oscar as Best Actress (which she might not win, but just being nominated could bring her to a new level in the industry) or Supporting (where she would have a serious chance at victory)?  Her decision will directly impact co-star Octavia Spencer, who has a much better chance of making the cut in Supporting with Davis in the leading category.  (There's also the chance Sissy Spacek could pull a Supporting nomination for her tasty little role as Bryce Dallas Howard's mother, but probably not--see "White Actress in an African-American Story," above.)  Not in the same gender pool but still a Winner is director Tate Taylor, who went from being utterly unknown to the man behind a giant success, without having to direct music videos or make a stop at Sundance.

Expanders:  Several limited releases widened their runs this weekend with generally good results.  SARAH'S KEY made $3900 at each of 201 theatres; THE GUARD did $5200 at 83; THE WHISTLEBLOWER, $3200 at 44; and SENNA, $12K at 14.  (THE FUTURE did less well, with $2K at 32.) 

Andy Serkis:  He probably won't get that Oscar nomination for his motion-capture performance as Caesar the chimp.  But when Fox starts its campaign on his behalf, no one will be laughing.

Avi Lerner:  You may never have heard of him, but he's produced 243 movies for his Nu Image and Millenium studios, most of them proud--and often profitable--pieces of low-budget schlock.  (Righteous Kill?  The Nicolas Cage remake of The Wicker Man?  Those were his.)  He had a breakout hit last year with The Expendables, and this year CONAN THE BARBARIAN was supposed to provide him with his first real franchise, at an expensive-for-him cost of $70-90M.  Now the movie will have to hope for huge overperformance overseas just to break even (although no doubt Lerner's own investment is covered by pre-release guarantees, from distributors who may not be his biggest fans today).

Bob Weinstein:  His Dimension genre brand was supposed to fund brother Harvey's swings for the Oscar fences.  But this week's disastrous reboot of SPY KIDS follows the disastrous reboot of Scream earlier this year; coming soon is another "found footage" horror movie with Apollo 18, and then a second chapter in the Piranha series, which didn't do all that well ($25M) the first time.

Anne Hathaway:  Remember that currently-vacant position of America's Sweetheart?  It wasn't so long ago that the job seemed Hathaway's for the taking, but the past year or so hasn't gone so well.  It's not that Hathaway is giving bad performances, or even choosing terrible movies (Love and Other Drugs was a tonal mess, but still entertaining, and One Day is a respectable failure)--she just seems to be pushing too hard, nowhere more so than during her painful-to-watch Oscar gig.  The Dark Knight Rises isn't likely to do much more for her than previous installments did for Katie Holmes or Maggie Gyllenhaal (odds are that Tom Hardy will be the movie's Heath Ledger and she'll be Aaron Eckhart), but that's OK as long as her Catwoman doesn't actually hurt the picture.

Colin Farrell:  After paying some dues with his fine performances in little films like In Bruges, Crazy Heart and Ondine, Fright Night was supposed to be Farrell's first step back to commercial viability--but even with good reviews, it turned out no one cared.  Up next is the much more expensive remake of Total Recall, whose producers can't be feeling too comfortable now that this week's Conan reboot fell flat on its face.

Openers:  Nothing much was happening in the arthouses this weekend.  John Sayles' AMIGO could only muster $4K per theatre in 10 despite guest appearances from Sayles and the actors, and MOZART'S SISTER wasn't much better with $4700 in each of 7.  The one seeming exception is misleading:  Kevin Smith's RED STATE pulled in $26K in a single LA theatre as part of its Oscar-qualifying week (it seems the picture, despite its massive Sundance hoopla, is going to VOD next month and may never have a conventional theatrical release), but that number was boosted by a Q&A with the motormouth maestro at every show.

THE HELP will be the year's first "serious" movie to gross over $100M.  September is traditionally one of the softest months on the movie release calendar, and 2011 is no exception:  although there are a few promising arrivals like Steven Soderbergh's Contagion and the film adaptation of  Moneyball, the major openings (they hope) include vehicles for Sarah Jessica Parker and Taylor Lautner, and not much else.  Propelled by massive word of mouth, The Help could play strongly all through the month.  

Although the new Oscar rules for Best Picture nominations are nearly impenetrable (we don't even know how many nominees there will be, somewhere between 5-10), The Help is certainly a possible factor.  Much more likely are nominations in acting and the visual categories like Production Design.  Oscar credentials will be very important to the film, because without them, its subject matter will place it in tough sledding overseas; even without international interest, though, the movie's $25M cost (plus moderate marketing) makes it a hit already.

