This Friday, the latest romantic drama adapted from Nicholas Spark hits the screen with The Longest Ride. The film would love to get to the numbers accomplished by The Notebook, Dear John, and Safe Haven. Britt Robertson and Scott Eastwood headline with Jack Huston and Alan Alda in the supporting cast.
A good portion of the Sparks adaptations have done terrific business at the box office, but last year’s The Best of Me broke that streak with a tepid $10 million debut and eventual $35 million domestic gross. My gut tells me The Longest Ride is more likely to follow suit with that as opposed to blockbusters like 2013’s Safe Haven. It could perhaps open bigger as female counter programming to Furious 7‘s second weekend, but I’m doubtful.
I’ll predict this manages to outdo The Best of Me by a hair.
The Longest Ride opening weekend prediction: $12.2 million
2011’s Horrible Bosses was a better than average raunchy comedy that will most be remembered for showing a whole new side to Jennifer Aniston, which assisted in achieving some shock value. It helped that it was headlined by three highly talented comedic leads – Jason’s Bateman and Sudeikis and Charlie Day. When it turned into a surprise blockbuster with a $117 million domestic gross, the bosses at Warner Bros decided we needed a sequel.
We didn’t.
Horrible Bosses 2 contains only hints of what the original a reasonable success. The sequel pines to remind us of what we dug about its predecessor. Kevin Spacey and Jamie Foxx reprise their roles but their parts aren’t as humorous as the first go round. Aniston is back, but that aforementioned shock value is long gone. The three leads have an undeniable chemistry which again isn’t as strong as when they were dealing with their original nefarious employers.
It’s actually Chris Pine who turns in the most unexpectedly winning performance. Captain Kirk hasn’t had much opportunity to show his comedy skills and he has them. He plays the spoiled son of a rich investor (a totally wasted Christoph Waltz) who bilks our trio out of their new business venture called The Shower Buddy (not really worth explaining). He is really the only new and worthy addition to the proceedings. The rest is primarily stale sex jokes. Lots of them.
The contrived plot (you can bet a sequel for this was never planned) involves the leads setting up a scheme to kidnap Pine. Their plans necessitate conspiring with their old foes Spacey and Foxx and Aniston because star power is key. Yet those three contributed a lot to the 2011 pic and the same cannot be said now.
Even a less than desirable follow up is bound to have laugh inducing moments with this cast. The ratio isn’t horrible, but it’s not impressive either.
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