Summer Movies 2006 Recap

Pirates, Sunshine, Snakes and Mutants Highlight this Year’s Hits and Misses

By Sara Michelle Fetters

Senior Editor – Theatrical

www.moviefreak.com

This summer proved to be an interesting one at the multiplex. Not because the films proved to be all that special (overall they were actually rather disappointing) but more because of the lessons both we as audiences and the Hollywood studios all learned during this May to August cinematic silly season. While the usual assortment of sequels, remakes and big budget spectaculars ruled the box office, there were an astonishing assortment of disappointments, surprise hits and shocking flops that many of us who watch these sorts of things really didn’t see coming.

The following are my Hits and Misses for Summer 2006. Some are obvious, others are not, and no matter what else I can say one thing remained as true this year as it has in all the others combined: It’s the movie, stupid, and if you make a good one that resonates with viewers, audiences will flock to it in droves.

HIT

Comedy Is Still King (and inexpensive, too!)

For all the talk of Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn’s romance sinking The Break-up, $118-million of box office success later those dismissing this one as one of the Summer’s most guaranteed flops should probably be looking for that crow to gobble down. Not only did their romance not dissuade people from standing in line for the film, in many cases it actually brought them through the turnstiles in the first place. (Granted, how much of this film’s overall success was due to the presence of Aniston or to the loyal followers of Vaughn is a conversation left for another day.)

But this wasn’t the only comedy to break through with audiences. The Devil Wears Prada ($119-million and counting) was a quietly profitable smash for Fox, the Meryl Streep-Anne Hathaway comedic adaptation of the best selling novel spending more time in the top ten than Warner’s much more high profile Superman Returns ($195-million) which opened the same week. And, of course, both Adam Sandler (Click - $135-million)) and Will Ferrell (Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby – currently at $118-million) hit one out of the comedic ballpark, each one scoring sizable hits with features that cost their studio (both were financed by Sony) relatively little in comparison to much of the rest which hit theaters these past few months.

And that’s the key for all these films. With the average studio picture costing upwards of $100-million before marketing, these little comedies are becoming the major Hollywood players’ bread and butter in regards to solvency. When a little high school teen comedy like John Tucker Must Die makes $39-million at the box office that might not sound like much when out up next to the grosses of something like Mission: Impossible III ($135-million), but whereas Paramount spent upwards of $150-million on that one compared to Fox’s $18-million on the former the profit margin here for the studio is monstrous indeed.

MISS

It’s The Release Date Stupid

While both Sony and Universal scored decent paydays for both Little Man ($58-million) and You, Me and Dupree ($73-million), it’s hard not to imagine that they would have made tons more had they both not decided to release both features up against one another. In the end, each movie competed for relatively the same audience, and while these grosses for rather inexpensive comedies is nothing to scoff at it’s still hard for me to believe both wouldn’t have done better had there been three or four weeks between their release.

But their story is nothing compared to that off Monster House ($68-million), The Ant Bully ($25-million) and Barnyard ($48-million). Over the last two weeks of July and the first week of August, these three CGI animated family features all came out on successive weekends. All had their strengths, all had their weaknesses, and even though I’m partial to the first of the trio (the best animated film of the Summer if you ask me) it’s likely all of them coming out when they did caused all to suffer box office disaster.

Okay, I get it. None of them wanted to go near either Dreamworks’ Over the Hedge ($154-million) or Pixar’s Cars ($240-million), but by staying so obscenely far away the studios producing these three allowed their rivals to rule the roost for what seemed the entire summer. More so, while both were good neither captured audience attention like Shrek II ($441-million in 2004) or Finding Nemo ($339-million in 2003), and had Sony, Warner Bros. or Paramount shown a bit more guts it’s readily apparent there were plenty family dollars ready to be captured. Now the only thing all three can look forward to is DVD, and while it is certain all will earn back their cost and then some it’s pretty obvious releasing them into theaters at the same time was a silly, and costly, mistake.

HIT

The Right Property Makes All The Difference

When Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl hit theaters in 2003 nobody thought it would become an outright cultural phenomenon and capture Johnny Depp his first Oscar nomination. When Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest ($403-million and counting) hit theaters in July of this year it was a forgone conclusion it was going to be a smash. Same thing goes for X-Men: The Last Stand ($234-million). Even a change of directors couldn’t stop that one from becoming a box office juggernaut, audiences so enamored with Bryan Singer’s popular (and profitable) originals they were ready to gobble this one up no matter who it was behind the scenes pulling the strings.

On the flipside, sequels The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift ($62-million) and Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties ($28-million) did middling business at best, while remakes Poseidon, Miami Vice (both $60-million) and The Omen ($54-million) all underperformed considerably. More so, counter programmers like The Lake House ($52-million) and My Super Ex-Girlfriend ($22-million) went absolutely nowhere despite their high profile casts, proving audiences aren’t going to flock to a movie just because the stars of Speed or the chick from Kill Bill headline the thing.

No, it’s all about the right property and convincing people they will be missing out at the water cooler by not going to see it opening day. This has nothing to do about quality, of course, because if it were Dead Man’s Chest, The Last Stand and The Da Vinci Code ($217-million) all would have made about as much money as early summer family failure Hoot ($8-million). Instead, this is about finding the cultural pulse at any given moment and then delivering exactly what that reading dictates. These three features did that and then some, and even though critics like me were less than thrilled with the final product audiences certainly disagreed turning each of them into an outright smash.

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