Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Looney Tunes Turnout

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Posted by John Carpenter (Member # 1488) on 11-15-2003, 08:37 AM:

Is it just a freak thing here or did Looney Tunes completely tank everywhere?? We are the busiest theatre in our company and can sell out almost anything they hand to us, but Looney Tunes didn't do a thing yesterday. Its busiest show had only 30 people in it and the 9:00s had about 16 in one and 10 in the other? One matinee didnt even sell any? Of course we were still selling out Love Actually, Elf and even Texas Chainsaw (it wasnt even in a small house yet). Its not that the film was bad - I liked it much more than Elf when I previewed it... what happened???

Posted by Jason Black (Member # 684) on 11-15-2003, 08:54 AM:

No, you['re not alone. The film sucked, from what I've gathered from those souls brave enough to view it. It just looks like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Cool World, & SPace Jam all over again. [puke]

Today's matinee figures will tell the tale however.

Posted by Eric Hooper (Member # 1730) on 11-15-2003, 09:58 AM:

Why bother taking the kids to see this and paying $9.50 for you (maybe $19 if two adults), $7.00 for each kid, $5 for popcorn, $10 for drinks - When in just three months you'll be able to buy the DVD for $14.99? The industry is training the public very well, and is causing itself to collapse in on itself... People are just not going to waste their money on such films anymore.... A Playstation would be a better investment.

Posted by Scott Balko (Member # 438) on 11-15-2003, 11:29 AM:

Well, I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me. Had 53 yesterday total!! Glad to here it wasn't just me, although I'm sorry to hear it for business sake. [Frown]

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 11-15-2003, 12:14 PM:

This movie has zero appeal to me. I don't want to see the classic Looney Tunes characters done with different voices for one thing. This is a 99 cent rental at best, and that's for someone who actually wants to see it, which I don't. [sleep]

Posted by Andrew Lee (Member # 1330) on 11-15-2003, 01:14 PM:

David, I agree. Bugs and the gang are classics and should not be re-issued or recycled. The public has spoken.

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 11-15-2003, 03:05 PM:

No the public just chooses to go see Elf and Brother Bear. There is just to many kids films out right now. It does not suprise me that Looney Tunes is not performing. Space jam had one thing going for it. MICHAEL JORDAN, what does Looney tunes have Brandin Fraiser, WOOOO! WHOOOOO!

Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 11-15-2003, 04:36 PM:

Steve Martin's performance reminded me of Sgt. Bilko... except maybe on steroids.

I thought maybe I was just getting old... but maybe not... For the first time since I started attending screenings, I was actually uncomfortable... just couldn't find a graceful way to leave.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 11-15-2003, 05:23 PM:

Hey, Jack, no need to feel uncomfortable. When I was at the screening of POPEYE, when the audience reaction was less than enthusiastic, Robtert Altman made no bones about picking himself up and walking out. I don't know why, I thought the film was very enjoyable. A lot better than LOONEY TOONS, THE (LOUSEY) MOVIE. [Smile]

Posted by Rachel Gilardi (Member # 1016) on 11-15-2003, 07:04 PM:

Damn you all, I really liked this movie! And we're doing pretty good attendance wise...not GREAT...just pretty good.

Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 11-15-2003, 10:14 PM:

quote:
Hey, Jack, no need to feel uncomfortable

Yah... only the problem was that there were only 3 other people in the auditorium... it would have been pretty obvious. [Frown]

Damn us all?..... [Eek!]

Hey, Rachel... simple minds over there????

Sorry... had to do that! [evil]

Posted by Rachel Gilardi (Member # 1016) on 11-15-2003, 10:50 PM:

quote:
Damn us all?..... Hey, Rachel... simple minds over there????

I was just joking, silly!!! [Big Grin]

Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 11-15-2003, 11:03 PM:

I knew that!

[Big Grin]

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-15-2003, 11:15 PM:

It got a *** (out of four) review from Ebert, and in the IME newsletter it's predicted to have "good legs." So WTF, indeed.

I haven't seen it but just going by the trailers, I think I'm going to feel the same way as most of you (except Rachel) about this one.

Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 11-15-2003, 11:34 PM:

Well, I grew up with these characters. I was expecting... maybe... too much.

Fact is, today's kids aren't watching Looney Tunes. Mine certainly aren't. They're making a valliant effort to establish their own path, and to them, Granny and Tweety are as hip as Frank Sinatra. Personally, I think most of the animation they actually find an interest in on Saturdays seems too stupid for words... but maybe our parents thought the same about us... I doubt it... but maybe so.

In any case, I don't see this film appealing to today's youth... especially considering what it's up against with Brother Bear and Elf. The timing was awful. That means the film has to appeal to my generation, and I personally thought it was sad to see the way they trotted out character after character, with no good excuse to do so.

