As if the gender battles of the current Democratic primaries weren’t enough, this weekend seems to be promising a bit of defacto sexual segregation in our nation’s theaters, with two separate films featuring strong not-quite-superstar comedy duos, one male and R-rated and one female and PG-13, and both getting mixed reviews.
Now, the old me might think this weekend would be a close call. Indeed, Variety failed to even hazard a guess this week. However, Carl DiOrio of the Hollywood Reporter did, and I have learned to respect the might of PG-13 girl power, and so this weekend’s probable winner (though probably not by very much) is…..
* “Baby Mama.” This high-concept comedy features Tina Fey, carrying over some of her romantically frustrated, tightly wound career woman shtick from “30 Rock” and SNL’s Amy Poehler as a trailer park refugee surrogate who is bearing her child, with Oscar and Felix style hijinks ensuing. There’s really no doubt about this one, as it appears to be “tracking” well with teenage girls. Also, with Tina Fey’s well deserved television fame, expect some crossover business from adult women and from the large secret society of men who find Tina Fey ridiculously attractive, which includes me. (It’s the glasses!) Moreover, though it gets a fairly ho-hum 58% on ye old Tomatometer, even at our very male-oriented site, this estrogen-heavy farce got a significantly better review than this week’s more manly-skewing comedy team entry….
*”Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanomo Bay” got me all excited (platonically, I mean) at my other blog home a few months back, but this sequel to the rib-tickling, ethnic-barrier breaking 2004 DVD hit, “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle” mainly gets some backhanded, vaguely disappointed, critical respect, with a slightly worse than ho-hum 49% rating at Rotten Tomatoes. (The first film did considerably better, breaking 70%.) In any case, the R-rating and the strong, but slightly niche-y, appeal here pretty much makes this a shoe-in for a healthy second place.
*Considering that last weekend’s second-place comedy “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” is not only hanging in at the box office but was actually yesterday’s #1 film, proving that good reviews and word of mouth actually count for something, and that last week’s winner, “The Forbidden Kingdom” is nevertheless going to stay strong for awhile, it’ll be interesting to see how low on the list the apparently dead-in-the-water not so sexy mega-turkey “Deception” actually comes in. With a cast led by Ewan McGregor, Hugh Jackman, and Michelle Williams, the fact that this film has received next to no promotion should be one clue. Another clue, as more than one critic, including good ol’ Dave Medsker, have pointed out, is the cookie-cutter “erotic thriller” title. Might as well call it “Kind of Lame Movie.” And, with a pathetic 8% RT rating, this makes it the second critically stomped star-driven thriller in two weeks, after “88 Minutes” spurred talk from several critics, including TV’s Richard Roeper and Michael Phillips, of it being both the worst ever Al Pacino film and his worst movie performance. No, Al, this time you really are out of order, it seems.
*Still, no new studio film will do worse this weekend than the poker drama “Deal.” It has done the near impossible for a professional film production with a reasonably strong cast (Burt Reynolds, “Reaper” boy Bret Harrison, Shannon Elizabeth, Jennifer Tilly, and character actor par excellance Charles Durning) and a veteran director in Gil Cates and gotten a 0% percent RT rating, which I can’t remember even seeing before. One presumes its token 50-theater release is being done only to avoid the “direct to DVD” stigma that, together with the trailer, makes it feel like a retread of a retread of a retread. Sad. [Update/correction: Obviously, “Deal” is not directed by 74-year old producer-director Gil Cates, best known these days for executive producing the Academy Awards telecast each year, but his son, Gil Cates, Jr. Compare their careers at IMDb. Also, Jason Z. pointed out in comments that “One Missed Call” also managed a 0% rating. Interestingly for film geeks, that film was not only a J-horror remake, but as far as I know the only English-language remake of a flick by hyper-busy Japanese bad-boy Takashi Miike — a director usually, though not always, noted for extreme violence, gore, and overall weirdness. Personally, I’d like to see a remake of the only one of his films I’ve had the guts to sit through so far, the relatively tame but hilarious and touching horror/musical/dramedy, “The Happiness of the Katakuris.” Now that would be a bold move.]
Meanwhile in Indiewood…. Fans of ultra-extreme horror might be dissapointed to find that “Rogue,” the new horror opus from the Australian creators of “Wolf Creek” (which deeply appalled and depressed the usually horror-friendly Roger Ebert) is, from the few reviews available, apparently an enjoyable, old fashioned creature flick without excess gore or sadism, and with a solid lead performer in Radha Mitchell. This one really looks like just my horror speed and a good time at the movies…so, of course, it’s only going to ten theaters. Can non-PTSD-inducing thrills-and-chills really be dead? Of course not, but some would disagree.
And, though it’s only showing up on two screens, by far the most important film to open this week has to be “Standard Operating Procedure,” a documentary exploring the court martials resulting from the Abu Ghraib torture/murder/photography scandals. It’s from Errol Morris (“The Fog of War,” “The Thin Blue Line,” etc.), who many (myself included) believe is by far the best living American documentarian, and one of the most thoughtful people to ever pick up a motion picture camera. All of his films are notable, but this one might be even more so, as the predictably strong reviews indicate (though 78% percent seems almost low, considering). We’ll be keeping tabs.
