No Speed Racer

By Evan Kessler

Well, I don't want to brag, but I'm going to say, "I told you so" as Iron Man raked in another solid $50 million last weekend. I know I cast a wide net by predicting $40-65 million, but we can't all be Nostradamous. Alas, the Summer blockbuster is alive and well and you might even say "thriving" in 2008.

While I wasn't surprised by Speed Racer's $20.2 million dollar second place take last weekend, I was completely flummoxed by Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz's ability to pull in $20 million dollars with Stupid Movie… Oh wait, that wasn't the title? I thought it was produced by the same people who did Superhero Movie and Date Movie.

Oh well. I guess I'll have to attribute that to the "oh it's sold out, we'll just go see whatever the hell else is playing" school of thought that most non-discerning moviegoers faithfully cling to. I think we've all fallen victim to that once or twice, the last time I remember doing that was when I went to see that movie Boys and Girls starring Jason Biggs and Claire Forlani about ten years back, though to be fair I sort of knew what I was getting into as I had a monster crush on Forlani dating back to Mallrats.

In any case, moviegoers will be moviegoers and hopefully they'll learn the errors of their ways. Either way, I think the success of Iron Man should assist in padding the pockets of several other studios thanks to this method of box office deflection. Who knows, maybe next year around this time someone will have earned enough money to place Ashton Kutcher in a movie where he's a likeable Superhero, though that would require plenty of CGI magic.

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