Review: G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013) fixes what wasn't broken and breaks it possibly beyond repair.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation
2013
100 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

It's no secret that I'm a fan of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (review).  It's big, colorful, and filled with over-the-top action performed by larger-than-life heroes and villains.  The first 90 minutes (I have issues with the finale) is basically, as I said back in 2009, what might happen if someone gave the 7-year old me to go play with my G.I. Joe action figures and gave me $175 million to spend on the resulting play-drama.  But for whatever reason fan-boys and critics carped about the last picture, calling it too ridiculous and too silly for a, um, G.I. Joe movie.  So now four years later, we have a somewhat stripped down and more 'realistic' sequel to Stephen Sommers's outlandish original. Jon Chu was under orders to make it cheaper and basically more 'grounded' than the last picture, and I suppose he has succeeded. G.I. Joe: Retaliation can best be described as G.I. Joe meets Act of Valor.  I don't mean that as a compliment.

White House Down gets a conspiratorial trailer...

Well, color me intrigued. Sony is making smart choices here, selling this second Die Hard In the White House movie not as a pulpy action flick but as a large-scale disaster movie.  It puts the film squarely in the realm of director Roland Emmerich and successfully differentiates itself from Olympus Has Fallen.  Also of note, other than the larger scale seemingly on display (this is the more expensive version, natch), is the opposing narratives.  While Olympus Has Fallen concerned a certain xenophobic 'scary foreigners will try to destroy America!' plot line, White House Down seems to be going for the more conspiracy-minded 'we did this to ourselves by betraying our morals' or what-have-you.  It also teases plot twists and surprises beyond the action template, making viewers wonder what terrible secrets will be revealed and who and what actually caused the onscreen carnage.  So yeah, I think the world is big enough for two White House-under siege movies.  White House Down opens June 28th, 2013.  As always, we'll see...

Scott Mendelson         

Weekend Box Office (02-10-13): Identity Thief cements Melissa McCarthy's stardom while Side Effects clarifies Channing Tatum's box office drawing power.

Melissa McCarthy is officially a comedy mega-star.  There can be little dispute of that after this weekend.  Identity Thief topped the box office this weekend with an astonishing $36.5 million and I'm at a loss to think of any reasons it would do so well aside from Ms. McCarthy.  Jason Bateman is a terrific actor and a fine foil, but he's box office poison as a lead (The Switch opened with $8.4 million, Extract opened to $4.3 million, and The Change-Up debuted with $13 million).  The film's simple and self-explanatory title, along with the clever expository tagline ("She's having the time of his life.") surely helped, as did the lack of any big comedies in the current marketplace.  Parental Guidance and This Is Forty are both doing stealthy strong business, with $74 million and $67 million thus far respectively, but this is the first big star comic vehicle in awhile and it delivered in spades.

This was McCarthy's first big test of her alleged stardom.  Identity Thief was completely sold on McCarthy's new-found stardom.  The core imagery was basically her face on the poster, slipping a Slurpee next to a befuddled Jason Bateman. This is a much larger debut than Bridesmaids, the film which catapulted her to fame and proverbial glory back in May, 2011.  This is among the ten-best R-rated comedy debuts ever and the fifth-best for a non-sequel.  Heck, it opened bigger than the PG-13 Couples Retreat, which had a proverbial whos-who of comedy players (Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman, Jon Favreau, Malin Akerman, Kristin Davis, and Kristen Bell) and managed a $34 million debut back in October 2009. Fox has to be thrilled at the moment, knowing that they have a plausible gold-mine in the Melissa McCarthy/Sandra Bullock action-comedy The Heat waiting in the wings for June of this summer.

Trailer: GI Joe: Retaliation teases subversive global fantasy of the world's worst fears concerning American military might.

It will be amusing and interesting to see how Paramount was able to rejigger the story in order to put previously DOA 'Duke' (Channing Tatum) back into the movie after he was un-killed following his banner 2012 theatrical year.  But more interesting than that, I'd argue, is the film's weirdly subversive plotline.  Wisely continuing from G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra's terrific cliffhanger, the Jon Chu-helmed sequel runs with the idea of the president of the United States being a literal world-wrecking super-villain.  We've had plenty of stories which toyed with the idea of an absolute monster attaining the highest office in the land, but they are usually defeated prior to election (or, in the case of the fifth season of 24, most of Gregory Yitzin's comparably tempered evildoing was committed prior to his exposure as the season's big bad).  Of course, with the president replaced by Arnold Vosloo's Zartan, the world must deal with an America that the world has arguably always feared.  Here we have a US president who basically uses America's stockpile to rain utter carnage on the world over.  I have to wonder if this plot thread is some kind of way to appeal to foreign markets, just as the film's conversion to 3D was more for overseas grosses than domestic ones (let's just say if you asked foreign audiences back in 2002 about The Two Towers, they probably said it was an Iraq-invasion parable very different from the one stateside audiences presumed).  Yes, the G.I. Joes are basically American, working to save their country from an internal threat.  But the idea of a US President gone mad with genocidal powers is something I don't think we've seen before, so for that reason alone G.I. Joe: Retaliation may end up being more than just a pointless sequel.  We'll know soon enough when it opens on March 29, 2013.   

