You say SLUMP, I say 'smaller movies with legs'. Why the first months of 2011 were good for box office, good for studios, and good for moviegoers.

If Fast Five and/or Thor fail to open to $50 million or more, then I'll start to worry. If Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides doesn't open anywhere near $100 million and doesn't clear $250 million, I'll start to be concerned. If Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows part II grosses under $260 million, I'll maybe start panicking. But until any of those things occur, let's stop whining about the week-to-week comparisons at the box office. We're not in a 'slump'. Yes, weekend-to-weekend figures have been consistently down behind last year's respective weekends for much of 2011. But when you look at the numbers on a movie-by-movie basis, you actually notice something wonderful. A flood of mid-budget, adult-skewed movies have opened at or above expectations, and many of them have had the kind of legs you just don't see anymore. That's the Hollywood we claim we want, so why are we complaining?

Weekend Box Office (04/03/11): Hop on top with $37m, Source Code opens to $14m, Insidious open to $13m, Sucker Punch crashes (-68%) in weekend two.

As expected, Universal scored another solid animated win for the weekend, as Hop opened with $37.5 million. This is a solid win for the occasionally beleaguered Universal, as the live-action/animation Easter comedy cost just $63 million. The film came from Illumination, the same company that gave Universal Despicable Me last summer, and the marketing department made sure everybody knew it. The sell was all about the concept, as Universal didn't even bother hyping the celebrity voices (Russell Brand, Hugh Laurie, etc), instead selling the various cuddly characters (the Easter bunny himself, the Pink Berets, evil chickens, etc). No one in their right mind was expecting an Ice Age 2 ($67 million) or Despicable Me ($56 million) level opening, but the moderately-low budget animated film delivered right in its comfort zone.

Review: Source Code (2011)

Source Code
2011
96 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

This won't be a terribly long review. I went into writer Ben Ripley and director Duncan Jones's Source Code relatively blind, and whenever I'm lucky enough to do that I try to give the readers the same courtesy. And since most of my issues with the film involve specific plot elements, there's only so much dancing around the edges I can do. The film wins points for constructing some original ideas and creating a thoughtful and compelling thriller. But it loses points by creating a narrative where much of the middle hour is a waiting game. And it loses even more points by arbitrarily changing the rules and wrecking its own logic in order to end the film on a happier note than it otherwise would.