WEEKEND REVIEW

Though I have problems with A.I., I’m not particularly giddy about the film coming up short at the box office.  The $30.1 million estimate may look okay next to Saving Private Ryan’s $30.6 million start from a distance, but a closer look shows almost 800 fewer screens and an R-rating for Ryan making a difference.  After some worries about tracking the week before last, numbers just before the weekend had people giddily estimating a $50 million 3-day take.  Nope.  Far more of a concern, the Friday number of $10.1 million suggested a $35 - $40 million weekend.  But the Friday-to-Saturday rise was a slight 1.2 million or 12 percent.    Coincidentally, The Fast and the Furious fell by the same percentage in this, its second weekend.  But last weekend, TFx2 actually dropped from Friday to Saturday.  That’s a sure sign of a teen movie.  (We saw this phenomena with regularity on the Sony High movies.)  Is that what A.I. is?  Teens and aging critics, together as one?  I don’t know.  Warner Bros.’ Dan Fellman told Reuters that the film was playing to a mostly over-25 audience.  All I do know that I’ll have to go back to see the film again.  Too many of you loved it… not quite as many as hated it, but out of respect for y’all, Warners will get $9 of my dollars.

In an odd way, a far bigger box office disappointment this weekend was the $4.5 million opening of crazy/beautiful.  Even on just 1601 screens, the film could have done better.  (Baby Boy, which sucked up a lot of its “must see” dollars in its Wednesday opening, did an estimated $8.6 million over the weekend on 1533 screens.)  I am tempted to suggest that Disney soft sold the film.  Newsweek’s John Horn already reported about the studio’s worries over the film and the extra cuts they forced on director John Stockwell.  1601 screens for a Kirsten Dunst movie … after her last starring role, Bring It On, opened to $17. 4 million in 2380 venues… is slight.  And while K.D. was on the cover of Entertainment Weekly last week, it was for a film that won’t open for 11 months.  I’m not saying that Dunst as a problem child in an interethnic relationship is an easy sell.  It isn’t.  But Disney already proved it was willing to dump a rising actress’ film when it parented the dumping of O – and with it, star Julia Stiles - by Miramax.  It would be unfair to suggest that those who work at Disney didn’t give their all… but resources come from on high. 

Speaking of Disney, Pearl Harbor estimated a 35 percent drop this weekend, continuing its unusual slowing fall as it loses screens.  We’ll see what happens this next weekend, when another chunk of screen space evaporates.  Even with the current 35 percent level of weekly deterioration, the film would come up about $5 million short of the target $200 million mark.  Wanna bet the film hits the mark?

Pootie Tang opened in twelfth place, with just $1.6 million.  But with a $4.5 million budget and a conservative P&A budget, the film is still sure to turn a profit on video. 

Amongst holdovers, The Fast & The Furious (a cheap, PG-13 remake of Gone in 60 Seconds) is on its way to well over $100 million, Swordfish (an expensive R rated thriller) is surprisingly not, Dr. Dolittle did okay, Tomb Raider passed $100 million, Atlantis estimated another disappointing  38 percent fall and Shrek keeps rolling.

THE GOOD:  Who would ever expected that the best two Disney films of the Summer of 2001 would be from DreamWorks and Warner Bros.?  Of course, the DreamWorks film is Shrek, which has all the kick of Disney’s Pixar films, including, they hope, the upcoming Monsters, Inc.  The Warner Bros. title is Cats & Dogs, which is a direct descendent of the Fred McMurray pictures, by way of Honey, I Shrunk The Kids.  The film, due out later this week, is a small delight… great for kids and entertaining enough for adults.  The film is a sure hit… a much better ride than something like the horrible Inspector Gadget.  And kids went to see that one over and over in the theater as though it were a video.  Look for much of the same from Cats & Dogs, as it plays its way into the late parts of summer.

THE BAD:  Today’s censorship update – It turns out that the worries about Charlie’s Angels in Dubai are connected to the mockery of religious ritual and NOT about Cameron’s Under-roos or Drew fellating a stick shift. 

Meanwhile in the UK, sex is also not the issue in the editing of Tomb Raider into a rating safe enough for a 12-year-old.  It’s the violence.  (They never expect the Spanish Inquisition!!!)  Read the story here.

THE UGLY:  They say the winners get to write the history.  And so it is in this week’s New York Observer, one of my very favorite reads.  Rebecca Traister, for whom I have a lot of respect, writes in this week’s The Transom column about some of the recent troubles at Disney animation.  And I can’t argue with a lot of her points.  However, the problem I have with the column is that it relies on a number of disgruntled animators who remain in the background… an equal number of whom could have been found over the last year ready to trash Jeffrey Katzenberg, the man who is played up as the hero of the piece.  The employment conditions at both studios… and at WB animation and at Fox… have left a lot cranky people around town.  And I haven’t written much about it because cranky people make bad sources.  I’m sure that a lot of their beefs are completely righteous.  But the level of rage ebbs and flows with the level of work.

But back to Ms. Traister’s piece… I am very happy to see  Jeffrey Katzenberg’s recent return to the top of the heap.   But it is a return, at least in the perception of the industry, after not only The Road to El Dorado, but in disappointing returns for The Prince of Egypt.  (Perhaps expectations for that film were simply too high.)  Additionally, while Pixar is used like a cudgel against Disney, there is not a single mention of PDI, DreamWorks’ partner on the their two most successful films, Antz and Shrek. 

Disney animation is an easy target right now.  I liked The Emperor’s New Groove, but it was a project that was in transition through almost its entire life.  Dinosaur did good business, but was incredibly expensive and missed the height of the dinosaur craze as it spent 5 years in production.  And Atlantis is a clear box office disappointment, particularly when compared to Shrek.  But success will come again, just as failure will arrive at DreamWorks’ door one of these days.  And the players will not have changed much.  But in the sometimes-short memory of the press, there will be a winner and a loser… for the moment.  (The story is here.)

BIG LIST O’ QUOTES:  Here we go again…

BAD AD WATCH:  Warner Bros. won’t let a little bad press about the junket game get in the way of some good pull quotes… and I even liked the movie!  Maria Salas, Jim Ferguson and Shawn Edwards are front and center on Cats & Dogs.   Meow!

READER OF THE DAY:  Not The AP Wire wrote:  “To me, a great film is not a perfectly structured, coherent story. A great film, and a fascinating film, is one which is distinguished, mysterious, provokes emotions, and offers something visually. A.I. is all those things...movies are first and foremost visual and sensory experiences, let's never forget that.

A.I., and other wonderfully strange films like Hannibal, work for me, not because they are perfect, but because they provide a cinematic experience that is like no other. Is A.I. like any movie you've seen before? I think not.

A.I. is another important, long awaited film, that will disappoint many, as well as be considered, probably, a box-office flop when the end results come in, but strangely people will keep on talking about it. Perhaps they will talk about it with disgust, but I think there's something to be said about movies that create such strong opinions, as A.I. surely does and surely will...”

E ME:  Keep the A.I. mail coming in… a Civilian Voices on A.I. will come out later this week.  (And Amy Berg’s column, The Spin, has some great reader mail up today.)