Another weekend, another “woke” comedy — this time Stuber — bites the box offices dust.
What, you mean Americans aren’t interesting in paying $12 for a lecture about the dangers of toxic masculinity?
Go on!
Rather than simply make us laugh, rather than have the decency and graciousness to show us a good time, according to its own stars, Stuber’s true purpose was to wag its finger at the left’s latest bogeymen… masculinity.
Yep, because the men who fight the wars and truck the products and extract the heating oil and unclog the toilets and keep our streets safe and deport the illegal aliens — they are the problem.
“I feel like we’re in a time where we can talk about masculinity and how it’s always been very traditionally defined in a narrow way and how that’s led to problems for everyone for women and for men,” Stuber co-star Kumail Nanjiani told the far-left Hollywood Reporter.
“I felt like it would be interesting to try to talk about that stuff in a traditionally very masculine genre. A buddy cop action-comedy is such a dude movie, so we thought it would be interesting to talk about dude issues that also affect the whole world, in a traditionally male genre,” he added.
And then his co-star jumped in with a top selling point:
“Throughout the film, we’re constantly talking about it. Sometimes you don’t realise it because we’re making you laugh or disguising it with action, but we really do have the discussion throughout the film,” he said.
Hey, where do I get in line for a comedy that is “constantly” lecturing about what the left claims is a social problem, when we all know that this whole “toxic masculinity” crusade is just a ruse to sucker good looking women into dating those bearded male feminists who can’t wait to treat them like a piece of meat.
Anyway, on a whopping 3050 screens, Stuber opened to just $8 million this weekend.
Lol.
The production budget for this loser is around $16 million, but the promotion costs probably nudged that closer to $40 million, which means this sucker’s gunna lose a ton of money.
Lol.
The premise was actually a good one, sort of a comedic riff on Michael Mann’s Collateral, where an Uber driver (Nanjiani) gets mixed up with an aggressive cop (Bautista) who needs his help in catching a drug dealer.
That actually sounds promising, like it could be a lot of fun; a perfect premise — you know, a buddy comedy filled with car chases, male bonding, gunfights, fist fights, and real laughs.
That’s a movie I want to see. Man alive, I miss action comedies. Throw in some gratuitous T&A and I’ll buy the Blu-ray.
But who wants to pay $12 to be lectured to about “toxic masculinity” by a couple of Hollywood jerk-offs who carry their penises in a murse?
Obviously, no one.
And so, what we have here is one more example of how “woke” is killing the box office, most especially comedy.
Booksmart, Longshot, The Hustle, What Men Want, Poms, Late Night… all woke, all bombed.
And now you can add Stuber to that list.
Naturally, the butt-kissers in the entertainment media will never-ever-ever add up two-and-two. Instead, here are all the words Deadline uses to explain Stuber’s box office death:
The creative campaign for Stuber, like Dark Phoenix, was uninspiring and mailed-in, with the initial one-sheets showing a close-up shot of stars Dave Bautista and Kumail Nanjiani. Also, a big factor missing: What the hell does Stuber mean? The campaign never really transmitted that: Nanjiani is a guy named Stu, who drives an Uber. It would help to incorporate that. There was a premiere of Stuber at SXSW days before the Disney-Fox merger in mid-March, but, no, this movie wasn’t Baby Driver.
Noted RelishMix about the social chatter for Stuber:“Moviegoers just aren’t getting the joke, particularly with big man Bautista as the star instead of the more Drax/sidekick role. This contingent gives the impression that other comedies have let them down recently, or that this mix of ‘one wild ride’ with the ride share premise just doesn’t do it for them.”
One could argue that Bautista and Nanjiani aren’t leading stars, that they’re just supporting players, but in all fairness, this was their opportunity to graduate to leading-man status. It just stinks that Stuber is in a situation where the film has been taken over and left to wither by another studio.
I’m just going to keep typing words until I run out of words because I need a lot of words to write around the real problem which I don’t have the moral courage to mention or to even hide within all these words because I don’t want to be blacklisted and telling the truth will get me blacklisted so I am going to keep writing the words I am expected to write and here are some more words and a few more and even more.
Okay, I made that last paragraph up.
There is, though, one point in all those words that makes the least amount of sense. Bautista and Nanjiani are not stars, but they are also not no-names. Nanjiana just had a modest hit with The Big Sick and Bautista co-stars in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, one of the biggest in the universe.
So how can Deadline explain away Stuber’s $8 million when a number of titles, with less promotion and smaller names, did so much better. Escape Room had no stars and no serious promotional push and still it opened in January to $18 million and eventually grossed $57 million — which is probably three times where Stuber will land.
Explain Five Feet Apart, which opened to $13 million, or Breakthrough, which opened to $11 million.
The box office chart is filled with titles starring nobodies that didn’t rate glowing Hollywood Reporter profiles of its metrosexual stars pontificating against toxic masculinity.
Anyway, this is Hollywood’s worst box office performance in three years.
America doesn’t hate you, Hollywood.
We’re just hating you back.
There’s a difference.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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