The Ugly Truth Tagged Articles at Cinematical

So here we have it, the summer movie season finally winding down, and maybe it's just us, but a couple of peculiar trends have cropped up since May that we thought were worth bringing to light. For starters, we've only further elaborated on Eric's early indicator that puking was 'in' this year (seriously, it's gotten to be a pretty considerable theme), and as for the rest, you can check them out after the jump. Some spoilers follow. And if there are any corrections or additions to be made, please pipe up in the comments, and do so gently.

As pleased as I am at the box office success of Quentin Tarantino's ambitious, pretty terrific Inglourious Basterds, I wonder how many of the folks who saw it this weekend knew what they were getting into. Its clever, funny marketing campaign aside, the movie is two and a half hours of mostly talking, mostly in foreign languages. Movies that fit that description do not have $37.6 million opening weekends. We should know by next weekend whether or not people were duped (and I should say that it's not clear -- the movie is plenty exciting despite, or perhaps in part because of, all the gabbing). For the moment, Inglourious Basterds, "artfully" misspelled title and all, is easily Quentin Tarantino's biggest opening.

Robert Rodriguez, Tarantino's occasional partner in crime, also had a movie opening this weekend -- the kiddie 3-D adventure Shorts. With $6.6 million, Shorts actually wound up being a personal worst for Rodriguez, who has never had a movie open in wide release to weaker numbers. (The similarly low-profile The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lava Girl did roughly twice the business.) And the non-descript, poorly reviewed Post Grad joins a growing list of late-summer total non-starters, with $2.8 million on 2000 screens.

Julie & Julia continues to perform well for Sony. Aside from holding up nicely in general, it's doing well during the workweek -- and, after three weeks, is at three times its opening weekend gross. The Ugly Truth has also acquitted itself, now having surpassed Katherine Heigl's previous effort as a leading lady, 27 Dresses.

The full top 10 after the jump.

What, you might fairly ask, inspired me to think of this well-meaning-but-mediocre 2005 rom-com four years later? This entry stems from my refusal to see The Ugly Truth, which I'm pretty sure is the sort of treacly, cloying, romance that I can't abide, with a contrived, ultra-sentimental happy ending shoved down our throats. Like, oh, I don't know, Must Love Dogs. Or, God forbid, Made of Honor. Two people who are meant for each other, but whom fate has kept apart for an endless 100 minutes, dramatically come together with a big heartfelt speech (or two), maybe an interrupted wedding, and, of course, a big kiss. Needless to say, not my favorite brand of crowdpleaser.

Sometimes -- more often than I'd care to admit -- I'm wrong about just how the weekend's box office will play out. But I'm rarely gobsmacked like I am this week. I expected G-Force to be part of the Disney live action also rans -- at best, I thought it would put up Race to Witch Mountain-type numbers; maybe $24 million. And I thought that it would handily be beaten by the well-liked Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, coming off a franchise record opening.

That is not how the estimates have it. As of Sunday, the guinea pig spy movie is ahead of Half-Blood Prince by just over $2 million: $32.2 to Potter's $30. Potter tumbled over 60% from its opening -- actually not the biggest drop-off in series history, which honor belongs, strangely, to Prisoner of Azkaban. Though I wouldn't shed any tears for the folks at Warner Bros., what with the film's worldwide gross breaking $600 million, the drop is a bit of a disappointment for the well-reviewed sixth film. G-Force, I guess, is a triumph for talking CGI animals and 3D.

Somewhere in Hollywood I believe there's a conference room that is used for one purpose: to completely deconstruct When Harry Met Sally (1989). The walls are covered with script pages, movie stills, charts, diagrams, lists of actors, character traits, keywords, jokes and many other things. Several times a year, some men in suits enter this room. These men can see and understand all the elements that made the movie successful. They understand that Meg Ryan's Sally was neurotic and tightly wound, and they understand that Billy Crystal's Harry was slightly crude (lovably so) and free-willed. They understand that Sally's fake orgasm in the restaurant was a huge crowd-pleaser.

