New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Maybe it's because Sarah Marshall was a jerk.

Kim Hollis: You Again, the latest Disney comedy starring Kristen Bell, ordered to a meager $8.4 million. Why didn't audiences show up en masse to watch Betty White be funny?

Josh Spiegel: Dare I venture the possibility that, perhaps, the Betty White craze is dying down? The movie didn't look...you know, good, but that doesn't stop most movies from making money. If anything, this one looked most desperate to use Betty White, and considering that this week included the self-aware desperation of the Community season premiere using White - to good advantage, by the way - that's saying something about You Again. Bland title, bland premise, wasted performers.

Bruce Hall: I guess this nixes any chance of President Obama making Betty White Secretary of the Treasury. Not only is it possible that we're all pretty much over Betty White - lovable as she is - but more importantly perhaps Kristen Bell is more important to Hollywood than she is to any of us. Just plopping actors with a high Q Score into any old drivel is the sort of cynical trickery I actually thought Hollywood was growing out of. But maybe I'm the fool here.

Wait, what was that gross again? $8 million? No, it's not me. It's not me at all.





Brett Beach: The premise of this film as I once understood it sounded like fun. When I started seeing the ads I gathered that Disney knew or felt they had a dud on their hands because they were attempting to sell it six ways from Sunday and none of them seemed appealing. Kristen Bell always had at me at "white trash walking" so this will get viewed at some point on Netflix or Redbox (like When in Rome), even though I now fear the worst. The most interesting thing she has done recently has been the Yeasayer music video. She needs to do something weird and effed up and soon. And I love Betty White but if she was responsible for more than $400,000 of the $8.4 million, I'll be a flibbertigibbet.

Matthew Huntley: Brett, I think you put it best by saying Buena Vista tried to sell this movie six ways from Sunday. Honestly, hitherto its TV spots, I didn't even know what it was about, and I'm sure I'm not alone on this (I never saw a trailer in the theaters, but the poster wasn't too informative, and the title, like Josh said, was lame). And after seeing said TV spots, You Again screamed "made-for-TV movie on ABC," and that's probably how audiences will see it. They'll probably skip theaters, skip DVD/Blu-ray and wait for it on TV. Bottom line: nothing about this movie seems funny, clever or interesting - Betty White or no Betty White. Maybe if I ever catch it (on TV) it will prove me wrong.

Reagen Sulewski: The switch in focus from Bell to Curtis and Weaver was kind of interesting from the stand point of who the studio had more trust in, but it really was a mistake. If Bell can open crap like When in Rome to $12 million, you're throwing money down a hole to not put her front and center in the marketing. I think in the end they knew they didn't have much of anything with this and cut their losses, so to speak.

Continued:       1       2       3       4