Welcome back to Movieline Attractions, your regular guide to everything new, noteworthy and/or fur-covered at the movies. This week sees about half the year's planned releases opening at once -- way, way too many movies to even think about let alone watch. But! Let's sort out what we can.
WHAT'S NEW: Good grief, more like what isn't new. When the studios have three simultaneous openings jammed against each other, you know it's going to be a bit of bottleneck for the rest of the industry. Moreover, it's not even like any of the big openings are likely to overtake Inception for first place overall. We're not moving forward, people.
Anyway. Let's make this quick: Paramount and DreamWorks have Dinner For Schmucks in theaters at last. The remake of French filmmaker Francis Veber's enduring 1998 farce The Dinner Party experienced a few development hiccups over the years, with Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, Zach Galifianakis, Jemaine Clement and fourth-billed Jeff Dunham finally pushing it over the hump. The film and its principals will be rewarded with maybe a $23 million opening for their persistence -- roughly $5 million-$6 million behind where Inception is expected to wind up.
Behind Schmucks it's a little more complicated: The affecting Zac Efron drama Charlie St. Cloud is not generally thought to have much resonance outside one quadrant -- OK, maybe one and a half if you count the 30- to 40-something women with their downlow Efron crushes and strategic "walking into the wrong theater" approach after buying Salt tickets. But neither is the animal-espionage effort Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, so who really knows? The latter doesn't even have that much sequel momentum going for it nearly 10 years on from the original. Let's call it a photo finish for Sunday with Charlie edging into fourth place with $17 million and Kitty right behind it at $16.5 million. You could just as easily subtract a few million from either tally, but they should at least ultimately settle in that order.
And then there's the art house. Hoo boy. The big title here is Get Low, featuring Robert Duvall, Bill Murray and Sissy Spacek in something of a Depression-era master class in everything but screenwriting ("That's what he's been hiding all this time?" your date will ask afterward as you shuffle away in disappointment). Nevertheless, Duvall and Murray are already Oscar short-listers, and deservedly so. Such treasures.
Crowding in behind them -- and I do mean crowding -- there's the Wilmer Valderrama/America Ferrera indie The Dry Land, the underwhelming Mélanie Laurent import The Concert, and the hagiographic mess Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel. In NYC only (for now), there's the intriguing Ron Galella profile Smash His Camera, the Ashley Judd depression drama Helen, the punk-rock homicide doc Who Killed Nancy and the doc adaptation of Thomas Frank's sociopolitics bestseller What's the Matter With Kansas? Meanwhile Los Angeles gets expansions of Countdown to Zero, Life During Wartime and the Jacques Rivette circus diversion Around a Small Mountain.
THE BIG LOSER: I don't think anything is likely to fall on its face out of the gate, but let it suffice to say that were it not for 3D premiums, Cats & Dogs would have a truly dire opening in the low teens. It's already going to be kind of demoralizing for Warners; it's not cheap getting a German Shepard to drop one-liners! Gotta make that cash back!
THE UNDERDOG: I've only got so many ways to tell you how much I enjoyed The Extra Man, from the loopy grandeur of Kevin Kline's lead performance to the quivering ambition of Paul Dano as his protégé to the rich, high-low dimensions of their Manhattan stomping grounds. So I'll leave it at that. It's a gem. Work more often, Kline, seriously.