I personally hope the company can find a way to do better by this genre. After all, I grew up with these guys. They're much more talented than what they were allowed on this picture.

Posted by Martin Brooks (Member # 1269) on 11-15-2003, 11:56 PM:

Actually, I'm surprised it's not doing well. I would have thought that the parents who grew up with these characters would have taken their kids to see it, as an excuse for themselves to see it.

And I also thought it would do well because the weather has turned colder. The day I was forced to see Brother Bear (for reasons I can't get into here), the theater was filled, in spite of the fact that it was an incredibly beautiful day outside.

The Village Voice, of all papers, actually gave this film a pretty good review. The NY Times gave it a mixed, but not bad review. But I guess people do think that taking two kids to the movies is going to cost them at least $35 with snacks and they might as well wait for the video. But the industry really doesn't care anymore -- the theatrical run is just marketing for the video these days.

Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 11-16-2003, 12:52 AM:

quote:
I would have thought that the parents who grew up with these characters would have taken their kids to see it, as an excuse for themselves to see it

Normally, I'd agree with you, Martin. However, in this case, I don't think the storyline justifies resurrecting the Looney Tunes characters... it's just too weak. Nobody ever considered Tweety or Granny as insidious bad-guys... nor was the Acme Company ever the root of an evil plot... at least, not that I recall. Steve Martin as the president of Acme? Puhleeeeze!... and his over-the-top arm-waving schtick was... to me... nothing more than an embarassing reminder of his Sgt. Bilko routine... tolerable in that movie, but way, way over the top in this one.... maybe if they had shortened his lines... a lot... well, nah. I didn't enjoy the film, and I wouldn't take my kids to it... especially if I had to buy tickets.

I never really noticed the difference in the characters' voices. Mel's dead, and I didn't go into it demanding that whoever replaced him was an effective clone. What I did notice was the short, seemingly inexplicable short cameos by various 'tunes. What, for example, did Sylvester bring to the table? As far as I could figure, they could have left him out completely, and nobody would have noticed. But... because they stuck him in there, the least they could have done was give him a realistic purpose... and I don't recall noticing one.

I was always a huge fan of the 'Tunes. I thought it was sad to see how much they had to sanitize the characters over the years to make them "PC" (there was some pretty raw stuff in their history). For me, this just took it too far and didn't do enough to portray a good reason to dredge them up.... probably the way I'll feel about myself in 20 years or so.

I personally wasn't surprised to see the film tank. It's one of the few times I actually said anything negative about a film... since I'm more often wrong about that kind of thing! [Roll Eyes]

(edit)
This week's Entertainment Weekly (the one with Britney Babe on the cover) has a review of the show... pretty much along the lines of what we've noticed already.

[ 11-16-2003, 04:23 PM: Message edited by: Jack Ondracek ]

Posted by Dennis Atkinson (Member # 345) on 11-16-2003, 01:50 PM:

I saw this turkey yesterday at a 3:15 show with 13 people total.
Had some good spoofing going on but other than that [sleep]

Could be cut down to an hour.

Dennis

Posted by Brent Mahaney (Member # 1090) on 11-16-2003, 05:54 PM:

I thought it was strange timing for the release of this movie. It's right on the heels of Brother Bear and one week before Cat In The Hat (which is going to be huge). Just my opinion, but I think it would have done a little better earlier in the year. Everybody has their sights set on Cat...

Posted by Aldo Baez (Member # 790) on 11-17-2003, 12:01 AM:

We didn't get this one. It was surprising for me because this is the first time I can recall us not getting a major studio release kids type of movie. Good call by our booker I suppose.

Posted by Chris Hipp (Member # 1788) on 11-17-2003, 01:08 AM:

I bet they would have been better off just re-releasing the old animated movies. The one with "kill the rabbit" and that other Daffy one I cant remember the name, something like fantastic island ?

Posted by Martin Brooks (Member # 1269) on 11-17-2003, 05:41 PM:

Here's the Village Voice review by Ben Kenigsberg:

In the classic Looney episode "Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century," Daffy Duck journeys to "Planet X"; in Looney Tunes: Back in Action, he meets Edgar Ulmer's Man From Planet X. The homage is oblique to the point of being deranged. It's the kind of reference that could spring only from the mind of Joe Dante, whose artfully eerie commercial films always offer reams of peripheral dividends for cinephiles. (Roger Corman, Robby the Robot, and Kevin McCarthy—pod in tow—all make cameos.) The director, sunnier than usual here, has never made a secret of his love for Warner's famous 'toons (Chuck Jones appeared in Gremlins and Innerspace, animated the bookends of Gremlins 2, and had a high school named after him in Explorers). In LT: BIA, Dante's masterstroke is to make the movie as visually and narratively unhinged as its source material. The heady non sequiturs—like Elmer Fudd surfacing for an impromptu chase though paintings by Seurat, Munch, and Dalí—are frequently hilarious. As in Dante's segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie, the live-action world operates with cartoon logic—Brendan Fraser goes splat almost as often as Wile E. Coyote, and even tussles with his double, à la "Duck Amuck."

