Movie Box Review

John Carter traveled to Mars; the movie with his name also looks beyond the US for some help.

OPENINGS:  JOHN CARTER (Disney) may or may not have grossed over $30M this weekend--we'll find out for sure tomorrow.  (Disney is claiming a not-unreasonable 31% Sunday drop, but it would take only a small slip to push the number below that threshold.)  The more important number, though, in terms of whether it'll be remembered as a historic flop or a mere financial disappointment, is the $71M (which includes pre-Friday grosses in certain territories) being reported overseas.  $17M of that was from Russia alone, but apparently Europe was generally not strong.  On the other hand, the picture is doing well in Asia, and has yet to open in China and Japan.  If Carter can get to a global total of $300M, it won't reach breakeven, but would avoid the embarrassment of a total failure.

A THOUSAND WORDS (Paramount), playing as a family comedy (which it really isn't), also had a good Saturday, but that only got it to a pitiful $6.4M.  However, that did beat Meet Dave and Imagine This, so this studio, as well, dodged complete ignominy.  SILENT HOUSE held even on Saturday despite the dreadful CinemaScore grade and is claiming (for now) slightly over $7M for the weekend.

HOLDOVERS:  THE LORAX (Universal) ended up with a Saturday that, while huge, wasn't quite up to the initial report (an 80% bump rather than 100%), so it's down 44% for the weekend, still extremely good.  More remarkably, PROJECT X (Warners) was almost in the same place with a 45% drop, excellent for a picture aiming at the teen-male demo.  SAFE HOUSE (Universal), THE VOW (Screen Gems/Sony) and THIS MEANS WAR (20th) continued to have very low drops in the low 30% range, while WANDERLUST (Universal) and GONE (Summit/Lionsgate) were heaved out of theatres as quickly as contracts allowed.

OSCAR WINNERS:  THE ARTIST (Weinstein) is claiming a mediocre 37% drop that, as with last week, relies on an very high Sunday estimate (a drop of only 25%)--last weekend's total was reduced on Monday, and the same may well happen tomorrow.  THE IRON LADY (Weinstein), with a more reasonable 35% estimated Sunday drop, is holding well, down only 31% for the weekend.  THE DESCENDANTS (Fox Searchlight) and HUGO (Paramount) are both on their way out of theatres.  A SEPARATION (Sony Classics) widened again to 281 theatres, and while it still dropped for the weekend as its per-theatre number fell, it's at $4.8M, a superb total for a subtitled Iranian film.  

LIMITED RELEASES:  For an R-rated comedy, FRIENDS WITH KIDS (Roadside Attractions) had a terrific Saturday bump of 53%, suggesting very strong word of mouth.  That pushed it to $2.2M in 374 theatres, with a per-theatre number that was below only The Lorax and John Carter in the top 20.  Roadside will widen the run next weekend to 600 theatres.  SALMON FISHING IN THE YEMEN (CBS) had a $13K average. but that was in only 18 theatres, which is only mildly promising.  FOOTNOTE (Sony Classics) and JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI (Magnolia) had strong NY openings, averaging over $20K per theatre each.  WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN (Oscilloscope) went from 40 to 60 theatres, and had a decent $2600 per-theatre average.  BEING FLYNN (Focus), though, tripled its theatre count to 12 and still fell for the weekend, as its per-theatre number collapsed.

Moral of the weekend:  If you're going to spend $250M+ on a movie, check first whether anyone wants to see it.

OPENINGS:  With a probable $27-28M opening, just how big a flop is JOHN CARTER (Disney) going to be?  Hard to tell until full weekend and international numbers are in.  But its sheer cost--probably at least $400M when worldwide marketing is included, and very possibly $500M--dwarfs such famous flops of the past as Ishtar and Heaven's Gate, both made in the 1980s when marketing costs were a fraction of what they are now, and even last year's huge bomb Mars Needs Moms, which cost around $100M less.  The movie is mediocre; the decision to green-light it at that budget was insane.  

