Funny People’s numbers may not have been hilarious but enough to beat Potter and G-Force
By Keith Williams

Sandler and Rogen look to find funnybone

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 8/2/09 – Nervous laughter echoed around the corridors of Universal this weekend as Funny People, the new dramedy from Judd Apatow raised an estimated $23.4 million from 3007 stand-up routines. Even twitchier laughter could be heard round at Fox where Aliens in the Attic scared up a less-than-out-of-this-world $7.8 million from 3105 invasions.
Despite a stellar cast, featuring Adam Sandler, Seth Rogan, Leslie Mann and Mr Hulk himself, Eric Bana, Funny People garnered mixed reviews and sore bottoms for those who stuck out its two-and-a-half hour running time. Indeed it was the length of the movie that attracted the most comments, suggesting a cut of at least half-an-hour would vastly improve it. Hardly, as it’d still be what it is, which is what confused audiences in the first place – a comedy that might be a heavy drama instead? Like Observe and Report found out to its detriment earlier this year, how can you expect people to buy tickets for something not even the trailer and poster seem honest about. Falling into the Adam Sandler weird category (see Punch Drunk Love), this looks like no Bedtime Stories but more something you’d need anti-depressants for. Apatow is a fine film-maker with a great sense of humor, as the vastly underrated Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story showed, and the intent of this movie sounds interesting and ambitious. But releasing it at the height of popcorn season, with mega-successful comedies such as The Hangover still cruising the ticket lanes, seems wasteful and inappropriate. Curiosity seekers should propel its future rentals on DVD and Blu-ray, but right now, that doleful pealing of bells you hear are those tolling above this year’s ill-fated slate of summer movies at Universal.
Despite under-performing, even though some brave souls touted it as the biggest opening for an R-rated Adam Sandler film, it still knocked those 3D hamsters off last week’s number 1 perch in the nation’s box-office cage, leaving G-Force to scrabble in third for $17 million with a 46.2% drop in demand for sunflower seeds . No Alvin and the Chipmunks here, with the cost of those plastic glasses inflating its gross if not its ticket sales. Unless gerbils across the land come out in support over the next couple of weeks, expect it to bottom out at around $100 million. Just above it, in second place, Harry Potter’s magic continued to wane with a decline of 39.9% and $17.7 million for Half-Blood Prince, confirming suspicions that had it opened last year as planned, there wouldn’t be such a feeling of “yesterday” about it. Still, $255 million (US) so far is still a pretty impressive figure for something most audiences found the equivalent of treading water til the next one arrives. Over in rom-com land, The Ugly Truth had to face up to the fact that audience interest faded by 52.9% for $13 million in veiled lies, while behind it, Aliens entered the Attic at number 5.
When Eye of the Tiger starts playing in the trailer for Aliens in the Attic, all hope fades that this might be a fun summer pic for the 21st Century. With its titled stars looking like something out of a chipmunk’s nightmares, grim, unfunny gags, and a premise that drags one back to the fun summer pics of the mid-80′s, it’s hardly surprising it took what it did at the box-office, proving even pre-teens have taste. Maybe it’s the trailer that made the movie look like it’s in desperate need of an exorcism, and it might well be an unfairly maligned comedy classic, but in all probability, not. Changing its title from They Came From Upstairs hardly seems to have helped, suggesting these critters/gremlins/spookies wannabes will soon be haunting the basement. At least it wasn’t in Gree-D.
At no 6, love for the Orphan declined by 43.7%, adopting $7.2 million in its second week of titillating the nation, at 7 Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs froze another $5.3 million on a 37% melt in glaciers, 8 saw The Hangover hanging in on a 24% fall for $5 million to bring its haul up to $255 million, nudging The Proposal down to 9 and $4.8 million to make a total of $148.8 million to date. This left Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen about to depart the Top Ten, and Earth, with $4.6 million on a 43.4% drop in car sales.
Just outside the charts, the other new release of the week, The Collector, er, collected $3.6 million at 1325 country homes, of note because its per-screen-average of $2736 was actually larger than that of Aliens in the Attic’s, albeit on far less screens.
Weekend Estimates courtesy boxofficemojo.com

WEEKEND TOP 5 STUDIO ESTIMATES, JULY 31-August 2, 2009

Rank. Movie Title (Distributor)
Weekend Gross | Theaters | Total Gross | Week #

1. Funny People (Universal)
$23.4 million | 3,008 | $23.4 million | 1

2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Warner Bros.)
$17.7 million | 4,393 | $255.5 million | 3

3. G-Force (Buena Vista)
$17.1 million | 3,697 | $66.5 million | 2

4. The Ugly Truth (Sony / Columbia)
$13.0 million | 2,882 | $54.5 million | 2

5. Aliens in the Attic (Fox)
$7.8 million | 3,106 | $7.8 million | 1