The Most Totally American Movies Ever: Our Top 9
Happy 232nd birthday, America! Along with baseball, Britney and oh so many flavors of Doritos, you’ve given the world an uncountable wealth of movies to enjoy. On this momentous holiday weekend, let’s focus on nine films that most fully embody the American spirit, plus a 10th to be determined by Online readers. (See, that’s some freedom of choice right there!)
O say can you see…our list:
1. Die Hard: Our boy Bruce Willis leaps across five decades of American Westerns in a single “yippee-ki-yay, motherf–ker.” The lone hero, the Twinkie-gobbling cop, the terrorist Eurotrash…it’s all there.
2. The Godfather: Part II: As if crafting the best-ever American crime drama weren’t enough, Coppola ups the ante?and anoints the blockbuster sequel?with an immigrant backstory, drugs, gambling and primo De Niro.
3. South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut: Crude, lowbrow Internet vid grows up to become crude, lowbrow animated epic. Saddam Hussein canoodles with Satan. “Blame Canada” earns an Oscar nod. U-S-A!
4. Do the Right Thing: Vibrant New York streets, simmering racial tension and a huge friggin’ radio. As complicated as America’s real-life race relations and as effective as a pummeling Public Enemy track.
5. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial: Spielberg spun a Disney-style parable into a sci-fi classic with kickass effects, intrepid suburban kids and a killer product placement for Reese’s. America cried in its popcorn.
6. Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle: Postmodern stoner epic puts the “bud” back in buddy pic. Slider-seeking antiheroes shirk the dull expectations of a morally bankrupt society and party with Doogie Howser.
7. Titanic: How much to turn a harrowing maritime disaster into a three-hour Celine Dion video starring Billy Zane? Only $200 million? Sold! Only the planet’s hottest capitalist democracy could produce this so-bad-it’s-Best-Picture masterwork.
8. Friday Night Lights: If this emotionally charged ode to high school football in western Texas doesn’t get your Yankee heart pumping, you’re probably already on a Homeland Security watch list.
9. Forrest Gump: This much is true: Tom Hanks is America. Gump crystallizes U.S. propensity to put oneself at the center of every important cultural moment. Also the film that launched a thousand real-life shrimp restaurants.
10. [YOUR CHOICE HERE]: What, no Terminator? No Tom Cruise? Do Girls Gone Wild videos count?! Cast your vote in the comments for the red-white-and-bluest movie you’ve ever seen.
Oh, Baby! Tina Fey Smokes Harold and Kumar
If every person who watches little-watched 30 Rock bought a ticket to Baby Mama, the Tina Fey comedy would have, well, made a lot more money.
But in the weekend before the arrival of Iron Man, $18.3 million was enough to capture the top spot, per estimates compiled Sunday by Exhibitor Relations.
John Cho and Kal Penn's latest adventure in the munchies, Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, opened in second. With a $14.6 million take, the sequel made almost as much in three days as 2004's Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle did during its entire run in theaters.
Baby Mama, meanwhile, marks the first time a comedy with a female lead has opened No. 1 since Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey's Fool's Gold in February.
A comedy with two female leadsBaby Mama costars Fey's former Saturday Night Live tag-team partner Amy Poehlerhasn't opened at No. 1 since, well…
Casual Sex? didn't open at No. 1, did it? (Um, no.)
The First Wives Club did, all the way back in 1996, but that starred three women (Diane Keaton, Bette Midler and Goldie Hawn), not two.
History-making or no, Baby Mama arguably makes Fey a bigger movie star than TV star. While her 30 Rock struggles to reach people other than critics and Emmy voters, her film career now boasts two No. 1 movies. (Mean Girls, from 2004, is the other.)
Then again, maybe 30 Rock's ratings aren't as small as they seem. If Fey's 30 Rock devotees (the show is averaging 6.5 million viewers) had each been a Baby Mama admission (at the 2008 average price of $7.14, per Lee's Movie Info), the comedy would have opened with an extremely fertile $46 million or so.
Guess we can't all be Iron Man.
Elsewhere:
- Last weekend's champ, The Forbidden Kingdom (third place, $11.2 million; $38.3 million overall) held up OK. Last weekend's also-ran, Forgetting Sarah Marshall (fourth place, $11 million; $35.1 million overall), held up even better.
- If only Al Pacino's 88 Minutes (eighth place, $3.6 million; $12.6 million overall) could generate as much heat as a Los Angeles Times column about Pacino's and Robert De Niro's squandered careers, at least one of those fellows' careers wouldn't be so squandered.
- Hugh Jackman plus Ewan McGregor plus a 2,001-theater launch added up to…next to nothing for Deception (10th place, $2.2 million).
- Expelled from the Top 10 were: Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed ($1.4 million; $5.3 million overall); Street Kings ($2.1 million; $23.7 million overall); and, Leatherheads ($1.8 million; $29.3 million overall), which, disappointment or no, is actually the biggest grossing movie of George Clooney's not exactly mainstream directing career.
- What in the world happened to Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden ($58,945; $263,327 overall)?
- The French mystery-thriller Roman de Gare was the weekend's biggest little movie, debuting with $25,545 at two theaters.
Here's a recap of the top-grossing weekend films based on Friday-Sunday estimates compiled by Exhibitor Relations:
- Baby Mama, $18.3 million
- Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, $14.8 million
- The Forbidden Kingdom, $11.2 million
- Forgetting Sarah Marshall, $11 million
- Nim's Island, $4.5 million
- Prom Night, $4.4 million
- 21, $4 million
- 88 Minutes, $3.6 million
- Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!, $2.4 million
- Deception, $2.2 million
Exclusive! New Docs in the House?
Hello my friends, Korbi back again, with some Princeton-Plainsboro prattle. I’m hearing exclusively that Olivia Wilde (The Black Donnellys, The O.C.), Kal Penn (24, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle), Peter Jacobson (In Justice, Transformers) and Anne Dudek (Big Day) have been hired for a minimum of eight episodes of the coming season!
Does this mean Cameron, Chase and Foreman have been permanently replaced? Not exactly. But it will be nice to have some new blood butting heads with House, no? Weigh in with your thoughts below!
Harold & Kumar 2 Red Band Movie Trailer
Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle wasn’t just a stoner comedy, it was laced with smart undertones which touched on social/racial stereotypes. The sequel, Harold & Kumar 2: Escape from Guantanamo Bay looks to be very similar in both tone and humor. And if the title wasn’t a give-away, this one seems to get a little bit more political.
The new red band (unrated) movie trailer shows just a few of the scenes from their journey (or escape), including a brush in with the Ku Klux Klan (with a cameo appearance by The Howard Stern Show’s Richard Christie), NPH, and even the President of the United States. Watch the new Red Band Movie Trailer.
Harold & Kumar 2: Escape from Guantanamo Bay hits theaters on April 25th, 2008.