Really? Diary of a Wimpy Kid took last week’s box-office crown?
Full disclosure: I hate Garfield. Of all the fictional characters who’ve weaseled their way into the iconography of American pop-culture I dispisethat cat the most. He’s lazy emotionally abusive and completely unreasonable in his demands for lasagna at every meal.
This is only relevant because this weekend sees the release of Hop a computer-animated movie about rabbits directed by Tim Hill the guy responsible for Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties.
In a time when both Pixar and Dreamworks are consistently producing top quality kids movies Hill seems to have cornered the market on critically reviled animated movies about dancing animals. The worst of which was obviously the Garfield sequel but Alvin and the Chipmunks is a close second. The chipmunks suffer from the same delusions of self-importance as the asshole cat but I give them credit for dancing to the Pussy Cat Dolls. It’s not my cup of tea but we’ve all got to get our kicks somehow.
The trailer for Hop suggests that it’s about the Easter Bunny’s heir avoiding responsibility and running away to Hollywood. So it’s sort of like Crossroads except and it’s hard to tell for sure this somehow appears to be the catalyst for a major civil conflict between rabbits and baby chickens over the means of production at a candy factory. At one point a rabbit poos jelly beans.
It looks awful but as last weekend’s box office winner Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules proves children’s tastes are basically impossible to predict for any rational literate adult. Apparently the Rodrick who’s doing the ruling in the film’s title is the wimpy kid’s older brother and hopefully in the end he gets what’s coming to him. A knuckle sandwich obviously.
On the other end of the spectrum is Source Code this weekend’s other new release. It’s director Duncan Jones’ first major studio movie after he proved his chops directing last year’s Moon which was one of the smartest science fiction films in recent memory.
Source Code is about the awesomely named Captain Colter Stevens played by Jake Gyllenhaal who crosses over into another man’s body for the last eight minutes of his life in order to help the government stop a bomber on a commuter train. He can continue crossing into the guy’s body again and again until he gets it right which seems to lower the stakes a little but if he couldn’t the movie would only be eight minutes long. Which is eight minutes longer than Garfield should have been if there was any justice in the world.
Insidious is about a haunted boy and comes from the people who made the Paranormal Activity and Saw films. The evil and/or possessed child genre is pretty played out at this point but they gave the kid a Bieber haircut for this one. That’s likely this movie’s only hint of originality. (ED: Fast Forward Weekly arts editor Krista Sylvester disagrees. Her review is on page 28.)
Unfortunately for fans of intricately designed action-fantasy films starring young women in bondage clothing Sucker Punch ’s opening weekend was underwhelming. The fact that it was a movie about young women sticking together to fight oppressive misogynists that starred barely legal girls in tight leather was probably a miscalculation. Who exactly does that appeal to?
Both Limitless and The Lincoln Lawyer are exceeding box office expectations. This is a bit surprising given that Limitless stars the Garfield of real-life people Bradley Cooper and The Lincoln Lawyer is a critically approved marketed-to-adults courtroom drama starring Matthew McConaughey. As Jon Arbuckle might say “Argh!”
