There are a lot of sad Christmas faces around 20th Century Fox this week. “Stuck on You” was figured to be an automatic $100 million dollar film. The Farrelly brothers comedy staring Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear was given a lot of hype and was expected to play respectably against the Christmas competition. However, grim reality is the only thing they found in their stockings. After 2 weeks in release, Stuck on You has only pulled in close to $17 million and it will be lucky if it breaks $40 million when all is said and done.
The audience and critics both seem to think that this is a decent film, so why the poor results? One obvious answer is Lord of the Rings: Return of the King which hogged most of the box office with almost $125 million in its first week. But with “Something’s Gotta Give” pulling in $33 million in the same 2 week period as “Stuck” the other problem that becomes obvious is marketing. I thought the ads for this film were just lame, and didn’t at all entice me to go out and see it despite the fact that I’m a Damon and Kinnear fan. It will be interesting to see how the film does over the next few weeks.
It also doesn’t help that the movie looks like a terribly gimmicky take off of other buddy movies – Dumb and Dumber comes to mind. With Dumb and Dumberer topping people’s “worst movie” lists this year, why promote it with thaty angle? My armchair quarterback advice: relaunch the hype machine in January, where it might have a chance of standing out in the crowd.
stuck on you isn’t doing well…..what has the world come to? Next thing you know people will start rejecting Ben Affleck movies. the horror.