This Year's Movies And Last Year's Movies: Is Escapism King?

Box-office numbers: Are we really walking away from good movies? We take a look at the evidence. iStockphoto.com

 

by Linda Holmes

The high-profile sputtering of some well-regarded recent movies, including State of Play, Duplicity and Adventureland, has led to some hand-wringing over whether we've all turned our backs on good movies in favor of escapist movies. From that Hollywood Reporter link comes this lament: "Telling stat: The average Rotten Tomatoes score for the top ten earners so far this year is a dismal 42%."

What they didn't mention? According to my calculations, based on information from Box Office Mojo, the average Rotten Tomatoes score for the top ten earners of last year that were released between January and April -- not the time of year when studios traditionally release either their great summer blockbusters or their award bait -- was... 41.5.

So I thought I'd take a look at the top twenty first-quarter earners of 2009 and the top twenty first-quarter earners of 2008 and see where we stand. Let's go to... THE CHARTS!

Deciphering the dots, after the jump...

Here are the top twenty earners of this year so far. Box-office take (in millions) is on the vertical axis; Rotten Tomatoes score is on the X-axis.

 

As you can see, both box office and quality are all over the place, with pretty much no discernible pattern to speak of. Some movies were well-reviewed and did very well (that King Dot that's made about $165 million and has a RT score of 73 is Monsters vs. Aliens); some were badly reviewed and did well anyway (those two dots around the area of $140 million by 30 are Paul Blart: Mall Cop and Fast and Furious, which will ultimately make substantially more money).

Some were highly regarded and are doing more modestly (those 81 and 88 RT scores are I Love You, Man and Coraline); some got bad reviews and haven't set the box office on fire (that clump in the lower left includes Bride Wars and The Unborn).

Now here's the chart for last year. The caveat, of course, is that these movies are finished making theatrical money, while the ones from 2009 are not. Monsters is still earning, as is Fast and Furious. With that said, look at this.

 

What sticks out immediately to me is how flat this chart is. Yes, there's 10,000 B.C. pulling in almost $95 million with a hilarious RT score of 9, but other than that, aside from that King Dot at $154.5 million and a 78 score (that's Horton Hears a Who, incidentally), a lot fewer movies were making the kind of money that movies are making this year. Last year, Hollywood managed one movie in the first quarter of the year that brought in more than $100 million; this year, there are five.

(They are, for the curious, Monsters vs. Aliens, Paul Blart, Taken, Fast and Furious and Watchmen.)

Now this, of course, doesn't cover the lament that there are some well-reviewed movies that have done poorly. This doesn't cover the disappointment over State of Play and Duplicity as adult thrillers, and it doesn't cover the absolute heartbreak of Adventureland, which is a terrific movie that was horribly marketed to look like the goofy comedy it is not, rather than the touching, almost Breaking Away-ish film it is.

Nor does it take into account the fact that in every single year, you will find most of the top critics' scores given to movies that will never open in wide release, meaning that all of this is meaningless if you're talking about best-best movies, because those will wait until DVD for most of us.

But what those dots tell me is not that there's anything wrong with the movies we're turning out to see, or that people are necessarily any more interested in escapism than before. (Last year's big first-quarter movies, behind Horton and 10,000 B.C., were 21, Cloverfield and 27 Dresses. We weren't exactly going in for the deep psychodrama then, either.)

It just demonstrates that we're not taking advantage of what's turning out to be an uptick in the quality of what's available in wide release. If, indeed, we're leaving good films on the table while watching movies of the same average quality, then it's not that we're suddenly averse to good movies or to adult thrillers.

It means we like a lot of the same movies, year in and year out. Early 2008 and early 2009 have a lot in common: One big kids' movie. One big stereotypically girl-friendly movie (last year's was 27 Dresses; this year's was He's Just Not That Into You, which barely missed the $100 million mark). A lot of junk of all kinds.

The bottom end, comprising the so-so performers, was filled out by more comedies last year (including College Road Trip and Meet the Spartans) and more horror this year (including My Bloody Valentine 3D and The Haunting In Connecticut). Maybe that's something.

But by and large, the data don't seem to support a conclusion that we're necessarily not going to good movies. We've gone to Coraline and I Love You, Man to about the same degree we went to The Spiderwick Chronicles and Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Certainly, business is booming. And the rising tide isn't lifting all boats, but the quality of the boats we're choosing isn't significantly lower than before.