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Two points about this weekend's mystifying Love Guru/Get Smart cage fight.

1) Myers has been popping up EVERYWHERE to plug LG, and that "Mariska Hargitay" thing drops like a LEAD BALLOON each and every time, whether it's Kimmel or AI; Also, his Today show appearance at least consisted of him dropping Chopra-esque self-improvement bromides with absolutely zero irony.

That said, I think GURU is gonna be bigger than we suspect; The tracking can't take into account small children. I don't care how bawdy or ribald the content, the ads show Myers in a goofy wig and costume and Verne Troyer doing slapstick.

Take a trek out to ANY theater in L.A. Saturday afternoon, and you'll see future Parents of the Year dragging along their brood of 2-to-14-years-olds, the kids cackling alongside their folks throughout, even though neither parent or child will likely "understand" half the "humor." Sort of a weird herd mentality thing, like the Austin Powers movies, where a theater full of 13-year-old kids suddenly "gets" references to the Mod era and "Blow-Up."

2) Does "Get Smart" in actuality look as wan, gray, black and murky as its trailers and spots? While I'm thrilled that for once a '00s comedy ISN'T shot in that sickly pastel filter with the cream flesh tones and baby blues (see Charlie Wilson, You Me Dupree, Sarah Marshall)... this thing looks like a Len Wiseman movie. Is the entire movie shot in a soot-hazed furnace?

Any retarded parents who take their small kids to this movie on Friday will probably think that urine jokes and the sight of 2 elephants fucking MIGHT not be in the best interest of children, and thus will tell their friends to not see this piece of crap on Saturday. I think Get Smart can reach high 30s. What are the predictions based on tracking?

I haven't been watching a lot of TV this week, can someone explain "Mariska Hargitay" to me or do I need to wait until it appears in American Cinematographer?

It's "Guru Pitka's" greeting.

Because, yeah, I guess the actress' name kinda sounds kind of like it would be an Indian guru's mantra.

Hilarity.

Aris, I regularly see parents taking their kids to ALL manner of unbelievable, hard-R shit, so I doubt a urine joke in a Mike Myers movie will even give them one second of pause.

My editor at Film Threat, Mark Bell, caught GET SMART last Sunday at CineVegas and he was stunned at how good it was. The trailers and clips made me decide to sleep in and not attend. Plus, Anne Hathaway wasn't there.

I still don't get the scheduling of these two films against one another and then later in the summer Tropic Thunder and Pineapple Express come out within a week of one another. Couldn't one of these PG-13 comedies trade places with one of those R comedies? At least that way, they would be appealing to different audiences in their respective weeks.

The word on Get Smart has been better than expected and The Love Guru is sounding like a disaster. Either way, neither will do the business that either could have done if they hadn't opened on the same day.

Wanted to take a minute to mourn the death of a great original film site, movies.com, taken over by corporate hacks at Fandango this week. Movies.com employed one of the wittiest critics out there, Dave White, had a ton of original features over the years, and consistently had the earliest scoop on upcoming movie projects. (they put IMDB and Pajiba's Daily Trade Round-Up to shame)

Not only did Fandango stripmine the site completely without almost no warning to its thousands of daily users, they did not allow for any user comments on Mr. White's Final Column, and had the gall to use a recycled column for their other site columnist and attempted to pass it off as new...again allowing no user comments. In fact, they managed to disable all user comments PERIOD from the site in its final week.

I'm not a fandango customer, but I urge you all to boycott the site and use Movie-tickets.com in the future.

Archive of Mr. White's reviews, alas his more witty columns were not archived:

http://www.movies.com/ReviewsArchiveIndex.aspx

RIP movies.com

Fuck you Fandango...and your cheap little puppets.

-Ethan

The new Burn After Reading trailer:

http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-us&vid=773e4d84-c478-46bf-8b04-99089bba3a75

Honestly, I want to see this movie more than...anything. I can't think of another movie besides Wall-E that looks this unbelievable.

Why are these two very similarly assimilated expensive summer comedies coming out the same day? EGO.

I'm assuming the studios' (not the stars). Set it and if one of them moved (either before or after the date) it'd look bad. Almost like a game of chicken.

