There are three new movies set to make their way to cinemas this week, and all three look very dumb - though only two did that unintentionally. It seems the third is shooting for lowest common denominator laughs and it looks like it hit the mark. The other two? Not so much. We've got Jupiter ascending, seventh sons and SpongeBob.
Just remember, I'm not reviewing these movies, but rather predicting where they'll end up on the Tomatometer. Let's take a look at what This Rotten Week has to offer.
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PREDICTION RATING HERE, LINK IT TO ROTTEN TOMATOES PAGE
Rotten Watch Prediction
If I found out tomorrow that I was the heir/ rightful ruler of Earth like Mila Kunis’ character in Jupiter Ascending, the first thing I would do is make sure the Dunkin Donuts on the corner wasn’t running out of strawberry glaze all the time. I mean come on people, how hard is it to make like three extra every day? That’d be my first order of business. And then world peace, curing hunger all that stuff. That’d be in there too. But the donut issue would be priority number one.
See the other heir to Earth in the trailer for the Wachowkski siblings’ Jupiter Ascending below:
The immediate problem that sticks out from this movie is really just the casting: "Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis), a down-on-her-luck janitor…" Look, I’ve been around a lot of janitors in my day, and for they most part they have been really solid dudes/ ladies. Hard-working and underappreciated for sure. But not one of them has looked anywhere in range of Mila Kunis. In fact, I’m not sure I could even compare them because she outpaces them in the looks department by factorials. So right from the start we know this movie is going to very much be a work of fiction. Science fiction even.
The Wachowskis are still very much working off the clout they built up with The Matrix trilogy, but they’re also scraping it away more recent efforts like Speed Racer (39%) and the unfortunate box office bomb Cloud Atlas (66%). As a result, there is a possibility that Jupiter Ascending could be the end of the line for them as far as big budget movie making is concerned. Coming off a less-than-stellar screening at Sundance and considering the movie’s been pushed back once, there isn’t a lot to believe in here. The fact that no reviews have hit the public just yet is another bad sign.
The trailer doesn’t do much in the way of stirring any confidence either, and really paints Jupiter Ascending as kind of a mess. From Channing Tatum’s very, very weird look, to some stilted dialogue (a Wachowski achilles's heel) and over-the-top special effects (not in a good way), I have trouble believing critics will come in anywhere close to positive. We have probably seen the best of this directing duo, and I predict Jupiter Ascending won’t bring back the glory days. But we can at least make everything right in the world again by naming me as the next heir to Earth. That would be a step in the right direction.
PREDICTION RATING HERE, LINK IT TO ROTTEN TOMATOES PAGE
Rotten Watch Prediction
If you enjoy movies with lots of crazy animals/creatures busting through walls and cages, shaking their heads around and releasing ferocious roars, well then I have the movie for you. If you enjoy movies with tired premises hidden under infinity layers of special effects and nonsense, well then I have the movie for you. If you enjoy movies with good actors taking on ridiculous sounding accents, well then...you get the point.
If you enjoy bad trailers for bad movies, then you should probably check out the trailer for Seventh Son below:
It’s not that there isn’t a lot going on in the trailer for The Seventh Son. No, it’s very much the opposite. What appears to have happened is the producers of this flick took every element of every fantasy movie ever made and threw it all into one movie. The trailer is an orgy of action and nonsense. It looks like there could have been (with an outside chance of still being) a good movie hidden behind all the fluff, but I doubt it all made it to the finish line.
Like Jupiter Ascending, Seventh Son is another title that has found its release date getting shifted around, which is not typically a good sign for a flick. When a studio delays a release date significantly, it usually means that something is very wrong. This film was originally supposed to hit screens in February 2013. It wound up getting caught up in the shift of Legendary Pictures from Warner Bros. to Universal, and has kind of hung around like a step-child ever since. What’s more, there hasn’t been much of an effort made to raise our hopes.
It seems that Seventh Son director Sergey Bodrov is on the verge of getting some very bad news. In these scenarios there’s always a chance that the film’s delay allowed the studio to make changes, do some reshoots and make some clever edits that wind up helping the movie. But by and large, when a studio doesn’t want you seeing something, there is a reason.
PREDICTION RATING HERE, LINK IT TO ROTTEN TOMATOES PAGE
Rotten Watch Prediction
I typically loathe the opportunities to write about animated movies. There is often so little speak about or react to. It’s not that animated flicks don’t have their place in the cinematic world, but instead that more often than not, what you see is what you get. But a pants-wearing sea sponge working at a burger joint with his buddies down at the bottom of the ocean? Now we’re talking.
Check out the trailer for The Sponge Bob Movie: Sponge Out of Water below:
The first film, The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie (68%), earned $140 million dollars at the box office and wasn't a disaster with critics when it came out in 2004. Did anyone doubt we’d have a sequel? If anything, I’m just surprised it took this long. Even with some proof that SpongeBob makes kids dumber to go with a bunch of crazy theories about the latent (or not so much) themes in the show, this franchise is massive and will most likely crush the box office once again. That’s not to say there aren’t some ways we can tie in philosophical discussions to a group of dimwitted sea life either, but for the most part I suspect this show knows who it’s speaking to.
From watching the trailers, I must admit that if this show had been made ten years earlier, I would have been all over it. No doubt about it. There’s something to be said for a cartoon that runs this long and it doesn’t involve just dumb luck. There has to be something else, and I suspect much of it stems from speaking to a wide age range. Cartoons work best when the writing appeals to both adults and kids. The best animation does this naturally and is able to extend its run. You can watch it as a kid/pre-teen and just as easily pick it up as an adult. And it doesn’t have to be all Pixar: crazy great storytelling to get it done. It can be silly and stupid and just as entertaining. It’s probably a good thing for me that I never sat down with this show. I might never have gotten up.
This latest movie is a love-action crossover made for 3D. It involves pirates, secret recipes, evil plots, superpowers, sexual innuendo, stupidity and bunch of other stuff that fans will surely eat up. Will it appeal with critics? Probably not, but I don’t think the studio much cares about that end of it. They know the demographic they’re shooting for, and it ain’t the cultural elite. No, the SpongeBob faithful will turn out in droves and get what they’re seeking. I just wish I was part of the group.
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We have to start with this one simply because it’s so extraordinary. The Loft (Predicted: 17% Actual: 0%) was an abomination of the highest (lowest) order. I’ve been writing this column coming on five years now and I honestly don’t remember another movie scoring a zero. I know it’s happened of course, but for a wide release to come in with this score is frankly amazing. I knew the movie looked like trash going in. The premise was ridiculous. But plenty of crappy movies have had someone like it. Not this piece of s@#$. Seventeen critics wrote it up. Seventeen critics hated it. Wow.
In other news, Project Almanac (Predicted: 21% Actual: 36%) looks like a freaking Oscar winner compared to The Loft. I panicked a bit early in the week when I checked in on Rotten Tomatoes and this had a score of 86%. I thought I was staring down the barrel of my biggest miss ever. But those early reviews were outliers (nicely timed) and the score plummeted over the course of the week. It’s just another flick we’ll forget was ever made when we catch up on the year in review. These things come and go. Two years from now you’ll say, "Project what…?"
And finally Black or White (Predicted: 40% Actual: 35%) was a win for the Rotten Watch. I’m still a Costner fan, but it looks like they missed the mark with this one. What might have a dialogue-creator on racial tensions/discourse in our country just couldn’t get the conversation started. Many critics felt the plot was contrived and patronizing. What a shame because my boy Kevin can still bring it. Just needs the right roles.
Next time around it gets a couple of shades grayer in here and kingsman in secret. It’s going to be a Rotten Week!
