2013 04 26 – Pain and Gain, The Big Wedding

This Friday we have two openings.

As usual  -- today here are posters, on Wednesday will be my shot of $ number per theater, on Friday will be full shot and numbers from all other shooters.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE MUSCLE, ZIG? SOMETIMES SMALL, BUT SOMETIMES BIG?

This one, Pain & Gain, is an action movie. MPAA rating is R.

Three fans of lifting heavy things and sculpting their bodies decide to kidnap a local crime boss, beat him and get some money from him. I didn't precisely catch in the trailer why they wanted to do this, but it is a minor detail, so I'm skipping that. The job goes quite well -- a shot of the boss, played by the one and only Tony Shalhoub, all in a medical plaster and with one of his arms in a sling, is worth everything. Filled with rage, the boss hires a ruthless enforcer to find kidnappers and make them pay for this.

This premise looks ok, but I see two troubles.

First, I'm not sure what will happen in act three. Basing from trailer, act one is probably ending with gaining help of Dwayne Johnson's character, first culmination of the act two is getting money from the boss, act two second culmination will be the enforcer gets back the money (it isn't shown in the trailer, but it is the most reasonable event). Now, act three should be about getting the money back again, this time with much more blowouts, damaging styrofoam's walls and muscle showing off. But in the trailer I couldn't see anything that backed this up. So I'm starting to worry that the showdown with the enforcer will be in fact the finale battle of the movie. And that way, it feels weaker in terms of dramatic tension.

This was the lesser from two troubles. I'm not sure it will affect the opening's box office that much -- certainly, it will show in reviews aggregated at Rotten Tomatoes. But it is still some shadow lurking behind Pain & Gain.

The second trouble involves the overall mood of the movie. The trailer looked like an easy and entertaining piece of action. There were a few jokes flying around and one of them could sustain even the whole movie ('I know what I'm doing, I saw lots of movies like this!', said by Mark Wahlberg's character). But I didn't see any other jokes based on that classic comedy foundation 'a fish taken out of the water'. We get instead a hilarious joke 'muscle training cures all problems', some jokes about muscles in hands and muscles below the belt and a joke about 'big guy that won't fight'. This doesn't have a glue, necessary to pull off this movie. It could be really great movie to watch, but I'm afraid it will turn just a mediocre one.

So my shot is also on the mediocre side per theater, and any amount of jaw action is going to strengthen this muscle up.

Shots:

26,5 mln  --  HSX
25 mln  --  Donald Shanahan, Examiner
24 mln  --  Perri Nemiroff, Shockya
23,2 mln  --  Laremy Legel, RopeOfSilicon  (2900 theaters, $8000 per theater)
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22 mln  --  Damon Houx, ScreenCrave
22 mln  --  Movie Critic Assassins, BreitBart
21,9 mln  --  Ray Subers, BoxOfficeMojo
21 mln  --  Bill Bonfanti, FilmGo  (via HSX)
20,25 mln  --  the final weekend number of the movie  (3277 theaters, $6178 per theater)
20 mln  --  Gitesh Pandya, BoxOfficeGuru
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18,02 mln  --  Mario Ludwinski, USBOPredictions2013,  (3277 theaters, $5500 per theater)
18 mln  --  C.S. Strowbridge, The-Numbers
14,75 mln  --  BoxOffice staff

LOVE CAN BE BLIND, BUT OVERALL IT HAS A GOOD SENSE OF DIRECTION

This one, The Big Wedding, is a romantic comedy. MPAA rating is R.

I like romantic comedies, because no matter who their heroes are and what troubles they fall into, the audience gets a proof that love is the greatest thing. It is worth feeling and sharing. And we get a motivation to go home or call someone and tell her/him 'I love you' or 'Thank you for being with me'. I'm not necessarily talking about love in terms of emotional relationship with a woman/man -- this person can be someone from a family or someone we just know and we want her/him to feel good right now.

In these terms, The Big Wedding is a good movie.

An issue of big opening number is an another story, though.

The main thing is it focuses -- at least in the trailer, but I doubt it was changed in the full movie -- on a wrong comedy premise. It introduces a great ironic tension of 'the mother of the groom can't find out parents of the bride got divorced'. But events go in direction of relationship between the father, his ex-wife and his now-wife. The incident that incites whole story is the wedding of young couple, and instead their love story we get a love story of the groom's parents. Sure, it could be great and also great fun, but if this is that good idea, the movie should be rewrited a little to accomodate that change. It didn't, of course.

So I think the number per theater will be small, and the whole number will take place next to February's  Beautiful Creatures' one.

Shots:

12,5 mln  --  Laremy Legel, RopeOfSilicon  (2500 theaters, $5000 per theater)
12 mln  --  Donald Shanahan, Examiner
11 mln  --  Bill Bonfanti, FilmGo  (via HSX)
11 mln  --  HSX
10 mln  --  Damon Houx, ScreenCrave
10 mln  --  Perri Nemiroff, Shockya
9,9 mln  --  Ray Subers, BoxOfficeMojo
9,25 mln  --  BoxOffice staff
9 mln  --  C.S. Strowbridge, The-Numbers
9 mln  --  Gitesh Pandya, BoxOfficeGuru
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7,8 mln  --  Movie Critic Assassins, BreitBart
7,59 mln  --  the final weekend number of the movie  (2633 theaters, $2883 per theater)
7,5 mln  --  Mario Ludwinski, USBOPredictions2013,  (2633 theaters, $2850 per theater)
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