Adult family dramas take center stage with 'Brothers,' 'Everybody's Fine'

By Sarah Sluis

Despite all the new offerings this weekend, New Moon and The Blind Side are expected to hold the top spots. But that doesn't mean the rest of the films won't fight for their spots as we head into the competitive holiday season.

Brothers (2,088 theatres), a love triangle with a wartime focus, is poised to capture a younger version of The Blind Side's audience. It's showing strong interest among young females under 25 that idolize stars Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhaal and Tobey Maguire. The war angle may help draw in their male companions, just as The Blind Side shared its tale of compassion with a male-friendly sports angle.

Everybody's Fine (2,133 theatres) is a quiet film that needs to make some noise. However, with its distributor, Miramax, crumbling back into Disney, and a Robert DeNiro considerably calmer than his gruff Meet the Parents persona, this movie is Most Likely to Get Lost in a Crowd. Still, this movie presents its offerings quite well, despite being "dramatically a bit thin," according to Executive Editor Kevin Lally.

Up in the Air won Best Picture from the National Board of Review yesterday, an auspicious way to start its run in ten theatres. George Clooney plays a jet-setting corporate downsizer (he fires other people's employees for a living) but somehow director Jason Reitman manages to make this plotline fit into our current recession economy. Not since Jerry Maguire waved to his ex while on a moving walkway has the mix of blas glamour and isolation in airport travel been captured so well.

Rounding out the week's releases are the standard action and horror offerings. Armored (1,915 theatres) is about the ultimate inside job: the drivers of armored trucks helping themselves to the stacks of money in cargo. Transylmania (1,005 theatres) is a horror spoof that should appeal to a younger crowd. Unlike the more gruesome Hostel, this movie is about a group of students spending a semester abroad who discover their university is infested with vampires.

On Monday, we'll check back to see if Up in the Air's box office is as winning as its Best Picture award, if Everybody's Fine was able to raise itself above a whisper, and if Brothers can stand up to The Blind Side.

'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs' enchants family audiences

By Sarah Sluis

Earning three times as much as the second-place movie, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs whipped up $30.1 million over the weekend. It also earned $2.5 million from its 127 IMAX locations, a

per-location average that was double the non-IMAX total. It doesn't face any competition until two weekends from now, when Disney releases Toy Story and Toy Story 2 as a 3D double feature, so it should perform strongly through its second weekend. People at Sony Pictures Animation also have reason to be happy: it's the highest-grossing opening weekend of any of their movies, including Surf's Up or Open Season.

The other three wide releases earned in the $6-10 million range, though their low production costs should mitigate their lower opening weekend grosses. The Informant! earned $10.5 million, with Matt Damon considered the biggest draw to moviegoers. Its adult-heavy audience could stem its losses in following weeks, since many adults aren't set on seeing a film opening weekend.

The audience for teen draw Jennifer's Body should have turned out in force for opening weekend, but didn't . It scared up $6.8 million, dropping 50% from Friday to Sunday. The reviews didn't match the hype, diminishing the chances of expanding its audience beyond 18-25's, as screenwriter Diablo Cody's Juno was able to do. Many also suspect that younger teens were shut out of the movie since it was rated R.

Jennifer's Body was beat by the soundly unoriginal Love Happens, which sold $8.4 million worth of tickets to an audience of primarily older females.

Bright Star, which is specialty distributor Apparition's first release, did an auspicious $10,000 per

location for a weekend cumulative of $190,000, making good on critic Ray Bennett's prediction that "art-house audiences will swoon." Its rave reviews should help grow that number in coming weeks. Since PG romances are all too rare, Bright Star could also draw in older and more conservative audiences when it expands next week to 120 theatres.

This Friday, Fame will open widest, followed by sci-fi thriller Surrogates and sci-fi horror Pandorum. Other films opening small that we'll be watching include Capitalism: A Love Story (which opens Wednesday), Coco Before Chanel, and I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell.

'Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa' to rule box-office kingdom?

