By Katey Rich
Since the Screener blog, or at least its writer, will be out of town on Friday, we're getting the box-office outlook one day early this week. Hooray! And in an even neater twist of events, two of the major releases for the weekend are movies I have both seen and liked-- a rarity in this summer of either a single major release each weekend or at least one turkey in each batch. There's actually three wide releases for the weekend, but since the third, Meet Dave, hasn't been screened for critics, we'll have to leave that one alone for now. And really, given that it's a movie advertised with the tagline "Eddie Murphy in Eddie Murphy," wouldn't you rather leave it be?
HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY. Opening in 2,900 theatres. Guillermo del Toro returns to direct a sequel to 2004's Hellboy, the story of a creature born from hell who comes to live among humans and fight on the side of righteousness. Ron Perlman reprises his role as the titular demon, with Selma Blair and Doug Jones also back as his fiery girlfriend Liz and his aquatic buddy Abe Sapien, respectively. This time the trio gets entangled in domestic strife between rulers of the underworld, where a young prince (Luke Goss) wants to seize power with the help of the mythical Golden Army.
You can read my thoughts on the movie in Tuesday's post, and happily, most critics agree with me. "To make a comic-book fantasy this derivative yet this dazzling requires more than technique. It takes a director in touch with his inner hellboy," writes Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly, giving the film a B+ rating. The Hollywood Reporter is enamored with the movie's visual style, writing, "With writer-director del Toro given free license to go where his singular vision takes him, Hellboy II plays like Guillermo's Greatest Hits with even hotter visual effects." And Variety credits the visuals as well as the humor: "There's a precision to the visual ornateness of Hellboy II that exceeds even that of its predecessor. It's certainly a more deliberately (and successfully) funny movie."
JOURNEY TO CENTER OF THE EARTH. Opening in 2,700 theatres. Brendan Fraser stars in this reimagining of Jules Verne's classic sci-fi tale as Trevor, a geologist who is continuing his brother Max's research on the Earth's core after his brother's strange disappearance. When Max's son Sean (Josh Hutcherson) comes to visit one weekend, Trevor coincidentally sees an opportunity to follow Max's research and travel to the center of the Earth. Joined by an Icelandic mountaineer (Anita Briem), Trevor and Sean begin the journey on the Earth's surface, but I bet you can guess where they wind up by the end. The movie was filmed specifically to be shown in 3D, and will be shown in that format in properly equipped theatres.
I had a blast watching Journey, and so did our Rex Roberts: "You'll leave the theatre with a smile as wide as a grinning Tyrannosaurus," he writes, referring to one of the many monsters who dwell at the Earth's core. MSNBC is a bit crankier, but admits, "Where Journey works best is in its shameless exploitation of 3-D, so if you must see it at all, watch it with the glasses on." Slant Magazine, on the other hand, isn't even a little bit entertained: "Aiming for rollercoaster-ride excitement, the film instead amounts to be merely a drab gimmick, and a sloppily constructed one at that." And the Arizona Republic calls the 3D glasses the real star of the movie, noting that, "you can have all the dimensions you want for the effects, but it doesn't make up for a one-dimensional story. Journey doesn't quite fall trap to that, but comes awfully close."
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