THURSDAY, JULY 26, 2001

Leapin' lizards hit $80 million

By Carl DiOrio

HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - Universal's dino sequel ``Jurassic Park III'' chomped into $50.3 million in estimated box office receipts at the weekend, while Sony/Revolution's Julia Roberts-led laffer ``America's Sweethearts'' courted a sweet $31 million in an unprecedented combined performance.

The pictures' dual success represents only the second time two films have opened north of $30 million. MGM's James Bond pic ``The World is Not Enough'' and Paramount's ``The Legend of Sleepy Hollow'' bowed at $35.1 million and $30.1 million, respectively, in November 1999.

The weekend's boffo pair -- clearly compatible in terms of their divergent target audiences -- helped the industry outpace the comparable year-ago frame for the first time in a month. Some $146 million in industrywide grosses marked a 6% uptick from the same weekend last year, according to data from box office tracker ACNielsen EDI.

Still, the bottom half of the session's top 10 pics displayed gruesome dino hickeys, with none managing to gross over $2,000 per theater. Among those casualties was Sony/Square Pictures' video game spinoff ``Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within,'' which now represents the summer's biggest disappointment.

``Final Fantasy'' dropped a horrific 69% -- from a weak bow last weekend -- to $3.5 million in ninth place over the latest frame. Its 12-day total moved to just $26.7 million.

On the other hand, the weekend's No. 3 and 4 finishers, MGM laffer ``Legally Blonde'' and Paramount heist pic ``The Score,'' held fairly well in their sophomore frames with grosses of $11.1 million (-46%) and $10.8 million (-43%), respectively.

Universal execs were enraptured over the weekend performance of the studio's killer-raptors thriller, which built on a solid midweek bow for the $92 million sequel.

``Eighty million dollars over five days -- I should have that happen to me once a year,'' beamed Universal distribution president Nikki Rocco.

Universal marketing president Peter Adee built the ``JPIII'' campaign around ads highlighting the picture's flying dinos. In at least one case, Universal even persuaded a newspaper to run the shadow of such a creature over its stock-market tables.

``The challenge was to tell the audience what was new about the third picture,'' Adee said. ``So, we had an edgier campaign with more attitude, and we tried to emphasize the flying dinosaurs.''

``JPIII'' was executive produced by Steven Spielberg and helmed by Joe Johnston (``Jumanji''). Its bow was bigger than that of the 1993 original ($47.1 million) but shy of Friday-Sunday totals for ``The Lost World: Jurassic Park'' ($72.1 million), which opened over 1999's long Memorial Day weekend. Both were directed by Spielberg.

``JPIII'' grosses spiked on Saturday, when 58% of evening audiences were comprised of adults over 25. Exit interviews showed lots of parents accompanied kids, which ensured the picture of playing broadly.

Universal's Rocco said the broad demos bode well for pic's long-term playability.

``I'm not complacent, but obviously it's a hit,'' she said. ``When you do this kind of business in five days, it's going to have legs.''

Sony marketing and distribution topper Jeff Blake also touted the prospects for ``Sweethearts'' as a long-playing release.

``What the market has needed is a great date movie, and I think we've got it,'' Blake said. ``In the world of romantic comedies, these are box-car type numbers. It's a genre that's notoriously tough to open, but it has a great history of holding.''

The picture's showing validates Sony/Revolution's somewhat risky release strategy of going head-to-head with the dinos.

``Sweethearts,'' which represented the second-best opening ever for Roberts after 1999's ``Runaway Bride'' ($35 million), also stars Billy Crystal, Catherine Zeta-Jones and John Cusack.

``Did Julia Roberts help us? -- there's no question,'' Revolution Studios partner Tom Sherak observed. ``But I think one of the things that clicked was the ensemble cast.''

``Sweethearts'' skewed 55% female, with 55% of audiences over age 25 in Friday night exit interviews.

By comparison, the year-ago frame saw DreamWorks thriller ``What Lies Beneath'' top the rankings with a $29.7 million bow, followed by the $19.6 million debut for Warner Bros. kidpic ``Pokemon: The Movie 2000.''

Meanwhile, the latest weekend's best per-theater average was delivered by limited opener ``Ghost World,'' a black comedy from MGM's United Artists specialty unit. ``Ghost World'' scared up $101,000 in two venues each in Gotham and L.A. and one in Seattle a week before expanding into seven additional markets.

