HollywoodIdiocy.com

Al Pacino and Colin Farrell star in this Blu-Ray release of The Recruit, a spy-in-training suspense film that is supposed to be about mind games. Farrell comports himself quite well in the role, managing to come off as more innocent and naïve than he has in most of his films. He plays a CIA recruit who is singled out by Al Pacino’s character for induction into the Agency.

The film makes good use of the talents of its two-star cast and gives them more screen time with each other than with anyone else. Unfortunately, the film is held back from being as shocking as it might otherwise be by two important elements.

The first element is that the script is a fairly by-the-numbers suspense flick that telegraphs its punches and never really keeps you guessing. Predictability is one of the seven deadly sins, right? Eh, maybe not, but it ought to be, at least in Hollywood.

The other element holding the film back is the filmic legacy of Pacino; when the time comes for various plot twists involving his character, it’s hard to be too shocked because of the acting legacy Pacino brings to any film he appears in, especially a film using him to “play to type,” rather than countering his established image.

The film is not without its merits; Bridget Moynahan appears and is effective in her role as a fellow recruit, but her character Layla is flat and uninspired despite the on-screen chemistry she pulls off with Farrell. While the film takes us through its mind-game paces, creative uses for shower faucets are among the many forms of mind-breaking that James Clayton (Farrell) faces. But I don’t want to spoil too much of the plot.

Although its pedestrian script holds the film back from being truly watchable, it’s also not unwatchable. In other words, the film is worth seeing once, but perhaps not quite worth owning; a better example of the genre is the film currently in theatres, Wanted, starring Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman. The Recruit is OK, but it’s not one you’ll want to go out of your way to see, unless you’re a devoted fan of either Farrell or Pacino.

There is a solid audience for Oprah Winfrey-produced films, and I realize Mitch Albom has a following thanks to his early works like The Five People You Meet In Heaven and Tuesdays With Morrie. However, even among folks who normally like this sort of thing, including my wife, Mitch Albom’s For One More Day is both annoying and snooze-inducing. In fact, I dozed lightly a couple times watching it and my wife almost needed GPS tracking to lure me back to the land of the wide awake.

The story revolves around a washed up baseball player who has screwed up his life and his relationship with his family so badly, he’s at the verge of committing suicide; but just as he is about to pull the trigger, he sees his mother, nine years dead, looking on from the other side of a Little League diamond.

As the title predicts, he gets to spend “one more day” with his mom, who takes him on a sort of “Ghost of Christmas Past” journey of his life, ala “A Christmas Carol,” to see what an utter piece of doo-doo he’d been to his mom throughout his life, because he was so eager to please his emotionally distant dad.

The cast offers little to speak of in the way of allure. Ellyn Burstyn is the biggest name in the cast, although 1980s starlet Samantha Mathis, made mildly famous in the movie Dream A Little Dream, suddenly re-emerges from obscurity to play a younger, early-40s version of this guy’s mom.

While Albom has mixed sentimentality well in the past, and the book may be more effective, the movie is plodding and ponderous and about as riveting as watching paint dry. Also, I just don’t follow the logic of the movie; his mom’s ghost is there to convince him not to kill himself, and does this by … showing him what an ass he’s been all these years? Way to motivate a fellow that life’s worth living, huh?

The DVD is short on extras, but it’s not the sort of film most folks will want to spend extra time with. If you’re an Albom fan, I’d say pick up his novels and start reading, or if you must see Albom’s work on film, rent Tuesdays With Morrie instead. For One More Day is, for this reviewer, one day too many.

Pixar’s animated robat flick topped Universal’s Angelina-mated assassin flick over the weekend, but both opened quite well, combining for a monstrous weekend at the box office. Wall-E won out with $62.5 million in its opening weekend, about a third of its $180 million budget; Wanted opened well above expectations with $51.1 million, or over two-thirds of its relatively modest $75 million budget. It all combined for a spectacular box office weekend that kept popcorn machines popping, prior to the coming July 4 holiday.

Last week’s champ, Get Smart, held on to third with a healthy second-week take of $20 million, bringing its total to $77.2 million after two weeks, against an $80 million budget. Kung Fu Panda dropped precipitously with the new competition for kids flicks from Wall-E, and took in only $11.7 million. Incredible Hulk was a strong fifth-placer with $9.2 million. With domestic box office now at $115 million and another $65 million in global box office, Incredible Hulk is now at $180 million, or $30 million into profit mode.

