Weekend Box Office Results for February 10-12, 2012

Weekend Box Office Results for February 10-12, 2012

Valentine's Day weekend is usually a good one for the box office, and this one was no exception. The new movies all put up satisfactory numbers, despite the fact that they are all mediocre films at best (The range at Rotten Tomatoes is 27%-57%).

• Safe House took in about $40 million, far more than expected - and finished second!
  
• The Vow took the top spot, performing just slightly better than Safe House.
  
• Journey 2 was a very strong third with $27 million, about 50% better than expected.
  
• The Phantom Menace 3-D re-release didn't fare as well as the others, but still took in more than expected ($23M).
  

All four of those films finished among the top 30 February openings of all time!

NOTE: I should note, in all fairness, that movie-goers have rated these films much higher than did the critics.

Safe House received a wishy-washy 53% from critics, but is rated a very solid 7.2 at IMDb and was rated A- in the CinemaScore ratings. Critics commented that it was an excellent example of superb execution applied to a tired set of ideas. Moviegoers focused on the superb execution and seemed to have had a good time.

The critics raked The Vow over the coals (27%), and the CinemaScore rating was a tepid B, but the IMDb rating is a respectable 6.7, which is higher than one of the Oscar nominees! You don't have to look very deep to find an explanation for that score, or for the film's success at the box office. The film is rated 6.0 by guys and 8.2 by women, putting it in the chick-flick stratosphere. We define a chick-flick as one in which female rating is a point higher than the male rating, or at least somewhere close to that figure. A discrepancy of even one point is rare. A two-point difference was unheard of until very recently. For years, the all-time highest discrepancy between male and female ratings was around 1.6 (Dirty Dancing). Then those Twilight movies came along and changed everything. Some in the Twilight series still score higher on this scale than The Vow, but when the final numbers shake out, The Vow has a chance to be the all-time chick-flick. The most dramatic proof of that is the fact that it is rated an unearthly 9.5 by females under 18!

Journey 2 (6.3) and The Phantom Menace (6.9) also have respectable IMDb scores, and Journey 2 also received a surprisingly high A- from CinemaScore reviewers.