Bust Rating, January 15

Bust rating, January 15

 

Ride Along 2

The first one grossed about $135 million domestic, a success.  The trailers for this sequel look about as good, maybe better than the first film, though the plot isn’t explained at all outside of a trip to Miami.  It’s obvious that the selling point of the film is Kevin Hart being hilarious.  Ice Cube can be solid in a straight faced funny role, but his comedic chops aren’t on nearly the same level.

Looking at the numbers, Hart has definitely had box office success, but not to the extent that he’s immune from a flop.  Can a comedic sequel that leaves the proving yourself to a brother in law plot of the original film and turns full on buddy cop be his first bust?

Maybe, but I doubt it.  Kevin Hart is truly funny, and even if I’m not a fan of the jokes in the trailers, he does make me smile with his delivery.  The film is hitting theaters at the right time to compete with Star Wars, as the film will drop below $40 million domestic this weekend.  The other two major comedies in theaters feature two white men and two white women, so this comedy featuring two black males (and apparently Ken Jeong) will be able to capture some of the market that the other two films can’t as easily.  It will likely have a rushed plot that has little to do with the original, but damn is Kevin Hart hilarious.

Bust rating 2/5

 

Norm of the North

Another film featuring Ken Jeong, good for him.  Unfortunately, this one looks completely devoid of humor.  I don’t expect to laugh at all trailers for kid’s movies, but maybe I should at least be able to see that there is humor?  This movie looks utterly devoid of any, and instead relies on themes of rich people being jerks and talk shows being cool.

Can we also talk about how they got Rob Schneider for the lead voice?  He’s actually gotten a decent amount of work as a voice actor, which makes sense since his voice is fairly unique, and his career as a lead actor in comedies is thankfully over.  He’s gotten top billing in (at least) two of those voice over roles, but both were as dogs, and were live action.  Providing a voice to an adorable puppy is almost certainly easier than voicing over and helping shape the character of a completely new animated character that’s also a polar bear.  It’ll be an interesting challenge for him, and maybe I’m just bitter over watching 10 minutes of The Hot Chick, but I’m not sure he can do it.  What I’ve seen from the trailers seems very uninspired.

Regardless of Rob Schneider’s voiceover abilities, this film just looks awful.  I can’t imagine a single parent wanting to take their kids to this film, and don’t see this having any appeal outside of it being about animals in a human world.

Also, the three fuzzy little lemmings seem like a ripoff mix between Alvin and the Chipmunks and the minions, except not funny.

Bust rating 5/5

 

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi

This is by far the most interesting film of the week for box office forecasting.  We’ll get to the political reasons and the juiced up Jim Halbert, but first let’s talk about Michael Bay.

Now, Transformers was awful, and the first 15 minutes of the sequel I watched were even worse.  I have no reason to believe the other two films in the franchise were even remotely better, and have no hopes for the one they’re releasing next year.  But, what happens if you take that whole franchise out of Michael Bay’s filmography?  The result is a mixed bag that leads me to believe Bay can put out a solid film.

Pearl Harbor sucked, it was boring and sappy.  Armageddon was mixed, with parts that were pretty cool and well acted, and some that were a bit too ridiculous.  I didn’t see The Island, but Wikipedia claims it didn’t capture the intellectual parts of the story well enough, and that is very believable.  Now, here is where things get interesting.  Bad Boys was phenomenal, and the sequel was pretty good.  The Rock is over the top at times, but is a film I’ll watch when I see it’s on television.  And I’d consider Pain & Gain to be one of the most underrated films of the past 5 years, as it was truly funny and compelling, even if it overused voiceover narration.  Those films did have phenomenal actors, but they are four films I’d definitely recommend and watch multiple times.

One huge issue with this is that Bay’s best films don’t come close to being as successful as the shitty Transformer films.  The first Transformers earned over $700 million worldwide, and the last two have gone over $1 billion worldwide.  Pain & Gain, a legitimately good film featuring The Rock and Mark Wahlberg (and Anthony Mackie, though he wasn’t as known then) managed less than $50 million domestic and about $36 million international.  He had other non-franchise films do better, especially Armageddon and Pearl Harbor, but can he repeat that success with this movie?

Another major uncertainty is whether Jim Halbert is marketable as a star.  John Krasinski was rumored to be in the running for Captain America, and seems to have taken that rejection well by getting super jacked and starring in a movie with more explosions (presumably, it’s Michael Bay after all).  They aren’t advertising his name much in the trailers, likely because he’s still thought of as a salesman for Dunder Mifflin.  Or maybe Polish names aren’t as good for advertising as long Austrian names.

This is an unexpected yet interesting choice both by Krasinski and whoever casted him.  He’s charismatic, and certainly has the hair to be a movie star, but how many iconic comedic television characters can take a career turn this major?  If Michael Scott can get a best actor nomination for a role as a creepy wrestling coach, maybe he has a chance.  Then again, interesting casting choices are a lot easier for indie films that aren’t trying to cross $1 billion worldwide at the box office.  They’re smart not pushing him as the selling point, and this film is bigger for him than he is for this film.

Now, the political aspect of the film.  This isn’t a political blog, and the posts are usually written by someone who feels caring about politics is useless and idiotic (occasionally I’m not as pessimistic though).  But I think we can all agree that something happened in Benghazi that pissed off a lot of people.  What that is has likely been exaggerated or underplayed by politicians and angry talking heads on politically driven news networks, but people seem pretty upset one way or the other.

So far the commercials haven’t politicized the issue too much, unless they’re putting different trailers on different networks.  It does have an authority figure appearing to not take action, and implies that the soldiers there are the only hope the people have, but they’ve fallen short of saying “Hillary Clinton is purposefully trying to kill Americans because she’s a damn dirty liberal!”  There is a line about God protecting a soldier, and I’d guess conservatives are more likely to see a film about American troops, but it doesn’t actively declare for one side or the other.

Yet, can you really have a film centered around a huge political scandal one side is playing hard against the other, and not have it automatically seem like it’s going to take the side of that party?  Especially when the director isn’t known for his subtle navigation of politics and cultural differences because that wasn’t what Transformers was about?  I can’t help but think this will turn off liberals from the film, yet will it pull in conservatives enough to make up for it?

This film is a minefield of things that can go wrong.  Bay’s last non-Transformers film didn’t do great despite stars, this film doesn’t have as marketable stars, and politics makes people overly emotional.  On the flip side, the action scenes look very well done, the characters seem to have a bit of depth to them from the trailers, and the events happened recently enough ago that they’re still fresh in people’s minds yet far enough away that would seem like a cash grab.  This really could go either way.  I’d guess that the political nature, lack of recognizable stars, and fact that Star Wars will likely go down as the better action film make this fairly risky to be a bust.  Then again, Bay’s films have grossed billions of dollars, so maybe I’m way off.

Bust rating 4/5