'Immortals' spars with 'Jack and Jill'

By Sarah Sluis

The swords-and-sandals epic Immortals (3,112 theatres) will have to fight a little in order to top the box office. Jack and Jill, Puss in Boots, and Immortals are all expected to land somewhere north of $20 million, but Immortals' 3D action should make it the biggest crowd-pleaser. 40% of Rotten Tomatoes critics rated the movie positively, and our Maitland McDonagh was one of them. She praised the "old-school epic entertainment dressed up with state-of-the-art effects." The driving force in the plot is the search for a bow that will allow a person to become a "one-man army." The bow sounds an awful lot like the "Macguffin" or "weenie" trope, but hey, at least it's an excuse for "deliriously bloody battle sequences and fetishistic fascination with lightly clad male flesh."

Adam Sandler cross-dresses in Jack and Jill (3,438 theatres), which may be the comedian's most groan-inducing premise yet. "Brains can be checked at the coatroom," critic Doris Toumarkine snipes, but acknowledges that some "Sandler fans may welcome the brainless diversion." After last year's Grown Ups, count me out--I'm a fallen Sandler fan. With an insanely low 2% positive Rotten Tomatoes rating, I doubt even those who count Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison as their favorite comedies will turn out. Ouch. Unlike most of the star's films, Jack and Jill is rated PG, so perhaps it will draw in family crowds and eleven-year-old boys who think Sandler is the funniest guy ever.

Director Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar (expanding to 1,910 theatres) opened in limited release on Wednesday, posting a $7,500 per-screen average. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as famed FBI head J. Edgar Hoover in the biopic. This is the kind of film that thrives on good reviews, but not many are coming. Sure, DiCaprio delivers a "committed performance," according to critic Kevin Lally, but there's also the "old-age makeup [that] isn't always convincing" and a speechy setup. "As agent Clyde Tolson, Armie Hammer says more with a knowing smile than any line of [screenwriter Dustin Lance] Black's wordy dialogue," Lally concludes. Sounds like a classic case of not following "show don't tell." Since the filmmakers can only speculate on certain things--like the exact nature of Hoover's relationship with Tolson, to whom he left his entire estate and spent a lot of close time with--it's often unsatisfying. The scope, too, is so large Black often just brushes the surface. Count this one out of the major Oscar races. At least, I hope there are better films out there this season.

On the specialty front, there's a tiny release of Elite Squad: The Enemy Within (1 theatre), a sequel to the smash Brazilian cops and gangsters hit that's "as intelligent as it is entertaining," according to critic Doris Toumarkine. Also in the mix is director Lars von Trier's Melancholia. Kirsten Dunst stars as a bride who marries just as a planet inches closer to destroying Earth. Critic Chris Barsanti felt the movie amounts to a "trite apocalypse," though he's in the minority of reviewers. Finally, director Werner Herzog mulls over the death penalty by focusing on one heinous crime in Texas in Into the Abyss (10 theatres). Barsanti had kinder words for the documentary, praising it as "essayistic yet visceral"

On Monday, we'll see if Immortals, Jack and Jill, and Puss in Boots all landed above the $20 million mark and if J. Edgar debuts higher than its middling reviews suggest.