'Knight and Day' and 'Grown Ups' aim for teen and adult crowds

By Sarah Sluis

Adults and teens will be greeted with two summer movie staples this weekend: a big-name comedy, Grown Ups, and a slick action comedy, Knight and Day. But don't expect either of them to beat the second weekend of Toy Story 3, which should earn well over $50 million.

Pairing up Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, Knight and Day (3,098 theatres) jump-started the weekend by opening on Wednesday, bringing in $3.8 million on opening day. However, Toy Story 3 brought in $13.4 million the same day, a sign that the movie will be trounced at the box office. Critic Kevin Lally summed up the movie "as disposable and inconsequential as summer entertainments get," but for audiences dividing their attention between the film and their giant buckets of popcorn, they might get exactly what they wished for.

Grown Ups (3,534 theatres) is a movie cast with extremely funny people that isn't really funny at all--unless you're the kind of person who thinks that

bodily fluids are so hilarious you squirt milk out your nose in laughter. I'm talking to you, fourth-grade lunchroom table. The movie is an exercise in mediocrity, and at best numbs you for a couple of hours. Apparently, the cast had fun making the movie, but as this slideshow from New York Magazine suggests, the more fun you have during shooting, the less fun the audience usually has watching the final product.

A moving war documentary that's also a selection at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, Restrepo follows a group of soldiers stationed in the most dangerous part of Afghanistan. Without drawing

conclusions about its participants, it offers a reminder of "one of the irreducible, grim absurdities of this war, which is the disjunction between its lofty strategic and ideological imperatives and the dusty, frustrating reality on the ground," as New York Times critic A.O. Scott points out. I wrote about the movie on this blog earlier this week, and give it my thumbs up.

On Monday, we'll weigh in on the second-week drop of Toy Story 3, wonder if it's the end for Tom Cruise with Knight and Day, and see how many audiences fell for stupid-funny Grown Ups.