THE REJECT REPORT 38

Movie fans can feel it. The Summer movie season is in the air, and we’ll be analyzing what it’s opening attack has to offer. For now, though, we’ve got four new films squaring off to soak up as much pre-Summer sun as they can, some of them sure to be more successful at that than others. Here’s a hint: the movie set in foggy Baltimore in the 1800s won’t be getting much sun. Another action film for the adult crowd and an animated yarn have better chances, but it’ll end up being the romantic comedy hitting that top spot here just before we’re flooded with superhero blockbusters. It’s the final Reject Report before Summer hits, and the flood of new movies this weekend is just one more indication that the industry has no urge to slow down now. The Breakdown The Five-Year Engagement It’s about time we got Jason Segel and Emily Blunt, those two, crazy kids, together. The Five-Year Engagement looks to be the headliner this weekend with the animated film, action film, and psychological horror film all serving as counter-programming. Segel and Blunt are openers at this point in their careers, and, with Judd Apatow on deck as producer, this film is sure to have some serious footing. Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the last Apatow/Segel collaboration, debuted with $17.7m. That was in 2008 before I Love You, Man and the story of his passion to get The Muppets made brought him near the forefront of comedic leading men. He’s not at the head, but he’s getting there. Blunt has never headlined a comedy like this, but her inexperience won’t keep the Apatow monster from rolling over close to $20m. Weekend Projection: $19.8m (#1 on The Chart) The Pirates! Band of Misfits Pirate movies are en vogue. What better sub-genre for an animated studio like Aardmen to take on than pirates? The company that Wallace & Gromit built hasn’t had a heaping help of success in its tenure. 2006′s Flushed Away comes in with their biggest opening, $18.8m, whileChicken Run remains their top, domestic earner with $106.8m in 2001. They’re films hit mild degrees of performance the whole way through, and Pirates! isn’t going to be the movie to break that lackluster stride. The widest new release title won’t help it much, either. At just over 3300 screens, Pirates! has roughly the same count as 2011′s Arthur Christmas, a film that opened to $12m. At Thanksgiving. The fact that The Lorax opened two months ago will help drive in the kid crowd looking for new animation. Arthur Christmas opened with The Muppets, Happy Feet 2, and Puss in Boots already in theaters. Pirates! will open higher than Aardman’s previous film, but it won’t be enough to skyrocket the company up the animated chart. Weekend Projection: $15.6m (#3 on The Chart) Safe Dear Jason Statham, it’s about time for another Transporter movie. Call it Trans4ter. Maybe not. All we’re saying is your movies outside that series aren’t earth-shattering in the box office numbers. The Stallone movies help, too. Take Safe, for example, your latest attempt at breaking 50 necks in a 90-minute time period. It’s gonna come in somewhere around $10m, kind of like Killer Elite last year with $9.3m or The Mechanic in early 2011 with $11.4m. Safe doesn’t look like anything new, and while you’ve still got a hold on a specific audience who loves you, it’ll be the low end of that range of people. Safe won’t break your career, but just give Luc Besson a call. See what he’s up to. Weekend Projection: $9.5m (#5 on The Chart) The Raven Because From Hell did so great. Seriously there aren’t too many films that you can compare closer to these two. From Hell stands higher in stature than The Raven simply due to it being Johnny Depp there and not John Cusack. Even in 2001, Depp had more box office pull than Cusack ever did. Add to that the wholly uninteresting trailer and the abysmal word of mouth, and this $7.2m seems to be a generous estimate. Cusack fans here. What are you gonna do? Weekend Projection: $7.2m (#7 on The Chart) The Chart The Five-Year Engagement – $19.8m NEW Think Like a Man – $16.3m (-51.4%) The Pirates! Band of Misfits – $15.6m NEW The Lucky One – $11.1m (-50.6%) Safe – $9.5m NEW The Hunger Games – $9.5m (-34.4%) The Raven – $7.2m NEW The Three Stooges – $5.1m (-46.7%) Chimpanzee – $4.7m (-55%) The Cabin in the Woods – $4.1m (-47.7%) The Analysis Even with numbers 8-10 hitting much higher than usual, the top 10 this weekend is set to bring in $102.9m, pretty typical for this final week before the Summer movies begin to trot out. It’s a dumping ground of its own, really, a tiny slice of January right here at the end of April. With the exception of The Five-Year Engagement, an Apatow-produced film that could have easily gotten a slot during the Summer months, none of the new hitters seem all that interesting. The studios sights are primed and poised for May 4th when the real fireworks begin. Little will be won or lost this weekend. Without a surprise or two in store for us, it’ll be just another day at the office for many studio execs come Monday. Who knows? Maybe the Cusack contingent and the Poe-hards create such a mix that The Raven trounces all with $68m and change. It is Poe, so there may have been drinking before that last sentence. We’ll be back early next week to go over the weekend numbers. Click here for more of The Reject Report Or Enjoy a Different Feature