Scott Mendelson

Weekend Box Office: Ted, Magic Mike, and Madea's Witness Protection all open huge in 'everybody wins' weekend.

This weekend represented a shining example of the two best trends in mainstream moviegoing this year.  As I wrote (here and here), we've seen a real upswing in both mid-to-low-budget mainstream fare that aren't especially 'tentpole-ish' as well as a huge upswing in the number of R-rated films being released by the major studios.  As such, two of the four wide releases this weekend were both R-rated and all four were relatively small-scale and in 2D.  That they mostly debuted to blockbuster numbers is an encouraging sign that not every movie need be a $150 million fantasy genre franchise entry.  The top film of the weekend is also the best mainstream picture of the summer, as Seth MacFarlane's Ted (review) debuted to a massive $54 million.  That's the third-best debut for an R-rated comedy behind the $57 million opening of Sex and the City and the $87 million Fri-Sun debut of The Hangover part II.  Among non-sequel/spin-off R-rated comedies, it topped the $44 million record debut of The Hangover and is the is among the top-ten best R-rated debuts of all-time. This is a massive win for all involved, bringing Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane serious film-making clout, further confirming that Mark Wahlberg is an actual 'put butts in the seats' movie star and giving Universal something to laugh about. Speaking of Wahlberg, this is his second biggest opening behind the $68 million debut of Planet of the Apes back in 2001, and it needs only cross $133 million to supplant The Departed as his third-highest grossing film (Planet of the Apes and The Perfect Storm earned $180 million and $182 million respectively)

GI Joe: Retaliation trailers kill off one of 2012's biggest stars.

Say what you will about hindsight and what-not, but I imagine that Paramount is kicking itself in the ass right now for the decision to kill off Channing Tatum in the opening act (scene?) of this second G.I. Joe film.  No, he wasn't exactly the highlight of The Rise of Cobra, but in the last three years 'that guy from Step Up' has been hacking away at would-be stardom and seems to have hit the jackpot this year.  He's now arguably the king of the romantic drama and scored huzzahs and box office with 21 Jump Street.  Between 21 Jump Street and The Vow (plus Haywire which turned him into Stephen Soderbergh's best buddy), Tatum is easily the 'break-out star of 2012' four months in.  Had Paramount had the good sense to let him stick around, they'd have a film starring Tatum and Dwayne Johnson, whose Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is the second-highest grossing American film at the global box office with $322 million thus far.  Paramount could have had two of the biggest male movie stars around in the same film shooting guns and dodging explosives together, but they (or director Jon Chu) had to listen to fanboy whining.  I wouldn't be the least-bit surprised to see an end-credit cookie showing that Duke really survived after all.

All eight G.I. Joe: Retaliation character posters...

These all went out to different online movie sites during the first part of the morning.  I generally don't do the whole 'cobble together from multiple sites and post them all trick, but I felt like doing so today.  Anyway, Paramount is pretty aggressive with this one as, absent the Marvel movies that dominated their summer last year, this is among their biggest would-be tentpoles.  They only have this film, The Dictator, and the Dreamworks animated sequel, Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted (which arguably sells itself until a week or so out, and which my mother-in-law is dying to see).  Anyway, enjoy the character posters after the jump.  Yo Joe and all that, this one drops June 29th.  As always, we'll see...

Scott Mendelson

Review: No cheap pop-culture knock-off, 21 Jump Street (2012) is a surprisingly winning character comedy that travels its own inspired path.

21 Jump Street

2012
109 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

By all rights, this film should be a disaster.  On paper, a comedic reboot of a half-forgotten gritty 1980s crime drama that even its breakout star decried as fascist is the epitome of lazy pop-culture recycling.  But by God, this is a real movie, a genuinely clever and often inspired comedy rooted in character and with a token amount of real intelligence.  Like Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, 21 Jump Street uses its property as a mere jumping off point in order to do its own thing and tell its own tale. Written by Michael Bacall and Jonah Hill, directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, it's almost good enough to actually ennoble the current trend of random 1980s/1990s remakes, reboots, and reinventions.

