I have a special rule when it comes to Tim Allen: unless it's a sequel to Galaxy Quest, I will not see any movie starring the former Home Improvement star. I know I'm not alone in having such a rule. Nobody I know likes Allen or the majority of his movies (Quest is the exception for most, it seems). But a lot of people apparently love his work and so Disney will continue to employ his comedic "talent". Obviously, he was partially the draw for this year's shockingly huge Wild Hogs, which was big enough to get Disney going on a sequel.

The latest picture the studio has attached Allen to is called Yosemite Three, which was greenlit based on a pitch from writers Michael Carnes and Josh Gilbert (The Wayne Brady Show). The idea has Allen and two others playing AWOL corporate employees who hide out in a bar while their co-workers head off on a mandated hike through Yosemite National Park. These lazy guys are eventually reported missing by the hikers and become the subjects of a popular news story. Whether or not the trio has access to a television and knows about their status is not reported. In case you want further confirmation that this movie will suck, though, it is being produced by David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman, who together gave us the remake The Shaggy Dog.

Carnes and Gilbert are a hot duo in Hollywood right now, despite the fact that they haven't yet had success on the big screen. Of course, this is only because none of the movies they've written have been released. The first will be Mr. Woodcock, which we told you about in October), arriving in the fall. Then there is the "Untitled Man vs. Nature" film that used to be called Furry Vengeance, starring Samuel L. Jackson and Jeremy Piven. They've also got two projects that are not yet in production: Stalker, A Love Story, which will star Owen Wilson, and The Worst Man. I nominate Allen to be the titular star of the latter.

Remember that incident a few months back involving the city of Boston and a marketing idea gone wrong? In case you're totally oblivious or have a bad memory, it consisted of a silly stunt to promote Aqua Teen Hunger Force that accidentally caused a terror alert. In the end, the mistake resulted in two men facing felony hoax charges, the head of Cartoon Network resigning, Turner Broadcasting paying out $2 million in restitution and Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino hating the surreal animated series forever. Unfortunately for Menino, the cinematic spin-off of the series, Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters, opens this Friday around the country, including in two theaters in his city. Menino has made attempts to convince these locations to boycott the film, "out of respect to the people of Boston," but obviously the theaters are not willing to meet his demands. The thing Menino doesn't appear to realize, which doesn't take an expert in marketing communication to point out (though the Boston Herald quotes one, just to go with an official perspective), that any negative attention he can give the movie will help in its appeal.

In unrelated news, Menino has also attacked the marketing of another film this week. He has ordered the removal of advertisements for Fracture, which contain written in big letters the phrase "I Shot My Wife" superimposed over Anthony Hopkins' face. The fifty posters, which are part of a reported $52,000 ad campaign, have been on display in bus shelters for nearly a month, and apparently they have caused a lot of complaints. A statement from the mayor's office claimed the ads promoted a negative and violent message, which makes me wonder what Menino would have thought if Boston had been included in the controversial campaign for Captivity. He might have gone and banned all movie marketing within city limits for good. Well, except for maybe those promoting seemingly harmless Tim Allen comedies. After all, in case anyone thinks that the mayor has a thing against Hollywood in general, recall how much love he showed to Wild Hogs last month.

The blood-soaked Greek war epic 300 once again left the competition bruised and battered this weekend, taking in a cool $31.2 million to hold its No. 1 position at the box office.

Here's what Patricia predicted for the weekend box office on Friday:

1. 300
2. Premonition
3. Wild Hogs
4. Dead Silence
5. I Think I Love My Wife

And here's the actual top five:

1. 300 - $31.2 million
2. Wild Hogs - $18.8 million
3. Premonition - $18.0 million
4. Dead Silence - $6.8 million
5. I Think I Love My Wife - $6.8 million

Get the full box-office report here.

Just as you might expect, many of the recently released, universally-panned movies are bringing in big box-office numbers, while praised films like Zodiac are falling short. Using the Rotten Tomatoes scale, which is usually quite forgiving when it comes to negative reviews: Wild Hogs, which was the number 1 film of last weekend, rests at 18%, Norbit rests at 10%, Ghost Rider came in with 27% and Night at the Museum had the highest with 45%, which is still low for a multi-week #1 hit.