However, they don't understand the imprecise factors, things like human interaction, and romance and chemistry, things that happen all by themselves during a lucky production and can't be planned or replicated. But they nevertheless cobble together a few rough ideas and greenlight the next romantic comedy. The absolutely awful The Ugly Truth is the latest result. Katherine Heigl plays the new neurotic, tightly wound heroine, Abby Richter, who is the producer of a "Today Show"-type morning television news show. Because of her overly-planned, risk-free programming, the show's ratings are faltering. One night she stumbles upon a cable access, love advice show called "The Ugly Truth" and immediately clashes with its slightly crude (lovably so) and free-willed host, Mike Chadway (Gerard Butler).

As expected, Harry Potter cast an effective spell over moviegoers taking the top spot at the box office and out grossing the series' last installment. Here's the top five:

1. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: $77.8 million ($158 million for Wednesday through Sunday)
2. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs: $17.6 million
3. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: $13.7 million
4. Bruno: $8.3 million
5. The Proposal: $8.3 million

This is the first time since the beginning of June that we've had three major releases in a single weekend.

G-Force
What's It All About: Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Oscar-winning effects artist Hoyt Yeatman, G-Force is a 3-D family comedy about talking guinea pigs working in the field of high tech espionage.
Why It Might Do Well: No doubt this was greenlit after Alvin and the Chipmunks started raking in the dough. If CGI chipmunks can pull in $360 million worldwide then why not guinea pigs? The impressive voice cast, which includes Nicolas Cage, Sam Rockwell, Penelope Cruz, and Tracy Morgan, can only help matters.
Why It Might Not Do Well: Have you ever actually smelled a guinea pig?
Number of Theaters: 3,200
Prediction: $29 million

Orphan
What's It All About: Thriller about a couple who adopt a young girl whose sweet and innocent demeanor is covering up much darker tendencies.
Why It Might Do Well: The creepy little kid horror sub-genre has a long history as I mentioned here.
Why It Might Not Do Well: The notion of a homicidal rug rat may be too disturbing for some.
Number of Theaters: 2,600
Prediction: $14 million

I now take back any defense I gave Katherine Heigl for her comments about Knocked Up. I was already on my way there when I heard about The Ugly Truth and its premise where a smart and successful woman turns to a chauvinist to learn about nabbing her beau. I hit the brink with the second trailer where she actually tries to deep throat a hot dog and stick out her chest to get the guy, while he says every pervish thing he can think of. And now ... now there's vibrating underwear.

In the clip after the jump, so appropriately coming to us from Coming Soon, Heigl's character gets a little vibrating gift as she gets ready for a date. She decides to put on the panty rocket and then gets whisked off on a half-date/half-business meeting. At no time does she decide to excuse herself to take off these things, and in fact, gets into some hot trouble when the remote falls into the hands of a kid at the next table. Heigl channels When Harry Met Sally, poorly I might add, and Gerard Butler watches in amusement.

Heigl... How any woman who notes chauvinism in a Judd Apatow movie can then take on this schlock is beyond my comprehension. Furthermore, take away Butler's charm and put ... hmm ... let's say Steve Buscemi into the role -- is it still all romantically funny, or does it get downright creepy? Actually, now that would be a movie -- The Ugly Truth, where a romcom tries to deliver this bull pucky to audiences without a dapper leading man to make it palatable.

Okay, for those of you who haven't been keeping track at home, here's a quick recap of the most recent release date changes:

• The Ugly Truth moves TO July
• 2012 moves FROM July
• and now Bruno moves TO July,
  if BOM is to be believed
  

This leaves the tepid-seeming Truth firmly wedged between the likes of Sacha Baron Cohen's R-rated comedic drawing power and Judd Apatow's (both Universal titles, to boot), so if Sony did indeed tuck tail and return to the April safe spot, it wouldn't surprise me in the least.

It also wouldn't surprise me if the Bruno move was made for any of the following three reasons: to give the film a longer lead with which to promote itself (Borat popped up at Cannes in May of that year and proceeded to be screened excessively for its eventually successful word-of-mouth campaign), to give the filmmakers more time to shoot, and to give them more time to cut what they already have (again, Borat had something like 400 hours of footage to whittle down to feature length).

In silver lining news, this takes a wee bit of pressure off of Summit's May-scheduled bow of The Brothers Bloom, but that's a whole other story...