Box Office: Audiences Love 'The LEGO Movie' and 'About Last Night' on Valentine's Day

1. The LEGO Movie- $48.8M/$129.1M
Nostalgia was always going to win out in a week dominated by '80s remakes, but it was The LEGO Movie that held on to the top spot for the second weekend in a row. Dropping a miniscule 29%, the Warner Bros. animated adventure hasn't slowed down much. even with a devastating winter snow shutting down much of the east coast. The plan all along was for the film to coast through the first weekend, then power through the holiday in week two, and that is how things are shaping out.
2. About Last Night- $27M
In case you missed the memo: Kevin Hart is a star. Not only is he a star, but he's quickly become one of the most bankable actors around. Look at what he was able to do with About Last Night, a remake of a 1986 Brat Pack film that nobody was clamoring to see redone, and yet he helped boost it to a debut that's more than double the $12M budget. As one of two clear romance movies arriving on Valentine's Day it opened strong with $13M on Friday, earning an 'A-' Cinemascore in the process. Hart now sits with two movies in the top 10, with Ride Along still chugging along well over the $100M mark.
3. Robocop- $21.5M/$26.4M
Getting a couple of days jump on the rest didn't help out the Robocop remake too much, booting up in third place and $26.4M total. That's not too far from the $25.4M opening of the Total Recall remake just a couple of years ago.  The $100M effort probably wasn't helped much by The LEGO Movie's staying power, and a glut of more romantic films opening on Valentine's Day. But there is a clear cut silver lining, and it's that foreign grosses have been high, leading to a worldwide total of $96.3M. Sony is going to clear some cash off this one, and it wouldn't be at all surprising if we see a Robocop 2 somewhere down the line.
4. The Monuments Men- $15M/$43.6M
As expected, George Clooney's The Monuments Men held strong to its older-skewing audience. Dropping only 31%, the WWII drama is performing well as an early season prestige film. Not too many of those around, really.
5. Endless Love- $13.3M
It was a smart move dropping the Alex Pettyfer/Gabriella Wilde romance Endless Love on Valentine's Day. The remake of the terrible mushy '80s film debuted to a healthy $7M on Friday as couples sought out a date night flick, only to have it peter out the rest of the weekend. This still doesn't do anything to save Pettyfer's flagging career, and it certainly doesn't do squat for Wilde, although both should remain relatively unscathed.
6. Ride Along- $8.7M/$116.1M
7. Winter's Tale- $7.7M
Quick, tell me what Winter's Tale is about. Impossible, right? Well, that's the same trouble trailers and TV spots had in selling this mythical religious romance flying horse manure thing. And so they settled simply on pushing the cast of Colin Farrell, Russell Crowe, and Jennifer Connelly, while keeping Will Smith's cameo as a surprise for appalled audiences.  Critics razed this thing to the ground (including yours truly), but audiences mostly took to it, enough to earn a 'B' Cinemascore. 
8. Frozen- $5.8M/$376M
9. Lone Survivor- $4M/$118.4M
10. That Awkward Moment- $3.3M/$21.4M

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Review: ‘Endless Love,’ starring Alex Pettyfer and Gabriella Wilde

I think Alex Pettyfer is the worst, and Endless Love doesn’t do anything to dissuade me of that notion. Sure, he’s a slab of muscular manmeat. But he’s also a horrendously inexpressive actor, the kind of guy for whom a half-smile and an eyebrow raise look like work. As the male lead you’re supposed to adore and root for in Endless Love, he simply isn’t successful—and he’s in shared company, since the rest of the movie is frustratingly mediocre, too.

The premise is this: working-class guy David (Pettyfer) has been interested in beautiful rich girl Jade (Gabriella Wilde) for years, but she’s been a social outcast since her older brother’s death from cancer two years previously. It’s only on their graduation day that David finally works up the nerve to talk to her, earning an invitation to her graduation party. He clearly doesn’t belong there—and Jade’s doctor father Hugh (Bruce Greenwood) makes that abundantly, cartoonishly obvious. So naturally, the response from David and Jade is to go make out in the dark. Duh!

With that begins the Abercrombie-advertisement portion of Endless Love, with Jade and David spending all their free time together—kissing while swimming, kissing while driving, kissing while everything—and Hugh angrily glaring and harrumphing about how Jade might be messing up her future of college and medical school with this relationship. Jade has never stuck up to Hugh before, and their family has been so broken after her brother’s death, that this relationship with David seems like a serious transgression. But, as people in the film keep parroting over and over again, “You have to fight for love!” Yeah, OK, we get it.

Eventually the film devolves into Hugh pulling crazy underhanded move after crazy underhanded move to get Jade and David to break up, and then a variety of absurd plot twists to display the “urgency” here: a car crash, a fire, a run through an airport, increasingly repetitive declarations of love. But I wrote “urgency” back there because the film never really succeeds in raising the stakes, in making the conflict here feel realized. The Notebook had the problem of Ryan Gosling’s character going to war, as so many Nicholas Sparks novels and film adaptations do, and last year’s The Vowhad Rachel McAdams’s character trying to regain her memory. But in Endless Love, the issue is … Jade’s father will be mad at her? OK, well, get over it.

Mundaneness of the story aside, there’s also the issue of Pettyfer and Wilde together; sure, they’re both pretty, but they don’t have any notable zing as a couple. Lots of kissing does not necessarily sexiness make. And in comparison with the ‘80s version of Endless Love, which had teenagers so crazily in love with each other that they left arson and homicide in their wake, this 2014 version feels especially toothless. A girl only stands up to her domineering father because of her boyfriend … and that’s it? Oh, OK. Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone! Don’t spend it watching Endless Love.

Rating: 0.5 out of 5 Guttenbergs

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