The Reject Report Loves You, Man

Posted by John Cairns (jcairns@filmschoolrejects.com) on March 20, 2009

rr-loveyouman

We interrupt our live continuing coverage of SXSW to give you more wrong box office predictions here at the Reject Report. This weekend we have a very tight race with some real upset potential brewing. The race is between Knowing, Duplicity and I Love You, Man, and I am hearing some conflicting stories about what may go down this weekend.

I’m not expecting any blockbusters, but that’s about the only thing I can say definitively about this weekend. Picking the weekend box office really is a mug’s game. Don’t you hate it when you go to some stupid box-office website and some idiot gives you a box-office prediction, and they act all authoritative as if their prediction is absolutely going to happen? As if he or she knows exactly what they are talking about? That sort of thing drives me up the wall.

Can’t people simply be honest and admit the weekend might be wide-open and anything could happen — for a change? That’s certainly the way this weekend is shaping up. Anyway, let’s take a look at the top contenders and figure out their prospects.

First up is Duplicity, starring Clive Owen, Julia Roberts and Tom Wilkinson. Of course, Clive Owen was just in The International, which was a bust at the box office. Tom Wilkinson was in Michael Clayton, which was directed by the same guy who directed this flick. You guessed it: Tony Gilroy. According to the film’s website, we have a couple of corporate spies who team up to pull off the ultimate con job on their bosses. Fun stuff.

Except I don’t see how this one gets more than $15 million. That seems to be the opening range for recent movies with Clive Owen or with Julia Roberts. This looks to me to be kind of similar to Michael Clayton, except maybe with a lighter tone. It seems like the kind of thing that might open weak but hang around the Top 10 for weeks on end. That’s the feeling I get. Oh, and expect the 40-year-olds to show up for this one, too.

Next up is Knowing, starring Nicolas Cage, and it’s going to have the widest release of the new movies this week at around 3,300 cinemas. This is about this guy who opens up a time capsule — a capsule that contains some eerie predictions on what the future holds. He notices the numbers 9/11/01 and a number of other cryptic predictions of doom and gloom, and of course he then tries to prevent them from happening. So that’s what the story revolves around.

I have heard a lot of people predicting this movie to win the weekend, and frankly I don’t know why. My own first though was that this would lose out to I Love You, Man, but what threw me was the higher theater count as well as the predictions by a lot of people that it would win the box office. Anyway, based on the theater count I am predicting $20 million, but I have doubts about whether it will win the weekend and I’ll get into that in just a moment.

Finally we come to I Love You, Man, which continues the recent trend towards “Bro-mantic” comedies (I think Superbad was supposed to be one.) Anyway, it stars Paul Rudd as this real estate agent guy who’s about to get married to the girl of his dreams. There’s only one problem; he can’t find a best man because he’s always been a girlfriend kind of guy. So he has to try and find a new best male friend and that eventually leads him to Jason Segel (of Forgetting Sarah Marshall fame, or infamy, depending on your point of view).

This movie is in about 600 fewer screens than Knowing, but I think it has a chance anyway. Here’s why I think this movie, which a lot of people have discounted as a contender this weekend, may wind up winning in the end. For one thing, we have seen upsets all year long. Moreover, I’m hearing the tracking is really good for I Love You, Man, and so are the reviews. As of Thursday night I Love You, Man was running at 77 percent at Rotten Tomatoes. Knowing was running at 20 percent.

That settles it. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict I Love You, Man to win the weekend because, well, this looks like it might be a good movie. And boy oh boy, those have been rare this year. I am predicting $23 million.

The likely damages: