The comedy Four Christmases continued its strong box office performance in its second weekend, bringing in a solid $18.2 million in North American box office sales over the past three days. The film has earned approximately $71 million in its first twelve days. Although critics have hated the film, audiences are ignoring the naysayers, showing once again the declining credibility of the mainstream media.
Thematically the film is interesting in dealing with a basically stable but somewhat superficial and hedonistic young couple (played by Witherspoon and Vaughn) who want to remain unmarried because they’re both products of families disturbed by divorce during their childhoods and thus are extremely reluctant to commit to an institution that seems to bring so much damage. The film shows how the chaotic condition of the culture contributes to such family disorder.
But of course Four Christmases is a romantic comedy, a string of situations intended to be funny, which will be what audiences will appreciate the most about it. Still, those uncomfortable scenes and ideas remain in the mind. . . .
Twilight and Bolt continued their strong performances at numbers 2 and 3, respectively, and Australia moved up one place in the box office sweepstakes, to number 4, just ahead of Quantum of Solace, which remained a solid draw in its fourth week.
As I forecast last week, the critically acclaimed pro-homosexuality movie Milk lost some steam in its move to a wider release this past weekend. The film appeared in nearly three times as many theaters as in the previous week (though still relatively few), but its earnings rose by only 16 percent, indicating a much smaller per-theater take as the film tentatively ventured outside of the nation’s strongest metrosexual redoubts.
Milk maintained a relatively high per-theater average by not going out to very many theaters overall, but has shown limited appeal overall. It fell out of the top ten and has earned a very modest $4.1 million so far.
—S. T. Karnick
Thanks for your update on the GGs, Fortunato. I have indeed seen the nominees list and am working on a writeup (which is at the end of a backlog of articles about to be filed). I agree that this list of nominations is typical of the smarminess of current-day Hollywood, with its overwhelming preference for earnestness above intelligence, creativity, and entertainment value. Ugh.
Have you seen the Golden Globes nominations? What a depressing bunch. Acting categories once again dominated by biopics (Sean Penn is almost certainly deemed to get his second statuette) and spectacular performances (we’re probably heading to a new “Rain Man” era) The Dark Knights gets only one nomination (Heath Ledger of course, but in the supporting category, which is a shame) and Two Lovers, a much better film than acknowledged by most critics, gets none. Last year’s award season was compelling with No Country and TWBB competing against each other and the duel between Christie and Cotillard, but this one will be certainly a lot more tedious.