For a new section, I’m going to do the opposite of Why’d it Bomb? and look at movies that did much better at the box office than most people expected. I don’t think I’ll crank out as much of these as I do with Why’d it Bomb‘s, because I think most movies that were hits were movies people expected to do well, but I’ll definitely write a few of these.
A few years ago, Dreamworks was in a rut. Their movies, for the most part, were getting good reviews but most of them were flopping at the box office. Lately, though, their fortunes have been reversed and their movies have been doing better as of late. Two of these movies were Trolls and Boss Baby, both of which also looked awful and I have no interest in seeing either.
Though, if you were to ask me, I’d say Boss Baby looked like it would be the lesser of two evils. Trolls looked like the type of children’s movie you’d see as a parody of kids movies in other kids movies! It didn’t help that the plot looked similar to an episode of The Happy Little Elves. Boss Baby‘s biggest crime is that it looked like it was a one joke movie (and a joke that’s rather cliche to boot by this point!). Also, I’m not a fan of babies and I love puppies so a movie where babies were the good guys and puppies were the bad guys wasn’t going to appeal to me. However, I understood why Trolls did well. It had a really catchy hit song and the characters looked cute and cute attracts kids to the theater. Why do you think the Smurfs have lasted for so long?
But why did Boss Baby hold the #1 spot for two weeks and, even if it didn’t do gangbusters at the box office, has already doubled it’s budget in America alone?
3. Alec Baldwin’s surge in popularity
Mr. Baldwin has definitely been in the news as of late thanks to his popular Trump impression on Saturday Night Live. Luckily for Boss Baby, the trailer came out only a couple of days after he’d done an impression of Trump for the first time and, from what I remember, it seemed like it had gotten a lot of press mostly because of that. It also probably helped that the Boss Baby kind’ve looks like Trump, which might’ve attracted audiences into seeing something that looked like it would be an entire movie making fun of him (even though, from what I’ve heard, it really isn’t).
2. Some people thought it looked funny
If you looked at the comments about this movie on the internet, you’d think everyone and their mother was dreading this movie. But, at the time it was being promoted, I did overhear a few people (some with kids, some not) saying they thought it looked like a funny movie and that might have gotten people to come see it.
1. Not too much competition
Probably the biggest reason honestly. Kids and their families weren’t interested in Power Rangers or Ghost in the Shell and most of them had already seen Beauty and the Beast. Kong: Skull Island and Logan had also been out for a while and most people had already seen both. I don’t know the exact demographics of people who saw this movie but it was probably mostly kids and their parents and, because their wasn’t really any alternatives for them, most probably just picked this movie.
At the end of the day, while it was surprising to see this movie do well at the box office at all, we’ll all probably forget it by the end of the year. That being said, it definitely did better than I think people thought it would. Just, Dreamworks, don’t think that means we want to see Boss Baby 2, okay?
It totally seems like a spoof of the idea of Trump as President. Trump acts like a baby quite often, and here is the guy who impersonates Trump playing Trump, but as a baby!
This movie looks completely terrible. I have no desire to see it whatsoever, nor its already announced sequel.
Me neither. Only thing is, and I’m not trying to defend Boss Baby here, there is one huge difference between the baby and Trump, and that’s, judging from the previews, The Boss Baby seems more laidback, polite, and smooth than Trump is nowadays. In that way, it almost seems more like Alec Baldwin playing Jack Donaghy, but as a baby!