Tag: Jacob Latimore

House Party Box Office Prediction

Blogger’s Update (01/11): Considering its meager 1500 screen count and scant buzz, I’m revising my House Party prediction down from $6 million to $3 million.

Warner Bros hopes audiences RSVP to the House Party reboot when it debuts January 13th. Directed by Calmatic (best known for music videos and commercials), Jacob Latimore and Tosin Cole star as best friends who hatch a plan to hold a blowout bash at the estate of LeBron James. The NBA superstar plays himself as do musical celebs like Kid Cudi, Lil Wayne, and Snoop Dogg.

The 1990 original featured hip hop act Kid N’ Play (who appear here) and spawned two sequels. It was a surprise box office success that also drew critical kudos. This was originally slated for an HBO Max only premiere last summer before the studio shifted emphasis to theatrical output.

Rolling out over the long MLK weekend, Party could manage to over perform. There’s a real question which new release will make the most money with A Man Called Otto and Plane as the other contenders. The trio should all fall behind Avatar: The Way of Water and M3GAN. I’ll project this falls short of double digits earnings by a notable margin.

House Party opening weekend prediction: $3 million (Friday to Monday estimate)

For my A Man Called Otto prediction, click here:

A Man Called Otto Box Office Prediction

For my Plane prediction, click here:

Plane Box Office Prediction

Collateral Beauty Movie Review

David Frankel’s Collateral Beauty starts with a pretentious name and goes downhill from there. It’s a film dealing with weighty subjects in a manner that is borderline offensive and cheats the audience and its talented actors of quality. When you can’t get past an incredibly contrived concept, it makes any semblance of emotional resonance that the screenplay is trying to beat into you fail badly. And it does.

Howard (Will Smith) is an advertising exec who’s mourning the loss of his young daughter. He can’t get past the loss and he’s cut off communication with the world, including his coworkers. There’s three of them that are focused on and they’re all given their own soap opera subplots. Whit (Edward Norton) is a divorcee trying to reconnect with his own little girl. Claire (Kate Winslet) is the workaholic wanting to become a mother. Simon (Michael Pena) is terminally ill and trying to hide his diagnosis from everyone.

The trio make the tough decision to try to push Howard out of the company. In order to do so, the script invents quite a remarkably ridiculous way to do so. You see – Howard writes letters to issues he’s grappling with – Love, Death, Time. When his coworkers are at their wit’s end, they make the puzzling decision to hire an acting troupe to portray those emotions, catch Howard’s reaction to them on camera, and exploit his response for the company’s gain. It’s even more contrived than it sounds. So we have Helen Mirren as Death, Keira Knightley as Love, and Jacob Latimore as Time. Howard also reaches out to a grief counselor (Naomie Harris) who’s experienced similar life issues.

This is the type of picture that some may not want to criticize due to its subject matter. Yet Collateral Beauty deserves scorn, especially because so many other films have dealt with similar themes in far more mature and satisfying ways. There’s not a performance here worthy of praise and that’s remarkable considering the cast. Smith is stuck playing one note throughout and even Mirren (one of our finest actresses) is annoying. No actors could make this dialogue work to be fair. It’s as if screenwriter Allan Loeb took a bunch of sympathy and encouragement cards and self-help manuals, cut them up, threw them in the air, and let treacly word piles form. The result is ugly.

* (out of four)