The Hangover Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Well, don't we all feel a little silly. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the movie that received the most hysterically negative reviews of 2009 opened to by far the year's biggest numbers -- $201 million since Wednesday, according to estimates. That's just a couple million shy of the first-five-days-of-release record set by The Dark Knight, though that movie opened on a Thursday. (It's tough to truly compare opening weekends of mega-blockbusters these days, since God knows on what day of the week they all hit theaters.) I hope everyone is looking forward to Transformers 3, where Autobots will discover fart jokes.

The only movie to dare take on Revenge of the Fallen in wide release, was the Nick Cassavetes weepie My Sister's Keeper, which opened to a respectable $12 million -- almost as strong as Cassavetes' The Notebook, though unlikely to be carried to an $80 million cume by good word-of-mouth. Year One took a big tumble, falling off 70% its middling opening; I guess Michael Cera and Jack Black aren't quite the automatic draw that battling cyborgs are. And The Hangover continues to ride a wave of audience goodwill; it will likely have reached $200 million by this time next weekend.

As for your weekly Up v. Finding Nemo update -- it's still neck-in-neck, with Nemo ahead by about $3 million after five weeks of release. If this weekend's heftier drop-off for Up is any indication, it may be starting to lose a little steam, which would mean that Nemo would get to hold on to the Pixar crown.

The full top 10 after the jump.

As 2009 approaches its halfway mark, it's a good time to reflect on the cinematic themes we've seen represented so far. Given the current economy, it's no surprise that banks and financiers have been villainized in movies such as Drag Me to Hell and The International. Perhaps we're tired of babies, too, as infants have been harmed or endangered for comic effect in Dance Flick and The Hangover. But the most prevalent theme in all of Hollywood this year? Vomit. Chunky, steamy vomit.

I don't know if so many movies with puke scenes have ever appeared in one year. And I'm not talking about where a character is seen discreetly from behind, kneeling over a toilet and ralphing, with no barf actually visible. That sort of thing is relatively common. No, I'm talking about scenes where we actually see the vomit as it's spewed from the person's mouth, graphically and in color. That's a lot rarer. Yet so far in 2009 it's happened in Adventureland, The Haunting in Connecticut, Drag Me to Hell, Observe and Report, The Hangover, Year One, and My Sister's Keeper. And wow, the first four of those seven all played at South By Southwest. Fixated much, SXSW programmers??

The causes of the chundering vary from film to film. In My Sister's Keeper and The Haunting in Connecticut, it's cancer-stricken teenagers suffering from nausea. Year One has its heroes afflicted with motion sickness (eating the poop didn't bother them at all), and I believe that's what makes an amusement-park customer hurl in Adventureland, too. Drag Me to Hell has a woman (possibly a hallucination) vomiting maggots on somebody. In the other movies, it's good ol' drunkenness or hungoverness.

It may have seemed like an "off" week by summer standards in terms of releases, but two debuts and two strong holdovers meant that four films grossed $20 million or more, which is rare for a non-holiday weekend. The top dog, surprisingly, turned out to be The Proposal, which rode a genial marketing campaign and a set of sneak previews to $34 million dollars -- Sandra Bullock's best opening weekend ever, by far. (Related question: did Bullock "open" this movie? I'm inclined to think not, though it's a perfect role for her.)

Year One is a bit tougher to read. Certainly with the Cera/Black/Ramis combination, it was expected to open bigger. Generally poor reviews didn't help; I haven't seen the film, so I'm a bit handicapped in the analysis. If I had to guess, I'd say that people saw it as a bit of a novelty item. Silliness can be hard to sell if it's not low-brow.

But the weekend's real story, I'd say, is once again The Hangover, which stuck around in second place after dropping less than 20% in its third weekend. It's hard to find a precise analogue for it at this point; Box Office Mojo stretches with "R-rated summer comedy breakout," which category it will dominate after it speeds ahead of Wedding Crashers in about two weeks. The movie did add nearly 200 new screens; still, when people talk about word-of-mouth giving a movie legs, this is what they're hoping for.

Meanwhile, Up is now pretty much running neck-in-neck with Finding Nemo for the title of highest-grossing Pixar release. It will be close.

The full top 10 after the jump.

To some, it was a surprise upset: the week-old The Hangover outgrossed the brand-new The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3. Or, in other words, the film with no stars beat out the film with two humongous stars. It's easy to look back over the past 12 months and find similar trends. Star Trek is currently the year's biggest smash, with no stars. (I'm using the term "stars" here very loosely; I'm talking, big, big stars, known the world over.) Likewise, Slumdog Millionaire, Up and Watchmen were all big hits with no big stars. We could argue that stars like Hugh Jackman, Tom Hanks, Ben Stiller and Christian Bale have been in hits this summer, but you could also argue that they're all in sequels that have sold because of other factors.

Some stars seem unstoppable. Will Smith, for example, rarely stars in a film that grosses less than $100 million, and when he does, he gets an Oscar nomination for it; the exception, last year's Seven Pounds, even managed to turn a profit despite the fact that nobody liked it and it disappeared before anyone could blink. And you could hardly argue that Gran Torino would have been much of a film without Clint Eastwood. Indeed, most of the big hits of the past year and a half have had big stars in the cast, but relying on a star and a star alone to carry your film seems to be a thing of the past. There needs to be a big concept or a selling point that's as big or bigger than the star. What do you think, dear readers? Is the star system obsolete? Are there stars you adore so much you'll see anything they're in? Or do you go to the movies for other reasons?

