Movie Nation

I was lukewarm on “Wonder Woman,” a bit bored by the plot and effects. We’re all root-root-rooting for Warners and DC to make a game of it with Disney’s Marvel juggernaut, and but come on.

Got to Rotten Tomatoes. It’s like “Citizen Kane” inspired a sequel, by their metrics.

I watch the commercials for “Wonder Woman,” see all the blurbs — TV tossers, for the most part. Who are these swooners taking the vapors over a blessedly feminist but just fun enough and somewhat yawn-worthy formula comic book pic? Check out metacritic. A definite distaff bias — women reviewers, bless them, are fangirling the hell out of “their” movie. Along  with their head cheerleader, Stevie “Nicks” Persall.

Good for them. There are biases in the “ratings” for such middling fare as “Alien: Covenant,” nerds who grade movies in “their” genre on the curve. So female critics rave up Diana of the Amazons. Hope it makes a billion. It earned $11 million Thursday night alone, on its way to nearly $90 million.

Yeah, she’s clobbering Johnny Depp. Just pretend the assemble the motley military “team” material is like “Captain America” without any casting flair, and that you’ve never seen that lame “super bomber” finale before. Pretend real hard and Tinkerbelle won’t die.

“Captain Underpants” had Dreamworks/Fox’s panties in a bunch, a ridiculous after-it-opens embargo on reviews (That’s called “embargo abuse,” kids.). Why show it a week in advance if you’re scared of critics?

Nothing to sweat, decent to better-than-decent reviews dominate.

Little else is opening against these two big boys (big boy, big girl), but “Band Aid” is worth tracking down — rom-com about a feuding married couple who work out their beefs in song, and  “Aaron’s Blood” and “Vincent N Roxxy,” which I panned.

“Captain Underpants,” not being a franchise picture, will be lucky to clear $30, according to Box Office Mojo. 

Box Office Guru is lowballing the only cartoon in theaters (“Boss Baby” is losing its screens), predicting $24 million. I figure $40 is within reach.

The Guru is saying “Wonder Woman” is headed towards $103 million, vs. the Mojo’s $89. I’m guessing it’ll be in between.

All genre pictures pander, serving up conventions and cliches that faithful horror, romance, comic book or “Furious” fans relish and devour like comfort food.

So why not a European travelogue about a lonely wife “seeing” France for the first time? And who better to star than Diane Lane, of “Under the Tuscan Sun,” an actress whose later career often features her as a woman ignored, looking to “get her groove back?”

Eleanor Coppola, wife of Francis, director of “Hearts of Darkness,” the classic “The Making of” documentary about her husband’s “Apocalypse Now,” wrote and directed “Paris Can Wait,” which shamelessly panders to women of a certain age, easy chair Travel Channel/Food Network addicts whose ears perk up at the mere mention of four magical words.

“France.” “Frenchmen.” “Wine.” “Chocolate.”

It’s a dithering little nothing of a movie which takes Lane, as the wife of a workaholic film producer husband (Alec Baldwin, wasted here) from the Cote d’azur home of the Cannes Film Festival, to Paris, a distance of some 900 kilometers, or about 565 miles.

Anne is in Cannes with husband Michael, and Michael’s ever-ringing cell-phone, for the Film Festival. She dutifully takes care of his little life details (packing, etc.) while he deals with incessant calls about his latest film project.

No, he’s not listening when she sighs at being left alone in one of the most romantic corners of Europe, or complains of an earache. So when he jets off to Budapest, she balks. She’ll meet him in Paris when he’s done putting out film fires.

But she cannot take the train. Oh no no no. Michael’s colleague Jacques (Arnaud Viard) will DRIVE her. He insists. And even though Michael blinks at this impulsive decision — “He is FRENCH, remember!” — he acquiesces.

“You’ll be there by dinner time!”

As that wouldn’t make for much of movie, dinner times come and go as Jacques leads Anne on the trip of a lifetime, making memories — and photographs — instead of deadlines, really diving into France with an expert, and flirtatious tour guide.

Jacques knows, seemingly, everybody. He has been everywhere, eaten every restaurant’s specialty, tasted every wine.

He’s a “You MUST try” this, “Let m show you” that guide — the best kind, because he knows “the best market in France,” “the best Roman aqueduct,” “the best roses,” “the best view.”

