“Troll 2″ is a movie so bad it’s great.  The same holds true for “Plan 9 From Outer Space” and “Showgirls.”

But 99.5 percent of terrible movies are just … terrible. That’s especially evident with the following five features, a quintet which cost millions to produce and yielded very little in return.

Dishonorable mentions include “The Change Up,” “Green Lantern,” “Larry Crowne,” “Sucker Punch” and “A Good Old Fashioned Orgy.” But these five movies went above and beyond the call of duty in draining precious hours from our lives.

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This hasn’t been the best of times for A-list movie stars.

First, Adam Sandler’s latest comedy, “Jack and Jill,” failed to measure up to his previous blockbusters. Over the weekend, the star-laden “New Year’s Eve” debuted at number one, but with a final tally of $13 million that few folks found impressive.

And Will Smith, arguably the most bankable star of his generation, has been MIA of late until the lackluster MIB3 trailer hit the Web today.

That brings us to Tom Cruise, the mega-star with the mega-smile. His latest film, “Mission:Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” opens in limited theaters Friday before going wide Dec. 21.

To say there’s plenty riding on the film for Cruise is a Hollywood-sized understatement. Should “Ghost Protocol” falter at the box office, it’ll be all the evidence needed that Cruise is no longer a box office draw.

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Jennifer Garner on Defense Over New Film

We’ve at least made some strides. A few years ago, Hollywood attacked Middle America and Republicans with wildly open abandon; a few years ago they apologized for nothing and proudly wore their preachy cinematic leftism on their sleeves. Today, however, you have George Clooney assuring us his political movie isn’t political and now this:

“I don’t know if I would want to watch it with a politician, but I would like to watch it in Iowa and see if they are still friends with me after because we made it with such respect,” she said. “And I come from a small town, so I just want to make sure that they enjoy it and have as much fun with it as we intend for them to have.”

This is with respect to her new indie film “Butter,” which is probably going to be one those preordained flops Hollywood makes to aggrandize themselves.

This is also the film where producer Harvey Weinstein issued a challenge that our resident badass Dana Loesch took him up on. And now after six weeks and no response, it’s probably safe to say that Weinstein — whose Indian name is He Who Supports Fugitive Child Rapists – was just blowing more of that cowardly Hollywood smoke.

‘Jack and Jill’ hits 2% at Rotten Tomatoes

Now I’m even more convinced it’s a classic.

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With overall box office as low as it is right now, Hollywood is looking for value wherever they can get it. “Immortals” will be the big draw to return crucial audience numbers to theaters, but the production faces other problems beyond its control.

This weekend’s predictions and revenue results go as follows:

1. Puss In Boots ($27 million) – The film will hold in its default position since the overall box office frame is not strong. Just like “The Help” showed in its run, when overall box office is down, go with the film that currently sits at the top and has the most positive buzz. That would be “Puss In Boots” currently.

2. Immortals ($25 million) – This picture faces a huge hurdle in that the overall box office frame is really weak right now. Generating audience support will not be easy, but as we noted in a new film essay this week, this one has the advantage of tapping into the audience pool that made “300″ an enormous success. This audience is very loyal when the film’s concept is right. Therefore, we predict a higher-than-expected opening and a close battle with “Puss In Boots” that will last until at least Saturday evening. The film may not win the weekend but will develop strong box legs to do very well overall. (more…)

Adam Sandler has his new movie “Jack and Jill” in theaters this weekend, and man, have the nation’s mainstream media film critics got their knives out for him on this one.

With a stunning 0 percent so far on Rotten Tomatoes the day before it hits theaters one might think Sandler had made a film that was completely, utterly and irredeemably lacking in laughs and entertainment value.

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But – taking into account that this isn’t pretentious art-house, Oscar-aiming fare – “Jack and Jill” is just another sad example of most critics’ single-minded agenda to give Sandler a smack down for daring to make movies that, while engaging in some crude humor, nearly always wind up upholding old-fashioned values like solid families, respect for elders (especially grandmas with meatballs!) and true love.