Weekend Box Office (03/04/12): The Lorax opens to $70 million, setting an animation record, while Project X opens to $20 million.

The full weekend chart HERE.  See this is what happens when you have just two major cartoon during the Winter/Spring season instead of six.  Last year, February, March, and April saw an onslaught on high-profile animated features, five of which opened just in March and April.  Gnomeo and Juliet ($25 million opening/$99 million domestic total), Rango ($38 million/$123 million) Hop ($37 million/$103 million), and Rio ($39 million/$143 million) all did well, but were burdened by directly competing with each other.  Mars Needs Moms ($6.9 million/$21 million) was one of the biggest box office bombs in modern history while the never-had-a-chance Hoodwinked: Hood vs. Evil ($4 million/$10 million) was DOA.  This time around, it's The Lorax or nothing (that second cartoon I mentioned doesn't open until April 27th), which coupled with the absolute lack of truly new kid-friendly product and the relative disinterest in domestic audiences in Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (which was still leggy enough to gross $130 million domestic) and The Adventures of Tintin (which is no flop with $372 million worldwide), left a very large gap in the marketplace.  No you can see how its $70 million opening is not *that* surprising.

Weekend Box Office (02/19/12): The Vow and Safe House fend off Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance and This Means War.

It was yet another 'photo-finish' at the box office over this President's Day weekend, but as always, it's the hard numbers rather than the arbitrary rankings that matter.  But since we need to decide which movies to discuss first, in order we shall go!  For the moment, it appears that Safe House will top the charts in its second weekend after barely missing the top slot last weekend.  It grossed $23.9 million over the Fri-Sun weekend and $28 million over the holiday.  Safe House will have grossed $82 million by Monday, a rather huge total for Mr. Washington.  In just eleven days, Safe House is Washington's 7th-biggest grosser, out-grossing such films as Training Day ($76 million), Man On Fire ($77 million), and Unstoppable ($81 million).  Barring a complete collapse, Safe House should become Denzel Washington's fifth $100 million grosser over the next weekend, with an outside shot of eclipsing the $130 million gross of American Gangster, which is currently his top grosser.  While we can debate how much credit co-star Ryan Reynolds gets for this one (he certainly didn't hurt...), Safe House is already his fourth-biggest grosser and will likely out-gross Green Lantern's $116 million total in a few weeks.  I'm frankly shocked at the strong legs for this one, as it's certainly one of Washington's worst genre entries in a long career with a number of solid adult-skewing action pictures (it looks like it was shot through a puke filter and edited in a blender, plus the script is so generic it could have been written in a Mad Libs book).  Still, star-power is a rare thing these days, and Denzel Washington clearly has it.  

Weekend Box Office (02/12/12): Everybody wins as The Vow breaks records, Safe House opens huge, Journey 2 best Journey 1, and Phantom Menace 3D feels the Force.

Wow.  Just wow.  Four major releases debuted this weekend and every single one of them opened with superb numbers.  On one hand, that means that every respective demographic was ably served this weekend.  On the other hand, one can only wonder how much cash was sacrificed by opening these four movies on the same weekend.  Anyway, the top film of the weekend was the Rachel McAdams/Channing Tatum romantic drama The Vow.  The $30 million Screen Gems drama, which by the way is NOT based on a Nicholas Sparks novel (it's a true story), debuted with an eye-popping $41 million, a record for the studio.  That's well-over $10 million more than the $30.4 million debut of Dear John, which was the previous record-holder for an opening weekend for a pure romantic drama.  The film played 55% under-25 years old and 72% female.  Obviously everything clicked on the marketing for this one, and Channing Tatum is now the official king of the romantic drama, having headlined the first one to open with more than $30 million and now the first one to open with over $40 million, while Rachel McAdams is the queen, now holding the first and fourth-biggest opening weekend for an unfiltered romantic drama ($18 million for The Time Traveler's Wife).  Where it goes from here is an open question, as Dear John did not have the strongest legs, topping out at $80 million (or just below the $81 million gross of Rachel McAdam's The Notebook).  On the plus side, The Vow doesn't have the same-demo blockbuster Valentine's Day nipping on its heals like Dear John did.  Plus, even if The Vow has the same quick-kill performance (2.6x weekend-to-final multiplier), it will become the first pure romantic drama (no explosions, no action scenes, no mass-disaster in the third act) to cross $100 million since Jerry McGuire in 1996.