Avatar ruled the box office for the second straight weekend, losing just 3 percent of its opening weekend tally to score $75 million. The film’s 10-day North American total now stands at around $212 mil. With a few more weekends like that, James Cameron may have enough cash to buy the moon of Pandora.
But Avatar wasn’t the only show in town. In fact, three films—Avatar, Sherlock Holmes, and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel—made more than $50 million and helped propel the box office to a record $278 million take. And if I was to guess, I’d imagine that a good many of you have seen at least one of these flicks.
The only one I can personally comment on is Sherlock Holmes, a PG-13 reworking of the classic literary detective. Forget the deerstalker hat, the demurely curved pipe and the ever-present magnifying glass. The 21st-century Holmes is still plenty smart, but he’s not just an investigator anymore: He’s an avenger, able to kick the stuffing out of nefarious henchmen as he searches for telltale balls of lint. And while he’s loitering in Victorian-era fight clubs, sharpening his hand-to-hand combat skills, his friend Dr. Watson is skulking around the wharf with a gun in his pocket and a blade in his cane.
Granted, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original Sherlock Holmes mysteries had some action in them. I believe both Holmes and Watson packed heat a time or two. But there’s a difference between characters prudently preparing themselves for violent confrontation and positively hankering for it. In an effort to bring us a Holmes and Watson that felt fresh and unfamiliar, director Guy Ritchie has taken two unique literary characters and made them—well, utterly familiar, and fairly indistinguishable from today’s crop of fictional crime-busting heroes. I mean, the only thing separating Holmes from Batman is a cowl, a car and Gotham City.
And that’s what we need in movies today: More homogeny.
But hey, I’m a fan of the original books, so perhaps I’m a bit biased. What did you think? And squeak in on The Chipmunks if you want, too. The Squeakquel probably won’t be on my movie-watching radar for a bit … but should it be?
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