Fine Line's singing-transsexual musical ``Hedwig and the Angry Inch'' measured $153,000 in nine Gotham and L.A. engagements, or an upbeat $17,000 average. ``Hedwig'' also expands to top-10 markets Aug. 3.

``Brother,'' a Japanese actioner from Sony Classics, grossed $63,051 in 11 Gotham and L.A. locations for an acceptable $5,732 average a week before moving into top-10 cities.

Artisan's mob laffer ``Made'' made good with an expansion from three theaters to 19, grossing an estimated $270,000, or an impressive $14,200 per venue. The Jon Favreau-helmed pic, in which he stars with Vince Vaughn, hits a full 100 locations next weekend.

Fox Searchlight's black comedy ``Sexy Beast'' added 10 engagements this weekend for a total of 189 and grossed $392,000, or $2,075 per venue. Its 6-week total reached a sexy $4.5 million.

Year-to-date, 2001 is almost 6% ahead of last year at $4.38 billion, with industry insiders eagerly awaiting the impact of next weekend's saturation release of 20th Century Fox's ``Planet of the Apes.'' The Tim Burton-helmed update of the classic picture played particularly well in recent screenings for exhibitors.

Reuters/Variety REUTERS

The top movies in North America -- July 20-22

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Following are the final data for the top 10 movies at the North American box office during the July 20-22 weekend, according to studio figures released Monday by Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc.

Film Three-day Cumulative

Title Gross Gross

1. Jurassic Park III .......... $50,771,645

BOX OFFICE SO FAR:  $81,385,755

2. America's Sweethearts .......... $30,181,877

BOX OFFICE SO FAR:  $30,181,877

3. Legally Blonde .......... $11,103,700

BOX OFFICE SO FAR:  $43,488,647

4. The Score .......... $10,762,333

BOX OFFICE SO FAR:  $37,162,585

5. Cats & Dogs .......... $6,814,617

BOX OFFICE SO FAR:  $72,420,348

6. The Fast and the Furious .......... $5,327,395

BOX OFFICE SO FAR:  $125,087,425

7. Scary Movie 2 .......... $4,523,493

BOX OFFICE SO FAR:  $61,823,992

8. Dr. Dolittle 2 .......... $4,400,905

BOX OFFICE SO FAR:  $93,283,512

9. Final Fantasy:  The Spirits Within .......... $3,658,552

BOX OFFICE SO FAR:  $26,846,730

10. Kiss of the Dragon .......... $2,916,173

BOX OFFICE SO FAR:  $29,661,710

Reuters/Variety REUTERS

John L.:  The hell that is the Summer 2001 movie season continues with the return of the dinos adn Julia's teeth.  This was a huge week at the box office, but besides the top 2 films, a lot of the others are falling very fast.  Final Fantasy is setting the age of advanced animation back uhh 8 weeks.  Jet Li is still a Chinese superstar and not an American one.  Jurassic Park 3 has opened very well, but fell short of the second one but out grossed the first.  America's Sweethearts may be an ensemble cast, but it is still a Julia Roberts' vehicle.  Let's see what we have.