And seeing France takes time. None of which is open apparent to Anne. But when he grabs her luggage to toss into his car she gets her first clue. It’s an early ’70s Peugot 504 Cabriolet (convertible). Yes, he’s rich so it’s been restored. But no, you don’t make 565 mile road trips in that without a few…unscheduled stops.

Jacques needs to take a break from driving “every hour.”

“Forty-two minutes,” she corrects.

There’s a cigarette to be smoked, and a radiator to be refilled. He is French, and so, alas, is his car.

But as they drive, the chatter and detours evolve from the birthplace of Cinema (Place Lumiere, Lyon) and the cathedral where Richard the Lionheart took up the cross for the Third Crusade (Vezelay Abbey in Burgundy) to “Are you happy…Is he faithful…What makes you dance in the street?”

As the wines, cheeses, assorted dishes and mad parade of chocolate delights arrive in this swank eatery or that riverside picnic, romance fills the air.

Or would, if these two had even a hint of chemistry and this script was anything more than a wan, under-developed tease.

Coppola takes Jacques’ life-lessons a little too much to heart, and “Paris Can Wait” ambles along, 90 minutes that feel like 150. The sights are lovely, the sentiments adorable.

But there’s no spark to it, and far too little wit. Viard, a French actor-director, gives barely a hint of the rogue this charming/disarming rogue Jacques is meant to be. He runs into women he knows, who remember him fondly, at every turn. “A trip with Jacques,” one says, is to be savored. Don’t be in such a hurry to get to Paris.

Often Jacques is communicating with waiters, sommeliers, mechanics and old girlfriends in French, and we experience this as Anne (whom he nickames Brulee, after the French dessert)  does. She is an American woman trapped in a foreign land with a take-charge French sexist, who orders for her, decides where they stop and picks out the hotels.

Which she can only counter with a raised eyebrow.

“Jacques, I am not French!”

Neither Jacques nor the film are overbearing. But for all the lovely, out-of-the-way sights, for all of Coppola’s and Viard’s (he’s a French actor/director) efforts, for all the reliable Lane’s charms, “Paris Can Wait” delivers too little on the promise of its alluring title.

Movies, life and love, Jacques says, “are like souffles — all about timing.” And Coppola’s is just…off. “Paris Can Wait” could have been a perfectly adorable wish-fulfillment fantasy for an over-40 audience. She just needed to wait until landing a more engaging leading man.

MPAA Rating: PG for thematic elements, smoking and some language

Cast: Diane Lane, Arnaud Viard ,Alec Baldwin

Credits: Written and directed by Eleanor Coppola. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Running time 1:32

Love Kenneth Branagh and all that, always impressed when a movie rounds up Dame Judi, Penelope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Michelle Pfeiffer, Johnny Depp and…Josh Gad for the cast. Derek Jacobi, Branagh’s Hector Elizondo, is here.

But this looks like a lush TV movie, an HBO Original with great cinematography. If this isn’t the most exhausted, dated source material of the fall film season, why did they try to hip it up with Imagine Dragons on the soundtrack?

Adults sentenced to sitting through yet another animated film with their kids look for one thing in the experience — a hint of anarchy, a taste of Looney Tunes mayhem and wit.

Kids? They’re waiting for the pooped-my-pants, teacher humiliated in his tidy whiteys gags.

“Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie,” delivers both.  An endlessly inventive and anarchic Dreamworks romp based on the Dav Pilkey children’s books, it thrives on prankster pals, over-matched adults and a hand-drawn comic book hero’s ethos.

“Never underESTIMATE the power of UNDERwear!”

Kevin Hart, who has the perfect little-guy/high-pitched voice for animation, is George, and Thomas Middleditch (“Silicon Valley”) voices Harold, life-long elementary school pals who make up comic book superheroes, draw them into books, only to have the hated no-fun Principal Krupp (Ed Helms) confiscate them.

He’s the sort of martinet who revels in tormenting children, with “Hope Dies Here” stenciled on his desk. Naturally, George and Harold are always coming up with pranks to put him in his place.

One prank too many has Krupp looking at the nuclear option — busting up the pals. In desperation, George whips out his cereal box prize hypno-ring. And darned if Krupp doesn’t start to think he’s the superhero with the boys his trusty sidekicks — Captain Underpants.