At a far lesser level of failure (financially, at least), SILENT HOUSE (Open Road) is headed for a $6-7M weekend and probably won't crack $20M in total (especially with an ugly "F" from CinemaScore), but with a tiny budget and limited marketing, it won't cause anyone much damage.  A THOUSAND WORDS (Paramount/DreamWorks) is only hitting theatres after 3 years because Paramount would have had accounting consequences had it been held off the market any longer.  It's heading for a similar total to Silent House at a much higher cost.  The amazing factoid is that if it can manage to scrape together a weekend above $5.5M, it'll still be higher than 2 of Eddie Murphy's last 5 openings, beating both Meet Dave and Imagine That.  And this:  with the exception of the Shrek movies and Dreamgirls, Murphy's last $100M grosser was Dr. Dolittle 2 in 2001.

HOLDOVERS:  With no direct competition, THE LORAX (Universal) is having a strong 2d weekend, down only 40-45% from its giant opening (and easily winning the weekend).  More surprisingly, PROJECT X (Warners) is holding up fine, with a similar percentage drop.  SAFE HOUSE (Universal), THE VOW (Screen Gems.  /Sony) and THIS MEANS WAR (20th) continue to hold up best, with drops of only around 30%, while GOOD DEEDS (Lionsgate/Summit), WANDERLUST (Universal) and GONE (Summit/Lionsgate) are collapsing as they get dumped by theatres.

OSCAR WINNERS:  THE ARTIST (Weinstein)'s post-Oscar bump didn't last long, as word-of-mouth and a wide audience continue to elude the film (permanently, we can now say).  A 40% weekend drop puts it in line for around $45M in total.  THE DESCENDANTS (Fox Searchlight), in its final pre-homevideo weekend, and HUGO (Paramount), already available at home, face similar declines.  THE IRON LADY (Weinstein), though, is holding on well with only a 25% fall.

LIMITED RELEASE:  FRIENDS WITH KIDS (Roadside Attractions) is trying a quasi-limited opening at 374 theatres, with fairly decent results for that kind of release, probably close to a $5K average per theatre that should give it around a $2M start.  On a much smaller scale, SALMON FISHING IN THE YEMEN (CBS) should have an OK average of around $10K in only 18 big-city theatres.  The Israeli FOOTNOTE (Sony Classics), with rave reviews, is headed for a very nice $20K average in 2 NY theatres.  BEING FLYNN (Focus) tripled its theatre count to 12, and will be lucky to hold even for the weekend, as its per-theatre average plummeted.

NEXT WEEKEND:  The big arrival is the Channing Tatum/Jonah Hill comedy revamp of 21 JUMP STREET (Sony), which is garnering remarkably strong early reviews.  2 more offbeat comedies will open in smaller releases;  JEFF WHO LIVES AT HOME (Paramount Vantage) and Will Ferrell's Spanish-language CASA DE MI PADRE (Lionsgate).  

Now the only question is when they announce the start of  pre-production on LORAX 2.

OPENINGS:  It turned out THE LORAX (Universal) wasn't frontloaded at all.  Quite the contrary, its 80% Saturday bump put the movie through the roof, a triumph of great marketing over cruddy filmmaking.  Lorax is currently the 3d highest March opening ever, but only $185K behind 300 at #2, so even a slight overperformance on Sunday could lift it up.  PROJECT X (Warners) slipped a bit on Saturday, but even if its Sunday is overestimated, it should still be safely over $20M for the weekend, a very good score for a relatively low-budget studio release.  (The result, unfortunately, will be more lousy "found-footage" movies.)

