And the Box Office Oscar goes to Paul Blart (?)

Posted by John Cairns (jcairns@filmschoolrejects.com) on January 26, 2009

Paul Blart!

Wow, I’m in a state of shock, here, folks. I knew it was going to be a close race this weekend at the box office but I didn’t think the American moviegoing public would make fools of themselves yet again by giving Paul Blart: Mall Cop a second straight weekend at the top of the box office. But that’s exactly what they did.

Again, the upset had nothing to do with other movies underperforming. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans got exactly what was predicted by people, and yet Paul Blart made more money than expected and managed to beat it. And this follows up on Paul Blart’s $39 million MLK Jr. weekend performance. I’ve been late in mentioning this, but last weekend was the biggest MLK Jr. weekend of all time. with an overall gross in the $200 million range. Anyway, all those people out there who say the American moviegoers don’t know a good movie when they see it — they got plenty of ammunition this week.

Meanwhile, Inkheart didn’t do well at the box office at all. It only brought in $7,725,000. Considering it was on over 2,600 screens that means there were plenty of empty theaters for this one.

The other big story is what went down with the Oscar nominees, and I kind of ranted and raved about it the other day. Having had a chance to calm down and think about it some more, I gotta say: I stand by what I said. There’s a big divide between the Academy’s Oscar choices and popular opinion, there’s no question about it. And while the public has to shoulder a fair share of the blame for that by making hits out of movies such as Paul Blart: Mall Cop, I think Hollywood has to take some responsibility and admit that the Oscar-worthy movies they are making these days just isn’t creating real excitement among rank-and-file theatergoers. The numbers from this weekend do not lie — and if you are a fan of Oscar movies, be ready to get depressed.

Slumdog Millionaire did the best of the Oscar-award nominees this weekend, with a haul of $10,550,000 to bring its overall haul up to $55 million. Not shabby at all. Still, that’s fifth place, folks, for the weekend, behind even Hotel for Dogs!! That’s right — Slumdog Millionaire lost to Hotel for Dogs!

Underworld 3The Curious Case of Benjamin Button continues to do the best business overall of the Oscar nominees, with a $6 million haul pushing its total now to $111 million. Still, that haul, too, is lower than the weekend haul for Hotel for Dogs. It’s also lower than for Bride Wars.

The other movies that are up for major awards on Oscar night also went to the dogs: Revolutionary Road made $5.2 million, The Wrestler made $3.7 million, Frost/Nixon $3 million, The Reader $1.4 million. Milk $864,000 and Rachel Getting Married made, get this, $465,000.

Granted, some of these movies are still being shown in less than a thousand theaters, but that’s not an excuse. I still think we have a real problem on our hands when we have a bunch of movies made that are aimed at Oscar voters and Oscar voters alone, with no thought given to whether the public will want to see the finished product. I really believe that if some of these filmmakers put their efforts into subject matter that might actually galvanize the public and which people will actually go and see, then everyone would be better off.

I mean, heck, it shouldn’t be that hard for these folks to make a movie that will earn money. The Razzie-award nominated The Love Guru made $13 million during its opening weekend, and yet that piece of junk looks like a big hit compared to some of these nominated movies — especially Frost/Nixon. Can we just go ahead and use the dreaded “F” word to describe Flop/Nixon? (No, that’s not a typo.) It didn’t make the Top Ten for the box office this weekend (it finished in 15th place), and its per-screen average wasn’t very good either. Its overall haul, to date, is $12 million dollars. The Love Guru made more money just in its opening weekend, and The Love Guru is widely considered to be a FLOP. So what the heck am I supposed to call Frost/Nixon? A hit?! A successful non-hit? Let’s go ahead and say it: Frost/Nixon is a flop.

I know, I know, the people out there are total idiots for not supporting Ron Howard’s brilliant filmmaking. But keep in mind — Ron Howard also made Apollo 13. That turned out to be a big hit, and it was also up for Best Picture. So it is possible to make a good movie that connects with the public in a big way. For whatever reason, Frost/Nixon isn’t it — possibly because the whole thing is old news. Movie audiences are tired of Nixon movies and definitely sick of politics. It’s too bad, but that’s life.