After that, and aside from the continued strength of RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (another movie benefiting from the weak August competition), the news is all bad.  Even though FRIGHT NIGHT and SPY KIDS:  ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD were modestly budgeted, their marketing costs were still at least $25-30M domestically, and they'll be lucky if their US grosses even exceed those numbers.  Even worse is CONAN THE BARBARIAN, which cost upward of $70M plus marketing; the financiers will need huge international business just to break even (Lionsgate only controls US rights, for which they reportedly paid $25M plus marketing--they'll be looking at red ink too).    

Similarly, the horribly reviewed ONE DAY (I had my own problems with it, but really it's not that terrible), despite a production cost of only $15M and relatively minimal marketing, will have to hope for a big response in the UK (where the story is set) to have any chance at breaking even.  

It's not as though people were rushing out to limited releases, either.  Despite very strong reviews, neither AMIGO nor THE HEDGEHOG is likely to do more than $5-6K per theatre in either of their small runs, and GRIFF THE INVISIBLE won't even get to $2K.

Next weekend, more of the same, although there's a welcome absence of shoddy 3D, and at least one of the openings is actually good:  OUR IDIOT BROTHER, a fun ensemble comedy acquired by Harvey Weinstein at Sundance.  It's joined by the somewhat buzzy horror movie DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK (produced by Guillermo del Toro), which was delayed when Disney got out of the Miramax business and is now with FilmDistrict (they had a notable horror success earlier this year with Insidious);  and Zoe Saldana in COLOMBIANA, from the Luc Besson international action-movie factory--you always know it's late summer when one of his movies shows up on the schedule. 

Stay with SHOWBUZZDAILY for full weekend boxoffice and Mitch Metcalf's analysis, as well as international grosses as soon as they're available.

We've gotten used to elections being called the moment the polls close, and now weekend boxoffice analysis begins while tickets are still being sold.  The Hollywood Reporter has fast Friday numbers, and they show a tightly bunched pack, with THE HELP, RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, CONAN THE BARBARIAN, FRIGHT NIGHT and SPY KIDS:  ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD grossing $4-5.5M for the day.  This kind of result favors Apes (perhaps $15M for the weekend) and especially The Help ($18-19M) over Saturday and Sunday, because movies tend to be much less front-loaded after their opening weekends are over.  Spy Kids, too, may benefit from matinee business on Saturday, and get to $14-15M, while Conan ($13-14M) and Fright Night ($12-13M) are more likely to dip after today. 

ONE DAY is described as described as "starting off slow," and considering that the picture is in a half-hearted release of 1700 theatres and was expected only to make $6M or so for the weekend, one wonders just how soft that number is.

The new remake of Tom Holland's 1985 FRIGHT NIGHT has a great set of credentials.  Craig Gillespie, the director, was behind the well-regarded indie Lars and the Real Girl, and has since been house director of United States of Tara for Showtime.  The cast includes Anton Yelchin, about to make a big splash in the wonderful Sundance prize-winner Like Crazy, along with Colin Farrell, the very talented young British actress Imogen Poots, David Tennant, and Gillespie's Tara star Toni Collette.  And most notably, the new script is by Marti Noxon, who cut her--sorry--teeth on the classic Buffy the Vampire Slayer and has since worked on shows like Angel, Mad Men and Grey's Anatomy.

And with all that, mostly it's just another crappy horror movie with a supposed comic edge. Holland's picture (which grossed only $25M in 1985, so this is hardly a grab for the riches of a lucrative franchise) was an arch, even campy black comedy in which Charley (William Ragsdale), obsessed with horror movies and lore, came to realize that his new next door neighbor Jerry (Chris Sarandon) was actually a vampire, and enlisted the services of Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowell), host of the local low-rent, late-night horror TV show, to bring him down.  

That basic outline is still the plot of the remake, but there are quite a few shifts in detail and emphasis.  Most of the changes seem to stem from the idea of resetting the tale from the midwest to Las Vegas, which was a promising concept--a city that truly never sleeps--but because (for budget reasons, no doubt) the movie was actually shot in New Mexico, Vegas as a physical location plays virtually no part in the picture.  This time, Jerry (Farrell) isn't an old-world Dracula type like Sarandon; he's a contemporary douchebag who supposedly works construction on the strip, wearing tight t-shirts--Charley's mom (Collette) and even his girlfriend (Poots) can't help themselves from leering at him.  Peter Vincent (Tennant) is now the star of a campy, but higher-scale, horror-themed stage show at the Hard Rock Hotel.   Meanwhile, Charley (Yelchin) is now more of a post-nerd guy who, for reasons even the movie doesn't understand, has a hot, compassionate girlfriend, and he spends the first part of the movie not believing the vampire story at all, despite the efforts of his former pal Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) to convince him.

