New Movies In Theaters This Week - Rotten Tomatoes

New Movies In Theaters This Week - Rotten Tomatoes

The movie industry usually uses Oscar weekend, when movie buffs stay home and watch TV, as a dumping ground for leftovers.

Tyler Perry's Good Deeds (PG-13), the first of his sixty three movies this year, is expected to take first place at the box office, but with a tepid gross just below $20M in about 2100 theaters. This film was not pre-screened for critics, but the one critic who saw it was harsh: "A melodramatic slog riddled with laughable dialogue that wouldn't hold a made-for-TV-movie audience past the first commercial break."

Although it will be in 3000+ theaters, Act of Valor is expected to finish a couple million smackers behind the Tyler Perry film, which will only be in about 2/3 as many venues. Act of Valor is an R-rated action film re-creating some real-life adventures of Navy Seals, using real Seals. Only 21% of the reviews were positive, and some reviewers said it was laughably awful: "One puppet Matt Damon cameo away from a Team America: World Police sequel."

Wanderlust (2000 theaters), the R-rated Jennifer Aniston comedy for which she did a topless scene, then asked it to be removed from the final cut, received surprisingly good reviews (64% positive), but is still expected to struggle at the box office, finishing with about $10M. That presumably will not be good enough to finish much higher than sixth.

The Amanda Seyfried thriller, Gone (PG-13), is expected to be a nuclear bomb, and was not submitted to critics in preview screenings. The only review says, "Gone is a mystery/thriller that is neither mysterious nor thrilling and proves Amanda Seyfried is quite a ways off at becoming a leading lady of quality entertainment." It will be in 2200 theaters or more, but is expected to gross in the neighborhood of $6 million, which is a very impoverished neighborhood indeed. It will struggle to make the top ten.

So there ya go. If you believe the critics, your best and only respectable choice is an Aniston comedy. Because so many people say it is quite funny, I would have gone to see it if she hadn't pulled her shenanigans with that topless scene, which was actually in some pre-theatrical screenings. Now there is a better chance that I will spend the weekend watching a Kardashian marathon or the complete boxed set of "My Name is Earl."