Right, wrong mix
That is what is called major-league buzz -- when even grandmothers are going to see a movie whose target audience is 19-year-old boys. Still, the biggest surprise for me was that Warner made the movie in the first place. Studio chairman Alan Horn, who frequently nudges filmmakers into getting rid of unnecessarily foul language, casual sex and cigarette smoking, is famous for his squeamishness when it comes to raunchy comedy. When I got him on the phone Monday I teased him, asking him how it felt to have such a big hit with a movie that must've made him hold his nose when he was pressing the greenlight button.
"OK, I admit that the film did make me a little squeamish," Horn said with a laugh, "On the other hand, I'd like to think I'm a little more open-minded than I was a couple of years ago. But give all the credit for this to [Warner Bros. Pictures Group President] Jeff Robinov. It was Jeff and his troops who got [director] Todd Phillips involved, allowed the movie to be R-rated and let Todd make the movie he wanted to make. Having worked with Todd on 'Starsky & Hutch' I knew he was a funny guy and had a lot of confidence in his comic instincts. But Jeff really ran point on this. He's my partner in the filmmaking process, and I think it's appropriate that our movies reflect his sensibility. He clearly knew what he was doing."
It would be hard to say the same thing about Universal and Ferrell's experience with "Land of the Lost." The movie's disastrous opening had to come as an especially cruel blow to Ferrell, since Phillips -- the man who directed the film that walloped him -- was the man who made Ferrell a star with "Old School." In a way, you could say that Ferrell was in the wrong movie, since Ferrell's biggest successes have been in outrageous comedies like "Old School," "Talladega Nights" and "Blades of Glory," films with essentially the same ingredients as "The Hangover."
As one rival studio marketer put it: "Will got creamed by a movie from the genre he helped popularize -- the R-rated stupid-guy comedy. It helped that it had a great title, but anyone who saw one TV spot knew what 'The Hangover' was supposed to be. No one ever knew what 'Land of the Lost' was going for. Was it supposed to be scary -- or was it supposed to be stupid? The end result was neither fish nor fowl, a family movie with a scary dinosaur and a movie star best known for frat-boy humor. It was a bad mix."
