The box office needed a little help this weekend, what with kids going back to school and Hurricane Irene causing all sorts of havoc on the East Coast. And, as it turns out, that’s exactly what it got. Or, should we say, a little more Help.
The Help, a quiet drama focused on the fledgling Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, repeated at the top of the box office with $14.3 million—besting a trio of middling newcomers.
Colombiana—a silly, salacious action flick—mustered only $10 million, but it was enough to hit No. 2 with a bullet. Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark apparently was afraid of weekend success, rustling up a fairly toothless $8.7 million. Our Idiot Brother, the third wide release this weekend, rounded out the Top Five with $6.6 million—about $2 million behind Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
I reviewed both Colombiana and Our Idiot Brother (ostensibly punishment for getting my editor’s dry cleaning done late this week), and the fact that I watched them in such close proximity to each other brings to mind one of the strange little dichotomies of the job. Colombiana was a horrible movie any way you want to slice it—so horrible that if the folks from Mystery Science Theater 3000 were still laboring away on the Satellite of Love, this might be prime fodder for them one day. There wasn’t much to be said about its family friendliness or uplifting content either. It was a film without a soul. But it was rated PG-13
Our Idiot Brother, meanwhile, was rated R and filled with all the requisite problems that R rating comes with. It was tawdry and crass and profane. But it did contain, buried underneath all the content, a nice message about the importance of honesty and family.
At Plugged In, we pay loads of attention to content (as we should). But because Colombiana was a hard PG-13 in terms of content and Our Idiot Brother was a solid R, I have a question for you: Is Colombiana then a “better” (or at least a “less worse”) movie? And can anyone recommend a quicker dry cleaning service?
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