You wouldn’t know it from the weather in New York, but Hollywood’s summer season is just seven days away, and this weekend the studios are doing some final spring cleaning. The box-office champ for this throwaway frame is “Obsessed,” which Screen Gems did not screen in advance for print critics. Beyonce Knowles, touted as an emerging screen star just a couple of years ago, takes second billing to TV actor Idris Elba in what sounds like a low-rent urban version of “Fatal Attraction” with Ali Larter in the Glenn Close role. “The climax arrives in the form of a glorious girl-on-girl smackdown that will someday make a fine clip on YouTube,” writes Geoff Berkshire at
, who gives it 2.5 stars out of 5. “Until then, do what the actors should’ve done: hold out for something better.” Steve Mason, who provides a bit of sanity at the increasingly wacky conservative cultural site
, predicts “Obsessed” will top the charts with $15 million — good for this type of cost-effective fare, which recycled the sets from “Quarantine.” Mase awards the No. 2 slot to, and prognosticates $13.5 million for “Earth,” the first offering from DisneyNature, which the Mouse House keeps claiming is its first new label in 60 years (I guess they don’t count Touchstone or the dormant Hollywood Pictures). Review are running 85 percent at
and even my junior colleague Kyle Smith, no fan of tree huggers, gives it
. Among the four new films being dumped is “The Soloist,” a failed Oscar contender from DreamWorks that studio’s lame-duck distributor, Paramount, yanked from a November berth, lest it divert attention from Par’s own “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” A curious movie indeed, Mase expects “The Soloist” to do no letter than fourth place and $11.6 million (following holdover “17 Again”), even with Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. topping the marquee as enabled and enabler. Reviews are running 55 percent positive at RT, and I give it a
notice. Moving down the weekend chart past holdovers “State of Play,” “Monsters vs. Aliens” and “Hannah Montana,” Mase awards the No. 8 spot to “Fighting,” a low-rent “Rocky” directed by Dito Montiel, the Astoria-born autuer behind “A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints.” Kyle gives this
and it rates a 29 at RT. The weekend’s fourth release is predicted to finish out of the top 10 with a paltry $1.7 million. That would be Gregor Jordan‘s Bret Easton Ellis adaptation “The Subterrean,” the most loathed film at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. In honor Mr. Ellis’ most famous work, I award this appalling portrait of the ’80s
stars. This release from the financially-challenged Senator is scoring 14 percent positive reviews at RT, thanks to raves from Joshua Rothkopf and Prairie Miller.