By Sarah Sluis

Filled with the familiar voices of adult A-list stars, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (4,056 screens) opens
to a saturation release this Friday, exceeding Wall-E's 3,992-screen release slightly with the hopes of earning $50-$60 million at the box office this weekend.  The film has inspired qualified, see-sawing reviews, with FJI critic Frank Lovece calling the film "no Lion King but a perfectly funny diversion that improves on the original," and the New York Times musing that the film's good moments in turn "make]its distracting star turns, storybook clichs and stereotypes harder to take."

Young men will surely turn out for Role Models (2,791 screens), the comedy that excels within the confines of the R-rated humor category without transcending it: there is no Apatow here, no extra spark to make the film stand out and generate acclaim beyond the normal fans of the genre.  Seattle Times critic Moira MacDonald summed up the film by saying "[t]here's something to be said for low expectations...," and what "looked exactly like the latest faded entry in the constant parade of men-behaving-like-boys comedies at the multiplexes lately...kind of works."

Soul Men (2,044 screens) also opens this week, the second-to-last film of late comedian Bernie Mac.  Teaming him with Samuel L. Jackson, the script (or willingness to deviate from it and just follow the

characters with the camera) plays to Mac's strengths, "[allowing] him room to explore the nuances and inflections of profanity."  The opening weekend carries above-average importance, as the presumptive majority audience, African-Americans, tends to show up the first week the film opens--a marketing fact explored in this LA Times article about The Secret Life of Bees and its multi-demographic success.

On the specialty side, maudlin but fulfilling The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (17 screens) opens.  The film has been doing incredibly well at the European box office, but was the subject of a scathing (and spoiler) review by the NY Times.  Potential cult/camp hit  Repo! The Genetic Opera (8 screens) also opens.  The rock-horror picture has an incredible trailer but reviews suggest that the film does not live up to expectations, even the eclectic ones of a cult hit: FJI's review states that "Midnight-movie fans going into this horror musical hoping to see the next Rocky Horror Picture Show will emerge sorely disappointed."

'Max Payne' shoots down the competition, but 'Bees' has sting

By Sarah Sluis

Surprising those who predicted yet another videogame adaptation flop, Max Payne topped the box office with a respectable take of $18 million.  I still maintain that the number will drop precipitously next week, when the videogame fans dying the see the adaptation dry up, but the low-budget action film is well on its way to profitability.

Beverly Hills Chihuahua continued its dominance in the family-friendly market, pulling in $11.2 million. 
The big surprise, though, was The Secret Life of Bees, which came in at #3 with an $11.05 million while playing on less than 2,000 screens.  The film made more per screen (and thus played to more packed houses) than #1 release Max Payne.  The semi-limited release strategy will positively impact their returns in weeks to come.  I predict lower-than-average drops in their box-office take.

Below Bees, W. took in $10.5 million, an assertive amount that gives the film's naysayers little ammunition against the film.  The film attracted young, pro-Obama voters.  By debuting while our President is still in office, the biopic has broken from the norm.  Its success at the box office may encourage more biographies to be made while a figure still holds a position of influence and prominence.

Sex Drive debuted at #9 with $3.5 million, coming slightly under the $3.56 million take of competing (and sweeter) teen film Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist.  The film's take was disappointing, making me believe the marketing department's release of the first ten minutes of the film may have been an act of desperation--or led teens already online to search for a torrent to illegally download the film.

Returning films Eagle Eye ($7.3 million), Body of Lies ($6.8 million), and Nights in Rodanthe ($2.6 million) all managed to post box-office drops below 50%, with Eagle Eye over $80 million and looking hopefully at $100 million.  Horror picture Quarantine, which debuted at #2 last week, dropped 55% to $6.3 million.

Next week will bring some big changes in the box office lineup.  Six wide releases, including teen draw High School Musical 3 and adult picture Changeling, will pack the box office, opting for the crowded October 24th weekend over October 31st, when the Friday Halloween holiday will undoubtedly draw audiences away from the box office as they seek their trick-or-treats elsewhere.

Full box office results here.