This transformation entails stripping to his skivvies, improvising a cape and singing his theme song — “Tra-la-LAAAAaaaaa!”

Suffice it to say, every time he does this — and George can snap him out of it by just snapping his fingers — it’s a hoot.

Captain Underpants is a clueless rube — “I take to the SKY! Like an OSTRICH!”

But it’s all fun and games only until that moment when the lads kind of realize the lonely lovelorn man inside Krupp, and that anarchy is no way to ensure anybody gets an education. That, and a  guy with no real super powers has no business taking on a real threat — the super-villain (Nick Kroll) mad scientist who elbows his way into a job as science teacher.

The pacing is whiplash-quick, with every finger-snapping transition from Krupp to the Captain crackling with energy.

Adults will appreciate the one scene that breaks from the movie’s simple, flat animated style. George and Harold imagine a future where they’ve grown apart. This sequence isn’t animated. It’s performed by sock puppets in a model mall, with sticks moving the cloth arms, the works. It’s an adorable DIY moment in a sea of computer-animated children’s entertainment, and it’s as delightful as anything Dreamworks has ever put on the screen.

For kids, all that’s necessary to telling them this is a fight between Captain Underpants and Professor Poopypants. Paints a picture, doesn’t it?

That said, there are barely enough jokes to put this over, making one wonder if this “First Epic Movie” has anywhere funny to go in the future if indeed it has a future.

But the present, the first picture, will make you grin and have your eight-and-unders in stitches. I mean, a grown man, singing in his unflattering form-fitting underwear. Come on!

MPAA Rating: for mild rude humor throughout
Cast: The voices of Kevin Hart, Ed Helms, Kristen Schaal, Nick Kroll, Jordan Peele
Credits: Directed by David Soren, written by Nicholas Stoller, based on the Dav Pilkey books. A Dreamworks/20th Century Fox release.
Running time: 1:29

They meet by accident — literally.

Vincent (Emile Hirsch) is purposefully motoring across town in his vintage ’70s Chevelle, Roxxy (Zoey Kravitz) is in the car in front, T-boned at an intersection.

When the offending car empties and the enraged, “Where’s my MONEY b—ch!” driver starts beating on her, Vincent intervenes — or tries to. Much violence later, they’re off, two strangers on the road to rural Louisiana; her to lay low and get some cash together, him to pick up old family ties.

But violence tags along with them, as Vincent gets tangled up in local feuds involving his tough-talking, street patois-slinging punk of a brother, JC (Emory Cohen) and Roxxy is entangled in local biker boy jealousies with JC’s girlfriend (Zoey Deutch).

“Vincent N Roxxy” wears the indie film cliches of its rough-hewn road romance with pride. He is a man with secrets, cigarettes and stubble. She has a past, a dead brother and never met a belly-shirt she couldn’t rock.

Gary Michael Schultz’s picture starts cryptically, two aimless young people without a past — until we learn about it. And he provides Kravitz (“Big Little Lies”) with some flinty femme fatale one-liners.

“Is that what you do, drive around in your cool car, trying to help girls getting beat up?”

Well into their impulsive 700 mile road trip (to Zachary, Louisiana), “You got something you want to ask me, now?”

It’s a tale that sees the poetry in the ruins of an old drive-in theater, but would prefer to wallow in the escalating mayhem that ensues when dead end young men — of any race, of any hopeless ghetto — let their desperation and testosterone get the better of them.

There’s not much room for performance in all this. Cohen does that acting school rendition of small-town-punk thing, Hirsch tries to simmer and Kravitz brings a little heat and paranoia to Roxxy.

But you sense it’s all just a preamble for an orgy of blood and violence in the finale, a drawn-out/bleed-out revenge thriller that we all see coming an hour before it gets there.

MPAA Rating: R for brutal bloody violence, language throughout, some strong sexual content, nudity, and brief drug use

Cast:  Emile Hirsch, Zoe Kravitz, Zoey Deutch, Emory Cohen

Credits: Written and directed by Gary Michael  Schultz. A Vertical release.

Running time: 1:41

In her origin story, a world at war throws bullets, bombs, poison gas and tanks (literally throws) at Wonder Woman. There’s hatred and slaughter enough to shock anyone.

And yet, she persists.

