Did Fox hold responsibility for knocking The X-Files out of the box (office) by scheduling a Dr. Dolittle appointment just a week after releasing the X? Could be. The X-Files‘ third place finish wasn’t a big surprise, but its 55 percent drop-off (to $13.5 million) was. On the sunny side for Fox, Dolittle’s $29 mllion start was surprisingly strong. When’s the last time Eddie Murphy held the top two spots on the box office chart? (Answer: Never, but this is quite an acheivement.) Perhaps The Nutty Professor goodwill held over, past Metro and to the Doctor. In any case, $29 million has got to be a victory for the Fox team. Mulan fell just 24 percent and should be around for the long run this summer. Another film that I expect to have legs for days is Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight. It did just $12.9 million this weekend for fourth place, but look for the film to linger all the way to Labor Day as people discover it for themselves. In fifth, The Truman Show grabbed another $8.6 million, dropping 31 percent, leaving the film just a few hundred thousand from the $100 million mark. Look for that milestone on Monday, whether by earnings or an increase from the Sunday estimate.
The second five was pretty much standard issue, except for the fact that Gone With the Wind didn’t crack the Top 10. Six Days, Seven Nights took sixth with just a 29 percent drop and $7.6 million, which is a good drop for that film. A Perfect Murder stole another $5.4 million as it passed the $50 million mark. Hope Floats and Can’t Hardly Wait tied at eighth and ninth (as predicted) with $2.2 million ($200,000 better than I projected. My apologies.) And with Gone With the Wind caught in the jetstream, The Horse Whisperer stayed in the Top 10 (just barely), falling just 26 percent to $1.9 million in its seventh weekend on its way to about $75 million domestically.
THE GOOD: I can’t really say enough about Out of Sight. I saw Saving Private Ryan this weekend and as good as it is, I would say that Out of Sight is odds-on favorite to be the most important film of the summer of 1998. And when I say important, I don’t mean stodgy. I mean, this film could change the way we see cinema. Ironically, in some ways, it’s a step back to the ’70s, but Steven Soderbergh, a director who most film lovers expected a whole lot from since Sex, Lies and Videotape, just delivered on that promise. Much like Woody Allen finally put it all together with Crimes and Misdemeanors. More on this film on Wednesday as I Rant & Rave.
THE BAD: I hate to speak ill of Eddie Murphy when he’s having such a good week at the box office, so I’ll let the very funny Michael Musto of The Village Voice speak for me: “Speaking of dragging away, I love how Eddie Murphy‘s hoping to downplay that driving-the-drag-‘ho, I mean home, incident as he promotes various ‘family films,’ but in Mulan, aka Yentl Chow Mein, he’s the voice of the dragon (or is it draggin’?) whose main goal is to get the cross-dresser home!”
THE UGLY: Saving Private Ryan is every bit as violent as reports have said it is. The first WWII sequence is so violent that it’s real. It’s so violent that audiences won’t be able to stop squirming in their seats. It’s so violent that Tom Hanks told us that Spielberg was doing it on purpose so that after experiencing the sequence you couldn’t help but to see the rest of the film through different eyes than you walked into the theater with. It works. Brilliantly.
THE BEYOND CONTEST: Look for the winner’s entries on Thursday.
THIS WEEK’S SCHEDULE: I’m in West Virginia at the Fox junkets for Ever After and There’s Something About Mary. In order to give you the best coverage, The Hot Button will be updating by 12:00 p.m. EST on Tuesday. Wednesday, it’s back to the regular 5:00 a.m. EST update.
TWO MOVIES EQUAL: Out of Sight + Dr. Dolittle = Out of Dr. Dolittle. The lighthearted family comedy about what happens when a group of talking animals decides to make clothes out of a human doctor. Enjoy the hilarity as the animals finally get a little payback. With George Clooney as Dr. Doug (which would have made him next on the alphabetical list of victims). And a special appearance by Meryl Streep as Karen Blixen.
JUST WONDERING: Do divorces, sexual escapades and drug issues really effect how you see movie actors, or is it really just none of our business?
BAD AD WATCH: Did I mention that Armageddon is using Ron Brewington‘s “Wow!” as its lead quote? Maybe that’s why Demi left.
READER OF THE DAY: Ryan writes: “Do ‘they’ believe that people who appreciate films only live in New York or L.A.? I would have given anything to have seen James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause in 70 feet of living color. Or how about Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun? I just saw Gone With the Wind. At least that was a little wider of a release. I also got to see Grease on a big screen, and I saw a lot of things I never noticed on video. Movies were meant for the big screen. I wish there were more revival houses that showed classics the way they were meant to be seen. I would love to see stuff like The Godfather and The Sound of Music on a big screen. Can you really appreciate David Lean on anything less? What could be better than watching Chaplin, Keaton or Valentino the way audiences did over 70 years ago? And though I will buy Titanic on home video, it can never be the same as it was on a big screen. There’s something about a dark theater with a screen larger than life. Home video is distracting — it’s all too easy to wander away from what’s going on. In a theater, you’re compelled to watch what’s on the screen. In a theater, you’re pulled into the movie, and for a couple of hours there is nothing else. I wish there were theaters across the country that specialized in these things. I know I’m not the only one who would pay for this.”

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