JURASSIC PARK III - FULL REVIEW

The first Jurassic Park was an overrated piece of entertainment that proved that the book is generally better than the movie.  Somehow that movie became a phenomenon and has spawned the evil that was The Lost World: Jurassic Park 2.  The first 2 movies have broken every box office record known to civilization, and when that happens, a sequel must be made.  JPIII is the story of really really dumb humans hanging around a known disaster area.  I like movies with dumb humans because it gives me something to laugh at, but this film has some of the dumbest ever put on celluloid.  The movie starts off with a kid and his mother's boyfriend parasailing near the Isla Sorna, the site of TLWJPII.   A dino attacks off screen and sends the 2 hapless chaps into the jungle of the island. Since people are lost, then we need people to go find them and that is when William H. Macy, Tea Leoni Duchovny, and Sam Neil come in to form a rescue mission.  Neil returns after a single film hiatus as the very unlucky Dr. Alan Grant, master palentologist.  Grant thinks he is supposed to be a site seeing guide over Dinosaur Island, but soon realizes it will be a more interactive adventure.  There are some other side characters along for the ride who are used for Scooby snacks that are pretty irrelevant otherwise.  This movie is just like the previous 2 with very little that is new, but the stuff that is fresh is quite significant.  The whole film is people see dino, people run from dino, sometimes dino catches human, sometimes it does not, repeat 5 times, then get off island and swear never to return unless movie makes $80 million in 6 days.  Let's go over what works in this film, and what falls flat.  The special effects for the dinosaurs are still excellent.  It does look like there are real creatures standing in front of human actors most of the time.  They still can't get the brontosaurs and brachiosaurs to look real, but the raptors are still cool, the new spinosaurus is intimidating, and my all time favorite, the pterodactyls (pteradons) are quite well done.  The first book had pterodactyls menacing the humans, but due to budget concerns, their whole sequence was excised from the film.  It has taken 8 years to finally get them to look right and it is very good for a first step.  The best sequence in JPIII is the flying dino attack.  They come in near the end of the film, but they are given a good amount of screen time.  The T-Rex makes only a small cameo in this film, but that is okay since that character has had it's day and it is time to move on.  The raptors are still the main villains and the ones who show the most intelligence.  Their communication and conniving skills have improved greatly since the first film.  Overall, I have no problem with the special effects.  They are not as awe inspiring as they were in 1993, but they are still some of the best you will ever see.  In terms of the human characters, Sam Neil and William H. Macy do a good job for what they are given to work with.  Macy is slightly obsessed, but also somewhat comical in his naiveté.  My favorite non action moment of the film is when he tries to get a drink out of a vending machine.  It is a small moment, but it made me laugh and it showed some effort in trying to get you sympathetic to a person put in a situation that is completely out of his league.  Macy has a natural acting style that makes him believeable in almost any part he plays.  I have been a fan of Neil's since he played Damien in the 3rd Omen film, and I still can't get that character out of my head when I see him in movies.  The Grant character in this film is possibly the dumbest man alive and the audience knows this when he is tricked to go back to another dinosaur world.  What saves the character is that Neil plays it so that he realizes he is an idiot for getting mixed up in this mess a second time.  The character has his own reasons for going along on the ride, but at the same time has a look in his eyes of boy do I look stupid.  This self actualization helps you sympathize with him as he is trying to figure out how to escape the claw strike of a raptor or the 2 foot long teeth of a spinosaur.  Tea Duchovny and the boy they have to find, Eric, played by Trevor Morgan, do not come off so well in my opinion.  Tea is an okay actress who could be something special if given the right role.  The closest she has come to being impressive on screen is her work in "Deep Impact."  Here, she is given very little to do but scream and look concerned every once in a while.  It is a one not performance with no sort of characterization that Macy managed to squeeze out of his somewhat lame part.  However, every movie like this needs an annoying person that the audience just hopes gets eaten, and Mrs. Duchovny satisfies that role.  I blame the script more than here though.  Speaking of the script, that is what ruins the Eric character.  All of these Jurassic Park movies have their super kids.  They somehow either know all about the dinosaur history or are super athletic and fend off the attacking beasts.  This kid is the uber-child.  He survives on the island for 8 weeks by himself and sets up a shelter, gets food, and even some dino pee to scare away predators.  The writers had him just be too good at what he had to do with little vulnerability.  At one point he is attacked by some pteradons, and he looks like a Mario Brothers character as he tries to get away.  A bit more of the psychological trauma this kid would have felt living on his own would have helped make us like the character better.  He pretty much acts like he was out camping in the woods and it was no big deal.  Jurassic Park III does not come up with anything all that new.  If you saw the first 2, or even managed to sit through last year's Dinosaur, you know what to expect.  Every scene is predictable and every character that is killed is telegraphed as soon as they appear on screen.  I will mention that the part of Billy, Dr. Grant's assistant is pretty well rounded and has a little story arc of his own that has a payoff even though it was somewhat contrived.  It was nice to see an effort there.  This movie will do okay, but it will be the least successful of the trilogy.  There is not much else you can do with this story to make it more interesting.  How about re-engineering the carnivores so that they are herbivores but then something goes terribly wrong and the current herbivores which tend to be about 10 times the size of a spinosaur turn into carnivores.  Whatcha gonna do when a brontosaurus wants to do more than lick your face?  You might need to bring back Jeff Goldblum for that one.  Final review:  2 1/2 stars out of 5; 5 1/2 out of 10; B-, thumbs up. Mindless summer entertainment, but worth a look see.

