By Keith Williams

HOLLYWOOD,CA (Hollywood Today) 9/27/09 –Movie screens across America remained cloudy this weekend as 3D digital meatballs pummelled family audiences for an estimated $24.6 million, leaving Bruce Willis’s new sci-fi thriller Surrogates dodging for cover with a below par $15 million at 2951 android repair shops and the remake of Fame a smoking crater with $10 million on 3096 dance floors. Left way behind in outer space, Dennis Quaid’s new horror/sci-fi Pandorum drifted aimlessly with $4.4 million from 2506 derelict spacecraft.

Dropping by a mere 18.8%, Cloudy/Chance/Meatballs has now accumulated just over $60 million for Sony since it opened last week. Tasty figures indeed for what some are already calling the best use of 3D in an animated film yet. Tasty however was not the word to use in Bruce Willis’s presence. Taking even less than industry analysts predicted, Surrogates suffered an ignominious fate, given its star pedigree, $80 million budget, and smarter-than-most concept. Reviews were largely unsympathetic, citing a lackluster plot as the main culprit, though co-star Rosamund Pike deservedly won praise for her dual performance as a plastic beauty/age-withered harrigan. Certainly the narrative goes cross-eyed in the third act, but this could be largely due to the 88 minutes running time, suggesting studio scissors have been busy at work cutting out scenes of exposition that would have resulted in a less confused and rushed climax. Whilst the hack/re-edit of Babylon A.D. was brutal to say the least, here it’s more subtle but still raises annoying questions of logic and clarity when it’s over. A pity as the film is far better than its immediate predecessor, Gamer, both sharing the same futuristic theme of what it’s like to be/have an Avatar, and if none of you reading this still don’t know or understand what’s meant by that, then Fox is in really big trouble at the end of the year.

With critics tripping over themselves to deliver the most abrasive reviews possible packed with obvious puns, e.g. “lame” and “tame”, it’s a shame Fame has only itself to blame for coming in third. If ever there was a remake any sane person would consider unnecessary, here it lies, coming at the tail end of similar efforts such as High School Musical 3 (hit) and Bandslam (bomb). Costing only $18 million, MGM can claim this film will break even/make a profit somewhere down the line, but what an opening gross of $10 million tells us is the low level of interest in the first place. With no megastar like Zac Efron to bring the fans in, a film classic few of them will have heard of, and the plethora of dance contests to be seen free on TV, this misconceived effort unfortunately will not live past the week let alone forever.

At 4, The Informant! fell a credible 33.9% to stitch up $6.9 million, with $20 million in the kitty now gearing up to be a modest hit, at 5, I Can Do Bad All By Myself plunged a shriek-worthy 51.9% for $4.7 million ($44.5 million so far for Tyler Perry’s latest), while at 6 materialised Pandorum, soon to be a Bollywood remake, Poppadom (not).

Sounding (and looking) like something that should star Kate Beckinsale, this new $40 million budgetted outer space thriller from producers Jeremy Bolt and Paul Anderson turned into more of a Non-Event Horizon than their previous, similar effort. Premise is intriguing, posters eye-catching, but the trailer goes and gives a lot of surprises away, and then there’s that title. Films ending in “um” rarely do well (e.g. Equilibrium, Pandemonium, Factotum, and that Dustin Hoffman flop Mr Magorium’s Wonder Emporium) as it suggests something arty and boring, plus the fact that no-one really knows what it means. For director Christian Alvart, still awaiting the release of his previous film Case 39 starring Renee Zellweger (by all accounts very good), Hollywood must seem a colder place than space itself right now

Love Happens at 7, though fading by 46.3% for $4.3 million, Jennifer’s Body shrunk by 49% for $3.5 million, at 9 was the titular title itself, fading rapidly by 49% for $2.8 million ($27 million US gross so far), leaving the top ten exit door creaking open this weekend for Inglourious Basterds, ziegheiling its way to $2.7 million via a 28.7% drop in Nazi memorabilia.

Weekend Estimates courtesy boxofficeguru.com