Box Office - Decade at a Glance: May - August 2006

By Michael Lynderey

November 17, 2009

Do you think he knows that's a chick he's propositioning or not?

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May also slipped in some also-rans - like An American Haunting ($16 million total), another PG-13 ghost story, wrestler Kane's brutal horror film, See No Evil ($15 million), as well as Hoot ($8 million), a generally unwatched kids' book adaptation, and the oddly-titled Goal! The Dream Begins ($4 million), which has thus far somehow managed to inspire not one but two sequels. And finally, Lindsay Lohan's Just My Luck was supposed to branch her out into Kate Hudson/Reese Witherspoon territory as a romantic comedy lead for adults - but finished with a surprisingly mild $17 million. This was the clear beginning of Lohan's downfall at the box office, something that would be even more sharply illustrated in the summer of 2007.

June

June 2006 started with a neat little hit, maybe to make up for May misbehavior. The Break-Up, Vince Vaughn's team-up with Jennifer Aniston, opened to $39 million and finished with a solid $118 million. Vaughn and Aniston were at the peak of their stardom here, and even an over-long, only intermittently funny vehicle like this one couldn't hide that fact. Speaking of stardom, the next weekend, June 9th, gave us another star vehicle for Pixar animation - Cars, generally cited as one of their weakest titles (at least that's what my Pixar-loving friend says), opened with a very Pixaresque $60 million and finished with $244 million, keeping their '00s streak of hits alive (though they sat out 2000, 2002 and 2005). The same period also saw yet another horror remake, the particularly dull, devil-themed The Omen, capitalize on the whole June 6, 2006 thing (yawn) to get itself a positively satanic first day of $12 million, leading to a $54 million total. With this film's release, some mysterious supervillain's quest to remake every single notable post-1968 horror film took one step closer to fruition. But at least the box office was low enough to apparently block a redo of the pulpily entertaining sequel, Damien: Omen II.




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The 16th came in with more of a mixed bag of titles, led by some undergrossing sequels: Garfield: A Take of Two Kitties (gee, it was really called that, wasn't it?) finished with $28 million to the first film's strong $75 million, and The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift put a dent in the series, finishing with a franchise-low of $62 million (and while the movie may have been the series' weakest, its first 10 minutes were probably the summer's most entertaining). Also on hand was the soapy and only occasionally effective time travel melodrama The Lake House ($52 million total), which gave Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock a minor hit. But the award for weekend's worst movie goes to Nacho Libre, Jared and Jerusha Hess' follow-up to Napoleon Dynamite; Nacho was that nearly unwatchable farce that cast Jack Black as a Mexican lucha libre (wrestler) to the tune of a $28 million opening and an unforgivably leggy total of $80 million. This was not one of the proudest days of 2000s box office, that's for sure.

June 23rd went back to the designated blockbuster rollout, giving Adam Sandler another strong performer with the overlong, crude (in that typically Sandlerian way), and somewhat depressing Click, which opened to $40 million and nevertheless finished with $137 million. Almost no actor was as consistent as Sandler this decade (Will Smith's movies wobbled around a bit more). Next, and also out that day, was Tyrese' star vehicle Waist Deep ($23 million total), but as the information in the brackets would indicate, it wasn't much seen.


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