They both look pretty bad. Get Smart looks slightly less terrible and the cast looks more appealing. But i'm going to skip both.

Get Smart is out tracking Love Guru by an almost 2-to-1 margin....fyi.

As mentioned above, though, Love Guru is probably doing better with kids, and tracking isn't picking that up.

Hathaway versus Alba = MAJOR OWNAGE.

THE HOTNESS. KNOW.

True...but I also think kids are going to go for Panda or wait for Wall-E...those of us who grew up with Austin Powers, I can say have pretty much moved on, and will spring for Wanted the following weekend. (at least I hope)

I would think the "guru" referencing is above most kids' heads...Myers is going to have to rely on Jessica Alba, JT and Jessica Simpson to get people in theatres. I just don't see it happening honestly...

Wait, Jessica SIMPSON is also in LOVE GURU???

That qualifies as a spoiler (of the most awesome kind) for me.

Based on what I have seen on television and the web anyone who actually pays to see Love Guru in the theater gets EXACTLY what he/she deserves....
Why take the kids to see that when you can take them to see Kung Fu Panda or Iron Man(well probably for the second time)...
I didn't look forward to Get Smart until the newest trailer and commercials....I am alittle shocked that they didn't promote The Rock more in the ads...They will miss 40 million by THAT MUCH....

Thanks for posting the link, Rothchild. I was already hooked even before I saw David Rasche, but that sealed it. Those beautiful bastards put Sledge Hammer back on the beat! And they have earned my undying love for it.

ethan, ditto about the demise of movies.com, i've been having a look there for years and got a fright when i went there yesterday, it looks just like a bunch of other sites now, bland and blah. i won't even bother going there now. i liked mike's buzz bin. bummer

Sucks about Movies.com, but in good movie web news, Mr. Beaks aka Jeremy Smith is back at AICN:

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/37137

I thought "Get Smart" was mildly (only mildly) amusing, and 20 minutes too long. But my preview audience--all ages/demographics--ate it up. Not that we need another movie "franchise," but this thing may very well surprise us all.
"Love Guru" is practically unwatchable, though. Pray that it dies a quick, and deserved death, at the box office.
"Nacho Libre" is "Napoleon Dynamite" compared with this sludge.
The most pleasant surprise of the week for me was "Wanted." I wasn't a big fan--hell, I wasn't a fan period--of either Bekmambetov "Watch" movie, but his first H'wood flick kicks major ass. It's the most enjoyable and flat-out satisfying action pic I've seen this year so far. Anyone who's written it off just because McAvoy is an unproven b.o. draw could be eating major crow before summer's over. I smell definite sleeper potential. here.
Finally caught up with "Reprise," and it totally lived up to the hype. Brilliant movie: try and catch it if it's playing anywhere near you.
And I very much liked two of my Netflix dvds this week: "Chaos Theory" (despite a wobbly beginning, this is nearly as good a rom-dramedy as Ryan Reynolds' "Definitely, Maybe" from earlier this year) and "Joy Division" which is as fine a rock-doc as any I've seen in recent years. Too bad Weinstein shelved it after "Control" (another great J-D movie) bombed.

Movieman, is it just the Get Smart trailers that have that dusky black industrial haze, or is the whole movie that grungy looking?

I'm predicting Guru will surprise and do 30.

I'll have to see it for ALBA, even if it is her last pre-hausfrau film role.

Love Guru was at 12% on RT last I checked. I know it'll make money, but damn. It would seem that Mike Myers is following the Dana Carvey career path at this point. All wacky costumes and funny voices and little real humor.

How can something be"20 minutes too long?" I see that complaint alot and don't get it. I mean....20 mins? Too long? Unless you have to pee or something...

On movies.com yeah...the face they had the gall to pretend the final buzz bin column was new material, when instead they recycled a past column....absolutely damning. Why would you take over a site and destroy all of the existing content and alienate the fan base it's cultivated? Unbelievable.

"Finally caught up with "Reprise," and it totally lived up to the hype. Brilliant movie: try and catch it if it's playing anywhere near you."

Reprise showed up in my mailbox today - it's already out on DVD here - and can't wait to watch it after the superlative things I've head. It'll have to wait until after the w/e though.

