Bust Watch February 5th

The Choice

I love talking about a movie I have literally never heard of.  First off, I can be really mean to it.  Second, I get to guess what it’s about on very little information.  It’s called The Choice, and the poster has a guy holding a girl from behind while they both wear sunglasses and smile.  I’m going to guess it’s a religious film, with the choice being about keeping a baby!  And it’s based in California!  And the guy surfs!  Ok, let’s do some research.

Ok, so it’s a Nicholas Sparks movie without abortions!  I was way off.  But wasn’t that fun?  Looking back, I can’t see an abortion movie doing well at the box office.  This movie appears to be about not neutering your pets, cheating on your doctor boyfriend, comas, euthanasia, and horrible acting.  They leave out the coma/euthanasia part in some of the trailers, but it’s there.

Bust rating January 29

Fifty Shades of Black

So, this looks awful.  A bunch of predictable jokes about sex, race, and recent popular movies.  I’m putting the over under on big black penis jokes at 6.5, and may be taking the over.  This’ll get poor reviews, cause me to bitch any time I see a trailer for it, and continue to prove that parody movies are complete garbage that Hollywood studios shit out for a quick cash grab.

Yet it almost certainly won’t be a bust, no matter how awful it ends up being.  The budget for this was apparently $5 million, the marketing budget can’t be much more, and “A Haunted House” made $60 million international, with the sequel making $24 million.  People know what the movie is going to be, and it’ll do well enough to make a quick profit.  It’ll likely more than double however much all the expenses end up being, and we’ll get another shitty parody movie in a year or two, maybe about black super heroes or something, with jokes about the Hulk’s penis compared to Black Thor’s.

As a side note, I completely forgot that “A Haunted House” even had a sequel before doing some research.  I actually merged the two films in my head, since they both looked like cheap parodies making awful and obvious jokes.  Say what you want about a lot of shitty looking films, but most of the time you don’t accidently forget about a film’s existence and assume your brief memories of the trailer was actually for another movie.

Bust rating 1/5

January 22 Bust Watch

Another late showing, was too lazy to proofread.  Will do a quick one over, but expect some errors that I’m too lazy to fix.

 

Dirty Grandpa

I’ll see practically anything with Dermot Mulroney.  I’ve legitimately seen The Wedding Date four times.  I’m convinced he’s the only reason Angels in the Outfield was any good.  I haven’t seen Jobs, but since he’s in it, I’m sure it was a better movie than Steve Jobs, despite what Fassbender has to say about Ashton Kutcher’s acting.  That’s why I’m so disappointed they aren’t advertising Dermot Mulroney’s part in this film at all, as the son of the titular character.

Since I can’t talk about Dermot Mulroney for the rest of this post, let’s go over this awful looking comedy.  Zac Efron has quickly gone from that douche singing in High School to that asshole prettyboy in awful romantic comedies to now apparently a cool funny guy who is too attractive for me to laugh at (or maybe he just isn’t funny).  He was very attractive in Neighbors, but that was a shitty movie, and Dave Franco was the only good part of it (Dave Franco has a surprisingly good range, though he lacks star quality).

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?

Bust Watch, January 8

After a few weeks off, I’m back to assume that everyone gets excited about the same movies as I do, and that the movies I don’t want to see will fail miserably.  The past few weeks have been dominated by Star Wars, which was predictably a megahit.  Two awful looking films hit theaters this week, let’s talk about them!

The Forest

I like Natalie Dormer, both as an actress and an attractive person.  So do a lot of other people.  Maybe this will do well because it has her?  Unfortunately, my interest in Japanese forests that people seemingly enjoy killing themselves in is slightly lower than my interest in the beautiful lead.

Bust Watch, November 27

I’m putting this up late, I’m sure the one person on the internet who stumbles upon this will accuse me of cheating with my predictions.  But if I really cared so much about being right on these, I would have changed the rating for Victor Frankenstein, which was a huge bust.  Should have trusted my gut, instead I got blinded by the star power.  Anyways, here are last week’s bust ratings.

Creed

Take a great movie franchise with a huge character arc from underdog to champ to symbol of America beating the Soviets, and relaunch it with a director coming off an incredible film in Fruitvale Station and a hot young actor in Michael B. Jordan who has a chance of pulling a Chris Evans and overcoming a shitty Fantastic Four movie, and you have what I think is going to be a surprisingly big hit.

The previous Rocky was a continuation that did well at the box office simply by continuing the story and not trying anything new.  There were video game references, a new young fighter that looked more like boxers today, but you were going to see it because you loved the original films (at least 4 of them, anyways).