With the box-office squarely on their side, the big honchos of mainstream movies are now, unsurprisingly, picking a fight with critics. An exec at Disney recently went on record saying that "critics are out of touch with their readership," while Tom Rothman of Fox proudly says that his feature wasn't embraced by "highfalutin snooty snoot critics." At least he was creative with his distaste. But when has big money ever equalled big quality? McDonald's rakes in the bucks, but no one calls the Big Mac gourmet. So, why are execs getting ticked off when critics, who are paid to evaluate how well something is done, see a film as a limp fast food burger and not a juicy taste of Kobe beef? You might like the limp burger, but that doesn't mean that it was made just as well as the gourmet one.

There's no winner or loser to this debate because the sides aren't arguing about the same thing. Just because a film does well does not mean that it is good. Can anyone attached to any of those films say that they are as good as some of their highly-regarded, highly-praised films? Would William H. Macy describe Wild Hogs as comparable to Pleasantville or Boogie Nights? No. It's time for these execs to stop getting ticked at critics when their crappy, or questionable big-box-office movie gets panned, and start seeing their mainstream schlock for what it is.

Following his better-than-expected success this past weekend with Wild Hogs, writer-director Walt Becker is the "it" man in Hollywood. And he's got plenty of projects in the pipeline to show for it, including a re-team with John Travolta called Old Dogs, which we told you about last week, and now the twin-rivalry comedy Runts, which he just set up at Dimension. The movie, being co-written by David Drew Gallagher, is about twin brothers who are complete opposites. As in one is a tall, muscular goody-goody with an Austrian accent and the other is a short, balding crook with a Jersey accent? Sounds original.

Sure, I'm being hard on the idea without hearing the entire pitch, but it's hard to take Becker seriously. He claims that he sees things in trailers, meaning his ideas are solely about what can be sold to an audience in a few minutes. On the other hand, Becker and Gallagher came up with the idea for Schooled, a project set to happen at Touchstone that the two pitched in 2005 (probably shocked that nobody had already thought of it.) Schooled sounds like your basic John Hughes comedy, yet it is seen through the eyes of and concentrates on the lives of the teachers. Here's hoping Ben Stein plays a nerdy teacher who tries to woo the popular hot teacher.

Hope your Monday was a good one (but, really, aren't all Mondays super?). So, um, moviegoers went 'Hog' wild, eh? Or were 'Wild' for 'Hogs'? How many other obvious puns are there to make with that title? Too many to count, I'm sure. Or maybe not, considering that the flick made $38 million this weekend. Shew. It's official: Critics really have no relevance on box office take. I know there have been some preliminary reports to such effect, but I'm hereby making it official. And apologizing to the critics. There is one good thing we can say about Wild Hogs, though, and it's this: William H. Macy co-stars (coincidentally, one of the stars of our staff picks celeb crush gallery). Of course, I haven't seen this movie, and judging by the comments that Erik Davis' review received, I guess it's a crowd-pleaser (Moviefone's own Tommy DiChiara did have fun with the cast in Boston). And at least it made more than Norbit when that broad comedy (heh ... we said "broad") opened a few weeks back -- $33 million if you're keeping track -- so that's something. Here's what Patric ia predicted Friday:

1. Wild Hogs
2. Zodiac
3. Ghost Rider
4. Bridge to Terabithia
5. Black Snake Moan

And here's the actual weekend top five:

1. Wild Hogs - $38 million (!)
2. Zodiac - $13.1 million
3. Ghost Rider - $11.5 million
4. Bridge to Terabithia - $8.5 million
5. The Number 23 - $7 million

Get the full box-office report here.

Just three wide releases this weekend: A deep-south drama about an angry man and his unhappy captive, a nose-pickin' comedy about morons on motorcycles, and a lengthy crime flick about a true-life serial killer.

Black Snake Moan -- 63 positive / 38 negative at RottenTomatoes.com

Pro: "In fact, I pretty much enjoyed the whole movie, with some incredulity and a few half-snorts." -- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times

Con: "It's an exploitation film fraught with faux-sincerity, and ultimately it's utterly ridiculous." -- Moira Macdonald, Seattle Times

Pro: "If you stick with it, you'll see that its excesses are earned and that this is a heartfelt, thoughtful piece." -- Kevin Laforest, Montreal Film Journal

Con: "Its consciously far-fetched, out-there notions of the things damaged people do in the name of love are reductive and go only so far." -- Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

Bonus! "The film succeeds because underneath all the symbolism and the outrageous window dressing, we can glimpse real people in the characters." -- Jette Kernion, Cinematical

Wild Hogs -- 12 positive / 68 negative at RT.com

Pro: "These "Mild" Hogs get by on being good-natured, and willing to trade a little star power for the chance to ride and get paid for it." -- Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel

Con: "The movie never rises to the level of the professional, much less the comic." -- Stephen Hunter, Washington Post

Pro: "Plays as a pleasingly broad diversion, provided one's level of anticipation is properly adjusted downward." -- Brent Simon, FilmStew.com

Con: "It does absolutely nothing, save for what you know it will do, and it does this with only an absolute bare minimum of exertion, with absolutely no exceptions." -- Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star

Bonus! "You can't help but wonder whether folks like Macy, Liotta and Travolta lost a bet." -- Erik Davis, Cinematical

Things are heating up on the movie front, and not soon enough. We've got a brand-new Fincher movie and more animals than you can shake a stick at. Whatever that means.

