Moviefone Editorial

Tag: jennifer-lopez

  • The 7 Secret Weapons Behind ‘Home’s’ Astonishing Box Office Success

    rihanna and jim parson in homePoor Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart. Any other week, the estimated $34.6 million opening of their R-rated comedy “Get Hard” would be a huge coup. Instead, they had to settle for coming in a distant second to a surprise kiddie cartoon smash about a little girl and an inept alien.

    “Home,” the fourth film from DreamWorks Animation in little over a year, was supposed to race neck-and-neck at best with “Get Hard.” After all, the film got middling reviews for its relative lack of originality and unlikely voice cast (Jim Parsons and Rihanna?). Plus, it comes from DWA, the anti-Pixar, an animation house known in recent years for oversaturating the market and for costly flops (most recently, “Penguins of Madagascar”). No one expected it to do better than $30 million.

    So how did “Home” manage a stunning debut estimated at $54 million? Maybe its perceived weaknesses were actually strengths. Here are seven secret weapons behind the alien-invasion comedy’s success.

    1. Title Change. “Home” is an awfully generic title. It’s also not the title the property came with. Like many DreamWorks cartoons, it’s based on a children’s book. In this case, it’s Adam Rex’s, “The True Meaning of Smekday.” Normally, studios like to try to keep the titles of book adaptations in order to capitalize on pre-existing brand awareness. In this case, though, it made sense to ditch the title for a much less awkward, more marquee-friendly one. There’s no way a movie with “Smekday” in its name was going to earn $54 million.

    2. Word-of-Mouth. Critics tend to find DreamWorks movies formulaic; they tend to be about outsiders who learn to cooperate in order to save their world. “Home” fits this pattern (the alien even looks like the cute, snaggle-toothed dragon from DWA’s “How to Train Your Dragon” movies), and it borrows from several other familiar kid-meets-alien tales (see below). So it got middling reviews from critics. But kids and families who saw it really liked it and recommended it strongly, as is clear from the A grade it received at CinemaScore.

    3. Familiar Premise. The human-child-befriends-childlike-alien premise has been done before, in movies from “E.T.” to “Lilo & Stitch.” Then again, maybe it helped that the premise was familiar to kids from other well-known family-friendly movies. It may have helped the film overcome the “Smekday” issue of its arcane and eccentric source material.

    4. ‘Toon Drought. Yes, DWA has been flooding the zone over the past year. Still, there hasn’t been a new animated feature in theaters since “The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water” a couple months ago. And there won’t be another until Pixar’s “inside Out” in June. So “Home” was poised to benefit from the lack of direct competition.

    5. Voice Talent. Want to know how to get Rihanna and Jennifer Lopez songs on your movie’s soundtrack? Cast the pop stars as voice actors in the film. Sure, the husky-voiced Rihanna may not be the first choice for the role of a little girl, but suspension of disbelief is a lot easier with a cartoon. Jim Parsons is probably not as well known to kids as his female co-stars (do kids watch “The Big Bang Theory”?) Then again, who better than the performer behind TV nerd-king Sheldon Cooper to play an alien who has trouble communicating with and relating to humans? Plus, the presence of Parsons and Steve Martin in the cast probably reassured a lot of parents that the movie would be funny.

    6. Spring Weather. After months of brutal winter conditions in much of the country, spring finally sprung this weekend, allowing hibernating moviegoers to emerge for the first time in ages. As a result, a rising tide lifted all boats, enabling box office success not just for “Home” but for pretty much every movie currently playing at the multiplex. On the whole, domestic box office was up 16 percent over last week, and the estimated $152.2 million worth of tickets sold was the highest cumulative total since “Fifty Shades of Grey” lured moviegoers out of the cold six weeks ago.

