And everyone is surprised but I'm not:
In a major upset, former wrestler Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson pummeled the box office competition with his new family comedy "The Game Plan," which beat presumed victor "The Kingdom" for top honors.(via)
"The Game Plan," in which Johnson plays a football star confronted by the 8-year-old daughter he never knew about, sold about $22.7 million worth of tickets since opening Friday, said distributor Walt Disney Pictures.
Universal Pictures' terrorism thriller "The Kingdom," starring Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner, followed with $17.7 million in its first three days.
Industry pundits had expected "The Kingdom" to open at No. 1 with sales in the low-$20 million range, with "The Game Plan" kicking off in the high-teen millions.
Critics were underwhelmed by both films, but "everybody has been starved" for a family comedy, said Chuck Viane, president of distribution at Walt Disney Co.'s domestic theatrical unit.
On Friday Samantha had a sleep over with a friend so I told Sarah (my 15 year old) that I would take her to the movies. The only movie we couldn't see was "The Game Plan" since Samantha wanted to see it. So here were our choices:
"The Kingdom" -- R rated for intense violence.
"Across the Universe" -- PG-13 but I hate the Beatles and would rather be tortured in some other way. Plus when Sarah saw the trailer she thought it looked weird and wasn't interested.
"The Bourne Ultimatum" -- PG-13 but we haven't seen the first two movies.
"The Brave One" -- R rated and it looks pretty violent.
"3:10 to Yuma" -- R rated and looks violent.
"Good Luck Chuck" -- rated R and yeah, I'm going to take my 15 year old daughter to see a movie about sleeping around.
"In the Valley of Elah" -- rated R
"Superbad" -- rated R -- Um, no.
"Sydney White" -- rated PG-13 -- we could have seen this movie but it got such terrible views we didn't bother.
You can see from this list why a children's movie beat out the competition. Parents have no other choice but to see a really bad teenager movie or a half-way descent kids' movie.
We finally decided just to rent a movie. We were going to get "Next" but they were out of it so we got "Disturbia" which turned out to be a bad choice. My husband was surprised that I would allow our daughter to see a movie about a serial killer but since it was PG-13 I figured it wouldn't be too graphic. Well, the violence wasn't too bad but the teenage hormone level was a little high. It was a teen age version of "The Rear Window" but it wasn't nearly as good. It was really slow (though the opening sequence was pretty good) and I was bored by it. Not suspenseful enough. Sarah didn't like it either, she thought it was slow at the beginning a pretty creepy.
