Box Office Outlook: Smoke and Babies

By Katey Rich

If you don't have a funny bone this weekend, you're out of luck. The next three months will be dominated by superhero costumes and explosions, but this weekend is all about comedy, with the only two major releases both aiming to be the mainstream comedy hit of the weekend. Well, if you can call a stoner comedy a mainstream comedy, that is. Universal couldn't quite snag the top spot last weekend with Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and it may struggle again as it pits Baby Mama against Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay. See, the problem is that both movies are targeting audiences who rarely leave the house: mothers and stoners. Let's see how the reviews will help sort out this mess.

BABY MAMA. Opening in 2,543 theatres. If you don't know the story behind Baby Mama by now, you've somehow avoided the all-out marketing assault that's been going on for this movie for the last few weeks. Tina Fey plays a single woman, Kate, who has focused so much on her career that she never left time to have a baby. When she finds out she can't conceive, she hires Angie (Amy Poehler) as a surrogate, conveniently ignoring the fact that Angie is lazy, annoying, and refuses to change pretty much anything about her life to prepare for pregnancy. The odd-couple comedy also stars Sigourney Weaver as a fertility clinic specialist, Steve Martin as a new-age guru, Dax Shepard as Angie's husband, and Romany Malco as a motormouth doorman.

The issue for Baby Mama's critical reception seems to have been expectations. Those expecting a wry Tina Fey comedy were disappointed, while those expecting (based on the godawful trailers) an annoying standard chick flick were pleasantly surprised. I was in the second camp in my review: "Baby Mama doesn't exactly break new ground with its rich and neat/poor and sloppy roommates, but it does go in enough surprising and funny directions to justify its contrived setup." Ann Hornaday at The Washington Post was with me, writing, "Fey and Poehler could easily have become caricatures. Instead, each actress gives her character her dignity, grounding her as a recognizable human being." The New York Post, on the other hand, wasn't crazy about the movie or its girly premise: "Pregnant with possibilities, Baby Mama wants too badly to be loved to take any chances. Men who are coerced into seeing this chick flick may feel like they've been attached to an estrogen drip." And Manohla Dargis at The New York Times credits the movie's use of female humor, but can't entirely get on board: "The film never comes fully to term, as it were: the visual style is sitcom functional, and even the zippiest jokes fall flat because of poor timing."

HAROLD AND KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY. Opening in 2,510 theatres. If critics weren't sure what to expect with Baby Mama, everyone knows exactly what they're getting into with Harold and Kumar. The stoner buddies are trying to make it to Amsterdam to meet up with Harold's (John Cho) new love Maria, but Kumar (Kal Penn) gets them in trouble with Homeland Security when he tries to smoke from a bong on the plane. Shipped off to Guantanamo, the pair escapes soon after, and they try to make their way across the South to... oh, does it really matter? With a crazed Homeland Security officer (Rob Corddry) on their tail, a run-in with Neil Patrick Harris at a whorehouse and adventures with the Klan, inbred hillbillies and even the President, Harold and Kumar have more than enough going on for one stoned adventure.

Given that it's a movie about two kids who mostly just want to get high, it's remarkable how many people praise Harold and Kumar, and point out its political sensibilities at that. "Its idiocy serves the cause of good sense and intelligence," writes A.O. Scott of the august New York Times, before clarifying, "And no, I'm not smoking anything." Our Lewis Beale also wants you to know his head is on straight when praising the movie: "Where Harold and Kumar truly excels, however�and this is no joke�is in its almost blas depiction of a truly multi-cultural America." Among the dueling trades, Variety called it " one of the ballsiest comedies to come out of Hollywood in a long time," but The Hollywood Reporter pauses to slam the movie as well as Corddry, writing that the actor "can't make the script's one-note Patriot Act-enabled incompetence entertaining for more than a few minutes." And the Village Voice calls it simply "a largely mind-numbing experience."

DECEPTION. Opening in 2,001 theatres. Filmed under the name The Tourist and once re-titled The List, Deception is a thriller that's been kicking around for a good long while. Ewan McGregor stars as a lonely accountant who, thanks to a high-powered lawyer (Hugh Jackman), gets brought into a seedy underground sex ring. His relationship with one nameless woman (Michelle Williams) drives him deeper and deeper into a scandal and, dare we say, deception?

In case you couldn't tell from that description that the movie appears to be irredeemably ridicuous, the critics will spell it out for you. Our Frank Lovece bemoans the movie's "slapdash shoddiness," while Newsday complains, "As a thriller, Deception can't get enough of the obvious." Salon.com shares Frank's complaint that the movie just looks awful, writing, "What troubles me most about Deception is that it looks so damn bad. The D.P. is Dante Spinotti, who has obviously been bodysnatched and replaced by a pod from Planet Glaucoma." And the Seattle Post-Intelligencer hits a bit below the belt, literally: "As a kinky-sex exploitation film (which it's trying very hard to be), Deception is even more incompetent. [...] What passes here for shocking sex is so tame it's laughable."