You can see how all of this may have pitched well:  in these Jersey Shore days, the idea of a douchebag vampire could have been fun, and Charley, dumping his own friend for the sake of popularity and hovering on the edge of becoming a douche himself, could have been a complex match for Jerry.  In the movie, though, with its imperatives of getting to the 3D bloodshed, very little of this is developed.  Yelchin basically does his best Shia LaBeouf as Charley, and the movie turns into Suburbia with fangs. Farrell has some really good moments as Jerry--he's scary and funny as he preens in front of Collette and Poots, and when he hovers just outside Jerry's doorway, frustrated not to be invited in--but the script betrays him by turning Jerry into a crazy killing machine much too early on.  Tennant livens things up as Peter Vincent (he's basically doing Russell Brand in Get Him to the Greek), although even he can't do much with an extraordinarily clumsy chunk of exposition late in the story that's supposed to explain why he's helping Charley.  Poots, who's given very interesting performances in indie movies like Cracks and Solitary Man, is here just "the girl."  And although Collette grounds her mom character nicely, it's hard to see what she's doing in the movie, other than as a favor to Gillepsie.  

The movie is badly constructed even as a genre piece.  Apart from the sloppy vampire mythology, which introduces a late gadget into the story just to ensure a happy ending, all the set-piece action sequences go on forever, and at 106 minutes, the picture feels 15 minutes too long.  Gillespie has no particular feel for atmosphere or pace beyond the obvious quiet-quiet-quiet-BANG of horror cliches, and the picture is never at all scary.  There's nothing notable about the picture technically, either:  vampire movies aren't really ideal for 3D, since by definition, they tend to take place in the dark and the dim 3D image makes things even murkier; it's hard to tell whether Javier Aguirresarobe's photography ever had any distinction. 

In an era where we're inundated with vampire stories, a new entry in the genre really has to take some chances to make a mark.  (And if it does, as with last year's Let Me In, the audience may reject it.)  Fright Night sounded like it might be one of those, but it's just another late-summer grab for ticket sales, part of the August/September low-budget horror fest.  Next week's entry:  Don't Be Afraid of the Dark.  

What went wrong with ONE DAY?  It's been clear for a while that its studio, Focus Features, didn't have great confidence in the film:  first  they postponed the opening from its original midsummer date to late August (which has turned out to be an even worse destination than it appeared, now that it's facing the surprise smash The Help), and then it was withheld from critics until 3 days before hitting theaters--the same treatment given to Conan the Barbarian.  

All this came as an enormous surprise as it unfolded, because when the movie was being made, it seemed like the filmmakers were doing everything right.  They allowed David Nicholls, author of the best-selling and well-liked novel, to write his own adaptation; hired Lone Scherfig, fresh off the acclaimed An Education, to direct; and as the two leads, they cast Anne Hathaway, who's as talented as she is successful (an American, but that's not an insuperable problem), and Jim Sturgess,  a fast-rising British leading man.  And yet....

One Day, novel and film, is based around a narrative gimmick:  it introduces the protagonists Emma and Dexter (Hathaway and Sturgess) on July 15, 1988, the day they both graduated from college and had an almost-one-night-stand that turned into a friendship, and follows their story by presenting a snapshot of their lives on each July 15 that follows, all the way to the present (it turns out that the date has more significance than was at first evident, but to say any more would be a spoiler).  Although Dex and Em become best friends, they drive each other crazy (Emma's feelings for Dex aren't requited; Dex is such a shallow narcissist that he barely seems to have feelings at all) and are often apart over the years, each with career and romantic trajectories that rise and fall.  The novel provides a social history of life over the past two decades even as it builds up the portraits of its protagonists, and also has more than a little to say about the process of getting older and facing one's life in the real world. 

The film is, in a technical sense, a faithful adaptation of the book, in that it mostly follows the general events and storyline of the novel.   But it doesn't even come close to working in the way it's supposed to; it's limp and uninvolving, with no momentum.  A great deal of the problem turns out to be the very thing that made the book stand out in the first place:  its narrative scheme.  Even though each episode of the novel takes place on a single day per year, the nature of prose fiction is that Nicholls is easily able to go into the heads of the characters to present events that led up to that day and how their thoughts and feelings have evolved over the preceding year.  The movie, which squeezes the decades-long story into 106 minutes, can't do the same, and the result is that not only is the structure schematic, but most of the episodes are schematic too, loaded with exposition and having the feel of free-standing one-act sketches.  So much background's been cut that everything happening in the characters' professional careers feels arbitrary, and there's no nuance to them as people.

