Weekend Forecast: Can a Sucker Wipe Out a Wimpy Kid?
It's almost Friiiidayyy! You know what that means: Another browse through the all of the week's scintillating new releases in Movieline's Weekend Forecast. And they are scintillating!* Let's have a browse and make some predictions.
NATIONAL FORECAST
· Sucker Punch: The high artistic hopes we all had for Zack Snyder's desaturated slo-mo girl-gang PG-13 burlesque sanitarium fantasia really fell through the floor with this week's reviews. So why don't I feel more... I dunno, upset? Perhaps because while having no real headliner in the ensemble cast, Sucker Punch also has no real competition in the multiplex. Last week was anemic, after all, and this week features the family sequel below as the lone other new release vying for ticket buyers' cash. I can't speak to the quality of the film itself, but economically, it is the pistol-packing belle of the ball. FORECAST: $26.3 million
· Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules: The sequel to the 2010 sleeper Diary of a Wimpy Kid --both based on Jeff Kinney's best-selling young adult books -- should prove a reliable treat for kids and a surprising diversion for parents. Timed fairly perfectly after the similarly demo-splicing Rango and nursing a brand that's anywhere near exhausted, I like this one to overperform
in second place -- unless dads everywhere manage to convince moms that Sucker Punch is the truly empowering Hollywood treat for their young ones. Which you know will happen, if it hasn't begun already. FORECAST: $19.1 million
REGIONAL OUTLOOK
The heartland has one medium-limited release to look forward to -- the spiritually influenced family flick The Fifth Quarter -- while most of the limited-release action occurs on the coasts. Among those new ones, the lone highlight appears to be the Catherine Deneuve comedy Potiche, about the hijinks that ensue when a woman takes over her ill husband's factory. Distant runners up include Julian Schnabel's on-the-nose Middle East tale Miral, the TV-stars-on-indie-parade misfire Peep World, and the fetishized '70s/Brooklyn kitchen-sink job White Irish Drinkers, which is about what it sounds like.
So! Any crystal-ball readings and/or viewing plans yourself? Weigh in below...
* i.e. The kind of stuff you deign to watch if and only if you got run out of your NCAA Tournament brackets last week.
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Comments
This movie was so pointless that I wondered why I was even sitting in the theatre watching it half way through the movie and why I sat through the whole thing at the end of the movie. Maybe it was because I paid $15.00 to see it on an IMAX screen or the fact that I was so sickened by the movie and needed time to gather myself to leave.
The movie was so incoherent and the majority of the movie had so little to do with the start and ending of the movie that if you left the theatre and walked back in at different parts of the movie you would think it was an entirely different movie each time just casting the same actors and actresses. Definitely not worth the time and money of movie goers and may not even be worth watching it if it was to one day be shown on HBO or Starz one day.
If you've yet to waste your money on this movie then use that money to go buy yourself some dinner. If after reading this and you still want to waste your money then I have a few foundations that you can better donate your money to than the pockets of Snyder.