I had a suspicion that Funny People would be Judd Apatow’s weakest box office opening, but I didn’t expect it to put up the disappointing numbers that it did.

22 milly is not a good look for an Adam Sandler comedy or a Judd Apatow comedy, and when their powers combine like Captain Planet it’s supposed to generate an earth shattering box office boom, not a lackluster dud.

Just goes to show that you might need to do more in your advertisements than just slap known funny people on the screen or poster, call your flick Funny People and then basically say, “Who’s ready to laugh!”

New Releases

I have zero faith in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra being any good. Less than zero, in fact. Any faith that I once had in this movie has collapsed in on itself and become a sort of anti-faith.

I’ve read a handful of reviews online saying the movie actually isn’t as bad as a lot of fans are assuming it will be. I’m inclined to designate these reviewers as plants and shills, but I’ve been wrong before, like that one time I told my friend Mikey that you always double down on eleven, baby. Always.

There is a fundamental flaw in the conceptualization of this film. Namely, they’ve taken a series that was popular for having distinct individual soldiers who each had a unique look, and a level of expertise in their chosen field that essentially granted them minor superpowers. So how do you translate this to the big screen? Give them all matching powersuits so their specialization in both appearance and ability is almost entirely nullified. Michael Bay has caught a lot of flack for his generally dumb take on Transformers, but hell, at least he remembered to retain their ability to transform. Giving the Joes supersuits is like making a movie about Sherlock Holmes where he uses a supercomputer that solves all the mysteries for him, giving him ample time to run around London turning tricks to support his opium habit. I don’t care if it’s supposed to be based more on the Sigma 6 series or some other lousy reincarnation–I want to see the 80′s version brought to life, that’s the classic shit.  Probably the only “tradition” from the original television series that they’ll be foolish enough to keep is a gross underuse of Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow.

Nonetheless, this is all but guaranteed to rule the box office this weekend, as it has no direct competition. I think it’ll do close to fifty million dollars this weekend, but if it’s as lousy as some anticipate the word of mouth could drag it below that mark by Sunday.

Meryl Streep might be the best actress in the whole damn history of Hollywood. Yeah, I said it. She should walk around rocking one of those “CHECK MY $TATS” t-shirts, except she wouldn’t because she probably knows how fucking stupid those shirts are. And based on that, Julie & Julia gets pass from me. I know, I’m supposed to be witty and sarcastic and savage for the sake of comedy but I promised myself when I made the site that I wasn’t gonna force myself to hate just to be hating.

This movie doesn’t appeal to me in any way, but I’m obviously not its target audience. Looking at it objectively I can’t identify too much that looks especially horrible or stupid about it. I like the cast (I’d like to “cook something up” with Amy Adams, if you know what I mean…eh? eh? I’m talking about meals…) and nothing about the movie looks horrible. It just looks like something I’d never, ever, ever want to see. And that’s fine. It’s not always about me. Just mostly…

I wouldn’t be surprised if this pulled in over twenty million this weekend. It’s a good counter-programming move and can attract an older audience.

I’m not convinced that A Perfect Getaway even knows what the fuck it’s supposed to be about. They’ve thrown out a late surge of commercials recently but I still don’t know completely if the movie is taking the subject matter completely seriously or not. Maybe it’s Steve Zahn’s fault. Soon as you see his face you’re conditioned to assume some degree of goofiness is about to begin. A Milla Jovovich sighting doesn’t help either because she hasn’t done shit worth mentioning onscreen except kill zombies for the past seven years. And that’s barely worth mentioning.

The movie doesn’t really look bad, just insipid. Like it should be one of those movies you see in the new release section at Blockbuster, and it has familiar actors on the cover that make you think, “I don’t remember this being in theaters. But it has Morgan Freeman and Christopher Walken in it, so it must have been at the theaters, right? Why would Morgan Freeman and Christopher Walken team up to do some straight to video shit? That would just be stupid.”

It’ll make the top 10, but almost certainly not top 5.

The Rest

So, is this the end of the Apatow era? It seems way too early to pull the trigger on that, but I just want to point out that before Judd took over as the king of adult comedy, the Farrelly Brothers seemed to have an unbreakable grip on the crown back in the mid-through-late 90′s. Then they dropped Stuck on You (which I actually thought was funny, but I’m as big of a Matt Damon fan as a man’s allowed to be if he still wants to like women) and immediately went into a tailspin from which they never recovered. Every movie they’ve released since has been greeted with “meh” reviews and just barely enough “success” at the box office to give them a shot at making one more movie in an attempt to reclaim their lost glory. Now, I seriously doubt Funny People marks the beginning of the end for Apataow, but being the hot comedy guy on the block is a tenuous position–you can get shoved out of that spot at any time.

Unfortunately, making cute-talking-animal movies puts you on firmer ground, and as I suspected G-Force had a decent hold, all but guaranteeing we’ll see a sequel by 2011. On the positive side of things though, The Collector didn’t even crack the top 10. Granted, as I mentioned last week, the budget was only 25 rubles and one free medium, one-topping pizza to be shared by the principle cast, so the film couldn’t have lost money even if it tried. Not making the top 10 still had to be a kick in the nuts though. A slow, torturous kick with some sort of beartrap boot… right in the pendulum…