Added to this is the sad fact that there's no romantic chemistry at all between Hathaway and Sturgess.  Every time Emma and Dexter are together, they might as well have just been introduced; the emotional bond between them that's essential to pull the episodes together is absent.  The result is disastrous for the leads.  Hathaway doesn't give a bad performance as such, but until the film's last half-hour, Emma is defined almost totally by her pathetic love-lorn feelings for Dex--she's drained of almost all other emotions and relationships, and it makes her seem bland and borderline annoying (Hathaway's English accent is inconsistent and anonymous, which doesn't help).  Romola Garai, in a much smaller role that doesn't begin until the story's second half, gets more shading as a character than Hathaway does.  As for Sturgess, he's now starred in several major films (21, Across the Universe, The Way Back), and although his performances have been perfectly professional in all of them, he's yet to make a really striking impression.  He's never believable as a self-centered, insensitive man or someone out of control here--even when Dex is at his nastiest, Sturgess still seems like a nice guy--and thus his character's arc provides little satisfaction. 

In all the superficial ways, One Day is beautifully made.  Scherfig and cinematographer Benoit Delhomme have bathed the film in gorgeous light (even when the characters are living in shabby near-poverty), and there's a lovely score by Rachel Portman.  Barney Pilling's editing no doubt does what it was intended to do, which is to move briskly from one episode to the next  The production, hair and make-up, and costume design mostly do a fine job of shifting along the decades without becoming cartoonish.  Everything is there on screen, except the pieces that are most crucial.

One Day, with all its flaws, has an intelligence and skill that isn't evident in many Hollywood romances, but it lacks charm and passion.  It's a wan disappointment, a romance that doesn't linger even for a day in the mind or heart.

With Monday and Tuesday numbers in, here are some notes about how the new arrivals are holding up:

THE HELP continues its impressive run:  its $8.3M on Monday-Tuesday represents a very robust 32% of its weekend total.  All signs continue to point to a strong second weekend hold, especially since early reviews for its direct competitor ONE DAY are fairly disastrous, running at only 28% positive on RottenTomatoes.

FINAL DESTINATION 5, on the other hand, has weekday numbers of $3.9M, a measly 22% of its $18M weekend.  Not unusually for its genre, it should flame out quickly--which would potentially leave the way clear for Dreamworks/Disney's FRIGHT NIGHT, if anyone cared that that movie exists.  (The studio has scheduled "Sneak Peek" screenings of the latter film around 9PM Thursday night, in an effort to build word of mouth for those who can't be roused for a midnight show.)

30 MINUTES OR LESS is holding better in a percentage sense, with $3.7M equaling 28% of its weekend--but at those numbers, even a good hold won't mean much.  Its main competition this weekend is CONAN THE BARBARIAN, a movie which while only at 44% on RottenTomatoes, doesn't care much about its reviews.

In the same boat as 30 Minutes only more so (less so?) is GLEE 3D, whose $1.6M is 27% of its weekend as it heads to oblivion.  Supplanting it in the hearts of young viewers this weekend will be SPY KIDS:  ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD, billed as being in "4D" because it features odors as well as objects protruding from the screen.  The Weinstein Company seems to have little interest in showing this one to critics.

Now that THE HELP has opened about as well as Dreamworks/Disney could have hoped, the next goal is a 2d weekend decline of around 40%.  That would match the hold of Julie & Julia, and would make a $100M gross for Help very realistic.  The film's only direct competition next weekend is the seemingly wan ONE DAY (which is only in around 1600 theatres, among other things).

The FINAL DESTINATION series would be over (or pre-reboot, as we might as well called discarded franchises these days) except that foreign results are more important than domestic here, and those numbers aren't in yet.

We'll see how the numbers play out, but right now, Sony is claiming the lowest Sunday decline for any movie in the Top 10, in what appears to be a desperately sad attempt to get 30 MINUTES OR LESS above a lousy $13M for its opening weekend.

