It’s time for another edition of This Rotten Week, as the summer blockbuster season rolls on – as does the season of counter-programming films. Going head to head this week is the giant earthquake of San Andreas versus the romantic comedy of Cameron Crowe’s Aloha.
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 what This Rotten Week has to offer.
POSTER HERE, LINK IT TO PREVIEW PAGE
PREDICTION RATING HERE, LINK IT TO ROTTEN TOMATOES PAGE
Rotten Watch Prediction
If San Andreas Fault just opened up and sucked in the better part of California, I’d be very pissed - mostly because we have a road trip planned there this summer, and I’m really looking forward to it. I just need this kind of ridiculous natural disaster to hold off for about two more months. After that? Suck the whole state in as far I’m concerned. I’ll have already crossed Cali off my bucket list.
See the west coast open up in the trailer for San Andreas below:
Dwayne Johnson is a ginormous superstar who is an all-around entertaining guy. Big action movies like this are his kind of thing. He’s genetically built to occupy this niche with just the right amount of charisma to go with watermelon biceps and other muscles that I don’t even know the names of. So I don’t necessarily see him as the problem here. And it isn’t the spectacle of the thing either. The stunts look over-the-top and ever-escalating. They are just what a summer movie should have: big boom booms. It’s just that there’s little chance critics, on the whole respond positively to it. That’s ok, as it will make its money at the box office. Not every big action, ridiculous piece of film can be a Fast and Furious-like flick that critics love and rakes in oodles of cash. It’s tough to have it both ways.
I doubt very much San Andreas was made with the critics in mind. It was conceived and produced in order to put The Rock on screen as much as possible, doing the craziest things imaginable in a natural disaster flick. From that stance I suppose it’ll be mission accomplished.
Director Brad Peyton has some experience working with Dwayne Johnson in Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (44%) though the former doesn’t yet have a good movie on his resume, as his only other directorial work is with Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (14%). This latest won’t put him on the right of the side either, as I find it hard to believe critics really dig this one. That we are a week away and don’t have any reviews to measure is a bad sign, especially with a big budget fare like this one.
PREDICTION RATING HERE, LINK IT TO ROTTEN TOMATOES PAGE
Rotten Watch Prediction
I don’t have a lot of other ways to say it or funny quips to open up with about this flick, so I’m just going to get the awkward thing out of the way: this movie looks like garbage. I wasn’t even able to make it through the trailer because at about the one minute mark I realized I didn’t care about one plot element. Cameron Crowe might be losing his fastball.
Maybe you can do better with the trailer for Aloha below:
This flick was pushed back a few months, from December to May. This is not typically a good sign. When a movie is tight, studios want it out as quickly as possible. Not the case with this film as it would appear. It’s usually a bad sign when a release is delayed, and the end result is typically a subpar film.
Look, Cameron Crowe is a legend. Flicks like Almost Famous (88%) and Jerry Maguire (85%) are amazing, and still quotable and watchable to this day. But he’s had some stinkers thrown in there with Elizabethtown (28%) and Vanilla Sky (41%). Most recently he just went a little *meh with We Bought a Zoo (66%). I don’t suspect the trend spikes back in the positive direction with Aloha. From the trailer it looks like a over-talking, go nowhere flick with a lot of big names and pretty faces. I don’t want it to be bad, of course. I love Crowe’s work. There is just little to get excited about and the trailer doesn’t do anything to dissuade you.
This poll is no longer available.
At some point last Sunday I emailed CinemaBlend editor Eric Eisenberg with a quick question about Tomorrowland (Predicted: 71% Actual: 49%). I basically wanted to know any opinion he could give me about the film, or how he thought it would perform with critics. I really never ask questions like this, but the flick had me confused. He responded that he basically thought my prediction was too high. He was right. The reason I had asked originally was because while Tomorrowland looked visually appealing, I worried the story would be lacking. On that account, I was correct. I should have trusted that it would come in lower than expectations. It just appeared corny and stiff. Critics were sour all things considered.
Meanwhile, Poltergeist (Predicted: 29% Actual: 35%) was right on track. The expectations can’t be particularly high for a remake of a classic, because most times these flicks shouldn’t be made to begin with. That was the case with Poltergeist, as most critics considered it a been there, done that horror film. It takes a lot for this genre to score through the roof to begin with. Using recycled stories really isn’t the way to go.
Next time around we become spies, get insidious again and finally catch back up with Vinny Chase and the boys. It’s going to be a Rotten Week!
