The brightly-plumaged birds of paradise edged out the mad black woman as Rio took the top spot again, with Madea’s Big Happy Family following close behind at number two. The olde-timey circus of R. Pattz and Reese Witherspoon’s Water For Elephants pulled into number three while the wild tabbies of African Cats settled into sixth place. Your weekend receipts are here.
The brightly-plumaged birds of paradise edged out the mad black woman as Rio took the top spot again, with Madea’s Big Happy Family following close behind at number two. The olde-timey circus of R. Pattz and Reese Witherspoon’s Water For Elephants pulled into number three while the wild tabbies of African Cats settled into sixth place. Your weekend receipts are here.
Does Robert Pattinson have another hit on his hands with Water for Elephants ? Perhaps at the box office, but not according to a majority of movie critics around the country. Take a look at various excerpts from a sampling of publications that aren’t exactly in love with the Twilight star’s new film, which opens on April 22… Even nonreaders of the book can figure out what happens next. It’s all in the telling. Sara Gruen provided grit and pungent detail. The movie settles for gloss. – Rolling Stone The script by Richard LaGravenese, who is well-versed in adapting popular fiction such as Bridges of Madison County, lacks the sparkle of his best work. – USA Today The love triangle takes a familiar shape and the dialogue tends toward the banal. Rarely has running away to join the circus looked so dull. – Boxoffice Magazine The problem isn’t just miscasting or the cheesiness of the material. It’s Pattinson’s increasingly predictable, dour persona. – Salon dot com Short-circuits the novel’s quirky charms and period atmosphere by its squeamish attitude toward gritty circus life and smothers the drama under James Newton Howard’s insufferable wall-to-wall musical soup. – The New York Times
Water for Elephants is one of those big, extravagant-looking romances that you might automatically deem “conventional” — except for the fact that almost nobody makes big, extravagant-looking romances anymore. That’s the elephant in the room that the movie’s director, Francis Lawrence, faces head on. Whatever his movie’s flaws may be, he’s alive to the wonder of spectacle, and he still believes in the old-fashioned idea of movie stars: Those with two legs, and especially those with four.
Good Friday means more in Hollywood this weekend than just the official start of the Easter holiday. It means cashing in on a new Tyler Perry film, wringing a lucrative second week out of the world favorite new animated bird, and counting on Twilight Nation to drop by the multiplex for Rob Pattinson’s latest extracurricular effort. Read on to call your box-office shots.
Millions of women (and men) would have slayed safari animals to share a love scene with Twilight sensation Robert Pattinson on the set of Water for Elephants. But in a big F-U to those fans, Pattinson’s co-star Reese Witherspoon has reportedly described at length how “disgusting” and “disappointing” the experience was for her.