Now that I have recovered from the shock…. I’m not sure about that. I believe that for the amount of pushing and advertising they spent on this they expected a much larger opening. For instance, The Hurt Locker opened the same weekend and I’m certain it didn’t do very well – at least not by these standards. But then, they also didn’t put the cash into pushing it like they did for Bruno. What they lost in production budget they made up for in advertising. It just seems to me that this movie is going to have a very, very rough time breaking $100 million and that would do considerably less than expected.

To be honest, I haven’t actually cared whether or not it is good. It seems to me that regardless of the controversy, the idea is getting old and Cohen should move on to sharing his considerable talents in a more constructive way.

I’m not sure what’s considered reasonable rates of returns in Hollywood anymore, but is ~$50 million really thought of as a bomb? I know the $100 million mark is still the standard the studios hope to break, but were there huge expectations for Bruno? Especially considering that I wouldn’t think the production budget was huge (then again, they probably have several million tucked away for the eventual lawsuits…). I don’t really have any intention of catching the film (I liked parts of Borat, didn’t like other parts, have soured on it since and haven’t revisited it), but I’m just curious…

Fox at Tractor Facts had quite the blistering take on it, but it looks like Ebert liked it. I hope the film is at least clever – ie. Cohen has the improv chops to create good comedy (I seem to remember that my favourite parts to Borat were him reacting to other people). Ebert thought so (though I think he mostly liked the sheer ballsiness of it) but Fox didn’t – his review makes it sound more like a Howard Stern morning show (ie. dull and mean).

I think I’ll stick to plowing through my DVD backlog…B-)
Bob Turnbull´s last blog post ..Basking In The Cesspool Of Filth #11