    7. Counterprogramming. The strategy of trying to target a demographic otherwise not served by the weekend’s expected winner — in this case, “Home” aiming at families and young girls while the R-rated “Get Hard” went after adults and young men — hasn’t been too productive lately. Two weekends ago, older, male-oriented action thriller “Run All Night” flopped against younger, girl-oriented “Cinderella,” and last weekend, “The Gunman” repeated the scenario against “Insurgent.” But this weekend, there really was something for all the fair-weather moviegoers to enjoy, so “Home” and “Get Hard” both did well. So did still-strong “Insurgent” and “Cinderella” (this weekend’s No. 3 and No. 4 films), even though both films are attracting some of the same tween-girl audience, and “Cinderella” and “Home” are both big family-oriented movies with an emphasis on girls. Even “It Follows,” the cult horror hit that expanded this weekend from 32 screens to 1,218, performed well, coming in fifth with an estimated $4.0 million, very good for a horror film with no star power or franchise familiarity — and in a week when young women (who make up a preponderance of horror viewers) already had a lot to choose from.

    Even all these reasons aren’t really enough to explain how “Home” managed to open a jaw-dropping $20 million above even the most optimistic projections. Sure, word-of-mouth was great, but the movie was doing well even before that, with strong showings at Thursday night early-bird screenings and robust pre-sales on Fandango. Maybe “Home” was just an incredible fluke. Or maybe there’s some worldwide alien mind-control conspiracy at work…
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  • Best of Late Night TV: ‘American Idol’ Judges Get Overheated, Keith Olbermann Talks Suspension (VIDEO)

    If you’re like us and value your sleep, you probably nodded off into your Ambien dreamland before the party started on post-prime time TV. Don’t worry; we’ve got you covered. Here’s the best of what happened last night on late night.

    “American Idol” judges Jennifer Lopez, Keith Urban, and Harry Connick Jr. were on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” Tuesday night and Jimmy had them try the new Peeps milk. It just looks … like an acquired taste. Jimmy said it tastes like the milk at the bottom of the cereal bowl without having to eat the cereal. Harry sent it through to Hollywood. The trio talked to Jimmy about their different genres of music and the first concerts they ever went to.

    Jimmy also asked the judges a series of questions on the theme of “Who is Most Likely To…” Stay for the end of that video. Harry says JLo gets cold at the “Idol” judges’ table, so she has a heater to warm her feet. Harry said it gets so darn hot under the table that he doesn’t wear pants, and that’s the real reason he doesn’t stand up after a great performance. Haha. He gets really “heated” while making the point, too. Eric Andre was also on JKL, talking about his talk show and his “rom-com on peyote” sitcom called “Man Seeking Women.” Keith Olbermann was on “Late Show with David Letterman” and explained his ESPN suspension. He retweeted the wrong thing and was glad to be told to take a few days off. He re-assessed Twitter and said it’s the first sign that society is disintegrating. (Why, because he was immature? Not everyone uses the forum to lash out.) Keith also talked about Brian Williams, who was recently suspended for different reasons. He’s very sympathetic to Brian and he wants to see him back on the air. Patricia Arquette was on the “Late Show” and talked to Dave about the gender wage equality speech she made at the Oscars and her new show, “CSI: Cyber.” The CSI video has some funny innuendo in the end.
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  • The 10 Most WTF-Worthy Moments From ‘The Boy Next Door’

    the boy next door stars ryan guzman and jennifer lopezThis week Jennifer Lopez stars in “The Boy Next Door,” a suburban psychosexual thriller where Lopez plays a recently separated teacher who has an affair with the (legally of-age) boy next door (Ryan Guzman), only to find her on the receiving end of brutal harassment and some profane graffiti (among other things). This is a movie that is so bad that it eclipse its own awfulness and becomes kind of good again. If I had seen it on opening night, in a packed theater full of screaming, susceptible fans, then I probably would have had the time of my life with it. Instead, I was in a stuffy midtown screening room and while there were certainly jolts of approval from the everyday folks the studio sneaked in, it was hard not to snicker in derision every chance we could.

    If you’re not going to see “Boy Next Door,” or maybe if you already have but want to relive the more painfully WTF-worthy moments from the movie, please follow along.

    SPOILERS, obviously, abound.

    1. The First Ten Minutes
    The first ten minutes of “The Boy Next Door,” overseen by schlocky action filmmaker Rob Cohen (“Dragonheart,” the first “Fast and the Furious,” “XXX”) are so deliriously inept that a colleague leaned over and said, “Is this the actual movie?” It’s an absolute nightmare, full of weird voice over and jarring cuts to either a flashback or a sexual what-if (a la “Eyes Wide Shut”) or maybe both. However you slice it, the opening of this movie certainly sets a precedent for the rest of the movie – the precedent being that this is going to be really awful.

