There are a bunch of new flicks coming out this week, with everything ranging from Tom Cruise and Tyler Perry to Ouija boards. Coming this Friday we've got Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, Keeping Up With the Joneses, Boo! A Madea Halloween and Ouija: Origin of Evil. It's gonna be a Rotten Week!
Just remember, I'm not reviewing these movies, but rather predicting where they'll end up on the Tomatometer. Let's take a look at This Rotten Week has to offer.
If you drink every time they say "Reacher" in the trailer for the new Jack Reacher movie, you'll be halfway to hammered before the two and half minutes are up. But besides the ultra-aggressive name branding, this film looks like good old fun. It's a dude with "skills" sent on a mission against dudes with considerably less skills. That alone often makes for a fun time at the movies.
Tom Cruise is back as Jack Reacher, the Lee Child titular character who is as rogue and one-liner as they come. The first film earned a 62% and I suspect this latest is around the same range. There aren't a lot of reasons to hate it considering Cruise is eminently watchable and carries his own sort of action cache to the screen.
Director Edward Zwick has had his hand in movies all over the genre spectrum with flicks like Pawn Sacrifice (72%), Blood Diamond (62%) and The Last Samurai (66%- and also heavily dosed with Cruise), but also The Siege (44%) and Love and Other Drugs (49%). None of the them are all that great, but none are all that bad either. He just puts out middle of the road stuff. That likely stays the same with this one. Reacher. Drink.
The premise and the cast here should lead you completely in the right direction. It's Zach Galifianakis, Jon Hamm, Isla Fisher and Gal Gadot. That's an all-star group with serious comedic chops. And I guess the premise in and of itself (typical suburban family gets caught up with international spies who are also their neighbors) should have plenty of comedic juice. But after 150 seconds of trailer without one organic laugh, I am worried if this thing can actually perform.
We've seen similar movies with likeminded plots hit the mark, like Mr. and Mrs. Smith, but that one wasn't trying to hit the comedic angle as hard. I have serious concerns about if this is going to be any good at all.
And sure, maybe I'm basing it too much on the trailer, because director Greg Mottola has two of my favorite movies in Superbad (88%) and Adventureland (89%). So I'm almost willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. But those were different movies, coming of age fare without any of the stylizing or expectations of this one. Hence, my prediction.
Look, I'm a data guy and sometimes we can learn all we need to from sample size. Therefore I give you the Madea series:
A Madea Christmas (18%)
_Madea's Witness Protection _(21%)
Maude's Big Happy Family (38%)
Madea Goes to Jail (29%)
Maude's Family Reunion (25%)
_Diary of a Mad Black Woman _(16%)
These aren't all of the instances of Madea in film (she plays a part in some of the other Tyler Perry flicks) but believe me, including them wouldn't necessarily help the critical cause here. These movies, from a Rotten Tomato perspective, suck and average an underwhelming 25%. But there's another number that keeps them popping up and that's the average $60 million they make at the box office. It's like clockwork and inversely proportional to the RT score. Good for Tyler Perry. I'm just going with past performance to dictate the current prediction. This one seems rather easy.
Considering how amazing the first Ouija movie was with the critics (7% -- which honestly feels high, all things considered), it's no surprise we are getting another one in the theaters. I mean it's a story about a haunted Ouija board, something that most fifth graders (or younger) could come up with in writing class and then be promptly told by their teachers to "try again" because it wasn't original enough.
Director Mike Flanagan has some horror chops with Hush (100%) and Oculus (73%) though this one will almost surely drag the resume down into the region of his latest work Before I Wake. This one looks terrible and I can't believe we are actually getting another one of these.
Not a great week, although I did have a direct hit with The Accountant (Predicted: 51% Actual: 51%). It fell right in that "meh, it's fine" range in that most critics thought it generally disappointed, but some were willing to almost give it a pass because there were a few redeeming elements. The action appears to be fine enough, but Ben Affleck's character was confusing and the plot in general was messy.
Meanwhile, Kevin Hart: What Now? (Predicted: 39% Actual: 77%) was a huge miss on my part. I misjudged this on a couple of levels. I thought the actual standup piece looked blah and filled with retreaded material. Plus, there was a narrative piece attached that also appeared nonsensical. I was wrong on both counts, and this represented a big mistake on my part.
And finally, Max Steel (Predicted: 35% Actual: 0%) sucked. It isn't easy pulling a 0%, and in some ways takes an extra special piece of garbage to get to such a low point. But here we have this cartoon-turned-live action turd. Nice work.
Next time around we've got Robert Langdon back to solve a mystery in Inferno. It's gonna be a Rotten Week!
