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Perhaps Gerard Butler is not quite so romantic as his letter-writing fans would have you believe...

Kim Hollis: P.S. I Love You, the generic looking Warner Bros. romantic comedy, took in $6.5 million from 2,454 locations, a per-venue total of only $2,651. This is a bomb of an opening weekend, right?

Pete Kilmer: Yeah, it was. I could have cared less about it.

Tim Briody: Hate to say it, but really, it's not. Yeah, the opening weekend wasn't all that great, but it did better than Walk Hard, the weekend's true bomb.

Marty Doskins: I think the difference between P.S. I Love You bombing and Walk Hard bombing is the expectations. P.S. I Love You was really marketed heavily by Warner. I think I saw an ad for PS: I Love You during almost every commercial break for a while. They were really pushing the film hard. I think the studio execs will be very disappointed with this per screen average.

Max Braden: Under three grand per site for a wide release is a bomb regardless of its competition. This love letter got a "Dear John..." response from audiences. (weak material inspires weak quips)

Pete Kilmer: Look, I adore Hilary Swank and think she's a terrific actor. But she's not a romantic lead actress for this type of schmaltzy movie.

David Mumpower: If we give out an award for most mismatched on-screen couple since Richard Gere and Jodie Foster, these two get my vote. Swank is as androgynous as women come, and Butler is a block of wood sans personality.

Reagen Sulewski: P.S. Your Film Sucks.

Fall Hard: The Epic Failure of Dewey Cox

Kim Hollis: Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, a movie Reagen Sulewski over-estimated by approximately the gross national product of Bolivia, earned a pathetic $4.1 million with a jaw-dropping per-venue average of only $1,547. What in the world went wrong here for this one to flame out so dramatically on opening weekend?

Joel Corcoran: Pretty simple really -- it sucked. The story sucked, the commercials sucked, and the really tragic part is that this film probably won't be able to take Alvin and the Chipmunks down with it. I think the problem is that the people behind this film are known for some great movies, some of the best comedies of the past five years. They know how to write, direct, and film great stories that poke fun at people, but do so gently and with a little bit of gravitas - movies like Anchorman, The 40 Year-Old Virgin, Talladega Nights, and Superbad. Those movies are so very good because we're laughing at ourselves as much as we're laughing at the characters on the screen. But here, it's like Judd Apatow was pitching Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story as "Dumb and Dumber meets Walk the Line carried out by the Scary Movie/Date Movie/Not Another Teen Movie/Epic Movie crew." It's just...ugh...I can't find the words...

Tim Briody: It's probably a lot funnier than the advertising indicates, but that's the problem. They didn't make it look funny. It started with an atrocious first trailer, and it was damage control from there.

Reagen Sulewski: Uh yeah, my bad. This is an object lesson in message control. The first thing you put out for a film has to be quality, because that's all that people really remember. I had thought they had done some excellent damage control from that hideous first trailer, but clearly no one was willing to give it a chance after that. Judd Apatow's plan to conquer the world will just have to wait.

Max Braden: In the absence of marketing for I'm Not There, audiences mistook this as a poor representation of Bob Dylan with apparently little screen time for Cate Blanchett and decided that a Nicolas Cage movie looked appealing. Lose, lose, lose all around.

Kim Hollis: I actually think if this were a movie starring Will Ferrell as Dewey Cox, it would have done quite well. At the end of the day, John C. Reilly just isn't a draw and it was a mistake to try to push him as one.

David Mumpower: I strongly suspect that this title is the new Galaxy Quest. That was the last funny December release whose advertising campaign completely betrayed a quality comedy. Something we will explore next week is how this impacts Judd Apatow's assertion that there is always room in the marketplace for a funny movie. He looked like a genius on this topic during the summer, but the holidays have been unkind.

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