All 12 movies in the top 12 this weekend made at least $1 million or more.

Will the Screen Actors Guild strike, or won’t they? That’s the question that has Hollywood on edge as June winds to a close and SAG’s contract looked set to expire without a resolution. Of course, the way they’re handling it is likely to raise the life insurance rates of everyone in Hollywood with a heart condition: rather than sitting down to the negotiating table with AMPTP, SAG is instead trying to interfere with the ratification of AFTRA’s agreement with AMPTP, so that neither actor’s labor union has a labor agreement.

Way to make progress, guys; push everyone back to square one? Real professional there.

AFTRA’s agreement needs 75 percent of members voting in favor to pass, and despite SAG’s derailment efforts, it is expected to pass on July 7, when the results of the ratification vote are announced by AFTRA.

Meanwhile, SAG has not yet asked its members for ratification to strike on July 1, but whether they strike or not, labor peace seems a long way off at this point in time, and the return of Hollywood’s prime time schedule may be delayed even longer if SAG does strike.

The entertainment industry lost billions due to the 100-day WGA strike last fall and winter and TV ratings have been depressed ever since, even after original programming returned to prime time. If the fall lineup is delayed further by an actors strike this summer, it could take until 2010 for networks to regain the audience mindshare lost by two consecutive seasons interrupted by labor strife.

The IQ of the US box office has risen to Steve Carell levels; the comic actor’s tribute to the 1965 Don Adams spy comedy, “Get Smart,” ruled at the box office this weekend, drawing in an estimated $39.1 million. Adams, who died on September 27, 2005, revised his role for the first silver-screen adaptation of the classic TV series in 1980, The Nude Bomb, but the movie was a critical and box office failure. The Carell version has been panned by critics, but with a nearly $40M weekend, it seems America doesn’t care what the critics say; they like Carell.

The whole Ademco link to Carell’s career might eventually become complete if Carell ever hosts a TV reality show that allows middle Americans to audition for a chance to get their big break in Hollywood; Don Adams had minor success with that concept on CBS in the early 1970s with “Don Adams’ Screen Test” and given the current trend of reality programming, bringing the concept back with Carell as host might not be an altogether bad idea. Only, of course, once Carell’s career cools down, which at the moment it shows no signs of doing.

Elsewhere on the weekend box office results, Kung Fu Panda ($21.7 million) eked out a narrow victory for second place behind Incredible Hulk ($21.5 million), which easily took third. Hulk raked in an extra $30 million from foreign box office so far, to bring its total to date to $127 million.

Mike Myers’ The Love Guru bombed out of the gate with a weak $14 million showing, although its light, $62 million production budget helps alleviate some of the disappointment; the movie seems to suffer mostly from Myers’ long absence from the silver screen, which led to him seeming more like “yesterday’s news” than “the hot, happening comic of the moment.” Rock on, Steve Carell.

M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening held tight to the last spot in the top five, with a $10 million weekend. So far the film has grossed $50.2 million domestically and $31.5 overseas, for a tidy $81.7 million gross against a $62 million budget, putting the film into the black in only its second week of release.

The rest of the “million or more” club goes like this: sixth place, Indiana Jones, $8.4 million; seventh place, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, $7.2 million (which has been weak overseas as well, grossing only $4.5 million so far, for a total of $88 million combined, against a $90 million production budget); eighth place, Sex and the City, $6.4 million; ninth place, Iron Man, $4 million; tenth place, The Strangers, $1.9 million and eleventh place, Prince Caspian, $1.7 million.

Well, it doesn’t quite measure up to Iron Man’s opening, nor does it compete with even the first Hulk movie, but there are several reasons Marvel Studios should be encouraged by Incredible Hulk’s $54.5 million opening. First, it was $20 million ahead of the next-closest feature, Kung Fu Panda, currently in its second week of release; second, it seems like a movie that, rather than losing steam fast on bad word of mouth as the first Hulk movie did, seems to be holding a bit more steady, thanks in part to a cameo by Robert Downey Jr. in his Iron Man/Tony Stark persona, which gave Incredible Hulk some legs off the goodwill generated by the very successful Iron Man movie.

Rather than go with big-name director Ang Lee this time, Marvel went with a lesser name directing, but a more faithful adaptation of its comic book hero. Instead of an artsy mess, this Hulk movie delivers all the expected “Hulk smash!” action that the first one failed to deliver. The film also fields a fresh cast to make the break from the Ang Lee-directed mess complete.

