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I will forget this movie's title in five minutes.

Kim Hollis: Limitless, Bradley Cooper's second attempt to prove himself a box office draw, opened to $18.9 million. Is this a good enough result for a film in this vein, co-starring Robert De Niro?

Josh Spiegel: I mean, it could be worse, but this is just one of those weekends at the movies where something becomes number one almost by default. Limitless wins the weekend because of a simple marketing campaign. By spelling out the concept in the TV spots and featuring an actor who's the right kind of bland where no one is too turned off by him, Relativity gets a win. I'm not sure that anyone will remember the film in a month's time, though.

Edwin Davies: As Josh said, it's such a mediocre week that it almost feels that something had to be number one this weekend so it might as well be Limitless. This is higher than expected, which is good, but the weekend as a whole is so quiet that it's hard to think of Limitless as a film that won, but rather as one that just didn't lose. This is a pretty solid result from Bradley Cooper's perspective since it has shown that he can open a film that isn't The Hangover or an established name like The A-Team, though I don't know how much of the opening could be attributed to him, or if it was more down to the concept or De Niro's presence. It's probably some combination of the three.





Matthew Huntley: Good enough, yes, especially given the movie only cost $30 million to make and it's about a guy who gains unlimited power via a magic pill. The marketing campaign for this movie was slick but the premise seemed absurd and kind of dumb (so Bradley Cooper starts out with a pony tail and five o'clock shadow, but after taking a pill he gets a hair cut and decides to shave). I know, there's more to it than that, but the trailer doesn't leave much to the imagination. I've yet to see it, but I agree this will probably be forgettable and simply establish Cooper as a prolific movie star instead of a full-fledged actor.

Reagen Sulewski: Hey, we've had four weekends already this year with a lower grossing number one film than this, so it could have been a lot worse. I think that easily explained premise was a double-edged sword, though - for every person that was hooked by the idea, two more said "that sounds stupid". There wasn't a lot of room left to go to once you had Bradley Cooper looking and acting like every douchebag idiot you want to punch in the face.

On another matter, this number does represent some good things for Cooper, as it's just a little below what Matt Damon recently did in a similar genre. Someone should be getting him a solo action script soon.

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