YearOne Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Year One (Unrated)
The marketing made it look like it was all about Jack Black and Michael Cera as primitive cavemen, when in reality it's very much a Biblical comedy. In either guise, it fails to fire on all cylinders, never igniting into a full-blown laugh romp. Still, Black and Cera display enough rambunctious charm to keep the proceedings moving along nicely. And maybe the unrated edition will restore some much-needed adult-oriented humor. Also on Blu-ray. Rent it.

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Imagine That
As I wrote in my review, Eddie Murphy gives a very warm, very funny performance as a stressed-out financial executive trying to be a better parent to his seven-year-old daughter, but the film springs to life only at rare moments, which are surrounded by so much fatty tissue that you fear the movie will die of a heart attack before it huffs and puffs its way to the end credits. Also on Blu-ray. Skip it.

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My Life in Ruins
No, no, Nia! The unexpected star of My Big Fat Greek Wedding has been struggling in vain to recreate that magical lightning strike, but not even a trip to Greece could interest audiences -- or critics. "It often feels flat and forced," wrote Jette Kernion, "and even the landscapes seemed blah." Also on Blu-ray. Skip it.

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Also out: Trick 'r Treat, The Children, Ken Burns: National Parks - America's Best Idea.

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.

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.

Bet you didn't know there's a Shockwave game for Year One. That's because Shockwave, well, kinda sucks. I can't even get the game to play on my Mac; I tried Safari and Firefox, so if anyone would like to give it a whirl and report back let me know. So far all I know is that you try and herd ox without making them nervous and run away.

Granted, Sony's Year One is not exactly a property ripe for video game adaptation, and its target audience is much broader than movies whose studios put in a lot of effort at viral buzz, but if it's that the case, why bother even making one at all? It's shoddy and looks like the marketing department already knew Year One (which I liked, by the way) would already be poorly reviewed and have a weak box office showing despite the big names attached.

On the other hand, The Dark Knight, which was distributed by Warner Bros., built up a ton of online buzz from its viral websites like WhySoSerious.com, Friends of Harvey Dent, and others with help from the marketing company 42 Entertainment. The Dark Knight would have been very successful even without these sites, which took a lot of effort and money to put together. Same with the campaign for Terminator Salvation and its Skynet Research site. It's a no-brainer summer blockbuster, destined to rake in the bucks despite the many complaints from critics and fans.

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.

The buzz might be mixed on this weekend's primitive buddy comedy Year One, but the combination of Jack Black and Michael Cera is a pretty irresistible one on-screen and off. Our friends at Moviefone caught up with the comedic duo, who were more than happy to talk about getting back to their prehistorical roots (both in the acting and follical sense of the word), define bromance, rip on each other's bad breath, and update us on the Arrested Development movie, School of Rock 2, and whether or not either of them will be doing some ghostbusting.

From the sound of it, neither actor really enjoyed being a caveman thanks to feathery wigs that just never stay out of your lunch (welcome to the fun of long hair, boys!), and the close encounters with bodily excrement. When asked what time period they'd like to return to, both opted for eras of a little more refinement:

If you guys could live during any time throughout the course of history, when would it be?
Black: My favorite time in history ... the Renaissance.
Cera: I would say ... the '30s. The 1930s.
Black: The '30s? Wait, isn't that the Depression?
Cera: Like '33, that was a great age.
Black: Come on, the Renaissance! Haven't you ever been to the Renaissance fair? Don't you wish that was real life? A little mead, a little roast ...

That knowledge undoes everything girls have been taught about men! I mean, for years girls have labored under the delusion that you wanted to return to the simpler days of hunting with spears, and cooking by fire. If you prefer civilization then please, start up some petitions or websites or something to set the record straighter ...

Harold Ramis has worked in comedy a long time, and his career has taken many directions. With his work on the Ghostbusters (1984) script and his straight-man performance in the film, he managed to allow Bill Murray room to move and riff within the confines of a visual effects-heavy summer blockbuster. As for the meticulously crafted classic Groundhog Day (1993), I hesitate to call any movie "perfect," but it comes close. But then there were phoned-in hits like Analyze This (1999) and Analyze That (2002) that seemed too tightly wound and too slavishly dependent on plot to be very funny.

Ramis' new film Year One, on the other hand, comes closer to the spirit of his directorial debut Caddyshack (1980). I'm not saying it's quite as funny or as brilliant, but it's in the same spirit. It cares thankfully little about its plot or its character arcs, or historical accuracy; it's a bit flabby and careless, but it's also gleefully stupid, and it has the ability to knock you off guard and make you giggle helplessly.

Harold Ramis is the comedy writer and director everyone's cribbed from, from Sandler to Apatow. After leaving "Second City TV," Ramis went on to write, direct, and occasionally star in comedic touchstones like Animal House, Caddyshack, Stripes, Groundhog Day, and of course, Ghostbusters, which have starred a slew of loveable losers fighting to get their sh*t together in the army, on the golf course, or in the middle of a war with supernatural beings. After taking a few years off, Ramis is taking it back to the beginning with this summer's Year One, which stars Jack Black and Michael Cera as loveable loser cavemen who, when Black's Zed accidentally burns down the village, find themselves in the middle of a very familiar holy war. Read on and find out what the big daddy of buddy movies had to say about evolution and self-improvement, male full frontal nudity and the lack thereof, and what the heck is up with Ghostbusters 3.

Year One opens nationwide this Friday, June 19th.

Cinematical: How much more stressful is it to deal with marketing a summer blockbuster and competing with the other movies that are out?

Harold Ramis: You know, it's the same level of stress every time you make a movie, because you've pinned all your hopes and dreams on it and you've fantasized what success will be like, but at the time you can't escape fantasizing what failure will be like. [laughs]

I conceived this movie on a big scale, to do a Biblical epic comedy. I knew it was ambitious and when the studio said "Yes, we'll do it," and it became real, I thought, "Oh my God!" [laughs] It's one thing to fail small, but to make a big movie that doesn't work is so risky.

The Hangover held on to the top spot once again last week, edging out newcomers The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 and Eddie Murphy's Imagine That (which placed sixth). Star Trek finally fell out of the top five landing in seventh place for its sixth week. Here's the top five:

1. The Hangover: $32.7 million
2. Up: $30.8 million
3. The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3: $23.4 million
4. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian: $9.6 million
5. Land of the Lost: $9 million

Two new comedies out this week:

The Proposal
What's It All About: Romantic comedy about a high power executive (Sandra Bullock) who faces deportation back to Canada. In order to stay in the States she plans to marry her assistant (Ryan Reynolds) who she has treated like dirt for years.
Why It Might Do Well: The two leads are appealing as is the supporting cast which includes Mary Steenburgen, Craig T. Nelson, and Betty White.
Why It Might Not Do Well: The basic plot has been done to death in film and episodic TV and there's no shortage of comedies this week.
Number of Theaters: 2,950
Prediction: $28 million

Year One
What's It All About: A stone age comedy directed by Harold Ramis and starring Jack Black and Michael Cera as two guys who embark upon adventures after being booted out of their village.
Why It Might Do Well: This kind of has a Life of Brian feel without the religious overtones.
Why It Might Not Do Well: Jack Black can be a real love him or hate him kind of guy.
Number of Theaters: 2,900
Prediction: $24 million