HOLDOVERS:  Thanks to a nice spread of genres in the Top 10, most of the older movies are holding quite well.  The only 3 movies in the Top 12 to dip more than 45% were JOURNEY 2 (Warners), which was direct competition for Lorax, GOOD DEEDS (Lionsgate/Summit) with a 55% drop that was in keeping with Tyler Perry's pictures, and GHOST RIDER 2 (Sony), which was already mid-collapse.  Particularly notable were the tiny respective drops for SAFE HOUSE (Universal) - 34%, THIS MEANS WAR (20th) - 33%, and the (deservedly) much-maligned GONE (Summit/Lionsgate) - 36%.

OSCAR WINNERS:  THE ARTIST (Weinstein), the 2d least popular Best Picture winner of the last quarter-century (and the lowest among films still in theatrical release when the awards were given out) raised its post-awards theatre count by 80% and could only manage a 34% bump.  And even that number is shaky, because Artist is claiming by far the lowest Sunday decline of the weekend's top movies, so it may well slipi down (and fall out of the Top 10) tomorrow.  Similarly, its stablemate THE IRON LADY (Weinstein) is claiming a 30% weekend increase that relies on a tiny estimated Sunday drop.  Back in the non-Weinstein world, THE DESCENDANTS (Fox Searchlight) lost many of its theatres and fell 36%, and HUGO (Paramount) dropped 14%.  A SEPARATION (Sony Classics) tripled its theatres off its Foreign Language Film win, and gratifyingly went over the $1M mark for the weekend in 243 houses.  

LIMITED RELEASES:  BEING FLYNN (Focus) created little excitement with a $11K average at only 4 theatres, and TIM & ERIC'S BILLION DOLLAR MOVIE (Magnolia) could only get to a $4K average in 24.    IN DARKNESS (Sony Classics) lost the Foreign-Language Oscar but tried increasing its theatre count by 50% anyway--the result was a 17% drop for the weekend.  WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN (Oscilloscope), another picture that was hoping for Oscar love it didn't get, more than doubled its theatres to 40, and averaged a decent $3300.  

There's a scene in Paul Weitz's new film BEING FLYNN where Jonathan Flynn (Robert DeNiro), the alcoholic, narcissistic, pitiful, self-destructive father of Nick (Paul Dano), reads to his son from a publisher's rejection letter.  Jonathan sees himself as one of the greatest of all American writers--albeit unpublished--his only peers being Mark Twain and J.D.Salinger, and he considers it a great compliment that in rejecting his novel, the publisher termed it a "virtuoso display of personality."  The phrase comes awfully close to describing DeNiro's performance and Being Flynn itself.

Being Flynn is based on Nick Flynn's memoir "Another Bullshit Day In Suck City," and it tells a mostly pathetic and depressing story.  Jonathan was arrested for bad checks when Nick was just a child, and even when he was released from prison, he was never a meaningful part of Nick's life.  He did, however, send his son scores of letters, mostly desperately self-aggrandizing, and his presence overshadowed Nick's youth and the single mother (Julianne Moore) who diligently raised him but ultimately committed suicide.  Nick, passive and rootless, and also an aspiring writer, drifted into a job at a homeless shelter, and it was there that he and his father, who had been sleeping on the streets, truly met, and and the two began a painful, dysfunctional relationship. 

This is extremely difficult material, much of it no picnic to watch, and Weitz, whose work ranges from the lovely About A Boy to the execrable Little Fockers, doesn't find a tone to make it work.  The film's Jonathan is all mannerism with very little substance.  While it's great to see DeNiro stretching to give a real performance, something he's rarely done in the past 15 years (it's hard to avoid the feeling that Weitz and DeNiro felt so mutually disgusted with Little Fockers that they both needed to cleanse themselves afterward with something serious), he never finds Jonathan's center.  His work feels full of effort and yet superficial.  From the actor who gave us indelible portraits in Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, it's subpar.  

DeNiro isn't helped by Weitz's script, which while heartfelt never really draws a bead on who Jonathan is.  For all its gritty detail--no recent Hollywood product (even the indie part of Hollywood) has dealt so seriously with homelessness in quite a while--the film sidesteps complications and settles for bland emotion (and toward the end, sentimentality) too often.  

