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It was more like Mostly Imperfect

Kim Hollis: A Perfect Getaway, a horror/thriller from Universal that stars Milla Jovovich and Timothy Olyphant, opened to $5.9 million. Why do you think this one wasn't marketable?

Josh Spiegel: A Perfect Getaway didn't have the best marketing push, none of its stars are extremely well-known (though Steve Zahn and Olyphant are both quite underrated), and there were too many options in other theaters. I grant you, there were no other competitors in the "Honeymooners escaping murder in Hawaii" genre, but people got distracted from its release, or weren't even aware of it.

Scott Lumley: I'm just going to go with "It didn't look that good." Seriously. If your options are Julie & Julia, G.I. Joe or A Perfect Getaway, what are you going to watch first? In my world, Julia gets the first nod due to the intriguing premise, G.I. Joe gets the look second due to the fact that I'm interested in seeing if the film is as bad as its advance publicity (it's not) and then I'll take a look at A Perfect Getaway.... but only if there aren't any other films I've been meaning to see yet.

Sean Collier: Gotta disagree, Scott - if I end up seeing anything tomorrow night, it's going to be A Perfect Getaway. But I'm weird, so that's neither here nor there. I think that it just got lost in the shuffle, and probably could've won a weekend in February or March. It also didn't really look clearly like either a horror film or an action film, and audiences prefer to know exactly what they're getting into.





Max Braden: The first movie I thought to check for box office reference was The Ruins because of the tropical vacation angle. The Ruins opened to only $8 million in April last year. I've seen a lot of trailers for A Perfect Getaway and I didn't even recognize Olyphant in it. I kept seeing Steve Zahn. In any case neither of them is going to be a powerful draw. This is just one of those movies people are waiting to see on DVD.

Reagen Sulewski: Teens don't dig the Steve Zahn.

David Mumpower: As a general rule of thumb, when a title fails, I generally believe it's because of the marketing. In this case, that simply is not true. Universal gave this one more of a chance than it deserved through some very clever and original campaigns. They also cast well with Olyphant and Jovovich. In fact, I wonder how tricked two such talented people into taking these roles. Also, as much as I love Milla, her choice of scripts is oftentimes brutal. She's an underrated actress - yes, I honestly believe that - but Ultraviolet and A Perfect Getaway are not the type of roles someone coming of $50 million hits should be taking. Everything about this release screams straight-to-DVD...except for the marketing and the lead actors. This was a very weird mix all around.

Kim Hollis: I agree that they actually seemed to be trying to market the film. Ads were all over the Internet, and I saw some decent ones on TV, too. I actually think it has a chance to be a movie I like...though I won't be seeing it until it hits DVD. Maybe people like me are the problem.

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