Box Office Wrap-up at Tagline

I enjoy reading Tagline for the sharp cinematic analysis, but I particularly dig it for its frequent schadenfreude. Today they have a look at recent box office returns:

For a flick that was marketed as consisting pretty much of our Jude parading his way through a variety of stylish duds and sexy ladies, ‘Alfie’ somehow managed to cough up an estimated budget of $60 million. Throw in a (conservative?) chunk of change for that aforementioned marketing – say, $30 million? – and you have one hefty bill for basically securing a couple of pic-heavy interview spreads in style magazines. And, the all-important box-office? A trifling $11 million in ten days, in this, a season when the (apparently) execrable – and similarly budgeted – ‘Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason’ can make $8 million in one week and on just 530 screens. Or, when ‘Seed of Chucky’ can also rustle up $8 million in its opening weekend.

That’s great. Alfie is such a shoddy-looking, transparent star vehicle. The marketing material seemed to yell “hey, 18 to 35-year-old women, yield to our will and pound, panting and sweating and lemming-like, at the cinema doors!” One of the reasons Alfie failed, I’d bet, is that not a single dollar was spent marketing the film to men. And, as you may know, genders often attend movies together. Besides, apparently the original is a decent-enough film.