No bailout for record-breaking 'Fast & Furious'

By Sarah Sluis

The automobile industry may be in decline, but the automobile? Never. In the highest opening of the year, and the highest April opening ever, Fast & Furious earned a whopping $72.5 million this weekend,

surprising industry experts, who had never seen anything bigger in April than the $42 million opening of Anger Management six years ago. The film was expected to open in the $40-50 million range, but instead brought in an estimated $20,950 per screen in its record-breaking finish. The opening weekend also bests the entire box-office gross of the previous sequel The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. The return of the original star Vin Diesel no doubt helped, but the robust performance of the film could also be viewed as an impact of the recession. While home entertainment competes with the theatre box office, the very fact that seeing a movie involves getting out of the house could work in the industry's favor during a period when many of the unemployed are stuck at home looking for a job. I'm curious to see if theatre owners see a lift in attendance Monday through Friday, as unoccupied workers seek some diversion during the week.

Below Fast & Furious, Monsters vs. Aliens earned a little more than half the amount of last week, $33.5 million. The 3D film will likely remain in the top ten for several weeks to come, and should taper off its drop as 2D screens are removed from the run and profitable 3D screens remain.

The other new picture of the week, Adventureland, came in at number six to earn a light $6 million. Opening on just 1,862 screens, the comedy didn't have the presence of Greg Mottola's previous film, Superbad.

Overture's Sunshine Cleaning broke into the top ten in its fourth week of release, adding 312 screens to its 479-screen run and earning $1.8 million. The star power of Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, as well as a marketing campaign that alluded to the black comedy's Little Miss Sunshine roots, have filled theatres, despite its small run.

The rest of the returning films dropped between 38-58%, a reasonable range. Two week-old releases The Haunting in Connecticut (#3, $9.5 million) and 12 Rounds (#9, $2.3 million) dropped the most, while comedy I Love You, Man (#5, $7.8 million) retained audiences with just a 38% drop. Sci-fi thriller Knowing (#4, $8.1 million), romantic spy movie Duplicity (#7, $4.3 million) and family film Race to Witch Mountain (#8, $3.3 million) rounded out the top ten.

'Adventureland' and 'Fast & Furious' race into theatres

By Sarah Sluis

The most hyped release of the week is Adventureland (1,862 theatres). From Superbad director Greg Mottola, it's set in the time of 1980's John Hughes movies, but the tale of "a dweeby nebbish [who] improbably wins the heart of a gorgeous babe" (according to our reviewer Ethan Alter) is told with

considerable more bite. The movie has a fantastic retro soundtrack and clothing, and unlike its 1980s predecessors, has no qualms making marijuana, not alcohol, the slacker-theme park drug of choice. Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg make a somewhat unlikely pairing, with Stewart playing a variation of "the typical manic pixie dream girl who teaches the nerdy hero how to loosen up and enjoy life." Even more unlikely is the casting of Ryan Reynolds (who recently wed Scarlett Johannsson) as an older, married maintenance worker who likes to carry out summer affairs with young members of the staff--Stewart included. Mottola does a great job setting up the "rules" of the theme park much like films like Mean Girls set up their high school hierarchies. Eisenberg and Stewart are "Games" people, not the coveted "Rides" people, and treated accordingly. The whole operation is overseen by a hilariously enthusiastic couple, played by SNL's Kristin Wiig and Bill Hader. The small release means it will likely come it no higher than #3 for the week (behind Monsters vs. Aliens and Fast & Furious), but at least the theatres will be packed enough to inspire contagious laughter.

Vin Diesel returns to the franchise that made him famous in Fast & Furious (3,462 theatres), the fourth installment of the film-slash-excuse for car chases and automobile fetishization. Our critic Daniel Eagan found "the stunts...as thrilling as they are implausible." But for viewers seeking "a throwback to an earlier

age of exploitation films," it's an old formula [that] still make[s] sense...Solid and satisfying, it should win over mainstream viewers as well as gearheads."

Even with an evangelical showing of "gearheads," Monsters vs. Aliens will likely win over the box office for a second week. A failure to do so will be a big upset for the film, which has been playing well in 3D venues. The 2D screens, by comparison, are considerably more empty, at least according to the talk at Showest.

On the specialty side, New Yorkers have a lot to choose from: Sugar, a "fictionalized tale of a Dominican baseball player trying to make it in the States," uses its story to comment on "acculturation and the immigrant experience." Paris 36, a "let's put on a show" musical with a lush, 1936 Paris setting, and, closer to home, Gigantic, a slightly surreal romance and comedy set in the Big Apple itself. Or, if you want to go out of this world, Alien Trespass, a sci-fi tale "with echoes of It Came from Outer Space and other 1950s drive-in classics" and "a paragon of dry humor," releases in 40 theatres across the country. Next Monday, we'll recap and sort out the winners and losers at the box office.