Fifty Shades was the movie everyone was talking about, and not surprisingly, it was the movie everyone went to see. The only real question was which variation of ‘Fifty Shades’ [Sex Act]s The Box Office to use in a headline. Turns out, Fifty Shades Cleveland Steamer’d the box office to the tune of $81.7 million.
That ranks second all-time in the month of February behind The Passion of the Christ; among R-rated movies, it ranks fifth behind The Matrix Reloaded, American Sniper, The Hangover Part II and The Passion. [BoxOfficeMojo]
Notably, it opened bigger than Twilight, the movie upon which Fifty Shades‘ fan-fiction source material was based. Jesus Christ, I still can’t believe that’s a real thing I have to type. Despite the huge opening, the movie received an unfortunate C+ Cinemascore from moviegoers and a 26% recommended rating on RottenTomatoes, meaning its box office performance is likely to be front-loaded. Not that we won’t still be getting multiple sequels, we’d need a nuclear war to save us from that at this point.
Elsewhere, Kingsman: The Secret Service pulled in $35.6 million, solid numbers even without the promise that Colin Firth was going to tie someone up and bang them (uh, except with a gun). Kingsman received a B+ Cinemascore and a 71% recommended rating on RottenTomatoes. Its take was good enough for number two at the box office, or as I like to call it, “Firth place.”
You might remember that Old Fashioned, a “faith-based” rom-com about a guy who couldn’t even be in the same room as a single woman, was billing itself as the “Christian Fifty Shades.” That also opened this weekend, earning $1.1 million from 224 locations.
That seems to be the biggest weekend ever for a faith-based movie playing at fewer than 300 theaters, and should be considered a decent result for distributor Freestyle Releasing.
So, uh… great news for G-rated Christian dating parables named after handjob euphemisms, I guess. I think you should watch this trailer again just to see what some people willingly put themselves through:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFO-RmMv6T8
If that dude isn’t the world’s most boring human, I don’t want to know who is. Though I respect his attempt to look younger by getting a 10-year-old’s haircut. In any case, the $1.1 million worth of people who submitted themselves to that are true martyrs.
Anyway, that’s about all for this week. This weekend brings us McFarland, USA, Hot Tub Time Machine 2, and The DUFF, which, as we all know by now, stands for “The Designated Ugly Fat Friend.” I’d never heard of that phenomenon before, but they don’t even use one in the national league, so.