Replacing Eric Bana is Edward Norton as Bruce Banner, and replacing Jennifer Connelly as Betty Ross is Liv Tyler, hot off her appearance in the surprise summer slasher hit, The Strangers. Plus, comic fans were thrilled to see Hulk battling his arch-nemesis, the Abomination, rather than a bunch of stupid Hulk-Dogs. Incredible Hulk is an upgrade in most every respect, including a trim $150 million budget, a third of which the movie has already made back; by the time it has enjoyed its domestic run and raked in some foreign receipts, this is a Hulk film that ought to make money.

As mentioned earlier, Kung Fu Panda held firm at second place with $34.3 million, and just short of $118 million domestically in its second week of release, which should have voice star Jack Black selecting out new home furniture with his royalty payments; followed closely by M. Night Shyamalan’s R-rated The Happening, which did better than expected, raking in $30.5 million to take third place, a take that will certainly be good news after the slim $60 million budget it took to make the flick.

Adam Sandler’s You Don’t Mess With the Zohan was solid in fourth place with about half that take, at $16.4 million; Indiana Jones added $13.5 million in fifth place, once again besting Sex and the City in staying power.

Sex dropped out of the top five but did decent business as alternative programming to the male- and child-dominated selections at the box office. Sex took in $10.1 million in its third week. No other movie cracked the $10 million mark, although four other flicks did $1 million or better. They are Iron Man ($5.1 million after seven weeks in release), The Strangers ($4.0 million), Prince Caspian ($3 million), and What Happens In Vegas ($1.7 million.), which means all Top 10 movies grossed at least $1.7 million or more.

Although it’s on tap as a replacement series for next season, rather than the official fall schedule, series creator Rob Thomas and ABC are full-steam ahead on the big remake of the late 90s dramady, Cupid. A person could put up a small business for sale trying to guess the whims of Hollywood execs, but at least the show is in full-on casting mode.

The latest member added to the cast is Sarah Paulsen, who most recently appeared as Harriet Hayes on Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and previously had appeared on several series in supporting roles, most notably on the old WB Network’s dramady, Jack And Jill. Paulsen will reprise the role of Dr. Claire Allen, the pyschiatrist assigned to look after former mental patient Trevor Hale, who is convinced he’s the god of love.

Allen was originally played by actress Paula Marshall; when Cupid was canceled after less than a season on the air and she joined 2-3 other series in their final season, Marshall gained the reputation of being an actress who was “the kiss of death” for any show she was cast in. Paulsen has no such reputation.

Actor Bobby Cannavale is taking on the role of Trevor Hale, originally portrayed by the charismatic Jeremy Piven. The remake of Cupid promises to be one of the more interesting remake/relaunch stories of the coming TV season.

Jack Black’s PG-rated Kung Fu Panda thoroughly thrashed Adam Sandler’s PG-13-rated You Don’t Mess With the Zohan at the box office this weekend, with the family-friendly animated feature pulling in 50 percent more than the live action teens-and-up flick.

Kung Fu Panda exceeded expectations with a $60 million weekend, while Zohan brought in a respectable but lower-than-expectations $40 million, as the pair dominated ticket sales over the weekend. In third place, Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Crystal Skull surged back to third place, overtaking last week’s challenge by chick-flick Sex and the City, which fell to fourth place.

Indiana Jones posted $22.8 million over the weekend, while Sex and the City posted $21.3 million. Behind those four, all other films posted less than $10 million on the weekend. The strongest of those was the surprisingly resilient The Strangers, which took fifth place with $9.2 million. Iron Man held on to sixth place with $7.5 million, Prince Caspian drew $5.5 million for seventh place, and What Happens in Vegas drew $3.4 million; nothing else broke even $1 million on the weekend.

Iron Man remains ahead of Indiana Jones in the early race for the top-grossing movie of Summer 2008.

The roadmap for the filmed fate of Harry Potter and his Hogwarts cohorts is finally laid out. The sixth film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, will make its debut this winter, November 21, 2008. With all the principals signed to finish out the series, the winter release is expected to be a big hit as Harry Potter films released in the winter holiday season always tend to do better than those released in the summer season.

The plans for the final book are a bit more complex in its translation to the silver screen. First, the book will be divided into two films, rather than compressed into one. That’s because producers felt too much of the final book was vital, so rather than cutting content, they chose to make Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows into a four-hour, two-part event.

