Several prognosticators predicted that the one-two punch of Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler co-starring in a romantic comedy would equal box office gold. Well, until the reviews started trickling in. When the dust settled, The Bounty Hunter had amassed a truly rotten score of 9% favorable reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. Ouch.

Despite that, the film made $2 1Million, good enough to place it in third place for the weekend. With a production budget of around $40 Million, it is way to early to call this a flop. $21 Million is a respectable opening weekend take.

The Red Queen and company from Alice in Wonderland continue to surprise everyone.Now in its third weekend in release, Alice is still bringing in some pretty big numbers. It dropped 45% over last weekend, for $34.5 Million, bringing its three week cumulative total to a fantastic $265 Million.

So what box-office star beat out Aniston for the number two spot? Would you believe nobody?  A cast of relative unknowns starred in Diary of  Wimpy Kid, which you probably have never heard of unless you happen to have elementary school-aged children.

It is a hot book franchise for those who run in the pre-tween circles, and apparently that was enough to buoy its box-office take.  Diary narrowly edged out The Bounty Hunter with $21.8 Million, but with a much more modest budget of $14 Million, it is already profitable.  There are plenty of books (4 already out, with plans for a fifth this year) to pillage for a franchise, too.

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Remakes and sequels are a dime a dozen. While Repo Men is neither of those, it bears incredible similarities with Repo! The Genetic Opera, a rock musical released in 2006. The films are very much the same in content and style, while the stories that they tell are very, very different.

Remy (Jude Law) seems like a normal guy. He’s got a wife and child, lives in a house in the suburbs, drives a fancy Volkswagon SUV. What isn’t so normal is Remy’s job. He repossess people’s artificial organs when they can’t afford their payments to The Union, the company that makes and finances the organs to people in need.

Anyone who becomes late with their payments is hunted down by The Union’s “repo men” and their artificial organs are repossessed, usually resulting in their immediate death. Remy and his partner Jake (Forest Whitaker) don’t mind being repo men, in fact they quite enjoy it. But when Remy’s wife decides maybe her husband should consider a career change, everything changes.

It’s hard to discuss this film’s plot without giving away the two major twists that make this film interesting, but I’ll just say that the Remy you meet in the beginning of the film is very, very different from the Remy at the end of the film. Think of Christian Bale’s character in Equilibrium as a comparison. Jude Law does a great job with this transformation, and Whitaker isn’t too shabby either.

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Many trailers these days follow a specific formula: send the audience in one direction, give them the twist, and show everybody in the film looking really, really cool. This formula is written on trailer editors bulletin boards. Sadly, that means that when it’s used incorrectly, the trailer, and in man cases the film, become a subject for ridicule.

This happens to be the case with the trailer for Jude Law and Forest Whitaker’s Repo Men. The film follows quite close to the premise of 2007′s Repo! A Genetic Rock Opera, without any of the singing, or Anthony Stewart Head. In this film, a conglomerate puts artificial organs on an open market for people to purchase on a payment plan. When those people can’t pay, the Repo Men step in to essentially “repossess the merchandise.”

The trailer does a pretty good job for the first 90 seconds or so, but then is subject for many shoulder shrugs and “really?!!?” exclamations towards the end. We’re all aware that Law and Whitaker aren’t known for their best picks in projects (I’m looking at you, Battlefield Earth and A.I.), but do we really need a sci-fi thriller-turned-action-blowout from the two actors?

It just doesn’t seem like the best use of their talents. Like Helen Mirren playing the Bride of Frankenstein. We all know she could do it, but is it necessary?

Check out the red band trailer for yourself after the jump, and see how the preview does it justice on April 2nd, when Repo Men hits theaters.

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