    2. Jennifer Lopez Is the Most Tube-Top-Wearingest High School Teacher Ever
    The movie sets Jennifer Lopez up as this major hard-ass, at least when it comes to her high school literature class. But she also wears an insane amount of tube tops for such a supposedly dowdy profession. (I’m not advocating for stuffy stereotypes to be rigidly reinforced but it just seems at odds with her character, who seems buttoned down and somewhat straight-laced.) This is a character who supposedly threw her husband out for having an affair with a coworker, but allows the camera to linger on her bare thigh as she stares, longingly, out her window. Heterosexual males in the audience will not complain about such leeriness; those who are looking for characters that actually make sense might be displeased.

    3. There’s This Weird Thing With Chocolate Chip Cookies
    At one point Lopez’s you-go-girl best friend and vice principle (played with annoying alertness by Kristin Chenoweth) makes note that her now-ex John Corbett referred to the woman that he was having an affair with as “tasting like chocolate chip cookies.” I’m not sure how this is physiologically possible or what this even means, really, but they refer to it a few times. And each time I gagged a little.

    4. The ‘First Edition’ of the ‘Iliad’
    At one point the already-pushy boy next door drops by to give Lopez a “first edition” of Homer’s “Iliad,” a book that Lopez will be teaching in class that year. She says, “Boy this sure must have been expensive” and he laughs it off as having found it at a garage sale for $1. But wouldn’t a “first edition” of the “Iliad” come from ancient Greece and virtually priceless (and, you know, not written in English or resembling something that you grabbed from the bargain bin at Barnes & Noble?) Anybody who has read “The Iliad” or graduated from a high school-level literature class must have thought, What?!?

    5. At One Point, a High School Bully Picks on a Kid By Making a Turner Classic Movies Joke
    This is 100% true. And then he references “The Wiz,” which I’m pretty sure would never, ever air on the premium cable channel. Do teenagers these days even watch TV?

    6. ‘Bad Cunnilingus Pun’
    I don’t remember what the pun was, but I wrote this down on my notes, so it must have gotten a WTF-worthy reaction out of me, whatever it was. (It goes without saying that this is the kind of movie that you forget about almost as soon as you leave the theater, or even while watching the movie, especially if you’re thinking about other, better movies that are kind of like it.)

    7. Automobile Brakes for Dummies
    At one point, the boy next door gets particularly evil and tampers with the breaks of John Corbett’s sick ride. He’s out driving with his son (Ian Nelson) and they seem to be cruising for a little while when — all of a sudden! — the brakes go out, leading to a pretty dull little action scene (seriously, this guy directed the first “Fast and Furious”?) but more to the point, makes insanely little sense. Why would the brakes give out then, and not during the rest of the drive? And why would the boy next door, even if he’s outright evil and sleeps in a weird psychosexual dungeon underneath his uncle’s house, keep a file on his computer pertaining to the brakes of that car (and the car of his parents – who were also mysteriously killed!) I mean part of being a creepy evil stalker is covering your tracks. Come on man!

    8. Jennifer Lopez Gets Rid of Evidence Very Quickly
    At one point, “the boy next door” (no, his name isn’t important) rigs Lopez’s printer to endlessly dispense photos of them making love (wait what?) and has also wallpapered her entire room with the same photo. (Yes, he’s so creepy he filmed their banging!) Not only does Lopez get rid of all of the evidence rather quickly, she seems to just leave the crumpled up images in her trashcan, leaving the obvious question: What if one of her students wants to, like, throw something away? Oh well, no matter!

    9. A Girl Is Referred to as ‘The Most Beautiful Girl in School’
    Nelson plays Lopez’s dweeby son, a kid who is afflicted by a mysterious allergy that nearly kills him in every other scene and who looks like he’s several decades from actually hitting puberty. But he refers to a girl that he and the boy next door run into as “the most beautiful girl in school,” which is just painful and seemingly left over from some sub-John Hughes romantic comedy of the mid-’80s. What’s worse is that he refers to her as that again. Oh, and then to show how evil he is, the boy next door has sex with this same girl (she gets completely naked and is supposed to be a high school junior, which is another level of WTF that I don’t even want to get into) while Lopez watches. That dog!

