By Scott Bowles, USA TODAYLOS ANGELES — Once again, a break-up is doing wonders for Jennifer Aniston's career.
Her high profile divorce from Brad Pitt made her a staple of the tabloid and talk show circuit. Now her movie The Break-Up has put her at the top of the box office this weekend.
The comedy with Vince Vaughn raked in $38.1 million, according to studio estimates.The haul is $10 million more than analysts predicted and was the third highest debut for a romantic comedy, behind only Hitch's $43.1 million opener and 50 First Dates' debut of $39.3 million.
Despite some tough reviews — only a third of the nation's film critics gave the movie a thumbs-up, according to rottentomatoes.com — the debut puts Aniston back among A-list actresses after some flops like last year's Derailed and Rumor Has It.
The movie was likely helped by interest in the reported relationship between Aniston and Vaughn, analysts say. Though neither has confirmed the relationship, the stars probably benefited "from interest about their chemistry," says Bradley Jacobs, a senior editor for US Weekly.
"I think people want to see the chemistry on screen in the same way people wanted to see the chemistry (between Pitt and Angelina Jolie) in Mr. And Mrs. Smith," he says of last year's action thriller that did $186.3 million.
Her next career move, analysts say, should be to continue moving away from her beloved character Rachel Green from the Friends television series.
"It's hard to transfrom from small screen stardom to the big screen," says Jess Cagle, an editor at large for People magazine. "But she's a really, really good actress. There's no question she's got the chops."
Cagle says that Aniston would be well served to avoid the girl-next-door roles that made her so popular on Friends and gravitate toward deeper character examinations, such as The Good Girl and Friends with Money. Both movies were moderate box office successes but won her high praise from critics.
"Once audiences forget about Rachel Green, she can graduate to the bigger stuff," Cagle says.
Few other films made a ripple this weekend. X-Men: The Last Stand dropped a sizeable 67% from its debut to take second place and $34.4 million.
Over the Hedge was third with $20.6 million, followed by The Da Vinci Code with $19.3 million. Mission: Impossible 3 was fifth with $4.7 million.An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's documentary on global warming, took in $1.3 million only only 77 screens.
12 comments:
I've been trying to figure out why the surprising success of The Break-Up is bothering me so much.
And then I figured it out. It's because I'm SO SICK OF THAT FUCKING HORSE-FACED, TALENTLESS TV BITCH. I guess it's the lesser of two evils with her stupid hand-on-hip sour whining taking the wind out of Ratner's sails, but it's still a Pyrrhic victory at best.
Aniston is a ten-watt-bulb of a movie star, at best. The kind that buzzes and flickers annoyingly until you replace it with Angelina Jolie, and then it somehow CONTINUES buzzing and flickering in the wastebasket for another year.
Sorry...cleanup in aisle four, guys
I've been bothered by it as well. For some reason it's always pleased me that she hasn't been able to transend Friends. I'm so untterly sick of seeing her face on TV and in magazines. It's strange to me that she's getting any credit whatsoever for the success of this film. Clearly these are Vince Vaughn numbers and have no more to do with her appearance in the film than her stint in Bruce Almighty. People are going to this because they believe it's Wedding Crashers 2. Word-of-mouth is terrible however, so I imagine that there will be a steep drop-off next week. So far two people today have told me that it sucked. Apparently it's being marketed as a comedy when it's really just an uncomfortable movie about two people screaming at each other.
Exactly. I'm so sick of this Hollywood procedure:
1) Make movie with bad/unpopular star/director
2) Observe movie make money over its first two days for reasons clearly and obviously unrelated to the bad/unpopular star/director
3) Mindlessly give "credit" to the bad/unpopular star/director [ignoring mitigating factors that everyone knows]
4) Give more money to the b/u s/d for another movie
5) Watch THAT movie fail
6) "Realize" what everyone knew to begin with and drop snide quotes into interviews about how "actually" the other success was for unrelated reasons.
It happens over, over, over again and I can't stand it. I remember (just to pick one example) in 1991 when Steven Seagal made a movie called Exit Wounds with DMX. It "took the weekend" (OBVIOUSLY, OBVIOUSLY, OBVIOUSLY) because of DMX. On Monday, there were like four different articles in which highly paid Hollywood types were saying, "Steven Seagal's back on top again!"
Around that same time the awful "Perfect Storm" came out and everyone said, "Clooney's finally got a hit! Oh, boy, he's a real star now!" Even though (OBVIOUSLY, OBVIOUSLY, OBVIOUSLY) it was Clooney's worst movie to date and was making money because of the book. It was like we were sudddenly "allowed" to like an actor that everyone liked all along, who now has an Oscar and some huge hits to his credit once he walked away from all this ridiculous bullshit and started making the movies he wanted to make.
Her next film is guaranteed to flop. She always gets so much credit for Office Space, which had nothing to do with her. Here's what she's been up to since Office Space:
1. The Break-Up (2006)
2. Friends with Money (2006)
3. Rumor Has It... (2005)
4. Derailed (2005)
5. Along Came Polly (2004)
6. Bruce Almighty (2003)
7. The Good Girl (2002)
8. Rock Star (2001)
In other words:
1. Vaughn
2. (flop)
3. (flop)
4. (flop)
5. (flop)
6. Carrey
7. (flop)
8. (flop)
Exactly!
It'll be interesting to see how long Vaughn puts up with her before he realizes, "Wow, you're a killjoy"
"And you look like a frying pan wearing a wig"
Remember how Mad Libs used to introduce "Horse-faced" as their example adjective? I suppose they could just say "Aniston-esque."
I always thought Sarah Jessica Parker should be the spokesmodel for "horse-faced."
I know Aniston's had a big weekend, but let's not ignore the efforts of other annoying, horse-faced actresses.
Yeah Parker's the worst out of them all. Remember on Family Guy when Peter says, "They let Sarah Jessica Parker's face on TV and she looks like a foot. ..."
Point taken, Octo.
How to be box-office-proof even if you look like a foot or other appendage:
1) Obtain blonde hair
2) Obtain industry-insider boyfriend/husband
3) Get down with the housewives
4) You're done.
I love your website. It has a lot of great pictures and is very informative.
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