'Funny People' looks out for number one

By Sarah Sluis

While almost everyone in the industry thinks Funny People (3,008 screens) will be able to grab the number one spot this weekend, its exact gross is more uncertain, with estimates ranging from $20 to $30 million. The film itself is similarly ambiguous, uneven and not immediately satisfying. It's the kind of movie you keep on thinking about after the lights go up. While I liked it far less than The 40-Year-Old Virgin or Knocked Up, it's a film I would want to revisit a few more Judd Apatow pictures down the line. Since Universal announced today that it signed a three-picture deal with Apatow, including an option for him to make films outside the studio, it looks as though the writer-director will have several more chances to add to his body of work. FJI's Executive Editor Kevin Lally called the death-centered comedy Apatow's "most ambitious film, which is both a good and bad thing for the audience. Good, because he's not playing it safe and repeating himself; bad, because the movie falls short of fulfilling its risky ambitions." I suspect this movie will underperform, but its risk-taking increases my respect for Apatow as a director.

Going to battle against the numerous kid films in release, Aliens in the Attic will open in 3,106 theatres. It's expected to perform below Harry Potter 6 and G-Force, making it a likely candidate for the number four spot. With its horror-lite tone and High School Musical star Ashley Tisdale, the movie is likely to do best among young boys.

Horror film The Collector will scare audiences in 1,325 theatres. While the movie wasn't screened for critics, its trailer has rather striking visuals, and the tale comes from the writers of the Saw sequels. The premise is intriguingly moralistic: a thief breaks into a house, only to discover that the family has been held captive by something or someone far more sinister--and he helps save the family he intended to rob.

On the specialty front, documentary The Cove opens in 4 theatres. The filmmaking activists pursue their goal--to record the inhumane slaughter of dolphins in Taiji, Japan--Ocean's Eleven style, adding suspense and allowing the audience to viacriously join the crusade. Vampire film Thirst opens on 4 screens. I adored the "cinematic maelstrom of bloodlust and sensual obsession projected through Park Chan-wook's runaway imagination," but its graphic, depraved representation can be difficult to watch and is certainly not for everyone. Adam, a "sensitive but not sentimental" romance in which one party has Asperger's, opened Wednesday on 4 screens, and Lorna's Silence, a Danish film from the award-wnning Dardennes Brothers about the relationship between a drug addict and the woman who married him for immigration reasons, will appear on 6 screens in New York and L.A. For family audiences and those seeking specialty fare (I would almost count Funny People in that category), it's another jam-packed summer weekend.

'Hannah Montana,' 'Observe and Report,' documentaries crowd the box office

By Sarah Sluis

If you are a girl between the ages of seven and thirteen, chances are you'll be at the movie theatre this weekend, watching what our critic dubbed an "utterly formulaic yet eminently watchable slice of Southern-fried cornpone." Yes, we're talking about Hannah Montana: The Movie, which sends the singer, who's turned into a bit of a diva, to live the "Simple Life" with her grandma in the country. She meets a cute boy who wears a cowboy hat (as all boys must do in the South), and uses her star power to throw a concert that will save the area from being turned into her old shrine, a shopping mall. It opens on 3,118 screens, but is expected to come in behind Fast & Furious, which has little competition in a field cluttered with kid-oriented films, among them holdover Monsters vs. Aliens and other newbie release Dragonball Evolution (2,181 theatres). Why so many films for the K-12 set? Spring break, which usually falls in April, right around the Passover/Easter holiday, the latter of which falls this Sunday.

For college students perhaps on spring break, R-rated Observe and Report opens this weekend. Inspired by Travis Bickle's character in Taxi Driver (if De Niro were Seth Rogen and a mall security guard), the film goes to the edge for comedy, including a borderline date rape scene that our critic called "the litmus test for deciding whether Observe and Report is darkly funny or deeply irresponsible." Opening in 2,727 theatres, the movie will likely open in the top five.

On the specialty front, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is another one of those literary adaptations that just makes you want to read the book. Our critic called the voice-over narration, a holdover from the book "not cinematically interesting," and noted that "the whole enterprise has a heavy literary tone that transmits onscreen as a certain unrelenting joylessness."

A cluster of documentaries release this week, with subjects ranging from rock bands to artists to war and poverty in developing nations. Documentarian Sacha Gervasi went out and found a band right out of This is Spinal Tap in Anvil! The Story of Anvil (3 theatres in NY/LA), an account of a band that keeps on going---still, as the joke goes, big in Japan. If the first film is a documentary version of a mockumentary, In a Dream is the reverse: a documentary that comes off as a "mockumentary of cinematic self-discovery." Using "overbearing" narration, director Jeremiah Zagar documents his artist father's work and even his dad's affair with his young assistant.

Moving to Lima, Peru, the documentary Oblivion focuses on "intentional forgetfulness and the forgotten," highlighting the class differences of a rich and poor society. Finally, An Unlikely Weapon tells the story of that Pulitzer Prize-winning photo taken during the Vietnam War of a South Vietnamese executing a Viet Cong, his face cringing in anticipation of his death. Whether you catch a teen singer in the country, that other mall cop, some dragonballs or one of the many documentaries coming out this week, we'll see you back here on Monday.