Zodiac: Fincher's back. Did you hear me? Fincher's back -- go! Run, to the theaters, now! Who knows when it might happen again? I'm kidding, of course. But the fact that the director of Seven and Fight Club has lately been taking so long between movies (his last was Panic Room, in 2002) means the arrival of Zodiac is almost something of an Event.

I'm happy to say that the film -- in which Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo are all characters trying to track down the 1960s San Francisco serial killer who calls himself Zodiac -- does not disappoint. It's a smart, intense thriller, brilliantly acted, and far more psychologically disturbing than violent (though there are a couple of early scenes that are not for the squeamish). The only drawback is that at slightly over 2 1/2 hours, it's kind of long; and given the subject matter, the R rating, and Fincher's reputation for violence, it's not as broadly marketable a film as, say, a movie starring John Travolta and Tim Allen ...
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Toward the end of Wild Hogs, I couldn't help but recall a scene from Three Amigos!; three unemployed, clumsy actors attempt to become the heroes they've played on screen so many times before in order to rescue an innocent woman from an evil clan of Mexican bandits. The two films have a lot in common: they both feature a group of simple men who pretend to be bad-ass rebels, but wind up disturbing the real-life warriors they so want to emulate. They both feature small towns (or villages) overrun by a gang of misfits out to take what they want, when they want it. Lastly, they both feature a crop of familiar Hollywood talent that, with the right script, are capable of providing an entertaining and satisfying moviegoing experience. Unfortunately, Wild Hogs got wrong everything Three Amigos! got right, and the result is a campy, poorly-written flick that relies too heavily on its physical comedy, without taking advantage of its diverse, multi-talented cast.

For the first half hour, pic repeatedly hits us over the head with the fact that our four main characters have grown into middle-aged boring men who wouldn't know fun and adventure if it came squealing into their driveways. Doug (Tim Allen) is a dentist who fails to earn respect from his wife and son because he's not a real doctor ... he's only a dentist. Woody (John Travolta) used to be a successful businessman, but is now flat broke after his supermodel girlfriend decided to toss him to the curb. Bobby (Martin Lawrence) is a plumber who takes orders from his wife as if he were the family pet, instead of the family man. And Dudley (William H. Macy) is our token geek; single, clumsy, stubborn and the butt of most of the sitcom-esque jokes -- in fact, I was half expecting a laugh track to pop up each and every time Dudley fell off his motorcycle (which, mind you, happens so often we can spot the joke coming from a mile away.)

The first time I heard about the movie Wild Hogs, I thought it might be about ... I dunno, a farm or something. Porcine invaders, run rampant! Farmers in peril! But no, it's actually about a bunch of middle-aged suburban guys who buy motorcycles (get it? hogs?) and hit the road seeking adventure. Waaait a second! This movie has nothing to do with pigs! I felt cheated, enlightened, confused and impressed. More or less.

Which got me thinking (always a dangerous prospect) about what other movies cleverly have animals in the titles ... but aren't about animals at all. There are tons, as it turns out. It's almost like a trend. For example, I'll be seeing a movie next week called Eagle vs. Shark, but it's not about an interspecies showdown; it's about two awkward misfits who fall in love (after dressing up in animal costumes). Here are some more:

Black Snake Moan
What It's Not About: A cobra in pain
What It Is About: A blues musician who attempts to "cure" a nymphomaniac of her sexual urges
What Does the Animal Represent? I've seen this movie, and I still have no idea. Maybe the nymphomania?

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
What It's Not About: A tabby trapped on top of a house ... in the summer
What It Is About: A Southern family in crisis
What Does the Animal Represent? Maggie "The Cat" Pollitt (Elizabeth Taylor), who tells her neglectful husband, "You know what I feel like? I feel all the time like a cat on a hot tin roof." (Ever the romantic, he replies, "Then jump off the roof, Maggie. Jump off it.")