There are a lot of sad Christmas faces around 20th Century Fox this week. “Stuck on You” was figured to be an automatic $100 million dollar film. The Farrelly brothers comedy staring Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear was given a lot of hype and was expected to play respectably against the Christmas competition. However, grim reality is the only thing they found in their stockings. After 2 weeks in release, Stuck on You has only pulled in close to $17 million and it will be lucky if it breaks $40 million when all is said and done.
The audience and critics both seem to think that this is a decent film, so why the poor results? One obvious answer is Lord of the Rings: Return of the King which hogged most of the box office with almost $125 million in its first week. But with “Something’s Gotta Give” pulling in $33 million in the same 2 week period as “Stuck” the other problem that becomes obvious is marketing. I thought the ads for this film were just lame, and didn’t at all entice me to go out and see it despite the fact that I’m a Damon and Kinnear fan. It will be interesting to see how the film does over the next few weeks.