“The future is female,” the pundits keep telling us. And so Warner Brothers and the director of the movie that won Charlize Theron her Oscar give us a fun and capable distaff super heroine who will not be ordered around, will not accept the status quo and will not need rescuing by a man — even if the man is played by Captain Kirk.

Israeli model-turned-actress Gal Gadot may be rail-thin and runway ready, but as she proved in films such as the “Fast and Furious” franchise and “Keeping Up With the Joneses,” she can handle Hollywood fight choreography — at least in slow motion.

And she makes a naive and brave, exotic and seriously sexy Diana, Princess of the Amazons in “Wonder Woman.” 

The movie is a derivative hash of comic book picture plot points and origin story touchstones — half “Captain America: The First Avenger,” half “Thor.” But director Patty Jenkins, who did not get enough credit for “Monster,” keeps Gadot in frame and the tone light — as light as any comic book picture that tries to grapple with the futility of war amidst the most futile of all wars — World War I.

The introductory scenes, of little Diana (Emily Carey) growing up on the hidden island of Themyscira in greater Greece, are handled in brisk strokes — a warrior aunt (Robin Wright, fiercesome) training her, her mother the queen (Connie Nielsen) disapproving and “forbidding” it, time and again.

Strong women don’t take to being “forbidden.”

“Fighting doesn’t make you a hero”  she is taught. But it does come in handy when you’re being threatened and oppressed.

A pilot who has been spying on the Germans and Ottomans (Chris Pine) crashes into the sea offshore, and that’s where the adult Diana discovers men, and introduces the Great War to the women warriors of Greek myth.

Diana will accompany Steve Trevor back to “the Front,” where she’s sure Ares, the God of War, is causing all this slaughter and strife. He’s in disguise. But she will take “The God Killer” with her and end this bloodbath, as “It is our sacred duty to defend the world.”

The story’s tone is set by the casting of Pine and the playful banter he and Gadot exchange as he explains the “real” world to her. He represents all of humanity, or at least Western civilization. Is he an “average” example of the male of the species?

“I’m…above average.”

Diana meets his secretary (Lucy Davis) in glum, grey war-footing London, a woman who goes where he says, does what he desires and sees to his every need.

“Where I come from, we call that slavery.”

David Thewlis is a helpful government minister, Danny Huston the psychotic General Ludendorf who wants to stop this “Armistice” at all costs and Elena Anaya, in Phantom of the Opera guise, is Dr. Poison, who cooks up the gas that could continue the War Without End.

Hollywood hasn’t had the interest to budget a decent movie about the Great War since the 1960s save for “War Horse.” A couple of malnourished movies about the Turkish Armenian genocide this year have underscored that. But put a comic book character in it, and we get period-appropriate tanks, a vast trenched No Man’s Land and period appropriate airplanes like a Fokker Eindecker.

Being a comic book movie, we also get lots of period inappropriate tech — superbombers, superbombs, etc. And there’s the usual heaping helping of what I call “Bugs Bunny Physics” — impossible violations of the laws of motion, thermodynamics and the logic set up by the movie. The deadly gas is deadly when need be, survivable when that’s more convenient. Diana and Steve take a Greek coastal sailboat to Britain, dozing off in the Aegean, waking up as they sail under London’s Tower Bridge.

As a genre, these are silly movies that do not welcome over-thinking.

And they’ve saddled this leggy super-heroine with a slow-footed movie with plenty of screen time allotted for character development — maybe even romance — but also dead stretches and needless distractions.

But I love the fiercely feminist text — NOT subtext — here. And Gadot, who drew deafening applause upon introduction in the finale of the gloomy “Batman vs. Superman,” wears the breastplate and warrior skirt with style and purpose.

Check out the “new” “superhero landing” she and Jenkins cook up for the end of every wondrous leap, plunge or pivot.

And check out the message delivered here. The world’s in a scary place, with Western civilization under threat from without and within. Vanquishing a single supervillain won’t fix it.

What’s Wonder Woma’s answer? Don’t despair. Don’t turn away. Wonder Woman takes the blows, gets back up time and again and faces the ugliness head on.

“And yet,” as the saying goes, “she persisted.”

IMPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, and some suggestive content

Cast: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Danny Huston, Robin Wright, David Thewlis

Credits:Directed by Patty Jenkins, script by Allen Heinberg, based on the DC comic book. A Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 2:20

Finding something appropriate for international acting treasure Judi Dench, all but retired, with failing eyesight, cannot be easy. It’s got to be a role with stature and gravitas, a role worthy of her.