    10. The Entire Climax
    Where to begin… The climax of “The Boy Next Door” is set in a barn, which is a weird place to set a movie otherwise concerned with the darkness dwelling just underneath the surface of suburban genteelness. It also involves, in no particular order: a fire, Kristin Chenoweth getting her throat slit (off-camera, of course, even though the movie is rated R), Corbett getting tied up, and the boy next door getting stabbed in the eye, in graphic detail, by one of the allergy pens the son uses to combat his mysterious illness. There is so much happening, while at the same time so little actually being conveyed, that it’s almost profound.

    “The Boy Next Door” is in theaters nationwide.
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  • Ryan Guzman Facts: 11 Things You (Probably) Don’t Know About the ‘Boy Next Door’ Star

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    Ryan Guzman has stepped into his role as the boy next door.

    After getting his start modeling in Northern California, the young star moved south to take on Hollywood. Between becoming the face of the “Pretty Little Liars,” you could say he’s done alright. This month, the actor stars opposite Jennifer Lopez in the steamy thriller “The Boy Next Door.”

    Here’s 11 things you (probably) don’t know about Ryan Guzman.
    [Sources: The Wrap, IMDb]

  • Best of Late Night TV: Jennifer Aniston’s Lip Flip and Jennifer Lopez’s Gigli Shade (VIDEO)


    If you’re like us and value your sleep, you probably nodded off into your Ambien dreamland before the party started on post-prime time TV. Don’t worry; we’ve got you covered. Here’s the best of what happened last night on late night.

    Time for a game of Lip Flip on “The Tonight Show!” This week’s victim of lip switcheroo goodness was none other than Jennifer Aniston, who totally killed it. Her Jimmy-induced musings on Bonnaroo will forever be etched in our memories.

    Lea Michele sang “Let It Go” during a recent episode of “Glee,” and yes, she sounded amazing. She also told Jimmy Kimmel that she vomited everywhere while performing it. So, you know. Good times. (Note: musings on vomit start around 1.5 minutes in.)

    In other news, Dr. Drew Pinsky also stopped by “Jimmy Kimmel Live” to fondle some footballs and explain how you (yes, you!) can determine if you’re suffering from “deflated balls.”

    Jennifer Lopez visited “Late Night” to talk about “The Boy Next Door,” but more importantly she talked about “Gigli,” otherwise known as The World’s Worst Movie –– though Jenny From The Block insists that “there are worst movies than Gigli out there.” Oh, and in this clip J.Lo also reacts to the news that Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” was inspired by her. Let’s just say she seems unimpressed.
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  • Best of Late Night TV: Jennifer Lopez’s Controversial ‘Catchphrase,’ Benedict Cumberbatch’s New Names (VIDEO)

    If you’re like us and value your sleep, you probably nodded off into your Ambien dreamland before the party started on post-prime time TV. Don’t worry; we’ve got you covered. Here’s the best of what happened last night on late night.

    Jennifer Lopez was on “The Tonight Show” Monday night, and a couple of interesting things happened. For one, she and Jimmy Fallon played “Catchphrase” opposite actor Anthony Mackie and comedian Steve Higgins. They were all pretty amazing, and ultra competitive, although there were a few uncalled cheating incidents for the winning side. Just saying. (JLo, you were robbed.) That’s a key discussion in the comments, if you click on the video – that and the distraction powers of JLo’s own bottom line. The fans noticed. But still, it was a great game to watch and it’s not like anyone deflated a football or anything. (Too soon?) “That was the best round of the game that I’ve ever played in my life,” Jimmy insisted, once the lightning-fast first round was over. This is a sharp-minded group, controversial non-calls or not.
    Also, in her sit-down interview, JLo talked about her live show, and discussed that her mother won a $2.4 million jackpot in the slot machines in Atlantic City. Seriously. Slot machines! This was a while ago, but if anyone didn’t need to just win the lottery it’s the mother of Jennifer Lopez. Spread the wealth, casino gods! Rob Lowe was on “Conan” and he shared memories from shooting “The Lyon’s Den” next to a dildo factory. (True story, Andy Richter was there too.) Rob also shared tips on never aging (he’s 50!), and did a live reading of James Franco’s poetry, since James did live readings from Rob’s first book in front of monuments. Rob still doesn’t know why James did it. No one really gets Franco. Jay Baruchel was also on “Conan,” insisting he’s not always super-high, but he has always had confidence in his looks. His mom raised him to believe he’s a catch! Danny DeVito was on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” and he talked about how he got his role in “Taxi” and what’s next for him on “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” They’re in their 10th season of “Sunny” and Danny just loves it. He talks up a Wade Boggs storyline. On a different note, it turns out both Danny and Jimmy were altar boys and they shared stories. Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer of “Broad City” dressed up for “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” looking very “Dumb & Dumber” in their colorful tuxes. They discussed details from their Comedy Central show. Jimmy guest hosted “The Bachelor” this week, and he shared a “deleted scene” from when Chris Harrison trained him on how to announce the final rose.
    Jimmy Kimmel thinks Benedict Cumberbatch has the best name in the world, but Jimmy was curious to see if he’d be as amazing with a different name. Cue this video with Benedict trying new names. “George Costanza” just doesn’t work for him, for some reason. But seriously, this is amazing.
    Don Cheadle was on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” and he talked about hanging out with “The Avengers” cast. They also shared an early clip from his career. Ruth Wilson, who just won a Golden Globe for “The Affair,” was also on “Late Night,” discussing her theater school horror stories, including clown training.

