Family-Friendly Movies Beat Star Power at Box Office
By Movieguide® Contributor
HERE’s poor opening at the box office proves that not even a renowned star like Tom Hanks can save an excessive movie when audiences want family-friendly content.
The movie is ambitious as it takes place shooting from the same camera angle until the very end of the movie. Furthermore, Tom Hanks, and his wife in the story, played by Robin Wright, are aged and de-aged throughout the movie through the use of AI to span them being teenagers through octogenarians. A strong plot, however, does not back the ambitious storytelling, which has led to a box office flop.
“This is a weak opening ($5 million) for an original drama,” David A. Gross, who runs the movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research, told Variety. “To work, this kind of story needs to connect emotionally and powerfully. In this case, the audience isn’t moved and there isn’t enough to recommend.”
More importantly, the movie also features content that no longer has a large audience. Seven of the top 10 movies this year, so far, are aimed at family audiences, whereas excessive and abhorrent movies continue to fail. HERE, unfortunately, fell into that trap and told a story without redeemable elements. A portion of Movieguide®’s review reads:
The problem is, HERE has a strong humanist and secular, perhaps even shallow, worldview. It focuses on the materialist, everyday and psychological facets of life rather than its purpose or meaning. As such, the movie ignores or even neglects the spiritual or deeply philosophical and moral aspects of life. Thus, there are no really uplifting, positive references to God, Jesus or the Bible, but there are eight strong profanities blaspheming God and Jesus. HERE also seems to have some politically correct elements. As such, it seems to have negative views of modern American, capitalist life, the police treatment of black people, and race relations in America. It also has a politically correct feminist subtext where Richard’s wife Margaret and her spirit are stifled by his lack of ambition. She hates living in the same house with his parents for so many years and never going anywhere, and she eventually leaves him to explore the world and what it has to offer.
READ MORE: HERE REVIEW
While Hollywood continues to believe that excessive movies are the most successful, more and more examples continue to pile up showing that uplifting, family-friendly stories perform the best, while stories with other elements often flop.
In recent years, movies like THE WILD ROBOT, WONKA, THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVI, and PUSS IN BOOT: THE LAST WISH, for example, have all found extreme success while catering to family audiences.
READ MORE: WILD ROBOT’S MASSIVE SUCCESS PROVES THIS
