It’s a rule of thumb that when the weather gets cold, Hollywood’s quality tanks. Dedicated moviegoers who plan on catching a flick over the next month will be hard-pressed to warm up to any of the new releases from major studios. January and February are generally considered “dump months” for the movie industry, meaning that this is when studios rid themselves of films they expect to receive chilly reviews. And this year is no exception.
A glance at the movies that opened in wide-release last month reveals the mentally challenged laugh-trap Epic Movie, the werewolf romance unforgiveably entitled Blood & Chocolate, and the previously shelved Vegas hitman flick Smokin’ Aces, which features a cast of solid C-list “talent” (Ryan Reynolds, Ben Affleck, and rapper Common). All these got released in January; all bombed with film critics.
One telling sign of dubious quality was the fact that none of these films were screened for critics before their release. This is a well-known marketing tactic employed by movie studios when they know that they’re sitting on a bomb. By not offering pre-screenings, they push back the avalanche of negative reviews until after the opening weekend box office numbers are counted.
Add those to duds already released, like Cedric the Entertainer’s idiotic spy romp, Code Name: The Cleaner, formulaic classroom drama Freedom Writers, Justin Timberlake’s long-delayed, “thug-lite” film Alpha Dog, and our favourite example of sneaky marketing, Primeval-the “serial killer” they talk about in the ad is a freaking crocodile! Lame!
The forecast for February doesn’t look good, either. Like a duo of deranged luchadors, franchise flick Hannibal Rising and the painfully pointless Eddie Murphy vehicle Norbit tag-team up to body-slam the crap out of audience hopes. I don’t know what’s worse: Murphy slapping on the latex and drag for another multiple-role-but-only-one-joke schtickfest, or the thought that it might overshadow his potential Oscar win for best supporting actor in Dreamgirls.
Audiences might have more fun if studios did mash-ups of their worst films. For example: the “thugs” from Alpha Dog skip their Freedom Writers class, dress up like fat black chicks, kidnap a kid from a Stompin’ stepping crew only to find out that the boy is young Hannibal Lecter, who is then bitten by a chocolate loving werewolf. The CIA dispatches The Cleaner and some competing hitman squads from Smokin’ Aces to catch everyone, but they just end up killing each other. Meanwhile, Hannibal the werewolf gets eaten by the crocodile from Primeval, who turns out to be Eddie Murphy in a latex suit. Hannibal bursts out of his stomach and then wears Murphy’s skin on his blind date with Mandy Moore-oh wait! This is just the plot of Epic Movie 2!
The reason studios dump so much garbage in these months is that these films simply can’t compete with glitzy summer blockbusters, nor can they stand up to the quality of the fall crop of awards hopefuls.
While the studios unload these new undesirables, they also tend to offer victory laps to films like Pan’s Labyrinth, Babel and Dreamgirls that have won Golden Globes and/or received Oscar nods.
The vacuum left by the absence of quality new releases is also partially filled by last year’s best foreign films. 13 Tzameti, The Italian, and Oscar hopeful The Lives of Others are finally beginning to trickle into Toronto theatres.
So while studios turn our multiplexes into black boxes of despair, the best option for moviegoers is to either catch up on foreign gems from the previous year, or see each film nominated for Best Picture.
