Back during my overview of the summer movie season, I pegged June 15th as the first weekend when audiences will stay away in droves. "Shockingly", I was right on the money. Both Rock of Ages and That's My Boy suffered very weak returns, each getting barely close to or less than $15 million, according to Box Office Mojo.
Of course, this has caused some concern over the bankability of both Tom Cruise and Adam Sandler. Spin, of course, is the name of the game in Hollywood, as multiple reasons for the failures have been piling out. Cruise is an action star, first and foremost (True, but people have been watching him regardless of genre). Cruise wasn't featured enough to sell the picture (Absolute lie). Sandler is a family movie star (A fib, considering his films have mostly been PG-13). It was the R rating (Did that hurt The Hangover films?). Etc, etc.
The only one who is going to walk away from this mess with better standings is Cruise. Though I haven't seen the film, the reviews for Rock of Ages have singled him as the only saving grace to the picture. Though Cruise has ruined some of his image thanks to his personal beliefs in Scientology, he has been keeping up his acting skills to many raves, though I did find him annoying and visibly too old in Knight and Day. Also, he'll get more press later on with a new franchise to jump-start this winter with Jack Reacher, a flick based on the popular Lee Child book series.
As for Sandler, where to start?
2011 was not a good year for Adam Sandler. He had two films, Just Go With It and Jack and Jill, that were much loathed with the critics, though it did get the suckers into the theaters. He also produced two other films, Zookeeper and Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star, that were just as worst or some how far below the previous two's standards. This year, he won multiple Razzie awards for practically all of them. His Happy Madison Productions has become a laughing stock and constant punchline, especially since they will be crafting films from the Tonka Truck toys and the board game Candyland (guess they didn't notice what happened to Battleship?). There has been a steady decline in his fans, with this film as proof. Maybe going all out with a comedy that touches upon statutory rape of all things wasn't the smartest thing to do, especially since his next endeavor is an animated kids' film.
Honestly, I do still like the guy, thanks mainly to his earlier films and experimenting in a few dramas. But I have severely fallen out of favor with his work, starting with the utter abhorrence of Big Daddy. I still haven't seen the film Funny People, where he essentially plays himself, mocking the crass he has been doing for far too long now, which are featured in too close for comfort parodies. It is too bad that he couldn't see his reflection in that and do something about it, hence why we have all been suffering since then.
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