This Week In Movies –‘The Other Guys,’‘Step Up 3D,’‘Middle Men’

By Pete Hammond HollywoodNews.com: Can Sony Pictures do no wrong this summer? Clearly it is the studio with the midas touch for the season. With no “Spider Man” in the lineup they have managed to deliver solid triples every time at bat even if they haven’t come near to a $200 or $300 + million dollar grosser like a “Toy Story 3”, “Twilight Saga: Eclipse” or “Iron Man” , all solid franchise blockbusters. Who needs only one giant hit when you can have five big ones instead to fill the pipeline. This weekend with the strong showing by the Will Ferrell comedy, “The Other Guys” which opened with a very sweet $35 million estimate, Sony continues a streak that began in June with the reboot of “The Karate Kid” ($150 ml and counting), Adam Sandler’s “Grown Ups” (ditto) and the action thriller , “Salt” (nearing $100 mil after just three weeks). Next Friday brings, “Eat Pray Love” , the must-see-Oprah-endorsed chick flick of the moment which is sure to continue the good times in Culver City. For every other studio it’s been hit and miss. Sure Universal had “Despicable Me” but it also has “Charlie St. Cloud”. Disney has “Toy Story 3” but there’s also “Prince Of Persia” and “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” underperforming. Warner Bros has “Inception” but the writedown has begun on “Jonah Hex” (Jonah who???) Paramount has done well worldwide with “Shrek Forever After” and opened “Dinner For Schmucks” nicely last weekend but suffered an OUCH 55% decline this weekend despite adding 93 screens, the same kind of steep drops “Last Airbender” also experienced. On the other hand Sony would appear to have diffused the inevitability of bombs by taking no risks. “Karate Kid” was based on a series of hit films, “Grown Ups” had Sandler and his star comedian buddies to bank on, “Salt” returned Angelina Jolie to the action genre , “The Other Guys” teamed Ferrell with Adam McKay his collaborator on hits like “Anchorman” and “Talladega Nights” and “Eat Pray Love” has a built in Best Seller and Julia Roberts back in the kind of female-friendly role that made her a star and is being released one year later on the same weekend as Sony opened another popular chick flick, Meryl Streep’s “Julie And Julia”. A surefire smash formula for commercial success, right? Not really. The last money-making “Karate [...]