7/15 – 7/17 The Weekend Blend is back, and as mildly useful as ever. Thanks to Comcast, who will no doubt have my internet service back and running at home before I finish typing this, enabling me to actually publish it before the weekend arrives and renders it irrelevant.
The boorish, over-hyped talk of box office slump continues, but movies like Fantastic Four are performing solidly. This week the competition diminishes, with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as the best contender to take down Ben Grimm and his buds before the weekend is through. Burton’s Chocolate Factory is a weird movie, and a little tough to predict. There does seem to be a fair amount of interest in it though, and that should be enough for it to unseat the unfairly hated Fantastic Four. Still, don’t be surprised if Fantastic Four continues to do well, critics loathe it (not this one) but audiences seem to be enjoying the heck out of it. Word of mouth should keep the Human Torch lit.
Enough money talk, here’s my usual look at which movies are worth your time this weekend:
Misc. Limited Releases (Opening on fewer than 500 screens.)
Though a movie titled Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus holds at least some blind attraction, the only real limited release of note this weekend is something called Happy Endings. March of the Penguins (a documentary about, you guessed it, elephants) is expending into 125 theaters and movies like The Warrior and God’s Sandbox open in a theater or two as well, but Happy Endings’ movie poster features a woman’s bare back with her buttocks covered only by a towel. It’s the sort of poster that makes you sit up and pay attention, deserved or not. Hitting in 50 theaters this week, Happy Endings stars among others, Tom Arnold. That’s never a good sign. The Don Roos movie is one of those multiple stories movie, of the type that fits so comfortable in movie theaters and is usually advertised with multiple squares. It’s unlikely that it works as well as something like Crash or even to a much lesser extent I Heart Huckabees, but if you’re heading to your city’s art district (assuming it has one, Oklahoma residents can probably safely skip the limited release section of this column every week) Happy Endings is probably the film to see.
Wedding Crashers (Opens in 2,600 theaters.)
Vince Vaughn brings his A-game in a movie about two guys crashing weddings and subsequently ending up in Christopher Walken’s living room. It’s a raunchy comedy filled with handjobs and hilarious crass jokes, but it’s also got a soft, squishy underbelly of romance that women are going to really dig. It’s worth seeing just for the opening montage, which must clock in at around ten minutes of wedding crashing fun played to the wedding staple “Shout!”. Owen and Vince have great chemistry together, and my favorite young actress Rachel McAdams is mixed in there with them. Wedding Crashers is a fun, wonderfully R-rated comedy. One of the funniest things I’ve seen this year and well worth checking out.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Opens in 3,770 theaters.)
I missed my screening of Burton’s “re-imagining” of Willy Wonka but plan to see it first showing tomorrow. At this point I have absolutely no idea what Burton has in store for us, but I’m more than a little afraid of it. The original Gene Wilder movie is a classic, and while there’s plenty of room for improvement in set design and maybe even in script with the original, there’s absolutely no replacing Gene. Still, if you’re going to try, Johnny Depp is the man to do it with. Burton’s version promises to be more faithful to the Roald Dahl novel, but the original (which I re-watched Monday) seems pretty faithful to me. Whatever he’s ended up with, Burton’s take on pop culture’s weirdest, midget-labor lovin candyman is not the sort of thing you can afford to miss. Load up on chocolate (theaters are going to make a killing on concessions with this thing) and give Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory a chance.
STILL IN THEATERS AND WORTH YOUR TIME: Bewitched, War of the Worlds, Murderball, Fantastic Four, Hustle & Flow
