'Green Lantern' prepares to light up box office

By Sarah Sluis

This summer appears to be the season of comic book films. Thor, X-Men: First Class, and now Green Lantern (3,816 theatres) are deluging audiences with superheroes, and Captain America: The First Avenger hasn't even come out yet. Thor skewed young, X-Men aimed for sophisticates, and 3D Green Lantern is best described as "trippy," according to our kind editor Kevin Lally. The consensus is that the movie is plain bad, "assembled with off-the-shelf narrative components and no authentic soul or emotion," according to critic Frank Lovece. The New York Times' Manohla Dargis added that tone is another of the film's issues, with the comic book film unable to "[hit] the sweet spot between sincerity and self-awareness." These worries aside, Green Lantern will probably open in the $50 millions, below Thor and above the highest-rated of the bunch, X-Men: First Class. Figures.

An uptight, workaholic Dad finally relaxes and embraces his family after something crazy and magical happens. This plotline has been used again and again (including in Jim Carrey film Liar Liar), and it's been resurrected for Carrey-starring Mr. Popper's Penguins (3,388 theatres), which centers on him signing for an unexpected shipment of penguins. I feel rather cool towards this premise, and apparently audiences do too. Fox is estimating a low $10 million for the movie, considerably less than Carrey's last kid-oriented studio effort, A Christmas Carol (also an underperformer). The low projections reflect Carrey's waning star power. There seems to be a caste of Hollywood A-List comedian/movie stars who made their big bucks doing PG-13 and R films, only to slowly work their way down the ladder into kid and family offerings. Eddie Murphy's just another example of the Carrey trajectory, and his "uptight Dad saved by kid magic" 2009 film Imagine That did not do well either.

Sundance darling Homework, now titled The Art of Getting By (610 theatres) has received a much cooler reception now that it's about to hit the big screen. THR's David Rooney dismissed the high school tales as a "vapid coming-of-age story" featuring "bland and pretty" couple Emma Roberts and Freddie Highmore going through that eye-rolling juvenile depression in which "standard-issue dissatisfactions are monument." The Times was more kind and clever, with A.O. Scott conceding that "if you grade on a curve you may find yourself touch, tickled, and occasionally surprised." With such a limited release, a number in the low millions will be lucky.

The specialty films to catch will be Page One: Inside the New York Times (2 theatres), a documentary about the Times' Media Desk that I praised yesterday. The real-life horse whisperer gets his own documentary in Buck (4 theatres). The "quietly captivating portrait" of Buck Brannaman shows off his "modesty" and wins over viewers.

On Monday, we'll see if Green Lantern was able to best expectations and beat Thor, if audiences flocked for Mr. Popper's Penguins, and if Fox Searchlight was able to capture the indie teen crowd for The Art of Getting By.