Review: ‘The Pirates! Band Of Misfits’ Fills Its Chests With Laugh Booty, But Goes Off the Map with Plot Posted: 27 Apr 2012 08:00 AM PDT Set sail for adventure on the high seas with the merriest band of buccaneers and scallywags this side of the ocean blue with Peter Lord and Jeff Newitt‘s rollicking and very fun family film, The Pirates! Band of Misfits. Arghs ahoy! Based on Gideon Defoe‘s comedic novels, the Aardman Animations film follows the Pirate Captain (voiced by Hugh Grant) and his merry band of hearties as they attempt to win the coveted Pirate of the Year Award, all while mixing it up with world-famous scientists, the Queen herself, sworn pirate enemies, and even a trained monkey. Frequently funny and layered with humor to suit all ages, including a gaggle of solid sight gags and verbal jokes aplenty, the film is another feather in Aardman’s (large, triangle-shaped pirate) cap. All that good humor aside, the film occasionally suffers from some missteps translating two of Defoe’s written works into one film, but while the plot might not sail along effortlessly, just about everything else about The Pirates! does. The good Pirate Captain’s gang is a merry one, a spirited family that includes the dutiful Number Two (Martin Freeman, also known as The Pirate with the Scarf), the chipper Albino Pirate (Anton Yelchin), the surprisingly curvaceous Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate (Ashley Jensen), the accident-prone Pirate with Gout (Brendan Gleeson), and everyone’s beloved pirate parrot Polly. Together, they might not be the best pirates on the high seas, but they’re certainly the most friendly. When the annual Pirate of the Year Awards roll back around, the Pirate Captain is determined to finally capture the prize, even if everyone thinks he is a loser and he has to go up against truly fearsome pirates like Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven), Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek, basically playing the exact same role as from Puss in Boots), and Peg Leg Hastings (Lenny Henry). Set on proving their meddle (and metal, they really need to capture some more booty), the Pirates! go looking for trouble, and boy do they ever find it. Cobbled together from two of screenwriter Gideon Defoe’s “The Pirates!” novels, the film’s one black mark is a tremendous lack of plot focus. While the film has been billed as detailing the crew’s attempts to win the Pirate of the Year Award, that story quickly gets jumbled up with the rascals setting off on a a trip to London for some high-falutin’ science awards that see them paired up with no less than Charles Darwin (David Tennant). It’s a fun spin on revisionist history, and it’s not likely to confuse any kiddos in the audience, though a few of them may end up with a residual fear of Queen Victoria (who ends up as the primary villain of the entire film). Before the London plot is sewn up, the pirates are back on pirate stomping ground Blood Island (apparently modeled after Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride, but buckets more fun), before they’re back in London – the plot zinging back and forth between conflicts and evil-doers seemingly without a map. While there are threads between the stories – the pirates find Darwin while searching for booty to impress King Pirate in their quest for the Pirate of the Year Award, their exploits in London eventually help them win pirate acclaim – they’re fragile threads and feel shoe-horned in around everything else. Fortunately for The Pirates!, the rest of the film is buoyant enough to keep the entire endeavor afloat. Like other Aardman classics, such as recognizable titles from the Wallace & Gromit franchise and Chicken Run, The Pirates! is mostly stop-motion claymation animation (as IMDb notes, computer-generated animation was used for much of the scenery), and the effect of such technical work is consistently beautiful and charming. There’s clearly been a lot of love put into the film, and it shows on the screen. The film is available in both 3D and 2D, and while the other technical merits of the film are outstanding, its third dimension is not necessary for audience enjoyment, it’s simply fun enough as is. The Pirates! Band of Misfits is a relentlessly amusing and crowd-pleasing trip on the high seas, one that begs for further journeys with this ragtag group of adventurers. The Upside: Consistently funny, scrappy, and charming, The Pirates! delivers laughs for all ages; gorgeous Aardman animation is as fun and dazzling to watch as ever; memorable voicework from a talented cast. The Downside: A choppy plot that doesn’t find its aim until far too late in the film. On the Side: Gideon Defoe adapted the first of of his own two “The Pirates!” novels, “The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists” and “The Pirates! in an Adventure with Whaling,” for the film. Defoe has written four “The Pirates!” novels since 2004, with a fifth hitting shelves this summer.