America's Sweethearts continues Julia Roberts' record of consecutive films to open above $20 million.  This time she plays the recently svelte sister of a superstar actress played by Catherine Zeta-Jones-Douglas.  CZJD is half of the top Hollywood screen couple.  The other half is made up of Joan Cusack's brother, John.  The couple break up in real life and do not want to make movies together or go out on press junkets to promote their latest adventure on the silver screen.  This is a big problem for Billy Crystal, the publicist who needs to have the mega couple together or he risks having another box office bomb on his hands.  Julia is given the task of keeping her sister and her co star together long enough to have the movie come out and be successful.  Complicating matters is that CZJD is going with a latin lover played by Hank "I do half the voices on the Simpson" Azaria who seems to be copying some weird Antonio Banderas mixed with Chris Kattan thing.  Also, it seems that Julia and John may have a thing for one another as well.  And to top it all off, since Billy Crystal can't be left out, it seems that a dog wants to spend much of its time sniffing Crystal's crotch.  That is certainly not that mahvalous.  This movie has all the makings of a classic ensemble screwball comedy.  It has tapped into that lost romantic story that this summer has been lacking.  The plot of this movie is quite confusing from its previews.  I could never truly figure it all out, and just when I did, they would change the focus.  The movie wants to be a group piece, but Julia Roberts is the only one the marketing focuses on.  Catherine Douglas desperately wants to be as star in real life, but she keeps messing up.  I used to dig her quite a bit ever since she tried to move between those laser beams in "Entrapment."  But she has somehow hit the wall since she married Michael Douglas.  Maybe I'm jealous, or that "The Haunting" was just unwatchable.  I have laughed a couple of her moments in the trailers like the Harry Potter joke and calling Julia's character "Kikikans."  I think she might have loosened up a bit and had some fun on this film.  She may get off my crap list eventually.  John Cusack so wants to be in a hit movie, and he had to sell out and do one with Julia Roberts to find one.  He is an actor who plays the same person in every film.  I like him, and have enjoyed most of his work, but he never changes his acting style.  Cusack always plays a version of himself and that has hurt his career since he can never really stand out enough to attract an audience that will take the effort to see his latest work.  If you have seen one John Cusack movie, you have seen them all.  Billy Crystal also needs a couple of more hits after a string of flops.  "Analyze This" has kept him from having to do the Oscars lately, and this movie should keep him employed on the big rather than the little screen.  Crystal is another one who has trouble playing someone other than the same Jack Benny type character he has done for the last 20 years.  He is very likable on screen and has shown great talent on his tv work like Saturday Night Live and his groundbreaking efforts on "Soap."  "Mr. Saturday Night" was the closest he came to playing anything other than Billy Crystal, and he did not get enough respect for the work he put in that film, so he goes back to playing the same characters over and over again.  Crystal wrote this film, so he is much to blame for it being too inside Hollywood for the masses to understand.  The masses know more about Hollywood nowadays than most of the people working in it.  There is nothing that is too inside anymore.  Crystal wants to make some sort of "Sunset Boulevard" type of movie without all the murder and old people.  America's Sweethearts will do okay at the box office, but it will be tough to reach that $100 million mark.  The preview was confusing and did not have a big hook to get the non romantic comedy fans to rush to see it.  Don't cry for anyone who made this film, because I am sure they will all work again.

REST OF THE TOP 10 IN 10:

1.    Legally Blonde is holding up well at the box office and will make a nice profit for the studio.

2.    Reese Witherspoon has finally become a movie star after spending the last couple of years raising Ryan Phillipe's kids.

3.    It boggles my mind that the best movie I have seen this summer is Legally Blonde.

4.    If the Score had some more oomph to it, it could have been a sleeper hit, but now it will do just average for a Bobby D. vehicle.

5.    The battle between the felines and the canines continues to be a surprise hit for the season.

6.    Since Fast and the Furious is still in the top ten, so is my Jordana Brewster pic of the week:

7.    The scariest thing about Scary Movie 2 is that it has been able to stay this long in the top ten.

8.    A lot of people put down the quality of Dr. Doolittle 2, but it is doing very well and is one of the more entertaining movies I have seen this year let alone this summer.

9.    Final Fantasy may live up to its name since this movie has not made enough money to warrant a direct sequel which is too bad since what was attempted here should be tried again.

10.    Kiss the Dragon goodbye from the rest of the top ten in ten.

Another way too late box office report.  Next week is Planet of the Apes and I will have a full review of that as well as a look back at the 5 movies that came before it.  I am a huge Apes fan, and am looking forward to seeing this movie.  I hope it's good.  Bye for now.