As terribly easy as it is to hate on the Twilight films, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part II was the best of the series. (Not that it was without its share of WTFery — imprinting and vampire fistfights and every second of Michael Sheen onscreen, anyone?) But with Breaking Dawn - Part II nominated for 11 Razzie Awards in just ten categories, up against the likes of Adam Sandler's That's My Boy, Eddie Murphy's A Thousand Words, and the bizarro pop culture sensation/box office bomb The Oogieloves In Big Balloon Adventure, let's be real: Does Twilight truly deserve to win all the Razzies?
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Despite the stiff competition of the NCAA tournament and the local bar, the multiplex fared all right over St. Patrick's Day weekend: The single new wide release 21 Jump Street was a hit, and The Lorax retained its blockbuster status in its third week of release. Not bad! Your Weekend Receipts are here.
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You might have noticed a glaring omission in this morning's Weekend Receipts, but probably not: Even I couldn't be bothered to remember that an Eddie Murphy movie not only opened on Friday (to catastrophically bad reviews; the Rotten Tomatoes "fresh" rating remains at a super-rare 0%) but also concluded the weekend with a brutal $6.25 million gross &mdash making for a sixth-place finish and a $3,360-per-screen average. This would make A Thousand Words the third straight Murphy-led film to open under $7 million — quite the opposite from last fall's reasonably successful ensemble effort Tower Heist and his voice work in the blockbuster Shrek franchise. Factor in his Oscars-hosting debacle, and you kind of have to ask yourself: Is this it for Eddie?
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Congrats are in order to Eddie Murphy, who with his latest comedy A Thousand Words joins the heralded ranks of filmmakers who've achieved perfection, of a sort -- the perfect 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It's the white whale of film criticism, a feat so rare that only films like One Missed Call or last year's Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star have earned the distinction. So let's raise a glass to A Thousand Words' now-guaranteed eventual Razzie nomination and remember a few of the best-worst films to earn the double zero distinction!
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The troubles marring the relationship between fast-talking literary agent Jack McCall (Eddie Murphy) and his wife and the mother of his baby Caroline (Kerry Washington) are nothing next to the issues A Thousand Words has in marrying wacky physical comedy and a new age exploration of absentee fathers. The film, which is directed by Norbit's Brian Robbins and written by Bruce Almighty's Steve Koren, is being slung at audiences as a broad family laffer of the Jim Carrey school, but spends just as much time trying to be a serious tale about letting go of childhood resentments and accepting mortality. The "deep" bits aren't, despite a climactic shot in which Murphy actually frolics with his childhood self through a Terrence Malick-style dreamy field of wheat, and the parts that aim to be funny rarely succeed at that either, telegraphing their punchlines so far in advance that they don't really need to follow through on them.
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So this whole Eddie Murphy dropping out of the Academy Awards thing has to be good for someone, right? Maybe even for Eddie Murphy and DreamWorks, who have cleverly unveiled a trailer for the long-postponed Murphy comedy A Thousand Words today, hoping that a little publicity will go a long way for what appears to be a knock-off of one of your favorite Jim Carrey titles.
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