Dano has a more straightforward role:  he's the guy who hits bottom (getting to know his father leads him to some serious drug use) and manages to climb back up, turning out to be terrifically talented to boot.  Yet while his arc is the more simplistic and undeveloped part of the film, Dano's own odd qualities as an actor make Nick more interesting for a while.  Dano doesn't have a lot of gears, at least not that he's shown thus far--his killer app is a sort of intense distraction that can be played for humor or for surprisingly powerful repressed anger--but they serve him well here.  Olivia Thirlby, as the only sane person around, does so much with very little that one wishes she'd been given more of a part, and Moore, only briefly on screen, is her usual expert self.   

Being Flynn is a hard movie to recommend, because the hard truth is that filmmakers who deal with challenging, uncomfortable material have far less margin for error.  The work is transcendent or it's trite, and Weitz's film isn't transcendent.  It's intermittently powerful and worth watching for some strong scenes and interesting performances, without ever quite achieving a satisfying whole.

Navy SEALs shoot up the Friday boxoffice.

OPENINGS:  The very aggressive marketing for ACT OF VALOR (Relativity) made it seem like it was a patriotic duty to see the film, and successfully hid the fact that it's mostly a sub-par B action movie.  The question now is whether its quality will catch up with it (or not).  GOOD DEEDS (Lionsgate/Summit) is Tyler Perry's lowest wide-release opening Friday ever at $5.6M (Daddy's Little Girls opened on a Wednesday), but not to worry--Perry will have a new Madea comedy out later this year.

Although daily numbers aren't available for her earliest vehicles, WANDERLUST (Universal), with a 2.2M Friday, also seems to be the biggest flop of Jennifer Aniston's starring career, let alone for one that pairs her with another big name like Paul Rudd.  Aniston has had something of a charmed movie career, considering the low quality of many of her pictures, but her luck may be running out.  GONE (Summit/Lionsgate) is just sad at $1.7M, and should send Amanda Seyfried on a search for the next half-decent rom-com or soap opera script that comes her way.

HOLDOVERS:  THE VOW (Screen Gems/Sony), SAFE HOUSE (Universal) and SECRET WORLD OF ARIETTY (Disney) are all sustaining well, but nothing is holding like JOURNEY 2:  THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (Warners), which is clearly pleasing its target audiences. The only thing that could keep it from beating the $102M US gross of the first Journey is next weekend's increased competition.  GHOST RIDER:  SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE (Sony) collapsed, and STAR WARS EPISODE I:  THE PHANTOM MENACE 3D (20th) continued to do so as well--it's starting to look like Phantom Menace may not even get to $50M, although it'll still put plenty of midichlorians in George Lucas's pocket.  

OSCAR NOMINEES:  As THE ARTIST (Weinstein) prepares for its coronation, it added about 20% more theatres and took a nice tick upward.  HUGO (Paramount) lost about 10% of its screens, but also went up a bit.  THE DESCENDANTS (Fox Searchlight), on the other hand, lost about a third of its theatres, and was somewhat down.

LIMITED RELEASES:  No notable openings or expansions this weekend, as the art-house audience is presumably occupied with Oscar Day.

NEXT WEEKEND:  March is unusually packed with event movies this year, and first up is THE LORAX (Universal), which the studio has been marketing as an all-quadrant tentpole, with spots aiming at kids (Dr. Seuss), teens (Zac Efron and Taylor Swift) and adults (Danny DeVito and Betty White)--including a fairly heavy ESPN push--and all of that doesn't even count the giant promo deals with a car company and restaurant chain.  A different sort of event is PROJECT X (Warners), an R-rated  "found footage" version of The Hangover (and produced by its director, as every promo is happy to tell you) about a teen party that goes very wild.  Also arriving is the year's first substantial limited release, Paul Weitz's BEING FLYNN (Focus), which is riding some good early buzz for its performances from Robert DeNiro and Paul Dano.