Miss March Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Fast & Furious
"Not only is the story silly, but there's not even much car-racing in it -- and why would anyone want to watch this movie if it doesn't have a lot of car-racing in it?" Eric D. Snider asked. "It turns out minimizing the one entertaining element of a franchise was a BAD idea!" Alas, I must agree. Also on Blu-ray. Skip it.

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Bart Got a Room.
"It's not much different from other nerdy-teen-needs-date-for-prom flicks," noted Erik Davis in his review, "but it sure as hell packs a ton of heart and has a lot of fun. It's alive, it's colorful, it's got well-written characters and more than a handful of memorable scenes." Steven Kaplan stars, with William H. Macy and Cheryl Hines as his newly-divorced parents. Rent it.

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Dragonball: Evolution
"It's not aggressively bad," opined the long-suffering Eric D. Snider, "It's more like a dumb, energetic puppy." Personally, I think he was being far too kind to a sloppy, embarrassing, and dull movie. Also on Blu-ray. Skip it.

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Miss March
"Up until yesterday I was having trouble keeping track of all the movies that were contenders for the worst of 2009," confessed Jeffrey M. Anderson, "and I couldn't decide which one topped the list. Now my head is clear of such decisions. I've seen Miss March." Also on Blu-ray. Skip it.

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Also check out: This week's TV on DVD releases at TV Squad.

New indie film releases, more Blu-ray picks, and a look at the Collector's Corner -- featuring the complete BSG set -- all after the jump!

The box office flop Miss March has plenty of material that could be considered offensive, which as I recall was one of the film's main selling points. The film's graphic depictions of poop, the accidental drinking of dog urine, jokes about epilepsy, plenty of nudity, and all the nonstop filthy dialogue you'd normally associate with R-rated sex comedies. But audiences who rent or buy the DVD when it comes out this Tuesday will find one less offensive thing than they found in theaters: the film no longer uses the word "retarded."

And thank goodness! Drinking pee is OK, but calling someone "retarded" is over the line.

I noticed this while reviewing the DVD for another outlet. There's a scene in which two abstinence promoters are trying to frighten kids into never having sex, and they share a story about a teenager who smoked while she was pregnant, causing the baby to come out a "crack head." Except the actress' lips clearly weren't saying "crack head." Her lips looked like they were saying "retard." The baby is mentioned twice more, each time with "retard" replaced with "crack head." Later in the film, someone's behavior is described as "stupid," and again it's clear that he originally said "retarded." Both the theatrical and uncut versions of the film are on the DVD, and they both have been de-retarded. (Which means the theatrical version isn't really the one that played theatrically, and the uncut version has been cut. Nice job.)

It's a rule that big blockbusters with big openings take big hits their second weekend, but Watchmen's 67% drop is more akin to notoriously frontloaded horror films than to tentpole releases. Look for $120 million in North America at the end of the day, which is shy of the $150 million production budget -- though the foreign number, already up to $50 million, should help. Elisabeth has more on the implications of this here.

Race to Witch Mountain won the weekend with $25 million, which is strong but not outstanding: didn't everyone think that the Rock would be a huge superstar draw by now? He didn't open this film; Witch Mountain's success is due to Disney's shrewd (and accurate) marketing of it as breezy family sci-fi -- and the only new family offering since Coraline.

The Last House on the Left opened to $14.6 million and third place, which won't put it in the horror remake pantheon, but probably makes Universal happy -- the film was cheap, and it opened on under 2500 screens (chump change these days). The goofy sex comedy Miss March opened to a meager $2.4 million, squeaking into the top 10. And in its seventh weekend of release, the Liam Neeson actioner Taken continues to groove along, dropping under 10% and passing $125 million.

The full top 10 after the jump.

Up until yesterday I was having trouble keeping track of all the movies that were contenders for the worst of 2009, and I couldn't decide which one topped the list. Now my head is clear of such decisions. I've seen Miss March. In the film, high school boy Eugene (Zach Cregger) practices abstinence but reluctantly agrees to sleep with his girlfriend Cindi (Raquel Alessi) on prom night. Before he can seal the deal he falls down some stairs and goes into a coma. When he wakes up four years later, Cindi is the new Playboy Centerfold. So he and his idiot best friend Tucker (Trevor Moore) take a road trip to the Playboy Mansion to find her.

How they're friends is one of the movie's greatest mysteries, aside from, you know, the one about how it ever got made. These two morons react to everything with bug eyes and jaws agape, sometimes comically screaming and sometimes not. Cregger is a self-righteous, hypocrite prig, and Moore does a barrel-scraping Jim Carrey impersonation that comes much closer to Jim Varney; he even makes those old "Strip-O-Rama" comedians look elegant and refined. (These two cretins are the co-creators of a TV show called "The Whitest Kids U Know," which I am proud to say I have not seen.)

Who watches the Watchmen? Quite a few people apparently. The R-rated super hero epic was last week's only new release, beating out its nearest contender by about $47 million. Here's the top five:
1. Watchmen: $55.2 million
2. Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail: $8.5 million
3. Taken: $7.3 million
4. Slumdog Millionaire: $6.8 million
5. Paul Blart: Mall Cop: $4.1 million

Three new releases this week:

The Last House on the Left
What's It All About: Remake of Wes Craven's disturbing sleaze-fest from 1972 which borrowed its plot from Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring. Two young women are brutally assaulted by a prison escapee and his gang. The criminals take refuge in what turns out to be the home of one of their victims and find themselves on the receiving end of her parents' revenge.
Why It Might Do Well: 2008's home invasion horror flick The Strangers struck me as very similar to Craven's original Last House, so there may be a market for this kind of movie.
Why It Might Not Do Well: The original was a dark and disturbing product of its time. How much will the story have to be de-fanged for a major release today?
Number of Theaters: 2,300
Prediction: $17 million

Ridiculousness on film can work quite well. Wanted rocked a world where cars can do unheard-of things and bullet trajectories can be curved. Zoolander made male models-turned-assassins a hoot. Unfortunately, on the flip side of all that, there's the films that just don't get it. Either they have no urge to and want to be stupid in the least enjoyable way, or they try and just miserably fail.

Take your pick at what the above falls into -- the new trailer for the upcoming comedy Miss March. As the story goes -- a high school dude has a girlfriend he's about to have sex with. But then he falls into a coma for four years, and awakens to find out that his love now shows her private bits to the masses through Playboy. With the help of his friends, they decide to storm the castle mansion and get the girl -- while also partying with the rest of the bunnies. Like any road trip movie -- there are hijinx ... ridiculously over-the-top hijinx that include firetrucks full of psycho fireman and tongues that can unlock locks.

As I see it, Miss March might ensnare some dudes overflowing with pubescent fantasies of breasts, die-hard Craig Robinson fans, or those heavily under the influence, but the masses? Naw. Do you agree? Weigh in below.