Could 'The Help' be this summer's second female-driven hit?

By Sarah Sluis

This summer began with an R-rated un-rom com, Bridesmaids, which opened softly but has since earned over six times its opening weekend. The highly anticipated adaptation of the novel The Help releases today, which I predict will soon have membership to the $100 million club. According to a Variety article published today, the studio held over 300 advance screenings of the movie that targeted black and faith-based audiences, as well as some library crowds. I took a look at some of The Help's comparable films to try to figure out the movie's prospects, which are currently looking quite bright.

Eat Pray Love (2010)
Opening weekend: $23 million. Domestic Total: $80 million.
Unlike The Help, Eat Pray Love was hampered by poor reviews. Just 46% of audiences liked the movie, according to Rotten Tomatoes, compared to 89% of audiences who have previewed The Help. Like The Help, Eat Pray Love was based on a bestseller popular in book clubs, but interest stopped at older white women. Many people dismissed the movie as covering "white girl problems," and the midlife crisis impetus for the woman's journeys alienated younger viewers. Prediction: The Help will blow this release out of the water.

Julie & Julia (2009)
Opening weekend: $20 million. Domestic Total: $94 million.
Another movie based on a popular book, Julie & Julia had much better reviews. It opened lower than Eat Pray Love, but audiences kept coming, giving the movie a higher finish. The casting of Meryl Streep, who was nominated for an Oscar, was also a boon. Prediction: The Help will do at least as well, in part because it also appeals to faith-based and black audiences.

Bridesmaids (2011)
Opening weekend: $26 million. Domestic Total (so far): $166 million.
Plenty of people who loved reading The Help would not be caught dead watching this R-rated comedy. However, it's worth noting that even with a lot of marketing and media exposure, this comedy only opened to $26 million. If The Help opens low, its performance the second and third weeks will spell whether the drama is a success or not. Prediction: Tough competition, but I think The Help has a chance of matching Bridesmaids.

The Blind Side (2009)
Opening weekend: $34 million Domestic Total: $255 million.
Comparison between The Blind Side and The Help may be the most valuable. They both share similar plotlines, about white people helping black people. Faith-based audiences responded particularly well to the Sandra Bullock drama, which is a bit more Christian than The Help, in my opinion. However, I don't know how popular The Blind Side was with black audiences. A movie like The Help will have much more resonance with black audiences than Blind Side, whose black character was mostly mute and unexplored as a person. In contrast, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer have been giving tons of interviews and many people will come to the movie to see them. The sports theme of The Blind Side was an automatic draw for male audiences, who may be less enthusiastic about The Help. Prediction: Unless The Help ends up in the Best Picture category like The Blind Side, I think The Help will come in underThe Blind Side's total.

A final thought. If Disney/DreamWorks has been successful in marketing The Help to black audiences, the movie's opening weekend could be much bigger than most female-driven adaptations of "book club" novels. Tyler Perry's Madea movies routinely earn half their total haul the first weekend, when middle-aged black women turn out in force to see these movies.

First-day estimates of The Help should post tomorrow. Currently, 31% of advance ticket sales on Fandango are for the movie.

Success of 'Bridesmaids' dispels some Hollywood myths

By Sarah Sluis

In many ways, Bridesmaids is a pretty typical movie. It bears the hallmarks of the comedies from producer Judd Apatow: a reliance on improv, an R-rating, and grounding in realism. But there's one thing that's different about Bridesmaids: women. To get a sense of how much Bridesmaids ruffles the status quo of Hollywood, one need only look at the numbers. The Kristen Wiig-starrer was originally predicted to earn in the high teen millions. After earning $7.8 million on Friday, THR posted an updated weekend prediction of $21.5 million. When the Monday estimates came in, Variety and THR both reported numbers in the $24.6 million range--much better than expected. Then the Monday actuals came in. The little comedy that could brought in $26.2 million. All told, the film earned 50% more than expected.

Occasionally, a movie will confound tracking, and it's often one that appeals to an audience that doesn't attend movies frequently. Bridesmaids had great reviews from critics and positive word-of-mouth, but insiders didn't have confidence that these indicators would lead to an overflowing box office. Bridesmaids led to a lot of chatter and enthusiastic recommendations in social networks. It was also a "group" movie, and the extra friend or boyfriend people dragged along probably added to the overperformance.