Deathly Hollows Part 1 will release two years after Half-Blood Prince, on November 19, 2010. Part 2, however, will be released far more quickly, as the two films will be shot at the same time. Part 2 will release only about six or seven months later, sometime in the Summer 2011 season.

The extra passage of time between Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows parts 1 and 2 is disappointed, as it will allow actors Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emily Watson to continue to out-age their roles; with all the books now out, it would have been nice to see the production schedule moved up so that Deathly Hallows fell on November 2009, rather than November 2010.

Time will tell if this is a good judgment call on the studio’s part or if someone should have invested in a speaker mount into the Warner Brothers executive office buildings to shout some sense into them.

Yes, the unlikely did happen and “Sex and the City” did take the top spot for weekend box office away from Indiana Jones … barely. While the Sarah Jessica Parker-headlined chick flick opened to a $27 million Friday, the film suffered from poor word-of-mouth and actually lost momentum as the weekend wore on. The final three-day tally for “Sex and the City” was only $55.7 million, about $20 million less that many industry analysts predicted after Friday’s big opening. However, since the film only cost New Line $65 million to make, the blogosphere and media press are still puffing it up as a huge win, with rumors of a sequel already in the planning.

My advice to film investors? Hide your wallets; the AbFab Four are certain to demand higher paydays for a second outing on the silver screen, so take a careful look at the business dynamics of the weekend before pouring $80 to $120 million into a sequel. Yes, the film had a fun Friday, but Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull gained momentum over the course of the weekend, beating Sex’s declining take on both Saturday and Sunday.

In fact, Harrison Ford and company posted a very impressive $46 million in its second week of release, bringing its domestic take to $216 million, $363 million when worldwide box office is added in. That’s in contrast to Sex, which thus far has done no business outside of the US.

Perhaps the biggest shocker of the weekend, however, is that Rogue Pictures’ slasher movie, The Strangers, took in $20.7 million in its opening weekend to bump Iron Man out of the third spot. Crafty casting may explain the surge in business for this Hostel-clone movie, as fans began to realize that, yes, that is Liv Tyler in the film, as well as former Felicity heartthrob Scott Speedman as the couple cornered by sadistic killers in a remote cabin.

The Strangers, which only cost $9 million to make, is already well into profit mode, even if business dries up next weekend. I’d venture to say that Tyler proved her box office drawing power by pushing a low-budget slasher/torture flick to over $20 million, than did Sarah Jessica Parker with her start-strong-and-fizzle-fast performance in Sex and the City. Tyler should be able to use the performance of The Strangers to draw a bigger payday in whatever she does next.

Iron Man stayed steady at fourth place, with $14 million, ahead of fifth-place Prince Caspian, which drew $13 million. Iron Man has done $276 million to date domestically, $505 million worldwide. Prince Caspian has made $115 domestically and $166 worldwide, but may need to wait until DVD/BluRay release to make its $200 million production budget back. Business is off considerably for Prince Caspian, as the first film in the series, Narnia, made $291 million at the box office, while this one will come nowhere near that cume.

The main difference seems to be that Narnia benefitted from the softer winter holiday season, whereas Prince Caspian was unleashed in the far-more-competitive summer season. The results of this downturn may cause Walden Media to scale down the $200 million budget for the third film, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, currently scheduled for another May release, in 2010; at the very least, the company may want to movie the third film back into the winter holiday season.

The rest of the Top 10 was as boring as a diet pill review, with nothing breaking the $10 million mark and some films not even making $1 million near the bottom of the roundup.

Next weekend is counter-programming to Iron Man and Indy, once again, but could also erode Sex and the City’s business as well; the Jack Black-voiced toon, Kung Fu Panda, makes its initial bow, along with the family-friendly Adam Sandler comedy, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan.

The weekend of June 13 will be the next big poke at adrenaline-fueled, testorerone-focused fare as both The Incredible Hulk and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening are strongly anticipated reviews, though expectations for the Hulk flick are muted due to both the original film’s critical failure, as well as Iron Man’s staying power.

If the second Hulk film flops, it’s likely a long timeout for the Jade Giant before he returns to the big screen again; in the meantime, most diehard comic book movie fans are setting their sights on the July 18 debut of The Dark Knight, the follow-up to the highly successful Batman relaunch, Batman Begins.