This time around, he includes a strong anti-bullying angle, and dares to have not one, not two, but three broad-sided smack downs of an atheist character – so be fully aware that while this isn’t a perfect film, it is damn funny. The packed audience I saw it with laughed their heads off while the few critics in attendance groused afterwards about what an atrocity it was.

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Did you hear the news? Chuck Woolery came out of the closet! No, not that closet. Coming out of that closet in Hollywood gets you applause for your bravery. Instead, Woolery came out recently to admit that he is a … wait for it … conservative!

If you have not read “Primetime Propaganda” by Ben Shapiro or Andrew Breitbart’s “Righteous Indignation,” I suggest adding both of them to your fall reading list. Both books do a great job of explaining how we got to this point in, supposedly, the most tolerant and accepting nation in the history of the planet, where the one thing that will not be tolerated in Hollywood is admitting you are a conservative. As someone hoping to one day make a living as a working actor, I know I have a difficult road in front of me due to my political views.

So why is it newsworthy when someone in Hollywood admits they are, indeed, a conservative? Everyone knows that Kelsey Grammer is a conservative, yet he still works regularly. His former co-star, Patricia Heaton, also has another hit series despite her apparent drawback. It is news because, at least until now, they have been the exception. It is news because the Hollywood power brokers have set up a system that, until now, has kept conservatives too afraid to admit their true political views for fear of being ostracized from any future work in “the business.”

There’s also the fact that conservatives do not feel the need to spout their political views at every opportunity the way liberals in Hollywood do. I’ve never understood why someone who relies on reaching the largest audience possible to view their work would alienate half of their potential fan base. Granted, not every Hollywood liberal has called Tea Partiers racists, but enough of them have to affect their box office numbers. According to Box Office Mojo, the 2011 box office take is down 4.2 percent compared to the same point last year. That is hundreds of millions of dollars. Sure, the down economy is having some effect on movie going, but it is not the only reason people aren’t going. I, for one, have stopped going because I don’t want to give my hard earned money to someone who thinks so little of me.

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ROD STEWART PLAYS LAS VEGAS

Hard to believe Rod Stewart could turn 66 but he has and is now packing Caesar’s Palace in Sin City.

May he live forever.

About ten years ago I saw Stewart perform live. He wasn’t supporting an album, which can be the best time to catch your favorite artists live. Instead of supporting a new release by playing a bunch of new songs you don’t know, they mainly stick to the hits — and what a reminder that night was of just how many terrific hits Stewart has cranked out over the years. It was a two-and-a-half hour concert loaded with memories all performed by a superstar who was obviously having a great time — in Charlotte, North Carolina, no less.

It’s easy to forget how many great songs Stewart’s recorded over the decades. I found the same is true with John Mellencamp, Elton John, Billy Joel, Tina Turner, and Eddie Money. You tend to kind of forget these performers over the years, but if you take a moment to grab hold of a greatest hits collection or see them live, it’s striking how prolific they were and for how long.

Can anyone name more than a few present-day pop artists under the age 30 who will have that many hits, or even as many as Loverboy? (“Turn Me Loose” will now be stuck in your head all day. I apologize for nothing.)

IS ADAM SANDLER’S “JACK AND JILL” TRAILER FOR REAL?

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This is something I’ve been writing about since I took to these here Internets in 2004 — and not gleefully. I love movies and I really love movie stars, and to watch the film industry devolve over the past decade into a CGI, shaky-cammed, high-concept, fanboy wet dream-a-thon has been more than a little heartbreaking. People used to argue with me about the death of the movie star. But not so much today. Now we’re just arguing over why.

In an interesting but flawed piece of analysis, The Daily Mail makes some key points and, I think, gets some things wrong:

Various reasons have been suggested to explain this new and — from the stars’ point of view — deeply worrying phenomenon.

Some say that blockbusting actors and actresses are simply pricing themselves out of the market. Depp, possibly the highest-paid actor in movies today, earns around £12 million a picture.