The Hangover is officially the summer's biggest breakout hit. Its closest analogue is Wedding Crashers, which, four summers ago, was carried by positive word-of-mouth to a final gross nearly seven times its opening weekend. The Hangover has bigger raw numbers, but its second weekend drop -- 25% -- is comparable. For a film that opened to $45 million, and without any sort of holiday boost, that's pretty remarkable. It will have some competition next weekend in the form of Year One, but it may not matter much; its word-of-mouth appears to be the stuff that dreams are made of.

Pixar's Up is also going gangbusters in second place. It is now running a mere $4 million behind Pixar box office champion Finding Nemo. At this point it's anybody's game.

The weekend's two wide openers -- The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 and Imagine That Imagine That opened pretty much to expectations. Pelham did a respectable $25 million, which is pretty close to previous Denzel Washington-Tony Scott collaborations (Man on Fire and Deja Vu). And Imagine That's $5.7 million pretty much precisely mirrors the opening of Eddie Murphy's Meet Dave this time next year. Murphy really needs to do something to shake things up a bit.

The full top 10 after the jump.

It seems redundant and pointless to talk about how intimidating Mike Tyson is, but I admit that I was nervously excited when Cinematical was offered the opportunity to interview him in conjunction with the release of The Hangover. Having spoken to Tommy Lee Jones, the toughest of tough celebrity interviews, I'd survived gauntlets far more fearsome than dealing with a former heavyweight, especially since I'd recently seen Tyson, which offers a portrait of him at his most reflective, self-aware and lucidly articulate. But I did want to get a good, and more importantly real interview with him, not just lob softballs in his direction and be yet another guy who was too scared to ask a substantive question.

Tyson's cameo in The Hangover is just one great moment in a film with plenty of other ones, but it seems to mean more for him, if not also to him: while the film's $45 million opening-weekend haul means higher paychecks and better roles for co-stars Bradley Cooper and Zach Galifianakis, its visibility and success gives Tyson a sense of humor, and moreover, a humanity that he's never quite achieved on such a significant scale. Cinematical spoke to Tyson on May 17 in Las Vegas, where the former prizefighter discussed what it meant to appear in the movie, looked back on the experience of making Toback's documentary, and talked about what the future holds for him following his recent adventures on the silver screen.

Up's 35% second-weekend drop -- allowing it to barely hang on to first place with $44.2 million, at least according to Sunday estimates -- is remarkable, placing it very nearly in Finding Nemo territory. (It's currently running around $7 million behind Pixar's highest grosser.) I am loving Up's success, not just because it's a terrific film, but because it has the least obviously commercial concept Pixar's ever tackled. (Though, as I mentioned last week, Wall-E -- which Up will now surely top -- is actually the more challenging film.)

The Hangover, meanwhile, rode great buzz and good reviews to $43.3 million, which is the second highest opening weekend ever for an R-rated comedy, behind American Pie 2. (Unless you subscribe to the ludicrous notion that Sex and the City is a comedy, in which case it's third.) If you've seen the movie, you know why it's been rapturously received. If you haven't, you should.

On the other hand, Land of the Lost was punished by reviews and a muddled marketing message, landing in 3rd place with $19.5 million. The folks at Universal tried hard to push this into the summer blockbuster A-list, but I think they would have been better off pushing it as what it is: an above-average Will Ferrell comedy. As it stands, the funny film got its ass kicked by Semi-Pro, which is sort of unacceptable.

Drag Me to Hell had a disappointing second weekend, with hopes that good word-of-mouth would help it overcome its weak opening weekend evaporating. I suppose the movie was likely inexpensive enough that its $40-million-or-so domestic final won't be seen as a total bust.

Nia Vardalos' half-hearted comeback attempt My Life in Ruins grossed $3.2 million in 9th place, which is... exactly how much Connie & Carla made in its first weekend in 2004. Oh well.

The full top 10 after the jump.

Welcome back to another edition of Insert Caption -- the game that asks you to imagine yourself winning tons of wonderful movie swag while you attempt to turn those dreams into reality. Last week we asked you to knock back a few while we toasted to Todd Phillips' new comedy The Hangover as it stumbled its way into theaters this weekend. Congrats to our three winners! Here's hoping your captions are still funny now that we're sober.

1. "I wonder if this is how Jon and Kate got started?" -- Maddy L.

2. "I think we're supposed to walk into a bar now?" -- Zack Y.

3. "If anybody asks, I had cute babes literally hanging off of me." -- Jae Z.

See full image and all captions





This week we're skippin' on over to the new Eddie Murphy comedy Imagine That, which stars Murphy as a down-on-his-luck financial executive who suddenly finds success through his young daughter's imaginary world of friends. (Meanwhile, all my imaginary friends do is hog the remote and drink all my beer. Yeah, thanks imagination!) The folks behind our three favorite captions this week will each walk away with one Imagine That poster. Now go forth and imagine up some funny captions for the photo below ...



Read the official rules for this contest

Todd Phillips, by his own admission or at least acceptance, is the comedy world's A-list anti-Apatow: where the writer-director of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up bathes his characters in sweetness and sentiment, Phillips wrings his dry, leaving only the odd, awkward and undeniable punch of their punch lines. His latest film, The Hangover, follows a group of guys who awaken from an all-night bachelor party in Vegas to discover that the groom is missing, there's a tiger in the bathroom of their suite, and they are now in possession of a baby. No lessons are learned, no constitutions tested and no hearts wrenched, and that's just the way Phillips – and the audience of his films, from Road Trip to Old School to Starsky and Hutch – prefers it.

Cinematical recently sat down with Phillips, in Vegas, no less, to discuss The Hangover. In addition to talking about his particular and preferred brand of comedy, Phillips talked about a few of the films that inspired him as a young man, and mused about the future of both The Hangover and Old School.