Box office forecast is 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs'

By Sarah Sluis

Releasing in 3D and IMAX, to a welcoming audience that's settled into school and ready for some entertainment, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is considered the likely winner of the weekend box office. It's clever and fast-paced, with "breakneck humor and sparkling wordplay," according to our critic Frank Lovece. While the plot is much more embellished than Ron and Judi Barrett's illustrated classic, it stays true to its wish-fulfillment premise. It rains ice cream, cheeseburgers, spaghetti and more--every kid's dream. Its 3,119 screen release includes 1,828 3D screens and 127 IMAX screens, a new high that should significantly pad the returns of the animated movie.

A "campy pastiche of horror and high-school movie clichs" appealing to the 18-25 crowd, Jennifer's Body (2,701 screens) should woo male and female audiences alike. The critical consensus appears to be that Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody's hipster-quip dialogue isn't quite as charming the second time around, but moviegoers may be much more forgiving of the slick horror film. Plus, there's Megan Fox, whose candid interviews and sultry on-screen personality will sell more than a few tickets.

Love Happens, which is billed as a Jennifer Aniston-Aaron Eckhart romantic comedy but is actually more about Eckhart coming to term's with his wife's death in a car accident, opens on 1,898 screens. It's a genre picture straight down to its green-screen shots of Seattle, but executed just well enough to make your hour and forty minutes more diverting than plodding.

Steven Soderbergh's The Informant! (2,505 screens) also debuts. Soderbergh is another one of those prolific directors who cranks out film after film--I got a hint of why in the comedy/thriller, which has a few shots with sloppy cinematography (Soderbergh does it himself under the pseudonym Peter Andrews). Our Executive Editor Kevin Lally hated the "relentlessly jaunty music score." While that film device fails, there's also a clever voice-over narration that illustrates the "cognitive dissonance" of Matt Damon's character. The "manic stream filled with non-sequiturs" about corn and polar bears was one of my favorite parts of the film.

This week is a crowded one at the box office. We'll recap Monday to see how the weekend played out.