All hail the rise of Jaden, the 11-year-old Smith of the Will and Jada Smiths, whose version of The Karate Kid nabbed an estimated $56 million this weekend to take first place at the box office. The reboot of the classic 1984 kids' movie played well to families and vastly overperformed, Sony says, and sequel buzz is all over the Net. Which is sort of funny, given that the '80s reboot that openly sought to become a shiny new franchise wasn't Smith's but Bradley Cooper's.
The stubbly, lanky star of The A-Team wasn't enough to carry the movie to a big opening; it bowed in second place with an estimated $26 million. (Yes, that's a $30 million margin between first and second place.) And the disappointing haul is perhaps part deux of summer's emerging wisdom that the sensitive funny guy doesn't always make the best action lead. Cooper has seen strong box-office performance with comedy (The Hangover, Wedding Crashers) and romantic comedy (He's Just Not That Into You). But action? Survey says "meh." The film's $110 million production budget further dwarfs its take, and with the World Cup in full swing, The A-Team's overseas potential looks grim.
But perhaps best not to pin the movie's underperformance on Cooper, and chalk it up instead to the much-discussed Iraq War effect. Even when a film's tone is lighter and more comedic, as with The A-Team, it seems audiences still don't click with categorizing Iraq War vets as diverting, leisure-time characters. For a better '80s revival, Twentieth Century Fox should've shunned the TV action series and gone with the Truffle Shuffle: this past week marked the 25th anniversary of The Goonies, and thousands of tourists flocked to the cult-classic movie's small-town Oregon setting to celebrate. Hey, you guuu-uuuys: maybe there're some legs in this one.