Hollywood is often criticized for not releasing enough movies that appeal to women, star women, and that really flesh out their characters. The success of Bridesmaids also shows that Hollywood has lacked the "sensors" to find the type of people who were excited about this kind of film. Insiders underestimated the support the film would get not only from a female audience, but a male one: 33% of the audience was male, refuting the industry adage that women will go to see a movie starring men but men won't see a movie starring women.

Bridesmaids' performance will undoubtedly inspire a number of female-driven comedies. Stale, packaged romantic comedies, with few exceptions, have been doing dismally at the box office, yet somehow these movies still get a green light. Bridesmaids also has something in common with 2006's surprise hit The Devil Wears Prada--it was a comedy about women that featured romance as an insignificant subplot.

Some Bridesmaids spinoffs might not get the entire message. I'm a little skeptical of the new Anna Faris vehicle, for example, What's Your Number?, which was billed as a "new kind of comedy" in a New Yorker profile of Faris. It's "raunchy" (Faris' character fears she has slept with too many men and revisits all her exes and one-night stands), but it also reads as a typical romantic comedy. The trailer makes it clear that the audience can count on the unfolding of a particularly painful, trite clich, that of "the Mr. Right who was right in front of you all along." It's the kind of thing that makes the audience roll their eyes in frustration.

Wiig's career should take off now that Bridesmaids is a verified success. She had the highest debut of any "SNL" cast member in a feature film, beating Will Ferrell's feature debut in Old School both in revenue and attendance, according to Box Office Mojo. Apatow will surely produce more female-centered comedies, and it looks like he already has one in his back pocket: IMDB lists the project Business Trip, which centers on a group of women goofing off on corporate excursion. Apatow's wife Leslie Mann is attached, and the script comes from Stacey Harman, a green screenwriter whose only other credit is an adaptation of an irreverent how-to book called The Hookup Handbook. Even if there's no Bridesmaids II, the film's $26.2 million weekend means audiences can look forward to some female-driven comedies that focus on friends and work, not finding true love.

A friendly discussion of 'The Social Network'

By Sarah Sluis

In case you haven't heard, "that Facebook movie" is coming out in two days. It seems like every critic is raving about the movie, currently rated 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, and every magazine has a Mark Zuckerberg story on its cover, but my advice is this: If you want to enjoy a good movie (not a great movie, mind you, a good movie), don't believe the hype.

While The Social Network is a perfectly competent and enjoyable film, it didn't awe me as much as I expected. When I watch a movie, I expect to be taken on an emotional roller coaster, but this one had the highs and lows and emotional arc of a television show. I was entertained, but not stunned. When I start hearing "Best Picture at the Oscars," my expectations get raised. When I see an awesome trailer, I expect the film to deliver. While living up to those kinds of predictions can be hard, there are definitely films (like Avatar) that live up the buzz.

The Social Network goes by very fast, but doesn't really ever rest on anything. Citizen Kane (which people are unfortunately comparing this movie to) also covered a lot, but it didn't feel rushed the way this does. One technique I didn't think added much was cross-cutting between Zuckerberg's Facebook-related lawsuits and the rise of Facebook. There wasn't a significant difference between Zuckerberg the rising star and Zuckerberg the defendant. If they were going for that stark contrast that you get with a "before/after he was behind bars" kind of movie, they failed.

The writer (Aaron Sorkin), director (David Fincher), and producer (Scott Rudin) of this film are immensely talented, and all have works on my "best" list. I saw bits and pieces of their trademark strengths, but everything didn't add up. Fincher was at his best at showing off Harvard's in-groups, creepiness, excess and conspiracy, hearkening back to his work on Fight Club, Se7en and Zodiac. I loved Sorkin's use of technical dialogue (hello, he is an offspring of Howard Hawks, although I prefer him when he's channeling the geekiness of Ball of Fire, not that His Girl Friday opening sequence).

I'll gladly see the movie again to find out if the Emperor really is wearing clothes, but in the meantime I'll keep my lonely position and set my sights on another film for Best Picture--True Grit.

Are men taking over romantic comedies?

By Sarah Sluis

Yesterday, I caught Going the Distance, a well-executed, not-so-painful romantic comedy (at least according to me, not my viewing companion). That's pretty much the best the genre can hope for nowadays. Afterwards, this lackluster film inspired some discussion about romantic comedies we have enjoyed over the past few years. It was hard to name ANY.

Last year's twee (500) Days of Summer got a mention, as did Cyrus, I Love You, Man and the Judd Apatow movies. "But those don't really count," my companion said. "They're kind of the death of romantic comedies."

