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The old adage about new tricks seems very true.

Kim Hollis: Old Dogs, the Wild Hogs knockoff from Disney, earned $24.2 million over the five-day portion of the Thanksgiving holiday. How should the studio feel about this result?

Josh Spiegel: Considering how horrendous the reviews were for this movie, Disney should be thrilled. If, however, they were hoping for Old Dogs to perform as well as Wild Hogs did, they're probably very disappointed. I would bet good money that, had Old Dogs opened back in the spring, as was originally intended, the movie would have made more money, if only because it might have had a less crowded marketplace to deal with. As it is, this movie proves once and for all that Robin Williams should avoid comedy and Seth Green should take this paycheck and be thankful he gets to make Robot Chicken.

Sean Collier: I'm not so sure that broad family comedies with crotch pain a-plenty are affected by reviews, so this might be seen as a bit of a failure. What might've been a big family compromise choice over the long weekend seems to have been railroaded by The Blind Side, so I think Josh is right - money was left on the table by releasing this dud now.

Tom Macy: Disney's gotta be a little disappointed as there was no real perceived family comedy competition at the box office this weekend, and Thanksgiving weekend is usually conducive to big business for family films. Plus, Old Dogs doppelganger Wild Hogs' surprisingly lucrative opening of nearly $40 million beat out the vastly superior Zodiac, which came in around $13 million (I often reference that weekend to demonstrate the infuriating world of box office injustices). This probably had them thinking more in that ballpark when they booked this weekend. Guess they were "Blind Sided" like the rest of us. Can't wait to see how many of you make that pun.





George Rose: This is way more than I expected it to earn. Old Dogs looked like a rip-off of Wild Hogs, which was a success in the vein of lightning in a bottle. That was a one time perfect storm, where even the worst concept ever could become a smash hit, mostly because of the high profile cast. I was flabbergasted when it broke even $100 million, though I knew the novelty title would never catch lightning twice. I doubt a sequel will even be able to carry the momentum, so a poor-quality clone doesn't stand a chance. If anything, I hope this is a warning to halt production on Wild Hogs 2. Making fun of once popular stars for being old just isn't that funny.

Michael Lynderey: On paper, this was obviously intended to play out just like Wild Hogs did - some big stars teaming up for a broad mid-life crisis comedy. Putting a few child actors in there was a particularly brilliant movie - get kids to see it, too. But Old Dogs' downward spiral started before it came out - I would guess it was around the summer of 2007, when the movie started filming, and the studio saw the dailies and realized what they had on their hands here - namely, not a very good movie. But this is still a $50 million earner at the minimum, so the studio should be pleased. They almost certainly got the best result possible out of a bad scenario. And it was nice to see Bernie Mac again, for the last time.

Tim Briody: This is disappointing even for something with terrible reviews. It seemed middle of the road enough that it should have done better over five days, and now it gets to fly completely off a cliff next weekend.

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