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This Royale with Cheese is bad. Can I send it back?

Kim Hollis: From Paris With Love, positioned as being the next Taken, opened to only $8.2 million. What went wrong here for Lionsgate?

Josh Spiegel: Did you see Travolta's goatee? I mean, come on. That's a disaster all by itself. The other problem is that Pierre Morel chose to follow up Taken with a half-baked buddy action movie that looked completely uninspired, boring, and cheesy. But, mostly Travolta's goatee.

George Rose: What went wrong is that they were trying to sell this as Taken 2, but Mel Gibson's Edge of Darkness already reeked of that odor. If anything, From Paris with Love is like Taken 3. Liam Neeson must be furious right now that these washed up former A-listers keep trying to make their own version of his movie, when he himself is trying to get Taken 2 off the ground. If either Gibson or Travolta wants to become famous again, there's only one way to do it. They need to have their offspring become super-mega-Disney TV stars like Billy Ray Cyrus did with Miley, and then ride their coattails. Remember people, it's all about NEW, SHINY, 3D, IMAX, 12-YEAR-OLD DISNEY PROSTITUTES, TRENDS! Old people remaking a movie about old people that was made only a year ago is not NEW or SHINY! It's depressing. Either retire with dignity or go balls-out on your comeback, but none of this half-ass Taken 2 nonsense.





Shalimar Sahota: It's Paris, with Travolta doing half a Castor Troy impression and screaming, "It's about terrorists," with cars exploding and guns blazing! Who wouldn't want to see this? However, considering it to be a blessing by positioning Pierre Morel's latest film on Super Bowl weekend, just because it worked for Taken last year, was not a good move. Taken had the advantage of being the only full on actioneer released for a while. From Paris With Love is coming off an overloaded January full of action with The Book of Eli, Legion and Edge of Darkness. The target audience may have been mostly watching the Super Bowl, but at the same time they've already had their fill on something that didn't look like it was doing anything new.

Michael Lynderey: The trailers for this one were pretty snappy, but I guess John Travolta's starpower wasn't enough to lift it above typical Lionsgate action box office - even if the movie did have "from the director of Taken" strewn all over it. Looking at the bigger picture, there seems to be an odd winner-takes-all situation going on this weekend, as one movie breaks out way beyond reasonable expectations, while the other underperforms severely. Really, I would have actually been less surprised had the numbers on the two openers been switched around.

Kim Hollis: It always felt like Travolta was back in Battlefield Earth mode, which is to say yuck. Audiences could smell the stink of failure al over this one.

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