Flame not so on

Box Office Mojo is reporting, as I predicted, a massive 59.5% dropoff in ticket sales for the second weekend of Shamtastic Four. A note to Avi Arad: you can buy an opening weekend, but even by whoring out your beloved products to every diarrhea-inducing second rate burger joint that ponies up the cash won’t keep you keep the green flowing for much longer than a weekend. Like any playground bully – and you are nothing if not a marketing bully – you’ll have your day in the sun, but when everyone else is out being successful, you’ll be long since spent. Let’s put this short-lived turkey of a film out of its misery and get it over with.

As for the success of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a film which I disliked, at least there’s some understandable appeal. Burton’s production designs are minor miracles unbound by such niceties as plot and character. Burton, back in his late 80s heyday, even admits as such, saying he wanted to subvert “the Spielberg story structure.” With Charlie, he hasn’t subverted it so much as done away with it entirely, and then slapped on a treacly little resolution about family and togetherness that’s so saccharine it might almost be a parody of Spielbergian resolution except for its simpleton delivery. Here’s to Burton, the new master of macabre naiveté.

UPDATE: It looks like the real winner this weekend isn't even a movie yet (give it a couple of years). Accused young adult occult training manual Harry Potter sells 250,000 books an hour.