In his time, Cruise has done even better. With gross points — a percentage of everything taken at the box office — he pocketed nearly£50 million from Mission Impossible 2 in 2000.

But that was 11 years ago, when Cruise was in his heyday and the audience demographic was different. Then, the average age of cinemagoers fell roughly between 12 and 25.

Since then there’s been a considerable change. Today, the mass of cinema audiences is aged between 15 and 18 — and that’s what poses such a threat to the existence of big movie stars.

Kids of that age are not interested in veterans like Hanks (55), Cruise (49) or even Depp (48), except when he plays Jack Sparrow in the frankly juvenile Pirates Of The Caribbean series. Watching old men like them on screen would be like watching their fathers cavorting about.

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So an Adam Sandler family comedy is released … during summer … with co-stars Kevin James, Rob Schneider, David Spade, and Chris Rock  … and the L.A. Times is sincerely confused over why it’s such a huge hit. Here’s their headline: Just how did Adam Sandler’s ‘Grown Ups’ become a hit?

Below that headline are nearly 700 confused and curious words digging into the strange, exotic phenomenon of American moviegoers flocking to an unpretentious, family comedy starring one of America’s few remaining bankable actors who co-stars with 4 guys who have spent 15 years building audience goodwill.

The author of the piece is Steven Zeitchik, and while my confusion with his confusion remains, let’s at least give him points for not pulling a Patrick Goldstein. Rather than speculate until he reached his own conclusion, Zeitchik actually practiced a little journalism: (more…)

The thread for my “Grown Ups” review was pretty played out by the time MSN’s James Rocchi responded late Saturday night or Sunday morning and I in turn responded to him a few hours later. It’s an interesting back and forth, it’s also civil, and I think Rocchi deserves his say on a bigger forum than a dying comment thread, mainly because my lack of clarity made the review sound like a direct attack on him — which I regret. Don’t get me wrong, criticizing and ridiculing the entertainment MSM (and James Cameron) is my reason for getting out of bed in the morning. But in my hurry to post the review Saturday morning, Rocchi, whose critique mirrored most everyone, was collateral damage.

Here’s Rocchi’s response (my response to his follows):

John:

Please let me note — with civil bemusement, not flaming-eyed fury or righteous indignation — that my last line was intended as a joke, and not as a serious, scornful indictment of American Mass Culture; I like a good fun movie that’s well-made (Hot Tub Time Machine, Zombieland, Date Night, Funny People, The Fantastic Mr. Fox — naming just a few examples from past months) and the fact is that — in my opinion, which is neither writ nor offered as irrefutable truth — Grown Ups is simply not a good comedy. I also noted in my review — which I offer for clarification — that “Sandler’s capable of good work (“Punch-Drunk Love,” “Funny People”) and even capable of noble errors working with real directors (“Reign Over Me,” “Spanglish”) …” To me, part of why Grown Ups is so painfully unfunny is that it’s beneath the real talents of the people involved; it’s lazy; it’s shabby; it’s dull. Look at Chris Rock and Maya Rudolph’s scenes; they have a real crackle to them, of something unexpected and funny and human. The rest of the movie lacks any similar spark of life or real joy. (more…)

Some movies strain for their laughs, while others just have to turn the camera on their stars and the guffaws will flow. “Grown Ups” is one of the latter, a laid-back yet hilarious film that doesn’t have much of a plot but has a non-stop stream of funny lines and situations expertly played by a team of ace comic performers whose associations go back nearly 20 years now.

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Starring the powerhouse cast of “SNL” vets Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, David Spade, Rob Schneider and Maya Rudolph in addition to Sandler’s “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry” costar Kevin James, “Grown Ups” actually does attempt to show these man-children in an occasionally mature and middle-aged way. Frequent Sandler director Dennis Dugan (“Chuck and Larry,” “Big Daddy”) also shows a somewhat more mature style that still knows when to cut loose with broadly funny situations.

