Evidencing the dumbing down of reviewers for major national newspapers, a few days ago USA Today ran a top of the front page article about the disturbing lack of $300M movies so far this summer and sluggish ticket sales during the past 3 weeks. This small % change is undoubtedly an indicator that the American Way is threatened, or that at the very least some sort of sea change is under way. Not that reviewers have even a common sense knowledge about statistics and minor fluctuations. Here you go:
usatoday.com/life/movies/new … fice_N.htm
This baloney happens at the beginning of every summer as we are told which films we will be enjoying, in particular which class of movies rate discussion. It’s as if we are in ancient Greece and only what excites the 18 year old male on the eve of his performance in the stadia is worthy of note. You notice that Up and Ice Age 3 aren’t mentioned as possible blockbusters, you have to dig deeper online to find any discussion of them in that article. Animated films are of course just for kiddies and don’t have many explosions or gunfire or speeding vehicles crashing about, so they don’t rate. The receptors in some people’s brains for adrenaline and L-dopa are in complete control of their reality.
Any goofball paying attention last summer would remember that it was a season of unusually high attendance movies, especially early on. Indiana Jones didn’t rate the hype, it broke no new ground. Just before Wall-E came out, some blurb fool in a national paper said “It will be a Hellboy vs. Batman summer!”. …Star Trek had a super ad preview, you knew it was going to rock, but it still turns off most women …I’ve been checking the M/F distribution during my two viewings. So StarTrek and Up aren’t blockbusters? It would have been really nice if Up had actually beaten the alcohol movie for the past 2 weeks, then the pundits would have been left trying to find some explanation.
Edit: Well, I’m just up on my soapbox crowing – Up will in fact pass up Star Trek within the next week or two. Wall-E made an extra $40-60M after this same point in its run, and Up is likely to make $52-75M more before it closes. That will be $278-301M boxoffice.