What all these movies have in common is that fact that they're guy romantic comedies. They're also about male friendships, in the case of the Apatow movies and I Love You, Man. Which makes them, technically, bromances and not romantic comedies.

Looking at back at some of my favorite romantic comedies from the past 20-30 years, however, I realized that a lot of them had memorable male characters. They also told the story from the male point-of-view or a combined male/female point-of-view. (Some of these favorites include Annie Hall, When Harry Met Sally, The American President, Jerry Maguire, The Wedding Singer, There's Something About Mary...)

Why are these types of romantic comedies so rewarding?

1) Speaking as a woman, there's always a level of curiosity about what the other half is thinking. When you're given a male point-of-view, women can see what's going on on the other side.

2) Also, when we see a male character in a romantic comedy, it's usually showing him pursuing or pining over a girl. Given a choice between seeing an empathetic man waiting by the phone for his love interest to call and a woman waiting for a man to call, I'll take the first one, hands down.

3) It's a sign that characters are well-developed. In many of the forgettable romantic comedies that I've seen over the past few years, I can barely remember the leading man. But a well-written, well-acted character can come across even with very little screen time.

Going the Distance tried to incorporate some of these techniques. Justin Long had plenty of screen time. We see him pick up the phone and call Drew Barrymore after his first date, not her waiting around for him to call (she also doesn't store his number in her phone, making her seem like the less interested one). The cast of male characters bolstered up our understanding of Long, and made him an equal character to Barrymore. Unfortunately, the whole movie lacked a certain naturalness and felt artificial, despite the best of intentions.

I've been eyeing the "bromance" trend for some time, and I wonder if this reflects a shift in American culture. Lots of older screwball romantic comedies, for example, involve prim women who are finally forced to acknowledge their love for someone else, which seems like a reflection of what was expected at the time. Now, it seems that romantic comedies often show male characters becoming more vulnerable and less "masculine." It's still a little transgressive and unusual, but also shows how American culture is changing over time.

'Sex and the City 2' is not (quite) a romantic comedy

By Sarah Sluis

The reviews are in for Sex and the City 2, and some of them are positively scathing. If you start with the New York Observer review, which opened with "The only thing memorable about Sex and the City 2 is the number two part, which describes it totally, if you get my drift," and work down from there, you have a pretty good idea of what people are saying.

Sex and the City 2 is an extremely easy target, with its over-the-top antics and tenuous connection to real life (at least in movie form). But it's also worth noting what it's not. It's not a story that ends when the girl and the guy get together. And, as I mentioned in my own review, the movie is about how sex, the city, and relationships bond the women to one another. The men in the story are always less important than the friendships, and that's what sets this series apart. It's also what makes some people call the show feminist, empowered, and things like that. It's like the teen movie Now and Then, but with cocktails and crazy clothes.

Writer/director/producer Michael Patrick King's interview with the Wall Street Journal best illustrates how this works (my bolding).

"Mr. King admitted that 'Sex and the City' and its great volume of stories has affected the romantic comedies that have come after. "It's not that they're stealing from us, but we stole from life," he said. "And we got there first. But they've lost the comedy in romantic comedies, or they've lost the romantic. Like girls are doofuses and they're sneaking into beauty parlors and dying each other's hair blue," Mr. King said, referring to the Kate Hudson film Bride Wars."

At one point (when "Sex and the City" was a series), it did feel like it was emulating (a more glamorous than yours) real life, describing the details of socializing in Manhattan and the silly quirks of relationships. I don't feel that the movies capture that feeling as well as the series, which had an added intimacy by being televised in one's own home. I also think the costuming got way out of control--I sincerely doubt anyone would wear a ball gown skirt and T-shirt in a Middle Eastern market. It just looks weird.

Sex and the City has its many detractors, including those that despise its particular brand of feminism. The series itself was supposed to be revolutionary, because it had independent women who were single long after they were supposed to be. As King says to the WSJ, "Sex and the City is about outsiders. Single girls as lepers, should have been married by now. It's the reason the whole thing took off." However, the fact that three out of four of the women are married by the second movie may negate this point. Was "Sex and the City" merely reflecting the fact that people were no longer marrying and having children in their early twenties?

I'm at the point where I hope there won't be a Sex and the City 3 (I've had my fill), but I will also be eagerly awaiting the box office returns from today, opening day. If I can choose between last year's juggernaut Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Sex and the City 2, I'd definitely like to see more of the latter.