Dumbledore's Corpse Eaten by Guinea Pigs, Potter Enslaved and Forced to Run On Giant Wheel
Monday morning means box office. And a hot Monday morning means summer box office. Which means big, depressing numbers for big, depressing movies. Like G-Force, a Jerry Bruckheimer-produced sorta-animated movie about guinea pigs. Yes, guinea pigs.
1) G-Force — $32.2. million
As we bemoaned earlier, the success of this film likely means that there will be many, many more awful animation/live-action hybrids to come. Oh, look! Here's one already! The thing about these movies that's really annoying is that because there are live action elements in them, the filmmakers seem to feel like, for some reason, they can be a bit more risque. Because, what?, adults are going to go because they want to see Jason Lee embarrass himself? Whatever the reasoning, it ends up with us having to see poop eating and stuff. Jokes that the classy Pixar and its classy-wannabes would never stoop to. Because animation is art. And live-action is everything else. So live-action/animation is... just pure shit. I mean poop. Eat it.
2) Harry Potter and the Dumbledore Dies — $30 million
Not that this movie is doing bad or anything. It's already grossed like $220 million in the States, not to mention the foreign box office, but still... This thing couldn't beat motherfucking G-Force? 'Tis a sad day for Potterville. Maybe number six is just too dark. What with the gloom and emotions and turmoil and people dying and stuff. Good thing no one dies in the last bo—... Oh. Oh wait. Shit. I mean poop.
3) The Awful Truth — $27 million
Even though this movie seems toxic and horrid, it still did pretty well. Even though Katherine Heigl has, somehow, squandered most of the good will she earned before/during/after Knocked Up, it still did pretty well. Even though Gerard Butler is nothing more than a poorly-accented talking leg of mutton, it still did pretty well. Even though John Michael Higgins and Cheryl Hines were crying all the way to the bank on this one, it still did pretty well. Even though there is no discernible reason why anyone, short of self-loathing masochists, would want to see this apparently dreadful "film", it still actually did really well. Poop. I mean shit.
4) Orphan — $12.8 million
DO NOT READ IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW THE SUPER SECRET SPOILER ENDING. But why wouldn't you want to? Because it is awesome. Orphan is a movie about a secret dwarf who kills people. It is not about a creepy demon kid. It is not about a ghost possessing a child. It is not about a weird cult that pretends to be an orphanage. Nope. Orphan is about a secret hooker 33-year-old dwarf who kills people. It did pretty OK for a horror B-movie in the thick of gushy summer. A movie about a nearing-middle-age Estonian dwarf who kills people did pretty well against a movie about computer guinea pigs who solve crimes for real humans. SHIT.
11) (500) Days of Summer — $1.63 million
Ohhh twee indie success! Though only open on less than a hundred screens, this gimmicky and highly cultivated feature is doing a nice, tidy little business. We here at the Gawkerdrome didn't care for it as much as we hoped to. It just felt... way too forced. And really derivative (in a bad way) of the farrrrr superior Eternal Sunshine. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is like having a delicious chocolate-chip sundae talk to you, and other things look really pretty too, but as a whole it's just a far more conventional film than it seems to think it is. (It clearly thinks very highly of itself. And, sadly, it shouldn't.) Ah well. Good for it anyway.