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15 years ago - November 17, 2000

How the Grinch Stole Christmas
For decades the Chuck Jones animated TV special Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! has been staple viewing for families during the holiday season. Turn it into a live action movie with the dynamic Jim Carrey as the Grinch and Ron Howard directing and you’re practically guaranteed to steal the box office. Reviews were good but audience reaction was great. The Grinch opened at #1 (and held that position for the next three weeks) with $55 million, the second highest opening of the year and second best November opening (after 1999’s Toy Story 2) to that time. Its total domestic gross of $260 million was the 13th best of all time up to that year. The movie earned three Academy Award nominations for Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, and Best Makeup, winning the latter category.

Rugrats in Paris: The Movie
The 1990s kid-friendly animated series Rugrats prompted Nickelodeon to produce their first animated film for theaters in 1998 and it turned out to be a blockbuster. This sequel focuses on Chuckie, voiced by Christine Cavanaugh (voice of Babe the pig in the live action film from 1995) and introduces Kimi (Dionne Quan). John Lithgow and Susan Sarandon voice the movie’s antagonists. Reviews were good and the movie was profitable, though it came up short of its predecessor. Rugrats in Paris opened at #2 with $22.7 million from 2,934 theaters and went on to gross $76 million domestically.

The 6th Day
If you’re struggling to recall this Arnold Schwarzenegger sci-fi thriller, you’re not alone; I know I saw it in theaters and yet I can remember only one sequence. The plot takes place in a future where cloning is legal within limits (Dolly the sheep was the first mammal to be born from cell cloning in 1996). Schwarzenegger plays a regular guy who must take his life back after his clone has replaced him. He earned three Razzie nominations here: for himself, for playing his clone, and for playing himself and his clone together onscreen. Reviews were below average as was the box office. The 6th Day opened at #4 behind holdover Charlie’s Angels with $13.0 million from 2,516 theaters - the weakest average for this weekend’s openers. Its total domestic gross of $34.5 million was the lowest for Schwarzenegger since Raw Deal in 1986, and not much more than Schwarzenegger’s $25 million paycheck for the movie.

Bounce
In Hollywood long relationships are a rarity, but so are amicable breakups. Gwyneth Paltrow and Ben Affleck were one of those short-lived high profile couples from 1997 to 2000, but remarkably she was able to convince him to work together after a breakup for the sake of… his acting, apparently. In this drama he plays an ad exec feeling guilty over giving his flight ticket to a stranger who dies in a crash, and befriends the man’s widow. This was Affleck’s third movie of the year, after Reindeer Games and Boiler Room. Reviews were mixed and audience response was even less enthusiastic. Bounce opened at #5 with $11.4 million from 1,918 theaters, and eventually grossed $36.8 million.

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