Weekend Box Office - 2/2/14

For the weekend of January 31-February 2, Ride Along has managed to stay on top for the third week in a row.  As we speak, Kevin Hart is furiously being edited into 300: Rise of An Empire, and he will now be Electro's sidekick in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Not really, but he seems ready to take that Melissa McCarthy step into stardom. The next Chris Tucker is here.

As far as new releases go, audiences didn't care about Zac Efron's Awkward Moment or to see how Kate Winslet celebrated Labor Day.

I think The Lego Movie is set up to open huge this Friday, and The Monuments Men will be a strong #2.  Vampire Academy will bomb.  Then next week we have three 1980's remakes opening. About Last Night (starring Kevin Hart) should have the biggest opening, RoboCop will open flat, and I can't really tell if anyone's intrigued by Endless Love. Never saw the 1981 original with Brooke Shields (and young Tom Cruise and James Spader in small parts), and the preview looks pretty generic now.

Seven of the top seventeen movies this weekend are nominated for Best Picture of 2013.

The Paperboy - DVD Review

Starring Matthew McConaughey, Zac Efron, Nicole Kidman, John Cusack, David Oyelowo, Macy Gray, Scott Glenn and Ned Bellamy.  
Directed by Lee Daniels.

★½

Lee Daniels directed Precious, which won Mo'Nique an Academy Award.  He also directed Shadowboxer, which had Cuba Gooding Jr. and Helen Mirren as a stepson/stepmother assassin team that isn't anywhere near as fun as it sounds.

This Southern gothic tale is more Shadowboxer Daniels than Precious Daniels.

In the mid-1960's, two reporters (McConaughey, Oyelowo) investigate the closed-case of a convicted killer (Cusack) at the behest of a death-row groupie woman (Kidman) who has fallen in love with him via writing letters.  Efron plays younger brother to McConaughey, and he wants to help on the case.  He's developed a crush on Kidman.

Now every actor does a great job (Kidman was nominated for a SAG award for her work here), and some of them plumb some debasing depths for their director.  There's one scene where Efron gets stung by a jellyfish and Kidman pees on him. But why is that scene in there at all?  This movie is full of scenes like that, scenes where I don't get what that has to do with the rest of the story.  Ah, but you see, this is the story. The investigation doesn't really matter.

The movie's shot with browns and oranges that make it look like 1960's home movies. I just wish Daniels had decided on a completely different script for this cast. Oh, Daniels co-wrote it too? Never mind.

Dr. Seuss' The Lorax - Movie Review

Starring the voices of Danny DeVito, Ed Helms, Zac Efron, Taylor Swift, Betty White, Rob Riggle, Jenny Slate and Nasim Pedrad.  Directed by Chris Renaud.

★★½

Saw it at the $2 theater.

For those who haven't read the book, what's wrong with you? For those who have, the 1972 animated short is more faithful to the spirit of the book than this 2012 update. But it has its own pleasures.

Since the movie's 80 minutes instead of 25, we get a lot more fleshing out of the characters. We get a whole family for the boy who goes to ask the Onceler. We get to see the Onceler and his transformation from bright-eyed entrepreneur to the sinister unseen being telling the tale from his boarded-up house. Not much fleshing out for The Lorax, which I appreciated.

Chris Renaud got his big break with directing Despicable Me, and it shows. The bears and fish (?) of the forest serve the same function as the minions from Despicable Me, chattering and muttering and going physical gags on the sides of the screen.

The pro-environmental anti-corporate message is delivered with the velvet subtlety of a jackhammer, and most of the songs are more annoying than catchy. It made me smile a few times, and I like this trend of animating Seuss's stories, even if this one isn't as good as Horton Hears A Who. At least this wasn't a live-action treatment starring Mike Myers, amIright?