Box Office Outlook: Rock The Stone Age

By Katey Rich

After last weekend's disastrous box-office returns, led by the meek performance from Semi-Pro, the whole movie industry could use a jolt. Who better to do it than the man who let aliens blow up the White House and sent wild wolves roaming the frozen tundra of Manhattan? Roland Emmerich is back, baby, with the action-packed, historically ridiculous 10,000 B.C. A lack of boldface names or sensical plot will probably not stop the movie from raking in the money, especially given its lack of significant competition. It's like it's already summertime: The biggest, loudest, most over-marketed movie will win.

10,000 B.C. Opening in 3,410 theatres. There are wooly mammoths in this movie! And sabre-toothed tigers! And you get to watch people build the pyramids. Do I really need to tell you more? OK, fine. 10,000  B.C. takes the basics of the Joseph Campbell "Hero with a Thousand Faces" myth and transplants it to the stone age, where a young man is ostracized by his tribe but must rise to the occasion and save his kinsmen-- and his hot, inexplicably blue-eyed girlfriend-- from slavery at the hands of a warring tribe.

Well, one's thing for sure with a Roland Emmerich film: It won't disappoint with the visual effects, but it may disappoint everywhere else. "The picture quality in 10,000 B.C. is excellent. Beautiful, even," writes the Arizona Daily Star, before continuing with, "The only problem is whenever it talks, you get really annoyed and want to cover your ears and scream for it to stop." Our Frank Lovece got caught up in all the mixed-up history and called it "anthropologically agonizing." MSNBC comes up with what is probably the kindest review: "While the movie is never boring, at least you'll have forgotten most of it by the time you get out of the parking lot." The Chicago Tribune, on the other hand, called it "agreeably bone-headed," and concluded with "I enjoyed "10,000 B.C." more and more, and more than just about anything Emmerich's done before." And A.O. Scott at The New York Times has some fun making fun of the whole thing, repeatedly calling the movie's wooly mammoths "snuffleupagus" and concluding, "As a history lesson, 10,000 BC has its value. It explains just how we came to be the tolerant, peace-loving farmers we are today, and why the pyramids were never finished."

COLLEGE ROAD TRIP. Opening in 2,706 theatres. It's a rite of passage for every high school senior looking at higher education-- driving from college to college, embarrassed at being seen with your parents for such an extended period of time. When Martin Lawrence is the dad, though, the situation has much more potential for hijinks and adventure. That's the idea behind College Road Trip, which pairs former Cosby kid Raven-Symon and Lawrence as a mismatched father-daughter pair on a road trip that includes a pet pig stowaway and a cameo from, of all people, Donny Osmond. Which one is country and which one is rock and roll?

The G-rated comedy may score points for being family-friendly, but that's about it. The Chicago Tribune scoffs, "As generic as its title, College Road Trip feels like a first draft, the one the studio brings to the rewrite team that, in this case, never got hired." Variety writes, "This overplayed, underachieving laffer feels thoroughly manufactured to Disney specifications." Entertainment Weekly calls it a "surprise-free comedy", while Newsday dismisses the whole thing with a pretty hilarious dig at Martin Lawrence: "Lawrence has pulled off this mugging-man-child act for so long now that you can leave for refreshments in the middle of his shtick not only feeling you haven't missed much, but that you'd still be able to play your own fill-in-the-missing-Martin-Lawrence-bits when you return to your seat." Only our Harvey Karten, writing over at Compuserve, had anything remotely nice to say: "The cartoonish characters do not outlast their welcome [...] If college were this much fun, we'd have even more unqualified kids attending."

THE BANK JOB. Opening in 1,603 theatres. Back in 1971, a group of crooks tunneled into the Lloyd's Bank of London and made out with quite a prize. Turns out, though, they weren't a bunch of petty thieves, but a group masterminded by the British government to retrieve some scandalous pictures of Princess Margaret. That's the conceit behind The Bank Job, at least, which stars action stalwart Jason Statham as the leader of the crew, and Saffron Burrows as a model convinced by the government to talk the boys into the crime.

Everyone loves a good heist film, and The Bank Job, it seems, is a keeper. Our Doris Toumarkine was mesmerized: "The Bank Job is so packed, it's not always easy to follow, but follow we do. And so will the crowds." The New Yorker credits director Roger Donaldson, writing, "the director has done his best to restore the civilized pleasures of the genre." Andrew Sarris at the New York Observer calls it "one of the liveliest entertainments of the year and, in its twisted way, a genuine feel-good movie." And Peter Travers at Rolling Stone cheers in his brief review for "a juicy, fact-based caper movie that's full of surprises I have no intention of spoiling." All these great reviews only make it a bigger mystery why a heist movie with an established action star is opening on less than half the number of screens at 10,000 B.C. We'll leave that math to the experts, I suppose.

MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY. Opening in 535 theatres. It's the 1930s in England, and Miss Pettigrew (Frances McDormand) has been fired from one too many governess positions. Desperate for money, she poses as an experienced "social secretary" and goes to work for Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams), an aspiring American actress who moves through life in a flurry of activity. Over the course of one day Miss Pettigrew helps Delysia choose between her three suitors-- played by Mark Strong, Tom Payne and Lee Pace-- and finds romance of her own thanks to a handsome lingerie designer (Ciaran Hinds). The deliberately old-fashioned comedy is based on a 1938 novel by Winifred Watson.

Most critics were charmed by the romantic trifle, but our David Noh was not one of them: "Bharat Nalluri's direction is entirely wrong�heavily comedic when it should be gossamer light, although nothing I imagine could disguise the screenplay's maladroit unfunniness." The Hollywood Reporter was much more charmed, writing that the movie "sustains itself through terrific forward momentum and two glorious star turns by gifted actresses Frances McDormand and Amy Adams." Andrew Sarris at The New York Observer has mixed feelings about the film, but aptly notes, "The fragile subtlety of the pas de deux of Ms. McDormand and Mr. Hinds is alone worth the price of admission." But Newsday is also less than amused, writing that Miss Pettigrew is "without any of the transcendent joy that is supposed to come with the package."

CJ7. Opening in 19 theatres. Around this time last year a movie about a magical toy called The Last Mimzy was a major bomb. Can Hong Kong action star Stephen Chow break the curse? He stars in this children's film about an impoverished man and his son who discover a magical toy that helps them fight their way out of poverty.

Our Daniel Eagan calls the movie "a daring and not entirely successful leap" for Chow, likening it to "sentimental comedies about children that were in vogue a generation ago in Hong Kong." New York Magazine warns that the film is "only sporadically funny, and often grating." The Hollywood Reporter thinks it's great family fare, but notes, "Such social issues as education, employment and inequality of wealth are glossed over by slogan-like mottos of being poor but virtuous." And Armond White at the New York Press raves about the movie, using a comparison that doesn't seem entirely apt: "Chow's thesis is more profound than There Will Be Blood's, and it's expressed through a more sophisticated narrative." I'm just waiting for the YouTube mash-up that inserts Daniel Plainview into all the scenes with a magical toy.