LexG, back as if he never even left. How depressing. Now that Alba is going to turn into a majorly fat dog ugly "hausfrau" will you stop talking about her? Mothers are just so repulsive, huh?

I still think Get Smart will do pretty good. It's broad and obvious, but judging by a lot of the comedies that have been hits lately, that's exactly what people want. And people prefer Carell/Hathaway to Myers/Alba.

It is my observation that Get Smart has many, many commercials running on all the children's TV networks; Love Guru not so much (if at all).

plus it has steve c., whom i fancy like there's no tomorrow...i have the worst crush on him in 'little miss sunshine' (his running style when going after the veedub van is so hilarious)

leah -- this is so obnoxious but i can't resist because you're a fan.....steve c. lives in my neighborhood and i see him and the kids often at the market (gelson's in studio city).....

NO WAY!!!! scoot, you are my housing location idol

aww, steve, i bet he's a great dad...i saw him on letterman last night and he seems quite the family man...sigh

Lex- "Get Smart" actually looks a lot better than you might have guessed from the trailer. In fact, for a movie directed by the guy who did "Tommy Boy" (Peter Segal), it's surprisingly stylish. Go figure, huh?
Most movies these days are too long, Don. And comedies that gild the lily are particularly (brevity is the soul of wit and all that). After the same joke(s) get repeated 20-odd times, it becomes more exhausting/draining than funny. And yeah, I've got a peanut-sized bladder and usually need to take a ferocious piss mid-movie if I'm not feeling it. I smiled a lot during "Get Smart," but only laughed
out loud once or twice.

...I intended that to read "particularly (brevity is the soul of wit and all that) irksome"....

I'm not a fandango customer, but I urge you all to boycott the site and use Movie-tickets.com in the future.

Regal and Carmike -- 2 big US theater chains -- have their showtimes powered by Fandango.

Loews (owned by AMC) is also on Fandango though that will likely change by the end of the year.

Here's the non-pressing question of the day...

What happened to JOSH LUCAS, A-LIST LEADING MAN?

I'm actually a pretty big fan of the guy, who can go back and forth between straightforward leading man and super-smarmy/sleazy character maniac; I guess his best work has been in the latter, but for a while there he was working up to being the New McConaughey.

Did "Stealth" and "Poseidon" coming exactly one summer apart, back-to-back, really take him out of the running for those kinds of pictures? I would argue those were both pretty actor-proof (the plane and wave being the alleged main attraction), and that he had bigger-name co-stars sharing the spotlight anyway. And wasn't "Glory Road" kind of a hit? And given Hollywood logic, he should get some credit for "Sweet Home Alabama."

I don't know, just checking his IMDB, looks like he hasn't been in a released movie in over two years now; Some projects lined up but most seem to be smaller, character-based movies.

Put JOSH LUCAS BACK ON THE A-LIST.

Who?

I kid. But the man really has no business being a leading man. He lacks starpower, by which I mean that intangible on-screen charisma that compels one to want to look at him whenever he's onscreen.

i'm still waiting for the movie in which matthew mcconahoweveryouspellit slowly mutates into josh lucas, who then morphs into cole hauser. now there's a moneyspinner for ya

Fantasy Moguls is now being linked by Drudge.....ooooooh, what did Nikki do to upset the big bad Drudge??

Get Smart made $15 million, yesterday - very good, will definitely be the biggest opening of his career, probably around $45 million.

Hulk dropped big, but probably not as big as the last one - Universal still shot themselves in the foot on the legs for this one (legs and foot, how clever) but opening both Wanted and Hellboy within the first month. It will probably do a bit better than the last one, overall.

Happening is dying, of course - could it set a record for the lowest overall gross for a $30 million opener? I think The Village might have pulled that off for a $50 million opener.

Love Guru tanked at $5 million - embarassed to say that just a few months ago (before the trailer came out), I actually had this making $150 million, just based on the wait from Mike Myers. Oh, well.

Indy is now assured of $300 million, but Iron Man could still beat it, hopefully.

Panda looks to do another $20 million, this weekend, and is now assured of $200 million.

Leah!! I have a crush on Steve Carell too! I've always found it strange, but he has total DILF qualities :p

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