In this campaign season, what can we learn from the performances of An American Carol and Religulous?
The easy conclusion is that audiences aren’t real keen on such aggressively political material, with the two movies finishing ninth and 10th, respectively, in the weekend’s overall box office. The second easy conclusion is that conservatives are slightly hungrier for entertainment than people who don’t like religion.
Neither is correct.
While these two movies brought up the rear here in box office, at least they finished in the top 10, unlike fellow new releases Blindness, Flash of Genius, and How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. All of those opened in more theaters than Religulous, and all but Flash of Genius opened in more than An American Carol.
As for the conservative and whatever-Bill-Maher-is divide, Religulous had the second-best per-theater average in the top 10. An American Carol did better only than Burn After Reading, which had been out for three weekends.
Critics were far kinder to Maher’s anti-religion documentary than the the proudly conservative satire of David Zucker, which garnered worse reviews than anything else in our rankings. That might mean that movie critics hate God and conservatives.
Add it all up and it appears that pandering to right-wingers isn’t enough; they wanted something better than An American Carol.
Continue reading for the methodology and the week’s full rankings.
Burnt Toast