Oh man. Was I ever bad at predicting the MTV movie awards. I think I only managed to guess “Best Kiss” and “Best Comedic Performance.” Apparently the Oscars, in addition to containing less hilarity per square inch, are also far more predictable.

In any case, let’s keep the movie train going, with a discussion of this week’s box office contenders. As always, these numbers are not taken from the movies.com box office report. To claim otherwise would just be silly.

Box Office Results for the June 1 – June 3 Weekend

1. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

Sure, it’s #1 two weeks in a row, but it’s down a land-loving 62 percent from its first weekend, guaranteeing that this third installment will end up doing far worse than the previous two. Can you say Johnny Depp Backlash? Because I sure can.

Honestly, though, there’s not a lot of room for negative spin on this one. Pirates has still proven itself to be a crazily popular franchise, and even with the slip, the third installment will still turn a profit. Really, the only person who has reason to worry is Orlando Bloom, as without big budget trilogies to support him he’s destined to end up starring in Hallmark Hall of Fame movies about plucky young teachers who show a bunch of kids how to believe again.

2. Knocked Up

This, on the other hand, has done very well, both critically and at the box office. It’s weird that the magic formula for Judd Apatow’s career success was to simply take pretty much exactly what he was doing on TV with Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared and then make it much dirtier. I guess America only likes their three dimensional comedic characters when they’re making reference to semen.

Good for Seth Rogen, though. He gives me that sort of hopeful feeling, because if he can be a movie star, I probably can too.

3. Shrek the Third

Are you still here? You’re no longer culturally relevant! Well, really, you were never culturally relevant. You just had everyone fooled. But now they’re on to you, and you’ve got nowhere to run.

4. Mr Brooks

Kevin Costner, Dane Cook, Demi Moore, what could go wrong? Few other movies promise wooden acting, references to balls and an odd plastic sheen just from their cast list alone.

I don’t even really know what this one’s about, but I do know Kevin Costner is a bad guy in it. Which is a little odd, considering he’s one of those guys that gets by on always being so gosh darn earnest. Kevin Costner as a killer is like Morgan Freeman as a mentally challenged man; the whole time you watching you’re thinking “god dammit, this isn’t you.”

(Because Morgan Freeman seems really smart, you see. He was God. And the President. And the guy who made the batmobile available.)

5. Spider-Man 3

I wonder if three out of the top five is a record for most third franchise installments in the top five ever. It’s certainly not doing a lot to make us moviegoers look very diverse or intelligent. We’re all “Fuck it, just give me the same movie as a couple of years back with a bigger number at the end of the title.”

What’s weird, though, is that this summer they’ve managed to pretty much uniformly screw even that up. You don’t take Shrek and add a bunch of stupid baby Shreks and Justin Timberlake — you just do what you’re doing before, but make it bigger. Similarly, you don’t take Spider-Man and add dancing. You just have Spider-Man fight more guys. Is that really so hard to get?

Conclusion

With Spider-Man on the cusp, it looks like we’re finally nearing the end of this third installment plague that has infected us all. Or at least that WOULD be true, if next week wasn’t bringing us Ocean’s Thirteen Otherwise known as Ocean’s Eleven Three If this were some sort of hip-hop-centred caper (as opposed to, you know, a Sinatra-centred caper) they might call it Three Ocean’s Three Eleven. And I bet I know who would do the soundtrack on that.

Also next week: Hostel: Part II! It has a colon! Surf’s Up! It has an apostrophe! And La Vie En Rose! It’s, well, French, I guess.

Be Sociable, Share!

•