“I don’t know how they can survive.” That’s what Dave (Jason Lee) says to his friend Ian after his beloved chipmunks are stranded on a desert island. Unfortunately, that same sentiment can be applied to the parents and children who are forced to sit through this third installment of the “Chipmunks” film series. Like its predecessors, “Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chip-wrecked” is a lazy exercise in children’s entertainment that should be avoided at all costs.

The story finds Alvin and the Chipmunks lost on a remote island along with their friends, “The Chipettes.” They all fell off of a cruise ship while on vacation with their caregivers Dave and Ian (David Cross), the money-grubber who often takes advantage of the little creatures. On the island, the chipmunks quickly encounter a crazy explorer named Zoe (Jenny Slate) who spends her days talking to sports equipment and is pleased to have new friends with whom to talk.

The chipmunks themselves are hard to dislike. They have quirky, simplistic personalities that would work well in a better film. Alvin (voiced by Justin Long) is fun-loving but vulnerable. Simon Matthew Gray Gubler) is nerdy and cautious. And Theodore (Jesse McCartney) is the childishly naive one. But this script doesn’t have much to do with them, and the adults in this film don’t help at all.

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The new Disney feature “The Princess and the Frog” is old school in more ways than one.

The animated film, number one at the box office over the weekend, uses hand-drawn animation to tell its magical story. It’s a technique most audiences grew up watching, but one pushed to the boundaries of animation thanks primarily to the computer wizards over at Pixar (“Toy Story,” “Up.”)

The film also relies on a conservative message – one featuring hard work, perseverance and the reality of the American dream.

It’s a far cry from recent kid’s films with their slams against the U.S. military (“Monsters vs. Aliens”) and the decadence of humanity as a whole (“Battle for Terra”).

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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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Rebooting Bond with Daniel Craig was Bold. Christopher Nolan’s Reinvention of Batman was genius. But some thought it was overly-ambitious, even audacious, to attempt to restart the Star Trek franchise. It has begun to pay off already for Paramount Pictures, and there will dividends for years to come.

A shiny new Enterprise is luring in a new generation of STAR TREK fans

J.J. Abrams is officially the Lazarus of movie directors as his all-new Star Trek has gone “Boldly Gone Where No Star Trek Movie has Gone Before.” With a cast of relative unknowns, the 42-year-old has resurrected a franchise that had been killed by insular “nerdyness” and timid imagination. The Gene Rodenberry creation didn’t so much bomb as it died slowly over a period of years. First, the 2002 movie Star Trek: Nemesis starring the Next Generation cast disappointed with a meager $43.3M domestic. Then, the final TV series Enterprise, which starred Scott Bakula, was not embraced by core fans or broader audiences and was canceled after four seasons, ending May 13, 2005.

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Several sources at competing studios have told me that J.J. Abrams’ all-new reboot of Star Trek (Paramount), which debuted last night at 7pm at many of its 3,849 locations, may have grossed as much as $6.5M-$7.5M. Studio honchos are “locked down tight” about actual numbers, but that is in the same ballpark as Transformers (Dreamworks/Paramount), which grabbed $8.8M in its previews starting at 8pm on Monday, July 2 during the summer of 2007. (What portion of ticket sales fall into Thursday and what percentage fall into Friday will likely be an open question even after final numbers are in.)

William Shatner (left) with Captain Kirk 2.0 Chris Pine

Keep in mind that Paramount never changed its Star Trek marketing to promote the 7pm Thursday start, so the opening night audience was likely heavy on Trekkers or Trekkies (not sure which term is “politically correct” anymore). So this was a “soft” opening and what amounts to a night of word-of-mouth screenings. Keep in mind that Transformers premiered during the summer when kids are more available while Star Trek has made its premiere during the school year.

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The all-new J.J. Abrams reboot of Star Trek (Paramount) will win the second weekend of the Hollywood Summer Box Office season by at least a couple of light years over Fox’s fast-fading X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but some of the astronomical numbers I’ve seen floating around in the blogosphere are very over-heated. Make no mistake, this movie will open extraordinarily well, but it’s not going to play out as a typical front-loaded blockbuster. Moviegoers need time to shake off the disappointment of the final TV series Enterprise (starring Scott Bakula and canceled after four seasons) and the disastrous 2002 final film Star Trek: Nemesis ($43.3M domestic). It will take time for a new generation of fans to discover the magic of Gene Rodenberry’s vision of the future through Abrams’ magical lens.

As of Wednesday night, Star Trek is cruising with 94% Fresh (positive) reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and critics are slinging some seriously glowing hyperbole.

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She has a hit TV show on the Disney Channel, a pair of albums that have debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts, a concert tour with 69 sold-out arenas in North America, and now a second #1 movie in as many years. Miley Cyrus is the biggest teen star in the world.