No more “Best Exotic Marigold Hotels,” oh no.

She’s played Queen Elizabeth I in her dotage, but Queen Victoria is a better fit. A reprise of “Mrs. Brown?”

Why not? “Victoria & Abdul” is a “true” story about the Empress of India’s late-life friendship with a servant from India, Abdul Karim (Ali Fazal). It features Michael Gambon, Olivia Williams, Simon Callow as Puccini and Eddie Izzard as Bertie, Prince of Wales. Look for “Victoria & Abdul” in September, at the beginning of awards season.

Actress (“Arranged,” TV’s “New Girl”) turned actress-writer Zoe Lister-Jones becomes an actress-writer/director with “Band Aid,” a frothy romantic comedy about marriage and miscarriage.

Yeah, it’s dark. It starts sarcastic, bends towards sardonic and ends up downright deep in its observations about couples, the stresses on a relationship and the importance of knowing how to “fight fair.”

Lister-Jones is Anna, a frustrated writer whose early promise is gone with the wind. Now in her 30s, she’s married to Ben (Adam Pally of “Happy Endings”), a slob who works at home, but not much. And he never, ever does the dishes.

Just something else for Anna to fume over as she drives for Uber.

Their fights start out testy, escalate to cutting and stop just shy of mean. Their therapist is fed up with hearing “the same fight, over and over again.”

The deeper strain here is not annoying parents (Susie Essman of “Curb Your Enthusiasm”), frustrated ambition or the seven year (irritation) itch, though those all figure into things. It’s that loss that they both experienced but dealt with in vastly incompatible ways.

But a chance musical improv at a child’s birthday party convinces them that music is a means of channeling their fights into something productive.

“What if we turned all our fights into songs?” Ben wants to know. Anna, who played bass in a band back in the day (as did Lister-Jones), is down with turning “our ten biggest fights” into tunes.

“Saturday Night Live/Portlandia” vet Fred Armisen plays their weird, nerdy neighbor. Remember, Fred plays the drums. So whatever “Dave” is doing with all the comically stripper-named sex addicts he “sponsors,” whatever else convinces Anna and Ben his weirdness fits a classic serial killer profile — “He’s 100 percent going to kill us” — they need his help to turn “I’m in No Mood for Your Mood” into a hit.

Lister-Jones builds-in abrupt turns — changes in tone and the “real” subject of the script — which keep you off balance. The withering Inter-Semitic snark-offs of the couple’s arguments are laugh-out-loud funny. Calling Anna a “dish Nazi” over her griping about what he’s what’s left in the sink is blasphemous.

“I come from a LONG line of Holocaust survivors!”

Ben, like us, quite rightly wonders how a “long line” of that description is possible.

The random riffs — party-going lesbians introduce their daughter “Isis” (who had the name first), the cliched cellphone addict “Uber douche” customer (Colin Hanks), the therapist (Retta) announcing “Time’s up, aaaaand, I’m moving to Canada” — sting. The onstage stuff is worth a few giggles, the songs themselves forgettably wry ditties.

But when the guitars are unplugged and the amps turned off, the serious moments have bite, too.

It’s a scruffy, DIY “Let’s call our friends and make a movie” indie comedy, not a laugh-riot, but amusing and cutting and quirky, the sort of film that brightens up the bottom of the bill at film festivals.

Lister-Jones gives it gravitas and the universal wince of recognition among couples that fight. If Hollywood can’t find better roles for her than third banana to Zooey Deschanel, cutting her a tiny check and seeing what movie she can make of it promises to be a lot more entertaining and interesting.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with frank sexual situations, profanity
Cast: Zoe Lister-Jones, Adam Pally, Fred Armisen
Credits: Written and drected by Zoe Lister-Jones. An IFC release.
Running time: 1:34

When it comes to making a vampire movie that will stand out from the crowd, these days, the bar’s been set pretty high. Some of us–MOST of us — have seemingly seen it all.

What’s new under the sun, which no vampire can bask in because, well, you know?

“Aaron’s Blood” throws the hemophiliac son of a phlebotomist at us, so there’s at least the potential for a little novelty.