The only notable new limited release was SENNA with a very nice $35K in each of 2 theatres, but there were a slew of expansions from slightly older films.  None of them seem hugely promising, but some did better than others (all numbers are per-theatre):  SARAH'S KEY $4600 in 101, THE GUARD $5900 in 47, THE DEVIL'S DOUBLE $2800 in 89, ANOTHER EARTH $1800 in 82, THE WHISTLEBLOWER $5100 in 22, and ATTACK THE BLOCK $2500 in 40.  Considering that even Final Destination 5 averaged $5800 in over 3000 theatres this weekend, there don't seem to be any potential breakout hits in this group.

Stay with SHOWBUZZDAILY for international numbers as soon as they're available later today, and Mitch Metcalf's report on this weekend's actual grosses tomorrow.

Deadline has preliminary numbers for Saturday and the weekend, and any worries that THE HELP would suffer from front-loading are out the window.  Rather amazingly, the picture seems to have climbed more than 25% from Friday to Saturday, and it seems likely to get near $25M for the weekend and $35M since its opening on Wednesday.  DreamWorks/Disney's seemingly odd decision to open the movie in the dead of August is looking pretty damn smart right now.

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES should still win the weekend with about $26.5M, representing a good second weekend decline of a bit over 50%.  As expected, FINAL DESTINATION 5 took a Saturday hit, and may not get to $18M for the weekend, while 30 MINUTES OR LESS held about even and is still headed for a meager $13M.  Saddest of all is GLEE 3D, which turned out not just to be a flop, but a front-loaded one:  it seems to have plummeted more than 35% from Friday to Saturday, making for a pathetic $5.5M weekend.  (Is the Gleek audience starting to suffer from Glee overload?  Suddenly the TV series ratings for the new season don't seem like a certainty.)

Stay with SHOWBUZZDAILY for Mitch Metcalf's full weekend report and analysis in the morning, and international numbers as soon as they're available.

FINAL DESTINATION 5 - Watch It At Home:  Death Takes No Holiday

There's only one thing worth mentioning in FINAL DESTINATION 5... and it's the one thing I can't talk about.  Let's just say that if you've been a follower of the series all along, the filmmakers (whether it was screenwriter Eric Heisserer or the producers) have come up with an ending so ingeniously satisfying that all things considered, it should mark the end of the franchise--but that would happen only if the movie flops.

Apart from that, Final 5 is more of the same.  You know the drill:  a group of deeply uninteresting characters is on its way to a grisly shared death, when one has a premonition and saves them all at the last moment.  Death, feeling cheated, then eliminates them one by one, mostly by means of lengthy, complicated "accidents" involving ordinary objects, but with a few sudden attacks just to keep the audience on its toes.  In the end, anyone who thought they were safe turns out not to be.  

Final 5, like its immediate predecessor, is in 3D, which means more impalings, spurting blood and flying body parts than usual.  The director, Steven Quale, has worked as a crew member and Assistant Director for years with James Cameron, and while he has no particular sense of visual style or skill with actors, he knows how to make things leap at the camera, and keep things moving (the movie is technically 95 minutes, but that includes extended opening and closing credits sequences).

For those who care about the specifics of the plot, this time the disaster escaped by our leads is a fairly spectacular (if somewhat tacky-looking) bridge collapse, and rather than high school or college students, the survivors are co-workers at an anonymous company.  There's a cute intern who does gymnastics (watch out!), a womanizer who decides to try acupuncture (bad idea!), a cool chick considering Lasik for her bad vision (keep the glasses!), and our hero is an aspiring chef, who doesn't seem to realize that all those blades and cooking oil in a restaurant kitchen can be bad for one's health.  The token authority figures are Courtney B. Vance as a cop--he must have had a mortgage payment due--and Tony Todd in his recurring role as a sinister coroner.  None of the performers have the opportunity to do much acting (their names this time are Nicholas D'Agosto, Emma Bell, David Koechner, Miles Fisher, Ellen Wroe, PJ Byrne, Arlen Escarpeta and Jacqueline MacInnes Wood)--like porn stars, they're basically meat, each one on screen to play his or her part in a particular set-piece.

Final Destination has always been a fairly curious franchise, basically a blackly comic collection of slaughters presented for our amusement--without even a villain who can himself be harmed.  There's never been anything particularly scary or suspenseful about the movies, and even the deaths are so cartoonish that they aren't shocking on any realistic level.   This fifth installment isn't any different--except for that ending.  Have to give them credit for coming up with that.

Let's take a look at just how remarkably THE HELP is performing so far.  

