From: nebusj-@-rpi-.edu
Drew writes:
>On 2007-06-23 1:38 a.m., Joseph Nebus verbated:
>> Lauren Graham:
>> + *Another* Evan Almighty guest? Why are they pretending they
>> can coax people into seeing that big, expensive, stupid mess? What is
>> *wrong* with people?
>...
>> - Evan Almighty: the lord God for no obvious reason declares
>> they had to spend $400 billion on a movie with no appealing features.
>Have you seen the film, Joseph? It might not be /that/ bad. Then again,
>it's hard to argue that it's worth what the studio spent on it.
I haven't seen it, no, and to be honest I don't figure I will
unless it turns out to be the only thing at all available as the
in-flight entertainment, and even then I'd probably switch over to the
Annoyingly Repetitive Disney Jingle channel on the earphones anyway.
I come by my derision for the movie from a simple gut reaction:
what about this premise as shown in the commercials is supposed to make
me want to see it? 'Bruce Almighty', while I've got no particular love
for it, did have an immediately appealing premise: how would you handle
being God, even if it was just in a small region of upstate New York?
This, though ... if God were to break the covenant and flood the world
again would you ... be forced by a Santa Clause-ish infliction of extra
facial hair to ... ride an ark through ... where were we, again?
(From the reviews apparently the flood isn't even of the whole
world, which at least respects some part of the connection to the
original legend, but means also the stakes are gutted since if Steve
Carrel can't play Noah the only species extincted would be those quite
local to Washington, DC. Oh, and there'd be the murder of millions of
people from the area, too.)
There's just some movies that obviously aren't going to be
worth the time and money put into them -- I remember having sadly to
explain to a friend that 'Monkey Bone' was not going to bring forth
a new era of mature, sophisticated animation -- and this is one of
them. That we got stars of this shoved at us almost daily made the
pop-culture death march side of it all the more grating.
> I read that
>"Evan" topped the weekend box-office charts with $32 million in receipts,
>but analysts considered that a disappointing opening-weekend figure because
>the film cost so much to make -- $175 million according to wire reports,
>"more than $250 million to produce and market" according to the LA Times --
>that it has to be a major blockbuster just to break even.
There's another part of the inexplicable nature of it all.
Have you ever heard of a comedy that became the slightest bit funnier
thanks to a generous budget? I admit there's a minimum you need so
that the quality of the sets doesn't become distracting -- and it needs
to be more if you aren't making a really zany comedy where things like
continuity glitches are assumed to be jokes -- but past that ... who
looks to comedies for spectacle? How do you make a funny natural
disaster?
>Given the opening-weekend total and a normal decay rate, the movie will be
>lucky to gross half of that $250 million in theaters domestically. I'm sure
>the studio doesn't want to lose that much money, so there undoubtedly will
>be more promotion of the movie in upcoming weeks. At least it won't happen
>on Conan because of reruns.
Although, sad to say, there's room for possible side effects
to hit Late Night after all. I ran across the mention that the movie
was made by NBC Universal, so if they've taken a bath on this movie all
sorts of innocent budgets could be sacrificed to it.
--
Joseph Nebus
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