Sequels falter during disappointing holiday weekend

By Sarah Sluis

Although the December box office picked up this weekend, it wasn't nearly as good as last year, with totals 14% behind 2010. Competition has been blamed for hurting individual films, but that doesn't explain why the box office as a whole is down.

Easily landing in first place with$40 million,Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadowsfell short of the $50 million figure many had predicted for the detective actioner. The first Holmes starring Robert Downey Jr. earned $62 million. However, audiences gave high ratings in exit polls, and there's still plenty of time in December for the tentpole to approach its $200+ million domestic total.

Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, the third installment in the live-action/CG hybrid franchise, finished with a slightly underwhelming$23.5 million. The 2009 sequel opened to $48 million over Christmas weekend, but it appears audiences may have tired slightly of the antics of the chipmunks and chipettes. Hugo, The Muppets, and Arthur Christmas are all competing against Chipwrecked, and this Wednesday The Adventures of Tintin will join the competition for family audiences.

Mission: Impossibe--Ghost Protocol sneaked into just over 500 theatres this weekend, most of which were IMAX. Posting a stunning $30,500 per-screen average for a total of $13 million, Paramount hopes the early release unleashed a torrent of buzz from the franchise's committed fanboys.

Specialty release Carnage failed to generate the kind of opening per-screen average that will make the play adapation a mover-and-shaker. With a $17,000 per-screen average in five locations, the Roman Polanski-directed film is definitely one of the weaker specialty releases this season. The Artist posted a per-screen average nearly as high--$16,900 per screen--in seventeen locations its fourth week of release. Carnage can't compete with that.

Young Adult expanded into nearly 1,000 screens its second week, landing a spot in the top ten with a $3.6 million total. That's good news, but it also shows it's not as strong asThe Descendants, which was able to earn twice as much on one-third the screens when it made its first expansion (admittedly over the Thanksgiving weekend). The Hawaii-set dramedy starring George Clooney added another $3.3 million to its coffers this week while still playing in only 878 theatres.

Showing stamina in its second week,Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spywent up 48% as it expanded from 4 to 16 theatres. Its $28,000 per-screen average made for a total of $452,000, a good sign for the spy film, which is rated 84% positive on Rotten Tomatoes.

This Wednesday, The Adventures of Tintin and The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo will open, followed by a wide release of We Bought a Zooon Friday. War Horse, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, and The Darkest Hour will follow on Sunday, Christmas Day.

Three sequels face off: 'Chipwrecked,' 'Game of Shadows,' and 'Ghost Protocol'

By Sarah Sluis

Alvin, Simon, Theodore, and the Chipettes return for Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (3,723 theatres), one of three sequels hitting theatres today. Though the CG-animated feature is expected to earn north of $25 million this weekend, it isn't because of quality. "C'mon, you can do better," Frank Lovece admonishes in his review. He acknowledges there's "no incentive" for the filmmakers to try, as evidenced by their sloppy work "that shows no feeling for the material, no affection for the characters, and no concern for any long-term legacy." Just call Alvin and the Chipmunks the anti-Pixar movie.

The leader this weekend is expected to be Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (3,703 theatres), which should rack up $50 million. The "bigger, louder, more expensive sequel...stays true to the Holmes canon" and won over critic
Daniel Eagan. Since the first installment earned over $500 million, hopes are high for the "hyperkinetic sequel."

Withholding its wide 3,000-screen release until next Wednesday, Mission: Impossible--Ghost Protocol will open in a select 425 theatres, all of which will project in IMAX or another large-screen experience. Viewers won't be disappointed, according to Eagan. The actioner offers "cutting-edge escapism that's almost guilt-free." Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt goes traipsing around the globe, including a memorable sequence in Dubai. Even with so few screens, the sequel should earn around $15 million, and I'm sure the combination of packed theatres and a big-screen experience will ensure positive word-of-mouth.

Despite having the actors "lustily go at it," Carnage (5 theatres) works from a script that sounds like "an ultra-slick TV-sitcom episode gone horribly wrong and combative," according to David Noh. In my opinion, the play adaptation still feels very stagey, one of my pet peeves. That kind of artifice doesn't fly on the silver screen. Kate Winslet and Jodie Foster both received acting nominations for the Golden Globes, but Noh's opinion must have been echoed by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which failed to nominate the film for anything else.

On Monday, we'll see if these three sequels were able to spike the December box office as people move from shopping for the holidays to celebrating the holidays.

Solving the mystery of a dull �Sherlock Holmes' trailer

By Sarah Sluis

Allow me to play the part of the cranky critic for a moment, but the trailer for Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is so lifeless, I need to kick it to its grave. It's hard to believe that a trailer so packed with action can be so boring, but it is. I was no fan of the first film. Its tenuous hold on reality translated to weak tension and suspense. The matte work was awful, too. I kept staring at the bad special effects instead of what was going on the screen. They were that distracting. Robert Downey Jr. tried to do what Johnny Depp did in the first Pirates of the Caribbean and failed. Depp was so great in the original Pirates because he jumped into this movie that was supposed to be about Orlando Bloom saving Keira Knightly, rolled his eyes, and stole the show. It's hard for Downey to do that if he's playing the actual lead. He has to play the straight man, the one who buys the movie's premise. Which is why Sherlock Holmes is one of my least favorite movies to spawn a sequel.

Top Five Reasons Game of Shadows will be a yawn to get through

1. The trailer has three scenes of Robert Downey Jr. dressed as a woman or wearing makeup. This disguise was old five minutes before it even got put in the trailer. It made me reminisce about Some Like it Hot.

2. Showing us a really cool "crime room" with lots of webs and newspaper clippings that wouldn't be out of place in Zodiac of Seven (:59), then suggesting we're getting a war film instead with rifle fights in forests and machine guns. I like mystery films. Sherlock Holmes is a detective. Can't the movie just stick to that?

3. A set piece on a train. No more trains! At least there were no scenes of them walking on top of a train...in the trailer, at least.

4. Ending with not-clever innuendo. This exchange actually works better on the page than the screen. Holmes: "Get that out of my face." Watson: "It's not in your face, it's in my hand." Holmes: "Get what's in your hand out of my face." Can you imagine how painful it will be to sit through an entire film of this?

5. Slow-motion explosions, gun loading, kicking. I'd like to point out that when this whole slo-mo thing was pioneered in The Matrix, the style supported the narrative. When people were inside the Matrix, time could be slowed down since the world was not real. Even in the movie, the slo-mo thing wasn't used in the "real world." Every movie that's used this technique since is just showing that it cares more about cool fighting than the story. #5 makes it pretty clear that Book of Shadows will be cool action sequences cobbled together by an excuse for a mystery.