The most obvious points of comparison are the literary-sourced, female-skewing hits of the last 2 Augusts:  Julie & Julia in 2009, and last year's Eat Pray Love.  Julia had a $20M opening that led to a $94M domestic gross; Eat was a little more front-loaded, with a $23M start on its way to an $80M total.  The Help will beat Julia's opening and has a fair chance of surpassing both of them--but only Help came to Friday with $10M already in the bank thanks to its Wednesday opening, which doesn't seem to have dampened its weekend at all.  Also, while both Julia and Eat were escapist entertainments, with easily promotable subjects like gourmet food and fabulous foreign locations (along with stars like Meryl Streep, Amy Adams and Julia Roberts), The Help is a serious period piece about the Civil Rights era that features Emma Stone only as part of an ensemble of mostly African-American actresses.    (These factors, however, may be more serious hindrances overseas, where Help is more likely to echo Julia's $35M boxoffice than Eat's lofty $124M.)  Oh, and Help's budget is $25M, far below Julia's $40M and Eat's $60M.

DreamWorks seems to have captured the audience that Lionsgate was hoping to get last year with Tyler Perry's For Colored Girls:  a combination of African-American and arthouse crowds.  It's very hard to tell how this will play out over time, as the African-American audience is notoriously front-loaded (as has been the case with all of Perry's movies), while arthouses are exactly the opposite.  In any case, The Help faces little direct competition over the next several weeks:  just One Day next Friday (which Focus has been oddly shy about marketing), Sarah Jessica Parker's I Don't Know How She Does It on September 16, and then on a more general prestige-movie level, Moneyball the following week.

Along with the immediate financial return, the success of The Help should help give it credence in the march to year-end awards--although this gets complicated.  DreamWorks has a little movie called War Horse on its way from studio patriarch Steven Spielberg, and that film will almost certainly get the lion's share of the Best Picture push.  However, War Horse is less likely to be in contention for performance awards, so the way is clear for DreamWorks to push Help's cast for Best Actress and Supporting Actress.  The question, though, will be:  who in which category?  This is especially important for Viola Davis, who would probably be the early frontrunner for Supporting Actress right now, but arguably is as much the lead in Help as Emma Stone--however, if Davis chooses to campaign for Actress, she'll face competition like Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady.  

Of course, these are high-class problems to have.

The rest of the Friday numbers are far less interesting.  RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES had a perfectly decent hold, but one that feels a little soft given its supposedly excellent word of mouth. The flop of 30 MINUTES OR LESS demonstrates that Jesse Eisenberg and Aziz Ansari aren't yet boxoffice draws, and that (especially combined with Your Highness earlier this year) Danny McBride is at best a cult figure who puts off as many people as he attracts.  FINAL DESTINATION 5 will probably top out at about $50M, but the big question is how it will do overseas, where the last chapter in the franchise almost doubled its US gross.  And GLEE 3D won't make any profit (unless it scores a hit on homevideo), but serves as an infomercial for the TV series mothership.

A quiet week for limited releases, with the documentary SENNA pulling in the only opening of any note, a very solid $30-35K in each of its 2 theatres.  

When they talk about the dog days of summer, next weekend is what they mean.  Along with the previously mentioned and curiously unpublicized ONE DAY (starring Anne Hathaway, based on a high-quality, best-selling novel--where's the buzz?), we get not one, not two, but three 3D reboots of pictures that weren't all that good the first time:  CONAN THE BARBARIAN, FRIGHT NIGHT and SPY KIDS.  A good weekend to go to the beach, or catch up on your DVR queue.

The Hollywood Reporter has some extremely early Friday numbers, and it appears that RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES had a very healthy day with $8.5-9M, which could double its $4.3M Thursday.  If that number holds, it should lead to a $25M+ weekend, which would be a very acceptable 55% or so drop from its opening.

THE HELP, on its smaller scale, is also doing quite well, aiming at about $6M for Friday, which could give it $20M for the weekend and $30M since its Wednesday opening.  Considering that the movie's budget was only $25M (excluding marketing), that would be a very good number.  My review is here.   

FINAL DESTINATION 5's Friday appears to be in Help's neighborhood, but the horror movie cost more ($40M+) and will almost certainly be far more front-loaded. 

After that, the news gets less good for new arrivals:  both GLEE 3D and 30 MINUTES OR LESS (my review of the latter is here) seem to be headed for around $10M for the weekend, with Minutes perhaps a bit ahead.  The Glee concert movie cost less and should do stronger business on homevideo, so that's better news for them than for 30 Minutes.

Check out Mitch Metcalf's Weekend Predictions, and stay with SHOWBUZZDAILY all weekend for the latest boxoffice numbers and analysis.