Cruisin' for a Bruisin'

By special Mung Hour contributor, Double-S

Why do they even have to spin the fucking box office receipts? Just print the fucking list and shut up.

http://movies.yahoo.com/news/movies.ap.org/toy-story-3-sandler-are-hot-tom-cruise-not-ap

I don't know why I give a fuck, probably because I liked the Cruise movie and simply do not find Sandler and his cronies funny. Just never have.

I'm not saying the couch trip didn't hurt Cruise's career. To blame a weak opening on it is unfair. As I've already noted, the release date was stupid and so was the last minute change to Wednesday. Other factors played into the weak opening too.

• Cruise is almost fifty and his leading lady is almost forty. They're twenty and thirty years older than the stars of Eclipse respectively. People simply cannot expect teens to want to see films featuring actors as old or older than their parents.
• Tastes have changed. Audiences expect super heroes from May through July now. if you're doing the kind of film studios have been doing since the eighties, release it in August.
• Everyone knew going in that Cruise had PR baggage. The painfully forced attempts to make him look 'normal' in publicity efforts failed four years ago, so why try it again? Look at how much fun Tom and Cameron are having on set! He's so normal! I'd have tried to get the guy to do some type of mea culpa. The guy could've gone back on Oprah and fixed it in five minutes.
• Stop spending $120M on films that don't need to cost $120M. Iron Man needs expensive effects. Neither K&D or A-Team can say that. When films like Death Race, Taken, and the first Bourne movie had more compelling action sequences at a third to half the budget. Point is, the cost of the film elevated expectations to an unrealistic level.

This has been the weakest summer in decades from both a commercial and content perspective. Lots of marginal films underperforming. And by 'marginal' I mean worse than the films we used to decry for making money despite being shitty.

If I'm Cruise, and I'm not, I try to push the Les Grossman thing through then try to focus on more artistic stuff. People talk a lot about MI4 being in danger as a result of this film. It likely is unless Paramount's already sunk too much into prep and would owe too many people (Abrams) for pay or play contracts if they pull the plug.