ComingSoon.net - The Weekend Warrior

The Weekend Warrior's predictions and analysis of the box office for the upcoming weekend.

• The Forbidden Kingdom: first place, $19.4m, 3000 theaters, 73% positive reviews. Jackie Chan meets Jet Li in a family fantasy picture.
  
• Forgetting Sarah Marshall: second place, $15.8m, 2700 theaters, 88% positive reviews. Judd Apatow's newest comedy production, written by and starring actor Jason Segel, about a guy trying to recover from a bad break-up.
  
• 88 Minutes: fourth place, $9.3m, 2000 theaters, 22% positive reviews. This is a re-tread Al Pacino movie that was released on DVD in South America more than a year ago and in many parts of Europe last year. It was originally finished in 2005 and was slated to be released in the USA in 2006. After a screening for Warner execs, the cast was called back for re-shoots, and it was re-edited, but the film continued to languish in distributor limbo. I saw it nearly two years ago and it may be very different now, but the version I saw was watchable only because of Pacino's presence, and even then only barely so. It was still riddled with amateurish mistakes like obvious continuity errors. Without Pacino it would be a typical straight-to-vid thriller and absolutely nothing more. Many critics liked it even less than I did. Reel Film called it "shockingly inept from start to finish." Variety's critic said that it was the worst film in Pacino's filmography, which obviously means that he hasn't see Gigli.