The five lead guys are first shown as boys in 1978, winning a big basketball game against a team of thugs led by Colin Quinn’s youthful alter ego while under the expert leadership of a beloved coach. When the coach dies 30 years later, the boys return as forty-something men to pay tribute to their coach with a weekend that features much more than the church service and scattering of ashes. (more…)

That’s right, a 1979 television movie starring The Fonz as Ebenezer Scrooge is ranked ahead of White Christmas. (Or, if you’re younger than a hundred, the Coach in “The Waterboy.”)

I have nothing to say in my defense and await your wrath.

Well, I do have one thing to say: Henry Winkler is a marvelously talented and underrated actor, and any opportunity to boost his Winkler-ness I’m taking. See also: Night Shift (1982) and an under-appreciated masterpiece called The One And Only (1978).  

Besides, Adam Sandler loves the guy. You want to argue with that?

Other than The Disco Ghost of Christmas Past, shifting the Dickens’ classic from Victorian England to Depression-era New England was an inspired idea that adds a nice spin to the story’s familiar template. Though the characters are given Americanized names (Scrooge becomes Slade), they’re all there including a very effective Tiny Tim. Another terrific spin is making the child Scrooge/Slade an orphan after the death of his parents. This added subplot not only helps to explain why Slade whould grow into a lonely old miser but adds something different and effective to his Christmas day reformation. (more…)

John Podhoretz in the Weekly Standard:

“[T]he system around which the motion-picture business has oriented itself almost since its creation in the early years of the last century–the star system, which it largely invented–has finally reached its end.”

“The eight most successful movies over the course of the year’s first eight months have collectively grossed $2.7 billion, up from $2.3 billion for the entirety of 2008. And what is most striking about these eight films is that not a single one of them, not a single one, features an unmistakable star. Three of them are cartoons (Up, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, and Monsters vs. Aliens). Three are sequels whose top-line talents are incidental to their success (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the sixth Harry Potter, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine). Two feature relative nobodies (Star Trek and The Hangover). The first traditional star appears in the ninth-place film, which is itself a high-concept sequel in which the star mostly stands around (Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian with Ben Stiller). It’s not until tenth place that a classic vehicle hits the list, Sandra Bullock’s The Proposal. And after that you have to jump down to 15th place to find Tom Hanks in Angels and Demons. Will Ferrell’s movie tanked. Julia Roberts laid an egg. Adam Sandler couldn’t sell a ticket. Johnny Depp disappointed. Denzel Washington and John Travolta bombed together. Instead, the movies whose successes depended on their strong leading performances were the ones featuring the 57-year-old Irishman Liam Neeson (Taken, $145 million) and the out-of-work TV comedian Kevin James (Paul Blart: Mall Cop, $146 million).
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Weighed down by a depressing premise made all too apparent by the theatrical trailer and advance publicity which made the film’s title too obviously sarcastic, Jud Apatow’s Funny People opened relatively poorly at the U.S. box office, taking in only $23.4 million. That was good enough to finish at the top of the heap for the weekend, but was the lowest number one opener since Yes Man last year.

Funny People showed much less audience draw than the great majority of Apatow’s and actor Adam Sandler’s previous efforts, and its failure to connect big with audiences cannot be blamed on any recent disappointments. Apatow’s Knocked Up and Sandler’s Bedtime Stories were both excellent films that did very well at the box office.

The magnitude of the disappointment for the Funny People writer-director and its star was summed up well by Reuters: (more…)

As one of America’s most popular comedians, George Simmons seemingly has the world on a string. But then one thing happens that can ruin everything: he’s diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia and told that even with aggressive experimental treatments, he only has an eight percent chance of survival. 