Posted by John Carpenter (Member # 1488) on 11-17-2003, 08:33 PM:

Well after all the weekend numbers are in I realized why I asked this question in the first place. My theatre consistently has higher per screen averages than the national average by at least 40%. Since I have been tracking it, we have never been below the national average - but this film we were 36% lower than the already low national average. I wonder what made it do so bad here?

Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 11-17-2003, 10:01 PM:

quote:
Fact is, today's kids aren't watching Looney Tunes. Mine certainly aren't. They're making a valliant effort to establish their own path, and to them, Granny and Tweety are as hip as Frank Sinatra. Personally, I think most of the animation they actually find an interest in on Saturdays seems too stupid for words... but maybe our parents thought the same about us... I doubt it... but maybe so.

There was a lot of total crap on TV when I was a kid (Clutch Cargo, anyone?) and Looney Tunes was already "old", moving to TV release from the original theatrical venue. But... the theatrical stuff was funny then and it's funny now.
I know kids who like the old LT stuff. They also like the animexploitation crap advertising this month's must-have toys. In 20 years they will probably still get a laff out of Bugs, but won't even remember CardCaptors.
What most have no time for even now is the new soulless looney tunes crap with baby bugs and baby daffy doing nothing interesting.

Posted by Zach Zagar (Member # 379) on 11-18-2003, 12:15 AM:

I got lucky on Saturday and Sunday with this one due to lucky show scheduling. For some reason Brother Bear just keeps going strong, would sell out, help out an Elf sell out, then spill over into Looney Toones. It worked out well enough I'm going to keep that strategy going into Cat in the Hat. Is it just me or is there an INSANE amount more of kid/family movies this year than in the past few years? Everyone must've really jumped on the lack of Potter this year.

Posted by Paul Konen (Member # 41) on 11-18-2003, 08:51 AM:

Rabbit Season [Smile]

Posted by Thomas Procyk (Member # 1170) on 11-18-2003, 09:03 AM:

Is there even a plot to this movie? It seems that all it's about is that there appear to be "Loony Tunes" of some sort, and they are springing "Back To Action" by attacking human cast members... WTF indeed...

Brendan Frazier was on a couple of talk shows before it opened explaining how Loony Tunes was shown before the movies with newsreels and how they belonged back on the big screen, and that "This is no Space Jam!" --- Of course, because Space Jam made money! [Razz]

I knew something was up when the owner brought us all the Looney Tunes stuff from the first-run theater on opening weekend. At least we'll get the movie sooner! [Smile]

=TMP=

Posted by Mike Williams (Member # 1140) on 11-18-2003, 09:05 AM:

I saw this movie with my 5 year old yesterday. She LOVED it! She likes the Daffy Duck show "Duck Dodgers" (pretty much all of the old Looney Tunes cartoons with Marvin the Martian and Daffy Duck) so I was pretty sure she would enjoy the movie.

Personally, I did not find the movie that bad. From some of the earlier posts in this thread, I was expecting it to be horrible... but then I think I can be entertained by almost any movie as long as I have the right mindset walking into the theater.

It was fun seeing all of the cameos in that movie.

Posted by Charles Everett (Member # 889) on 11-18-2003, 05:53 PM:

John and Brent, you're not alone. I noticed that quite a few multiplexes got burned by opening 2 prints of Looney Tunes. Now they may only have room to open 1 print of The Cat in the Hat.

Reading Cinemas in Manville NJ is up s#!t creek: This coming week it has to hold 2 prints of Looney Tunes and 2 prints of The Matrix Revolutions. No Cat in the Hat, no Master and Commander, not even Love Actually. That's what being off service with Fox and Universal will do for you!

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 11-18-2003, 07:48 PM:

They'll only need one print of Cat in the Hat.

I'd like to know what favour the booker owed to book two prints of Looney Tunes and what they were smoking to book two prints of Revolutions. [Smile]

Posted by Thomas Procyk (Member # 1170) on 11-19-2003, 01:15 PM:

There's theaters here who booked 6 to 8 prints of Revolutions. [Smile]

=TMP=

Posted by William T. Parr (Member # 677) on 11-19-2003, 03:11 PM:

quote:
what does Looney tunes have Brandin Fraiser

Don't forget Jenna Elfman.... what a Hottie