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."
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