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  • Golden Globe Awards 2015: Most Feminist Ever?

    72nd Annual Golden Globe Awards - ArrivalsJane Fonda and Lily Tomlin pretty much summed up the tone of the 2015 Golden Globe Awards when presenting the award for Best Actor In A Television Series – Comedy Or Musical. Jane quipped that it was great that men were finally getting the comedy recognition they deserved, with Lily slinging the zinger, “We can finally put to rest the negative stereotype that men aren’t funny.” Yep, they’ve come a long way, baby!

    Hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler set that smart-aleck tone for (cringe if you must) “feminism” and “female empowerment” from the monologue onward, as they have done in the past. But this year it felt like more presenters and winners picked up the baton, making more inspiring speeches to honor women – without making it seem like male-bashing or just empty words.

    Tina and Amy joked in their monologue about the irony of George Clooney getting a lifetime achievement award as a Hollywood celebrity, when his wife Amal – a lawyer and human rights activist – has a much longer list of impressive accomplishments. (In his speech, George honored Amal, saying he was so proud to be her husband.)
    72nd Annual Golden Globe Awards - ShowAlso in the monologue, Amy joked that the movie “Boyhood” “proves there are still good roles for women over 40, as long as you get hired when you’re under 40.” The starring woman in question, Patricia Arquette, won the supporting actress award; in her speech she thanked director Richard Linklater for “shining a light” on her character, an underappreciated single mother, “and the many women like her, and for allowing me to honor my own mother with this incredible character.” In that case, it was acknowledged that a male writer took the time to spotlight a female character, since it’s not about men vs. women, it’s just about stories worth seeing.

    Amy Adams won the best comedy or musical award for “Big Eyes,” and she thanked her actress peers for being such good role models for her 4-year-old daughter, Aviana. “You speak to her so loudly,” Amy said. “She watches everything and sees everything and I am so grateful for all of you women in this room who have such a lovely beautiful voice and are speaking to my daughter.” Maggie Gyllenhaal, who won best actress in a miniseries or TV movie for “The Honorable Woman,” also spoke out in gratitude for the influx of roles for actual women; she also gave a shout-out to her husband, actor Peter Sarsgaard, calling him “a lover of complicated women.” In her best actress in a drama speech, Julianne Moore mentioned how her film “Still Alice” was shot down originally because she was told no one wanted to see a film about a middle-aged woman. But now she’s basically the Oscar frontrunner for that lead role.

    So it’s no wonder the Internet took notice when Jeremy Renner made a joke about Jennifer Lopez‘s “Golden Globes”:

    It was a harmless joke overall, but it felt tacky and stale in the context of the overall event. (Then again, Renner is a dude and we know the stereotype about how they’re not that funny.)

    Did you also feel a more feminist shift in this last (supposedly) Tina and Amy show, or do you feel like Tina and Fey let feminists down with a Bill Cosby joke that some considered to be “a rape joke” at the expense of rape victims?
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