Webloggin » Libertas on Cloverfield Movie - “never before heard the word “sucked” muttered so often”

Cloverfield is the latest monster movie to hit the big screen and it easily smashed records for weekend opening box office gross with a 3 day $46 million take.

Following months of hype and anticipation, Paramount’s monster flick Cloverfield arrived and generated monster sales grossing an estimated $41M in its first three days of release. Directed by Matt Reeves and produced by J.J. Abrams, the PG-13 film averaged a brutal $12,020 from 3,411 theaters and broke the eleven-year-old record for the biggest opening weekend gross for a film debuting in January. The Special Edition re-release of Star Wars held that record since 1997 when it launched in 2,104 locations to the tune of $35.9M and a scorching $17,066 average. At today’s ticket prices however, those figures would be more than $53M and $25,000, respectively.

Which makes it all the more important that I get an honest review; especially considering that the movie was hyped to the hilt. They liked it on Rotten Tomatoes with a 77% cumulative rating. So I wondered about how much of the gross was based on the hype and how much was based on the actual lack of quality offerings being offered up by the big Hollywood studios. We won’t be able to make that call until the next couple of weeks as the word of mouth affect takes hold.

However, I hold Libertas in high regard when it comes to telling it to me straight. Jason Apuzzo presented perhaps the best single sentence wrap up that I have read in years.

Maybe it’s because there were a lot of people there, but I’ve never before heard the word “sucked” muttered so often as a theatre emptied. These were teenagers, first dayers, excited, eager, ready for it (probably skipping school).

This is my kind of review. If the teenagers truly don’t like a movie targeted specifically for their demographic then we can rest assured that few else will. However, the bar is pretty low nowadays. I’ll let you know after it comes to Comcast.