Get Smart came in right around most projections and gave all of its main stars — Carell, Anne Hathaway, and Dwayne Johnson — the biggest bow of their careers as lead actors. (Yes, it is bigger than The Scorpion King!) The film is now the second No. 1 movie of the summer to be adapted from a television show, following Sex and the City; after Carrie & Co.'s flick, it's also the second-biggest live-action comedy opener of 2008. Credit broad appeal (the spy spoof earned a decent B+ CinemaScore grade from an audience that was divided equally between men and women and skewed 60-40 toward older people), decent reviews, and the ever-increasing appeal of its stars. With two weeks before Will Smith's Hancock premieres, Get Smart should keep strong.
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One movie that's definitely going nowhere is Mike Myers' The Love Guru, which earned a disappointing $14 mil. While not exactly, you know, a Gigli-esque number, that total is pretty bad: It's merely half of what most pundits predicted the film would earn, and it represents Myers' worst opening since View From the Top's $7 mil bow five years ago. Worse yet, The Love Guru now enjoys the honor of becoming the second major flop of the summer, after Speed Racer (which actually grossed more on its first weekend, $18.6 mil). And with a B- CinemaScore grade from an audience that skewed slightly younger and male, Myers' movie probably won't see much of a karmic improvement ahead.
I love it!! Have I said that yet? :o) I know it's mean (and kind of sad, actually) to extract such glee from one man's professional meltdown but... oh well. My joy cannot be contained!
Original Post: Yes, I totally agree with you - Get Smart looks like ass. However, it is going head-to-head with The Love Guru... and I want Smart to squash Guru like a bug!!! My dad said to me yesterday that he thought I was in a "rant-y" mood on the blog this week, so I thought I'd toss another log on the fire. :o)I love, love, love Wayne's World and I really liked Mike Myers on SNL but Austin Powers and every other Myers vehicle since 1992 has really not been my cup of tea. (Yes, I like parts of So I Married an Axe Murderer but it's definitely less than a quarter, so it doesn't count. And yes, I like Shrek but I don't consider that solely a Mike Myers gig - Donkey is pretty important, too, dammit!) Anyway, my point is that while I've never actively 'hated' Mike Myers, I've definitely been sort of ambivalent about him in the past. I'd read some stuff about him that made him sound like a jerk but it sort of wafted around gossip sites in spurts over the years - nothing too horrific or concrete to really slap a firm "loathe" label on, you know? Then, especially during the making of The Love Guru, I started reading more and more about his supposed diva antics - things like:
andWe're told Mike has two male assistants follow him constantly, one to shield his fair skin with a personal umbrella and another to hold a fresh bottle of water with a straw for sipping.
"And Mike gets easily distracted by the sun hitting any reflective surfaces, so he makes people run around the movie with black tape to cover each one," says our snitch.
"When filming is outside, the sun moves and before you know it, there's black tape covering everything and people running around with rolls of it."
First he refused to be driven in a limo to the set an hour away and demanded to beandhelicoptered there instead by his production company. Then his coffee wasn’t made right so a poor intern received the tongue lashing of life. When she started tearing up, he told her to grow a thicker skin. The other day he wouldn’t come out of his trailer because he didn’t get his cappuccino. Word is he sulks for an hour if people don’t fall over themselves quickly or often enough over his sense of humor resulting in much prompting and reminding by assistants to overtly applaud his brilliance. And despite the fact that everyone was initially stoked to work with a local legend, he has, at one time or another, mistreated the entire crew so badly, they are eager to start selling him out.
A hometown disappointment continues to disappoint with his ridiculous behaviour and outrageous demands. Still shooting his new movie close to home, apparently he has to wear some kind of prosthetic or padding that makes him hot and is obsessed with trying to cool down. Five personal AC units were installed in his “personal cooling tents” to keep him from overheating and it still wasn’t enough. Crazier still, the tents have to be pre-cooled to await his arrival which is never pre-determined so he had production completely halted for an entire day very recently just to discuss the tent/AC situation, extracting a promise from the crew to have his itinerary and his immediate whereabouts constantly communicated to the “personal cooling tents” so that they can be at exact chill temperatures when he enters.
Longtime fans are shaking their heads at the bizarre antics that don’t seem to be coming to an end. He’s also supposedly pulled out the old favourite – no looking at him without asking for permission. And around town he’s even worse. Many fans who’ve approached in public places for autographs have not only been rudely rebuffed, they’ve pretty much all been told off. But of course he won’t deign to do it himself. He simply looks away and motions for his minion to tell the admirer that he can’t be bothered to talk.
I’m telling you, of all the tips I’ve ever received about celebrity douches on set, he is by far the worst.
Still, the impression was that Mike's on-set dick behavior was sort of kept under wraps. And then just last week Entertainment Weekly rounded all the stories up and delivered a 6-page article on Mike. The article is quite enlightening if you haven't heard any rumors about Mike so far - mostly because actual people (like the director of the first Wayne's World) go on record as to his assy behavior. Myers, of course, refused to be interviewed for the story and who can blame him? He does have his supporters, to be sure, but he honestly sounds like he's definitely lost some marbles on the road from SNL to now.
So... if Mike's douche-iness isn't enough to deter you from Guru (Jessica Alba totally should but...) then there's this review from Slate, which begins:
There are good movies. There are bad movies. There are movies so bad they're good (though, strangely, not the reverse). And once in a while there is a movie so bad that it takes you to a place beyond good and evil and abandons you there, shivering and alone. Watching The Love Guru (Paramount Pictures) is a spiritual experience of a sort, but not the sort that its creator and star, Mike Myers, intended. This tale of a guru who brings joy to all who meet him is the most joy-draining 88 minutes I've ever spent outside a hospital waiting room. In the course of those long minutes, Myers leads you on a journey deep inside himself, to the source from whence his comedy springs—and it's about as much fun as a tour of someone's large intestine.
And it only gets better from there, people. So, do your part for mankind and support Get Smart and Steve Carell. Yes, the movie may be ass but Guru doesn't sound much better - and Carell's actually a decent human being! If anyone deserves your hard earned $21, it's Steve.
UPDATE: See?! 20 seconds after I finished this post, I found this blurb on JustJared:
While promoting his latest film The Love Guru on the Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Mike Myers made demands of backstage staffers for Silk nondairy creamer, Twizzlers and raspberry seltzer; he sent one of the interns back when it was not the seltzer brand he wanted.
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