Tag: Christopher Meloni

Oscar Predictions: IF

After massive box office success with the two A Quiet Place horror pics, John Krasinski is in family mode when IF debuts Friday. Combining live-action with animation, Ryan Reynolds headlines the human cast with a ginormous list of familiar faces voicing imaginary friends from Steve Carell to Emily Blunt to George Clooney to Matt Damon and Bradley Cooper and many more.

The review embargo is up and reaction is mixed. With a 59% RT score, any awards prospects are shaky. The one exception could be Visual Effects, but I don’t even think it’s guaranteed to make the shortlist (let alone the final five). In other words, putting this anywhere in your Academy forecast represents a big… well, you know. My Oscar Prediction posts will continue…

IF Box Office Prediction

Paramount is banking on John Krasinski’s latest directorial project to make lots of noise at multiplexes when IF debuts on May 17th. Mixing live-action with animation, the comedy’s real-life cast consists of Ryan Reynolds, Cailey Fleming, Fiona Shaw, Alan Kim, Liza Colón-Zayas, Bobby Moynihan, and Krasinski himself. The sprawling list of performers providing voiceover work includes the filmmaker’s Office costar Steve Carell, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Krasinski’s spouse Emily Blunt, the late Louis Gossett Jr., Matt Damon, Maya Rudolph, Jon Stewart, Sam Rockwell, Sebastian Maniscalco, Christopher Meloni, Richard Jenkins, Awkwafina, Blake Lively, George Clooney, Matthew Rhys, Bradley Cooper, Amy Schumer, Keegan-Michael Key, and Vince Vaughn.

Handling screenplay duties as well, this is a far cry from the director’s A Quiet Place pics. The summer’s first feature geared toward families, this should capitalize on the absence of genre material in the marketplace (it’s been two months since Kung Fu Panda 4). The title, by the way, stands for Imaginary Friend.

The chance for this to rise above expectations seems real. I think it could make $50 million for starters. It could also start out slowly and hope for decent legs in subsequent weekends. A worst case scenario could be $25-30 million. I’m giving it $35-40 million out of the gate.

IF opening weekend prediction: $38.3 million

For my The Strangers: Chapter 1 prediction, click here:

The Strangers: Chapter 1 Box Office Prediction

For my Back to Black prediction, click here:

Back to Black Box Office Prediction

Snatched Movie Review

Amy Schumer burst onto the film scene two summers ago with Judd Apatow’s Trainwreck. It was a solid vehicle to showcase the comedienne’s raunchy yet intelligent humor. Snatched is the follow-up. It’s occasionally raunchy, but it’s rarely intelligent and it struggles to even fill the 90 minute runtime with memorable material.

The pic also marks Goldie Hawn’s return to the silver screen after a decade and a half. She looks great, but it’s a shame she’s saddled with the overprotective mother role and given little chance to expand it. Schumer is Emily and she’s recently single after her rocker boyfriend dumps her when he realizes the fringe benefits of success. Emily is also unemployed and holding onto two non-refundable tickets to Ecuador for what was to be a romantic getaway with her departed beau. Enter Linda (Hawn), Emily’s mom who lives a quiet life with her cats and agoraphobic son (Ike Barinholtz). Despite her reluctance, mom joins daughter in South America.

While Linda is content to read her magazines and novellas in the hotel room, Emily is looking for some wild vacation times. She thinks she’s found it with a hunky dude who takes her to a rave and then agrees to show her and Linda around the next day. That’s when the pair are indeed snatched.

What follows is a rather surprisingly laugh free experience that is over in about an hour (it takes a third of the 90 minutes to get to the actual snatching). Some familiar faces pop up including Wanda Sykes and a mute yet deadly Joan Cusack as vacationers who assist the nabbed duo. Christopher Meloni turns up as a very poor man’s Indiana Jones.  Barinholtz has a couple funny moments as the bizarre shut-in son.

Yet it’s not encouraging when the bit that made me chuckle hardest involved a tapeworm and is a sight gag that lasts about a minute. Schumer’s stand-up work and her Trainwreck role showcases a refreshing honesty and sexuality that used to be reserved for just the boys onstage and onscreen. There’s nothing about Snatched where the word refreshing is warranted. It’s not necessarily bad, but it is often excruciatingly ordinary and these leads deserve better.

** (out of four)

Snatched Box Office Prediction

Nearly two years after she broke through on the silver screen in a major way, Amy Schumer is back with Snatched next weekend. The action comedy teams the comedienne with Goldie Hawn, making her first film appearance in almost 15 years. This duo play a mother/daughter (which was the working title of the pic) on a vacation that goes all wrong. Jonathan Levine (who made 50/50 and The Night Before) directs and the supporting cast includes Ike Barinholtz, Joan Cusack, Wanda Sykes, and Christopher Meloni.

In the summer of 2015, Schumer’s Trainwreck rode a wave of great buzz to a $30 million debut and $110 million overall domestic gross. The fact that this is her follow-up should automatically get a substantial number of her fans out there. It also doesn’t hurt that Snatched is being unveiled on Mother’s Day weekend and it should serve as decent counter programming to the second weekend of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (in which Hawn’s longtime beau Kurt Russell costars).

Even with those clear pluses, I don’t feel the anticipation for this as there was for Trainwreck. I expect Snatched to grab a high teens to low 20s beginning.

Snatched opening weekend prediction: $21.1 million

For my King Arthur: Legend of the Sword prediction, click here:

https://toddmthatcher.com/2017/05/03/king-arthur-legend-of-the-sword-box-office-prediction/