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Seriously, people. What the hell is wrong with you?

Kim Hollis: Takers, the poorly reviewed Screen Gems release that still wants to be known as this generation's Heat, earned $20.5 million and actually ended up winning the weekend. Are you more surprised by the reviews or by the fact that someone would actually consider this 2010? Also what to do you think of its box office performance?

Josh Spiegel: Screen Gems is acompany that triumphs in making relatively low-budget films for urban audiences, so they're likely thrilled with the result. Bad reviews aside, this movie had enough big names for African American audiences to be lured in. Is this movie worthy of any praise? No. Still, the distributor will be fine in just taking more and more money from unsuspecting audiences.

Reagen Sulewski: The question with Takers (they're not thieves, they just take things. Things that aren't theirs). was always going to be how well it could saturate its target demo, and the answer to that appears to be "entirely". It's a bit like The Expendables from three weeks ago (I said a bit) where the presence of so many actors swept up enough stragglers and fence-sitters to make this special enough. But for the love of... have some taste, 20-somethings! "Oooh, Paul Walker *and* Hayden Christensen in the same movie, bra!" The casting director must have felt like Oppenheimer at Los Alamos when he put this group together.





Matthew Huntley: Is the critic who blurbed Takers as this generation's Heat trying to suggest the latter movie is too old to be cross-generational? Heat is only 15-years-old and holds up very well, so I don't think it's a sound comment. As far as Takers' box office performance, I'm quite surprised by it. When I first saw the release date and the ads, I figured an opening of $13 million or lower was in the cards (I don't know, something about the project just felt half-as*ed), but clearly I underestimated the appeal of the young cast, especially, as Josh pointed out, with the urban crowd. I wonder if the ads had featured a woman on the posters and in the commercials if it would have made even more, thus securing the #1 spot for the weekend. Whether the movie is good or not, a $20 million opening during the last week of August is pretty good and may even challenge the notion that this time of year is a "dumping ground" for movies the studio doesn't have a lot of faith in.

Reagen Sulewski: Someone will be calling something "this generation's Takers" by next year. Now, if you'll excuse me, those kids on my lawn aren't going to shoo themselves.

Daron Aldridge: If it hadn't been for the several references to the film in news articles about T.I. getting out of jail, I would have told you this already came out because the only marketing I saw for this was a lobby standee months ago. After you informed me that it actually was being released, I would have pegged it with half this "take." (Sorry about that). This looked more like an urbanification of the Ocean's trilogy with 100% fewer Oscar nominees and acting ability, save for Idris Elba.

All this generation talk is confusing my old brain...where does the Me Generation end and Gen X begin and what about this Gen Y and OMG Generation (or whatever they are dubbig themselves)? [Sigh] I need a nap.

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