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Kim Hollis: When in Rome, a Disney romantic comedy starring semi-famous Josh Duhamel and Kristen Bell, opened to $12.4 million. Is this win, lose or draw for the studio and Duhamel/Bell?

Tom Macy: Can I add a fourth option? Yawn. I mean, it's better than Leap Year a couple of weeks ago, which had equally bad reviews. How much do you wish this were a sequel to Anchorman?

Matthew Huntley: Disney should be happy with this result, but only because it could have been a lot worse (e.g. Did You Hear About the Morgans?). Duhamel and Bell are no box office draws, and it seems audiences only decided to see this because of the lack of competition, but the movie probably had a relatively low production budget. And it could show decent legs next weekend since women tend to find the Super Bowl less appealing than men, and females are the primary audience here. Because a movie like this won't be remembered for very long, I think it'll be considered "just another movie" for Duhamel and Bell - it won't help them or hurt them. Overall, call it a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.





Josh Spiegel: I would say somewhere between lose and draw. Granted, Bell and Duhamel aren't known as box-office stars (and a pity for the lovely miss Veronica Mars, I'd say), but this movie has been advertised heavily for the past month, with a specific push on social networking websites, so the fact that the potential word-of-mouth didn't help out When In Rome is disappointing. Still, looking on the bright side for Disney, this movie could have done a lot, lot worse. Also, When In Rome did better than Leap Year in its opening weekend, something not to ignore.

George Rose: This is better than I expected but still disappointing, so I say it's a draw. Neither are proven A-listers and have only played supporting roles in their previous hits, so it's not as if anyone should have expected a $25+ million opening weekend here. But I like both actors and would rather not twist the knife in this poor decision. I'll leave this one alone with a shake of the head and a tisk-tisk.

Michael Lynderey: When in Rome's a classic case of a draw. It's not an outright bomb, nor is it now (nor will it ever be) a breakout hit. And that's a surprising development, because the film spent the past several months looking like a potentially very successful attempt to recreate what Katherine Heigl did for herself in 27 Dresses. Rome had an appealing enough premise, the trailer did the job (or so I thought), and Bell's last two big roles set her up nicely for a solo hit. But then the whole not-screened-for-critics factor came in and helped slow down the momentum (of course, the reviews themselves were pretty harsh, so this may have been a case of no good options). In general, the last batch of romantic comedies (Leap Year, the Morgans) hasn't done very well, so maybe the genre has finally worn out its enthusiasts, especially since the earth-swallowing numbers for The Proposal and The Ugly Truth probably represented the high point - and there's only one direction to go from there. Anyway, Kristen Bell has another one of these coming out in September, so she'll get her second chance to out-Heigl Heigl.

Jason Lee: I think Kim hit the nail on the head when she used the words "semi-famous.' You have Fergie's eye candy and an actress who's better recognized by the title characters that she's played (Veronica Mars and Sarah Marshall). You have two B-level stars, a tepid trailer, and a rom-com opening two weeks before Valentine's while big parts of the country got hit with ice and snow. Not exactly the best ingredients for breakout box office success.

Reagen Sulewski: To me this is more a case of a studio successfully polishing a turd. It's about as hackneyed a plot as romantic comedies get, so score one for Bell that it wasn't an outright bomb like Amy Adams' Leap Year.

Max Braden: My mental comparison for crappy comedy first went to Matthew McConaughey's Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, which opened to $15 million last May. There was no chemistry or plot in the trailer for When in Rome, so they should feel lucky to have broken into double digits.

Tim Briody: Kristen, if you're at all distraught over When in Rome's performance, please feel free to call me.

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