But there’s virtually no point to making the title character a professional bloodmobile nurse (James Martinez) in “Aaron’s Blood.” So little is made of this that you wonder which draft writer-director Tommy Stovall abandoned his original premise in.

We’re set up for a Dad, with access to gallons and gallons of blood, desperately trying to save his son’s life even as he works out how to “cure” him of this terminal/immortal “condition.” But the C-movie that he made delivers no desperation, no “inside track” knowledge or access, no “special skills” that Dad can use to spare Little Man Tate.

The kid (Trevor Stovall, you figure it out) is bullied at school, a dangerous fate for a boy whose blood won’t clot. His Dad, Aaron (Martinez) knows this better than anybody.

A broken nose, and Tate is in mortal danger. But something happened in the hospital. He gets well in an instant. He discovers he doesn’t need his glasses any more. And he’s got the strength to intimidate an army of bullies. If he can just remember to stay out of the sun, and maybe control that insatiable thirst.

Most of the players are better at physical acting than in delivering stilted line-readings. The problem really gets out of hand the further down the cast list you go.

But it is director Stovall (“Sedona,” “Hate Crime”) who knocks his movie utterly off the rails in one incredulously stupid scene.

Vampire hunters (Michael Chieffo, Michael Peach) show up, in the dark of night, to deal with the new blood-sucker in their little Arizona town.

“Just a guy trying to do the right thing,” one explains, double-bladed ax in hand.

Aaron interrupts their attempted beheading of his son, only to see the kid kill and feed off one of the intruders. Naturally, the other vampire hunter has sympathy for the killer and his father, leaves his ax with Aaron and — TOTALLY FORGETTING the friend/trusted colleague whom he’s just seen slaughtered and blood-sucked — leaves them be.

Stovall scripts several nightmare scenarios that Aaron experiences, and wakes up from — cheap tricks. He has the boy three steps ahead of his dad in figuring out what’s happening, and doesn’t do nearly enough with the boy’s new “condition” in addition to more or less forgetting dad’s special expertise. An 80 minute movie doesn’t leave much time for more telling scenes.

It’s a standard-issue vampire tale, with an all-explaining priest (David Castellvi), and no one we care about sparing from the fangs, or an eternal life of murder and corpse-draining. Its few novel touches aren’t enough to lift “Aaron’s Blood” into the realm of vampire-movie-worth-seeing.

MPAA Rating: Unrated, with graphic violence
Cast: James Martinez, Trevor Stovall, Farah White, Michael Chieffo, David Castellvi
Credits: Written and directed by Tommy Stovall. A Gravitas release.
Running time: 1:19

You read it here, first. There will NOT be another “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie. There’s a project listed on IMdb, supposedly Johnny Depp is on board. But “Dead Men Tell No Tales” should be the finish line or the 14 year long franchise.

As I said in my review, they summoned up just enough wit, heart and action to make this film their finale. Keira and Orlando make brief returns for a curtain call (Whoops, spoiler alert). And that’s that. Or should.

Disney will be satisfied with the worldwide ($250) opening numbers, but the US opening –– on Memorial Day weekend — is a well less than most of the franchise’s marks — about $60 million. Good, not “Let’s do this forever” good. Global will ensure this pricey picture finishes in the black. But it’s done, it’s time. Wake up and smell the rum, mateys.

Similarly, Ridley Scott and Fox have to stop milking the “Alien” cow. “Covenant” opened in the low end of expectations, and on its second weekend, just fell off the table. A nearly 70% “Tyler Perry Movie Second Weekend Plunge.” Ouch. I was in the reviewing  minority expressing zero shock, surprise or thrills at this rinse/wash/repeat bore. But audiences were with me. Done. No mas. Make something else your grand finale as a director, Sir Ridley.

“Baywatch” isn’t bombing, but it’s not blowing anybody out of the water, either. The reviews are drowning it, I dare say. Here’s one that could have been helped had critics thought it was a fun send up of a bad, jiggly TV show. It’s not funny, it’s violent and they got the tone wrong. They didn’t spend the money on the swimsuit side of the casting, and nobody wants to see it. $26 million over the weekend. Not awful, but bad.

That darned “Boss Baby” has one more weekend in the Top Ten, and will finish, as I have been predicting, in the $175 range. “Fate of the Furious” is still making money, another franchise that has run its course and then some. But there’s still money in that one.