With most of Hollywood (including myself) expecting an opening in the mid-$20M’s for Hannah Montana The Movie (Disney), Miley has surprised “grown-ups” with her box office clout once again. The picture opened with a heavily front-loaded $17.39M on Good Friday then dropped 40% on Saturday to an estimated $10.34M, and it will reach an estimated $34M by the end of Easter weekend, making it the all-time #2 opening for the bunny holiday weekend. My Friday night early 3-day projection was for $33.6M, but then I raised my number to $39M on Saturday. As it turns out, I should have stuck with my first pass. These young skewing movies are tricky to project, and the Easter Weekend, where Saturday traditionally drops from Friday, makes it even more complicated.

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Easter weekend 2009 will almost certainly be an all-time record-breaker for Hollywood with a pair of new releases that could be among the top six bunny holiday openings of all time. Although neither Hannah Montana: The Movie (Disney) or the new R-rated comedy Observe & Report (Warner Bros) will challenge 2006’s all-time Easter weekend opening champion Scary Movie 4 ($40.2M), both new offerings look very solid in pre-release industry tracking, and they will be joined by some strong holdovers.

Universal’s Fast & Furious is likely to cross the finish line first for a second consecutive weekend, following up last weekend’s almost $71M with about $30M, which would mark a 58% drop. Still, it must be considered a triumph that the re-teaming of Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster and Michelle Rodriguez may have $120M in US sales after just 10 days. That will mean that Fast & Furious will have almost doubled the domestic gross of The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift (the last film in the franchise), and this souped-up thrill ride could be headed for $160M US.

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I took my five-year-old son (Ed) and seven-year-old daughter (Ahmi) to see “Monsters vs. Aliens.” We got our Elvis Costello 3D glasses and wore them at all the wrong times during the television commercials that come on before the movie trailers. My kids didn’t know but I was mostly interested in their response to the 3D imagery. That’s right, I went to “Monsters vs. Aliens” primarily for human experimentation. They reached out to grab objects that appeared to float in front of them, but the greatest of all expressions came to their faces every time I looked over at them: smiles.

Reese Witherspoon voices Ginormica, a 49-foot-tall woman with an awesome figure. More to love. But her fiance is a sleazy weatherman from Modesto, as if there’s any other kind. Ginormica is the straight person in the adventure; she carries the hero’s burden of bringing any kind of depth or drama to a 90 minute farce. Her comedy relief side-kicks are fish man, cockroach man, a big Mothra maggot and the show stealing gelatinous B.O.B. voiced by Seth Rogen. (more…)

Jeffrey Katzenberg and Dreamworks Animation have definitively proven that Digital 3-D is a blockbuster format. Not only has Monsters vs. Aliens seized a monstrous $58.2M in opening weekend ticket sales, Real-D (the technology provider) and Dreamworks have revealed that $25M or so of that gross was generated specifically from 3-D and IMAX 3-D. Fox is reporting that fully 43% of the total take was from the estimated 2,218 Digital 3-D screens.

MONSTERS VS. ALIENS tore up the box office this weekend - especially in 3-D

That means that the Per Screen Average for the movie in 3-D was about $11,700, while the 4,800 or so traditional 35MM 2-D engagements had a Per Theatre of just an estimated $4,780. Exhibitors who figured out a way to overcome the credit crunch and pay the estimated $100,000 to convert a traditional theatre into one that can show Digital 3-D made a killing this weekend.

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DreamWorks Animation has created a niche all their own; great looking, high-concept computer animated films with about as much thematic depth as an installment of “Josey and the Pussycats.” It’s as if Pixar created DreamWorks Animation just to make themselves look good.  

“Monsters vs. Aliens” has an awfully great title going for it – who doesn’t want to see that? – but is merely adequate in the execution. Considering the potential of the idea and that there are five credited screenwriters, you would expect a memorable sequence or two and a few clever characters, but lacking in every story element is an inspired imagination.

Susan Murphy (Reese Witherspoon) is about to get married when she’s hit by meteor. The good news is that she’s not hurt, the bad news is that she grows to be about fifty stories tall and is promptly captured by the military and imprisoned in Area 51, where all “monsters” are locked away to keep the public from panicking. The warden is the oh-so cleverly named General W.R. Monger (Kiefer Sutherland), and he explains to Susan, code name Ginormica, that she will never see the light of day again.

Yes, another film aimed at your kids that paints the military as oppressive, robotic and reactionary. (more…)

Hollywood is off to a staggering, record-breaking start in 2009 led by Clint Eastwood’s most successful wide opening ever, a French action import and a chubby guy on a Segway. Hot on the heels of the biggest January in history with over $1 billion in domestic sales, February has exceeded $750M in the US. The industry’s all-time best January followed by the all-time biggest February on the books puts total domestic box office for the year at almost $1.8 billion.

“Everything is working.” That’s what one studio exec told me today. “With the exception of the Jonas Brothers, it seems like almost every release is out-performing expectations.” January 2009 has gone down as the all-time 8th-best month in modern box office history. It started with excellent holiday holdovers. Six movies, technically released in 2008, did major chunks of their business after New Year’s.

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