You know what we don’t get enough of? Movies that smash things. Sure, there are movies that blow things up, movies with car chases, or aliens who demolish cities in their attempts to take over the world, but movies that just out and out smash things with a hammer for nearly two hours… yeah, there’s just not enough of that. And as a society, apparently we clamor for that free feeling that most of us forget after toddler-hood…the ability to destroy with the swing of a hand.
Thor was sent to remind us.
1) Thor — $66.0 Million
Well, that’s certainly not shocking. While not outdoing its Marvel counterparts, X-Men Origins: Wolverine ($85.1 million) and Iron Man ($98.6 million) on their opening weekends, Thor was able to smash its way into legitimate blockbuster movie numbers. Which is a good thing for the mythical god, because purely going by its actual content, well, let’s just say to this audience member there was much to be desired from the titan blond Viking. One could wonder if 1980’s Flash Gordon wasn’t the inspiration for this heavy-handed fanciful film. Sam J. Jones, 1980’s Flash, was perhaps sitting in the theater thinking, “Wow, we were so ahead of our time what with the corny special effects, so much time spent in alternate realms, and just the laughable, over-all cheesiness that dripped unintentional crap-syrup all over this whole thing. I tell you, if I knew then what I know now, I would have pushed director Mike Hodges to just give me a hammer.”
2) Fast Five — $32.5 Million
I imagine Vin Diesel yelling at the heavens which would probably sound like a congested bear snoring in a cave. His little street-car heist movie slipped 62 percent from last weekend when it brought in a whopping $86.2 million, which effectively drove a souped-up Corvette over Thor‘s big day out with his cape. Still, that’s a pretty steep decline for Paul Walker, permanent hood ornament, The Rock, arms of magnanimous intimidation, and Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, who, well, I have no idea why he’s in this movie — I blame the overbearing Crash for this, always. As evidenced from the past four movies, dropping significantly after its opening weekend is sort of what the Fast and Furious movies do. It’s kind of like the audience says, “Hell yeah, fast cars and unbelievable stunts like flying off a bridge!” and then the next week it’s, “Oh, ho. Fast cars, and no way they flew off that bridge. Shenanigans! Let’s go see Thor swing a hammer on some Jolly Blue Frosty Giants because that’s not silly at all!”
3) Jumping the Broom — $13.7 Million
So America likes Alan “Show Me That Smile” Thicke’s daughter-in-law Paula Patton’s new movie just slightly more than whatever Ginnifer Goodwin and Kate Hudson were doing in that goofy film about lady-cheating with square-chinned nobody dudes who look all perplexed in NYC cabs. It was really a photo finish with Jumping the Broom as the projected winner for the weekend’s number three spot. Good for the African-American family film that has 100% less Tyler Perry, which is like saying these chips are free of Olestra! That’s always a good thing, because who wants to end up agonizing over those empty calories and then spending the night praying to God you’ll never do it again? Not America. No sir. We’ve decided that for this week at least we’d like to praise an actual female matriarch character and not some guy running around in a large woman suit making strange noises whenever an “h” word threatens to escape his throat. We’ve come so far. Let’s not go back. I imagine Madea and Loretta Devine locked in some sort of David and Goliath battle for the souls of shoe beatings everywhere.
4) Something Borrowed — $13.2 Million
This is a sad, sad day for Gawker. Its favorite movie, you know the one that was filming just outside their offices, which should’ve made it doomed from the start, ended up eating the dust of most all other movies that opened this weekend. It just couldn’t be saved. Not by the ever annoying pixie-brained Ginnifer Goodwin, or by Kate Hudson who is just wandering onto movie sets now seemingly without even reading the script, the director not even sure she should be there, but ultimately shrugging and then putting her in an awful pantsuit before saying “Action!”, nor could the ever so confused John Krasinski who has no idea why he keeps getting cast as the joking sidekick/best-friend guy save this drivel-pap. It’s like he’s always taking movies out for coffee or brunch and never landing in the dinner-date big leagues. So all of these mediocre people have coalesced to make a mediocre movie about some sort of New York City love triangle thing that no one cares about. And there is Gawker who has fond memories of Kate and Ginnifer drinking lattes outside their windows in almost touching distance…but now it’s all ruined. It’s like Nick Denton went and told everyone on set that they were wonderful, which is like bearing the mark of the horned beast…and so it was cursed from that day forward.
5) Rio — $8.2 Million
Looks around. Realizes that no animated movies opened this weekend, and that just won’t do. There has to be a singing, dancing, booty-bird shaking movie out there for the masses, there just has to. When was the last time no animated movie was in the top five? Like ninety-five weeks ago? Or when one didn’t open every weekend…like 2009? Oh, no, that’s not true. Something called Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil came out last week, but seriously it has the word “evil” in it, and it has an 11% Rotten Tomatoes score, and that’s just like saying, “Here, take your kids to see this crap because we know you’re tired and really don’t care.” Well, we can’t have that. So we’ll just keep going to see this little autotuned bird monstrosity until something else comes out with all its animated limbs in place, perhaps the silly words 3D attached, and hopefully Russell Brand voicing one of the characters. This Rio thing should keep the withdrawal shakes away for at least a few more weeks. Summer is almost here, and by then there’s just gotta be something coming out with a recognizable franchise name like Ice Age or Monsters, Inc. or something! Movie studios wouldn’t leave us doomed with just Pirates of the Caribbean: Geriatric Pirate Nonsense on the horizon. Would they?
