This week we continue the run of craptacular movies hitting the theaters. Last week, The Losers (Prediction 29%, Actual 23%) and The Back-up Plan (Prediction 29% Actual 41%) predictably had critics making stink faces in theaters. Get ready for some more of the same.
Thankfully, next weekIron Man 2 gets the summer hit parade rolling.
Furry Vengeance
Does anyone else think this sounds like a great title for a porn movie? Coincidentally, if it were a porn movie, it would probably have a better chance of garnering one iota of critical acclaim. Unfortunately, it’s not and instead movie-goers are treated to some more Brendan Fraser.
Ever wonder how people in the entertainment industry keep getting jobs? For guys like Brendan Fraser, it has to be strictly on luck (or he’s got compromising pictures of studio execs). He’s kind of like the horseshoe player who, on his turn, chucks the horseshoe so poorly that it lands in the street thirty yards from the target. Except, right at that moment, a car passes by, hits the horseshoe, sends it flying back toward the pin and it ends up a ringer. That’s Brendan Fraser. His acting is awful, he’s a huge joke, but his movies just somehow, out of pure luck (no other explanation) rock the box office. In the last decade he’s been in four movies that have grossed over 100 million at the box office, and one that topped 200 million. You read those numbers correctly.
In Furry Vengeance Fraser plays Dan Sanders, a real estate investor fighting against a bunch of animals because... ahh f#$% it, who cares. I only got through 50 seconds of the two and a half minute trailer. When Fraser gets sprayed in the crotch with a sprinkler because the raccoon played a trick on him, it was time to check out. The kick in the pants is that kids will want to see it, their parents will take them, the kids will love it, the parents will want to gouge their eyes out with a soda straw, and Fraser will laugh his way to the bank. The Rotten Watch for Furry Vengeance is 26%.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
When the Doug Norrie History Book is written posthumously in the year 2175, Chapter 27 entitled “The Time He Almost S$#t His Pants Out of Fear” it will be all about watching the original Nightmare on Elm Street. It will be a graphic and detailed look at how one scary movie took an impressionable pre-teen and turned him into the neurotic, non-horror watching guy who writes a weekly column predicting movie critical consensus. The same guy who doesn’t even really enjoy horror trailers, but sucked it up this week for the sake of his adoring audience.
In 1984, Wes Craven made the original about Freddy Krueger haunting the dreams of those teens unlucky enough to live on Elm Street (and garnered a tremendous amount of critical acclaim). Now, twenty-six years and a couple of thousand horror, gorefest movies later, Samuel Bayer brings back the stripe-sweatered, razor-clawed, burn victim, psycho killer. Freddy K. has appeared on screen a bunch of times between now and then, but this is the first time his story has been rebooted to give the new generation a reason to never go to sleep ever again.
The big difference between the original and the version coming out this week comes down to context. In the 80’s, movies like Nightmare, Friday the 13th and Halloween ushered in the slasher genre. They were movies replete with not only blood and guts, but also characters like Freddy, Jason and Michael Myers. Guys who were evil to the core, but also somewhat believable and with enough of a backstory, to warrant a real-life afterthought. In other words, they were coming to kill us too. Since then, we’ve been handed a steady dose of Jigsaw, zombies, aliens, blood, murder, guts, torture, more blood and more guts (not me, I don’t watch them, but you get the point). A movie like Nightmare on Elm Street 2010 has nothing new to offer, except a storyline some kids haven’t heard of yet. The Rotten Watch for Nightmare on Elm Street 2010 is 32%.
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Next week, Tony Stark returns in what looks to be a tour-de-force of awesomeness. Iron Man 2 is such a powerhouse that no other studio put up another movie to compete against it. It’s going to be a Rotten Week!