That happy-sad dichotomy is at the heart of the new film “Funny People,” in which Adam Sandler plays Simmons in a terrific performance that no doubt draws on his own experiences as a wildly successful comedy star. As written and directed by Judd Apatow in his third film, following “The 40 Year Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up,” the movie has an intimate awareness of the pain that often lies behind the laughter generated by our modern court jesters.  (more…)

Never in a million years did I think Judd Apatow was capable of making something as sharp and penetrating as “Funny People.” Never. Since the director first started dabbling in film, I’ve been a harsh critic of everything he’s touched, labeling it as over-rated, overlong, self-indulgent and as forgettable as last week’s “National Enquirer.” Well, past is the past. “Funny People” is proof that this was a director working towards something, earning his chops and feeling his way to bigger things. And it was worth the wait. “Funny People” is kinda brilliant — an insightful, touching and intelligent dramedy…  James L. Brooks at his best but with a whole lot of dick jokes.

Adam Sandler is George Simmons, a comedian/movie star as wealthy and popular as Sandler, but having turned his back on his family and cheated on his one true love, Laura (Leslie Mann), he’s now left with only “show-biz friends,” which means he has no friends at all. In-between making films like “Merman” (“Splash” with a guy mermaid) and private-jetting to corporate standup gigs that pay $300k, this desolate 40 year-old haunts a Malibu mansion and looks to fill his emptiness with willing groupies and everything money can buy. (more…)

You could feel it in the air as Apatow basked in the glow of his 2006 double whammy, the hilarious “Knocked Up” and “Superbad.” By the time 2007’s “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” rolled around, the backlash was gathering steam.

I told a friend I’d seen it.

“Is it just more of the Judd Apatow formula,” he sniffed. It was, I admitted. But I like the formula. I like it a lot. And not to get too Harry Knowles on everyone, but I’ve liked it for a long while.

I liked “The Ben Stiller Show,” loved “Heavyweights” and what I saw of “The Larry Sanders Show.” Heck, I even chuckled at “Celtic Pride” and saw “The Cable Guy” opening weekend. Aside from the latter, most people didn’t see much of Apatow’s work, but those who had loved most of it. (more…)

Seth Rogen’s appeal baffles me, at least as a leading man in romantic comedies, albeit raunchy ones. There’s nothing warm about the guy and no matter how sincere he tries to be an undercurrent of sullen hostility never leaves his voice. Rogen may look like a cute little teddy bear, but there’s nothing cuddly about him. There’s talent there to be sure, and he’s watchable enough, but connecting and rooting for his characters never comes easy, if at all.

No matter how crude or wild things got, Adam Sandler, Chevy Chase, John Candy, John Belushi, and Bill Murray have all managed to capture our sympathy in a single scene. Rogen lacks that gift, which makes him the perfect choice to play a deluded, territorial mall cop in “Observe and Report.”

Ronnie (Rogen) wants to be a hero and leader of men, and he’ll be damned if he’ll let anything get in the way, including his own limitations and station in life. Overweight, not terribly bright and suffering from psychological problems serious enough to require medication, Ronnie’s positioned himself as the Supercop of the Forest Ridge Mall, and with a team of three other mall cops made up of overweight twins and the sycophant Dennis (Michael Pena - finally breaking out of the sensitive-Hispanic typecasting ghetto), skateboarders, suspicious Middle Easterners and anyone foolish enough to make Ronnie’s day had best beware this Hall Monitor from Hell. (more…)

It was another good weekend for Summit Entertainment. The distributor behind last year’s meteoric hit Twilight has scored a solid hit with the Alex Proyas-directed Knowing, starring Nicolas Cage. Despite shaky word-of-mouth and negative reviews, the sci-fi thriller got a solid 9% bump on Saturday for a $9.7M second day, and it will likely finish its opening weekend with a possible $24.8M.

As a production company, Summit is responsible for some monster hits, including commercially and/or artistically successful films like Once (Oscar nominee for Best Picture), American Pie ($102..5M domestic), Memento (Oscar nominee for Best Original Screenplay: Chris Nolan), Mr. & Mrs. Smith ($186.3M domestic) and In the Valley of Ellah (Tommy Lee Jones nominated for Best Actor). But as a distributor, they got off to a slow start. (more…)