Wise Americans Take Revenge On Anti-Family Jennifer Aniston
Poor, family-hating Jennifer Aniston stunk up the box office this weekend, while a bunch of grumpy old MEN once again grabbed the top spot. Vampires took a stake in the heart, hilariously, and piranhas raged.
1) The Expendables — $16.5M
Does this film's second weekend success spell a sequel? Will we soon see The Expendables 2 The Grave? I can just picture it, our ragged heroes returning to fight another battle, wounds bleeding high-iron, Geritol-infused blood, the tennis balls on their walkers soaked with viscera. Sly Stallone levels his gaze and his gun on a hated villain. "Get outta my easy chair!" And then a beautiful slo-mo-esque, but not actually slo-mo, fight sequence in which Dolph Lundgren strangles a guy with his glasses chain. Of course the action slows and the mood turns somber when everyone attends Arnold Schwarzenegger's funeral, which of course is interrupted by the film's main baddie, an AK-wielding Shirley MacLaine. (It's why it's funny when she's firing at Bruce Willis and yells "Damn you, McClane!!") The Expendables II: Life Alert. That works. (Do you get the jokes here? It is because the cast is old. Isn't that funny?)
2) Vampires Suck — $12.2M
If you enjoy that kind of humor you will love Vampires Suck, a movie that manages to make fun of Twilight, the Black Eyed Peas, and gay people, almost at the same time. Plus it features the acting talents of this guy. And once you've been in The Cutting Edge: Chasing the Dream, then you are really skating with the big boys. Plus he's got such proven comedic chops from 90210. The way he stares hunkily at things sometimes, and then dreamily at others. High comedy! I bet he kept all the teen boys laughing this weekend, cackling their greasy butts off at this stupid gay, girly vampire craze, enjoying the moment until they had to go back home and their sisters had friends over, girls who liked those books, and the boys pressed their ears to their sisters' doors and listened to the sweet dulcet tones of girls named Ingrid laughing, and they thought that maybe if Ingrid would go with them, maybe then they'd see a real Twilight movie, maybe they'd get it then, there in the dark with sweet, sweet, got-her-boobs-last-summer Ingrid. But since that won't happen, since the Ingrids barely know the boys exist beyond being their friends' dopey, smelly brothers, the boys will just chuckle to themselves about Vampires Suck. Because they do. They just suck so bad.
6) Piranha 3D — $10M
Academy Award-winner Richard Dreyfuss stars with Oscar-nominee Elisabeth Shue and Golden Globe Award-giver-awayer-to-Jack-Lemmoner Ving Rhames in this complex environmental thriller about changes in ecosystems and the vast and unpredictable disasters it can bring. In this particular case, Dreyfuss is once again dealing with murderous fish. Poor Richard Dreyfuss is always having to deal with fish that want to eat people. On his tombstone it will say "He needed a bigger boat." At least he wasn't involved in Jaws 3D, that movie where Dennis Quaid and the mom from My So-Called Life team up with Louis Gossett Jr. to save Sea World. Really! The whole movie is an ad for Sea World, basically. "Sea World: Get Eaten By Our Fish". Lea Thompson's in it too. But no Richard Dreyfuss! He managed to escape that one. But I guess in the end the water sucked him back in, as it always does. Piranhas are like a Jaws monster broken up into a million gnashing pieces. Which is kinda worse, actually! So maybe you should have gone to Sea World all them years ago, Richard. Maybe you should have. Or you could have done Jaws: The Revenge, which had Michael Caine and Mario van Peebles. You had choices, is what I'm saying. Choices that led both toward and away from Piranha 3D.
8) The Switch — $8.1M
O'Reilly wins! O'Reilly wins! Jennifer Lonelyston's "comedy" about ruining traditional families didn't have a terribly auspicious opening. This is a victory for people who believe in a proper and ideal two-parent household, not some freakish Frankenstein experiment where women try to subvert the patriarchy and go against their biological imperative to get Christian married. This disgusting movie ranks up there with The Kids Are [Not!!!] All Right, that "queer" fantasy in which lesbian "marrieds" have two kids, and somehow Suzy isn't shaving her head and riding motorcycles and little Johnny isn't prancing around in high heels. That's a fantasy only Hollywood could produce. It's a shame there aren't more pro-family films these days. Sure there's that Tyler Perry person, but we're not going to see his movies because, well... you know. Ah well. Even if there aren't more positive films to remind us what works in this country, at least these negative detriments to society aren't performing as well as their loosey-goosey, wastoid La-La Land makers expected they would. Hollywood is out of touch, obviously.
10) Scott Pilgrim vs. the World — $5M
"Pack up the hoodies. Wrap the vinyl and the random tchotchkes in plastic, carefully! Make sure you unplug the Hair Rumpler™ before you leave. Because, yes, we are leaving and never coming back. We are getting into our hilariously dated or dumpy car and putting on that wistful boy/girl collaboration album that's good for occasions like these, and we are leaving this picturesquely drab town. We've bundled up all our stammering insecurity and nice-guy Snoopiness and there's nothing more to it. Goodbye, gleaming world! We thought we had a place here. But we were wrong. We were so, so wrong."