All I am saying is that the Oscar race shouldn’t just be about Hollywood congratulating itself — there ought to be more of an attempt made by serious filmmakers to strike a chord with the viewing public. These filmmakers can’t simply give up, or blame the public for not having good taste in movies. They’ve got to try, because I’m convinced the public is just waiting to be galvanized by some potential Oscar-winning movie. If these awards-minded moviemakers truly are making a serious attempt to connect with wide audiences, what they’re doing so far sure isn’t working. We haven’t been galvanized by an Academy Best Picture-nominated movie in a long time. We haven’t had one finish in first place for a single weekend since The Departed in October of 2006!

These talented filmmakers need to go back to the drawing boards and come up with some Oscar-calibre movies that genuinely excite people, like the ones that we saw in the Seventies. There isn’t a potential Patton or Godfather or The Sting in this bunch. EVERYONE in Hollywood -filmmakers, Academy voters, studio executives, everyone else – needs to go a more populist direction with their so-called “quality” movies. Then maybe, just maybe, we’ll get better movies winning at the box office on a more regular basis and we can talk about something other than how big a draw Kevin James is at movie theaters.

Really, folks: Paul Blart: Mall Cop. First place. That is sad.

Here are the weekend damages:

1 Paul Blart: Mall Cop Sony $21,500,000
2 Underworld: Rise of the Lycans SGem $20,700,000
3 Gran Torino WB $16,000,000
4 Hotel for Dogs P/DW $12,360,000
5 Slumdog Millionaire FoxS $10,550,000
6 My Bloody Valentine 3-D LGF $10,050,000
7 Inkheart WB (NL) $7,725,000
8 Bride Wars Fox $7,000,000
9 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Par. $6,000,000
10 Notorious (2009) FoxS $5,700,000

Don’t get me started again on The Dark Knight, either, and what happened with that movie getting the shaft that it got from the Academy. At least those filmmakers had the right idea. That’s all for now. I’m going to shut up now before I get into further trouble here at the Reject Report.


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  • Jon
    This movie was aweful. I can't belive people are STILL going to see this. I saw it only to write a review for the film for my site because a reader had requested a review of the film. And I'm sorry that I drew the short straw and had to go see it.

    Kevin James is a funny guy, I love his standup. That comedy central special "Sweat the Small Stuff" was hilarious! But his movie career hasn't really produced anything close to as funny as his stand up bits are. I feel for him, but he is being pidgeon holed into the crap roles in stupid comedies.
  • Proof that just because a movie makes a LOT of money, doesn't mean it's actually good.
  • Rhona Mitra or Kevin James? C'mon people!
  • Simply put...."You’ll never go broke appealing to the lowest common denominator"
  • Underworld was very good, in fact better than I expected. They tied the ending in very well and actually left it open for another transition movie up to the point that Kate becomes involved in the first movie. My only complaint.....the Vampires died to easily. What's the point of being immortal if a sword or bite from a Werewolf can kill you?
  • oujala
    Paul Blart has come at a time when America is being kicked in the gut one time too many. The Wrestler is every bit the superior movie for another time. With some economists talking another Great Depression, sometimes a stupid, crappy, ridiculous good laugh is needed. I still won't watch it though, ha ha.
  • Perhaps you are right... Thats deep...
  • 790
    10-4, Angry Broomstick!

    Monsters vs. Aliens is guaranteed to break 400 mil at this point. Ppl are so dumb.
  • Rohith
    I can't believe you actually said "Slumdog Millionaire lost to Hotel for Dogs!". The movie Hotel for Dogs only made a bit ($2 million) more than the Slumdog and that's only because it was released in almost three times as many theaters as slumdog. If you look at the average collections per theater for Slumdog, its actually almost twice as high than Hotel for Dogs. So, if you really think about it, Slumdog hasn't lost to any movie. In fact it had the HIGHEST per theater average than any other movie over the weekend and this is not a limited release with 1411 theater count and its in its 11th week unlike Hotel for Dogs which has just released 2 weeks ago.

    I agree with the fact that Benjamin Button did not do better than Hotel for Dogs as its per theater average is way lower than the Dogs movie.
  • I actually thought that Paul Blart was okay. I mean, it's no award winning comedy, but I've seen and paid for movies that were far worse than this one. Plus, I'm a pretty big Kevin James fan!
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