SIX TIPS, OR HOW TO PLEASE YOUR SLATE – THE FILMS OF 1/12

[numbersix]

Holidays are over! Yet holidays are back! You Yanks are an odd bunch, having only 6 major national public holidays a year, with three of them happening in the space of three weeks. Anyway, it’s MLK day this week, and there’s no better way to honour the civil rights activist than watch a bunch of white people dance and/or fight on the silver (well, white) screen.




Stop trying to make Mean Girls (Paramount) happen, cried many a misogynist or sad cynic. But the 2004 highschool comedy clung to the cultural consciousness, remaining a key film of the noughties. And now it’s back, in musical form. The film begat a broadway hit which has now begat this film, starring newcomers Angourie Rice and Reneé Rapp, alongside the more familiar adult actors Jon Hamm and Jenna Fischer, and of course Tina Fey who wrote both original and musical. And while musicals don’t always spell success (ahem ahem West Side Story and In the Heights), this has enough good buzz behind it and lack of competition to pirouette to the top of the box office. Expect it to make $25-$30m for the 4-day, and around $80m in total. It could even go higher, with so little out for the rest of the month. So, you could see 15+ T5 points, 6+ PTA points, and a mid 6 IMDB score. In both BO and Ultimate, this is going to deliver and potentially be one of the best picks of the season, so do yourself a favour and fetch it.




The Beekeeper (MGM) is an action film that sadly doesn’t feature bees as a projectile weapon. What a waste of a title. It’s actually David “Angry man” Ayers’ latest, featuring Jason Statham and his single facial expression as he exacts revenge on the people responsible for his neighbour’s death. Now that’s a good neighbour. Mine just leaves their trash out on the shared balcony. Anyway, this looks like a typical January filler film, with little buzz and a very modest theatrical return. $10m for the 4-day and $30m max feels about right. Lack of competition may get it 5 T5, 1 PTA, and a high 5s in IMDB, which doesn’t feel worth the $8.




Even less compelling is The Book of Clarence (Sony). Despite it being Jeymes Samuel’s latest (after western The Harder They Fall), this biblical comedy failed to find a festival to launch in, settling on the B-grade London Film Festival. Reviews have been muted on this story of a man who pretends to be the next messiah (and instead is a very naughty boy). The Life of Brian this is not, and it doesn’t look like it will register with a general audience or the religious demographic. It will struggle to make $10m over the 4 days, and won’t earn enough in Ultimate to tempt you into spending $7.




Disney are releasing some of its stream-only Pixar titles, with this week seeing Soul hit the cinema. It’s to fill the empty screens, and with the film being easily available on Disney+, don’t expect a huge result, even if it’s one of the studio’s better animations of the past few years.




And finally, on the limited front MUBI are putting out The Settlers, a Chilean Western about the genocide of an indigenous tribe. It opened in Cannes to great reviews, although the buzz isn’t as strong as some of MUBI’s other titles. That said, it should get a few PTA points this weekend, as the awards films continue to expand, so it may be worth $3 in Ultimate as a stocking filler.




Predictions for the weekend

1. Mean Girls Girls Girls - $25m ($30m 4-day)
2. Not So Wonky - $8m (11m 4-day)
3. The Buzzkeeper - $8m (10m 4-day)
4. Anyone But You - $7m (8.5m 4-day)
5. Migration - $6m (7.5 4-day)

PTA: Mean Girls, The Zone of Interest, The Settlers, All of Us Strangers, Wonka

Next week sees the release of sorta-wide films Origin, I.S.S, and proper limited film Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell. Tranny will spill the tea.

[Buscemi2]

The Beekeeper makes me think of Expend4bles, the last Jason Statham-led movie that seemed to have been made with far-right wing audiences in mind. Almost no one saw it. And this one looks to have an even dumber plot and in addition, MGM hasn't been doing much of a push on it. I don't even think it hits $10 million.

As for the popularity of Mean Girls, it's basically Fight Club for real-life mean girls who peaked in high school. Notice how in both movies, they focus on boring protagonists while the audience wants to live through the lives of the villains, no matter what happens to them. Regina George is the teen version of Tyler Durden and the people who obsess over these characters are convinced these characters are to be worshiped instead of seeing them as the pathetic lowlifes they really are.

As for the box office, I think it has a good opening day before the target audience realizes it's a pale imitation of the original and choose to watch the original three times in a row so to forget the remake even exists. They already pretend Mean Girls 2 never happened.

And last night, I saw the trailer for I.S.S. before a showing of Being John Malkovich. I'm surprised Roland Emmerich didn't direct it.

[Buscemi2]

Early word on Mean Girls is that it's very average (62 on Metacritic with no big raves or pans), with critics considering it watchable but nowhere near the level of the original. Looks like it will open well before having fast drops.

[transformers2]

Preview totals:
Mean Girls $3.25 mil (includes Wednesday's 1-off sneaks)
The Beekeeper $2.4 mil
The Book of Clarence $285k

[Buscemi2]

How did The Beekeeper triple Expend4bles' preview total? It feels like there's been no buzz for this one.

Unless it's the same people that made Sound of Freedom a hit that are seeing this one, which I predicted a few months back.

[transformers2]

Uh, because it's not the 4th entry in a completely DOA franchise?

[Buscemi2]

But both had Statham as the top-billed actor and seem to be the same "guy shoots up a bunch of people and saves the world because they made him mad" plot. You can't convince me they are any different.

Same thing with the forthcoming Argylle and Ghosted.

[BanksIsDaFuture]

Audiences are discovering Mean Girls is a musical, and they're not happy LOL:

https://x.com/whyrev/status/1745491030202310962?s=20

[BanksIsDaFuture]

You Yanks are an odd bunch, having only 6 major national public holidays a year, with three of them happening in the space of three weeks

Wait what are the other 3?

4th of July? Maybe MLK, although it's not observed by everyone...

[Buscemi2]

Martin Luther King Day, Valentine's Day, and Presidents' Day seem to be the three in the short time span Chien would be referring to, though Valentine's Day isn't an official holiday and was created by the greeting card companies.

And who can forget when the city of Cincinnati declared the day after the Super Bowl a national holiday so Bengals fans could nurse the hangovers that occurred as a result of Eli Apple being a terrible cornerback?

As for Mean Girls, they should have known it was a musical. The original Broadway production was nominated for Tonys.

[numbersix]

The other 3, I'm assuming, are Memorial Day, July 4th, and Thanksgiving.

[Buscemi2]

I just realized he meant Christmas, New Year's, and Martin Luther King Day.

[numbersix]

Correct.

And am I right in thinking there's no minimum paid leave by law, so companies can give their employees no days off outside of national/state holidays?

[Buscemi2]

I think it's a state-by-state thing. I don't even bother to look into it, as I know it's going to be different from New York to say, a place that's fifty years behind like Mississippi.

[Buscemi2]

Cinemascores:

The Beekeeper: B+
The Book of Clarence: B
Mean Girls: B