So this weekend shows how little I know about the box office. Dreamworks Home was a huge hit at theaters making 54 million and ending up 1 by a long shot over the comedy Get Hard that brought in 34.
To say I’m surprised would be an understatement. To me Home was at best forgettable and the kids in my theater didn’t seem engaged at all. It’s bright and colorful but saddled with a predictable story and inconsistent characters. Maybe I’ve just seen too many movies because everything felt like a retread of better films and I was left asking a lot of questions about how this world could possibly work. If I’m thinking about all the plot holes than it is usually a bad sign. Plus, the voicecasting I thought was way off. Worst of all it didn’t make me laugh. Not one laugh.
Most critics were a little kinder than me but even the positive reviews said it wasn’t a classic, kind of forgettable. The fact it made more than How to Train Your Dragon 2 opening weekend is a huge surprise. But then again Maleficent was a huge hit and I thought that was total crap so what do I know?
That said, I’m thrilled for Dreamworks. They definitely needed a hit so good for them. It makes no sense to me but neither did Birdman winning Best Picture so who knows?
Why do you guys think Home did so well? What did Dreamworks do right with this release? It still has a huge budget to overcome so it may not help Dreamworks as much as it should but we will see.
I’d venture to guess maybe because there were trailers for it on a bunch of other films, it had Jim Parsons in the film, and the fact that most of the songs were original helped make the film successful. But I could be wrong, I suppose.
I’m sure those are all good reasons and it is bright and colorful. I wonder how long it will last
Hopefully long enough for it to be successful to the point of not facing as high of a risk of the company shutting down sooner or later.
Hopefully
I thinking people see a colorful animated kids movie with Jim Parsons and they figure it will be cute. And there wasn’t much competition for the younger age group.