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Lesson learned: Don't bite the hand(s) that feed you

Kim Hollis: Life As We Know It finished in second place with $14.5 million. Do you see this as proof that Katherine Heigl's box office power is fading, or do you think this project didn't look 27 Dresses enough for fans?

Bruce Hall: Call me cynical - and everyone does - but I just don't understand Katherine Heigl's popularity. Maybe it is because I never liked Grey's Anatomy. In fact, I hated it and I hated it as much as I hated Scrubs. But no, it is more than that. I just don't find her likable or transcendent as an actress. For decades, serious film actors avoided television because television was considered beneath a true thespian. And of course before that, stage actors avoided film, mostly for the same reasons Thomas Jefferson could never get elected today. A whiny, nasal voice coupled with a paralyzing inability to speak well in public is death at the polls. But I digress.





Heigl was a prominent part of one of television's hottest shows, and was arguably the most marketable part of it as well. But she turned out to have limited appeal as an actress as well as a tendency to publicly shoot herself in the foot whenever there was a camera nearby. I have nothing against her personally, but I just don't get the hype. I think she might be a victim of the fact that the most visible character on the most popular drama on television at any given time is automatically crowned the Next Big Thing at the box office, and that probably isn't fair (pick your roles carefully, Jon Hamm). I think Heigl is a beautiful woman who does have talent, but she is more a product of the vehicles she chooses, and her ability to transcend that material is questionable.

I think she's the soup of the day, just like split pea used to be. And nobody likes split pea soup any more.

Edwin Davies: Considering how horribly unfunny the trailer was, how stupid the poster looked and how scathing the reviews have been, this result is higher than I thought the film would get, and that's probably due to Heigl's appeal, dubious though it may be. Considering that she was the only real name attached to the film - Josh Duhamel may have been one of the meatbags in the Transformers films but I don't think he can be blamed for their success and probably wasn't much of a factor - and the blah premise, the fact that she was able to draw nearly $15 million worth of cash is mildly impressive. It didn't break out to super big numbers because the set-up was tired and there was no gimmick to draw people in. Any moratorium on her career should be held off until she appears in another of the standard romantic comedies that she made her name with and it flops.

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