Tuckered Out
The summer blockbuster season limps to a close today with the release of “Rush Hour 3,” which Kyle gives 1.5 stars. With a reported price tag of $130 million, it should gross around $60 million this weekend — roughly enough to cover the fee it took New Line to lure Chris Tucker out of his self-imposed retirement, after the theaters take their cut. Variety reckons at this point, overall business is up 9 percent over last summer and five percent ahead of the record year, 2004 — of course, they never mention that 2 to 3 percent of that comes from soaring ticket prices. There’s not much competition among newcomers, with Gitesh Pandya at Box Office Guru predicting a take of $11 million for both the fairy-tale epic “Stardust” and the sequel “Daddy Day Camp,” with the hapless Cuba Gooding Jr. replacing Eddie Murphy, who starred in “Daddy Day Camp.” The latter had a $7 million opening day, but Cuba’s sequel did roughly one-tenth that when it debuted on Wednesday, and Thursday was even worse. The other quasi-wide release is “Skinwalkers,” a vampire tale being distributed sans advance screenings in the U.S. by the schlock peddlers formerly known as After Dark Films. A reviewer for Toronto’s Globe and Mail reports the first reel “is bad enough to insure many viewers to flee from theaters…”

