ITS ON. THE race to the bottom to determine this island’s most low-fallutin’ region is off to a big start for 2012.
We were sure that The ROI had mustered an insurmountable lead late last month, when it delivered a €185,170 opening weekend take for The Sitter, thereby knocking War Horseoff the top spot. Elsewhere, across the rest of the UK/Malta/ ROI nexus, the pony triumphed. But the citizens of the Republic just can't say no to Jonah Hill in an underground gay gym. Fact.
Well, never count against the North. NI just got back in the race with a big No 1 weekend for Jack and Jill. Last weekend, ROI residents put another €237,261 towards a €806,154 running total for The Descendants, placing the latest Clooney joint at the top of the chart for a second week. Jack and Jillonly managed a poor second with €168,192.
Mind you, the ROI weren't all that far behind. The ROI, you'll recall, officially transferred all affections once reserved for moving statues onto Adam Sandler films with the release of I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larryin 2007. Stack all the euro that Grown Upsmade here and they go past the sun and on to other galaxies.
Box office lessons learned: in Ireland, nothing gets past George Clooney’s cargo pants.
At least The ROI are still in the Sandler Love race. Last weekend, the UK looked pretty foolish when they opted for the well-reviewed, ass-kicking Chronicle over the available gross-out comedies.
They may plead special circumstances: a discrepancy between our school holidays left a surfeit of mid-term marauding teens on their streets, and The Sitterdid split the vote a little. But the rest of us mongrels have our suspicions: they just don't love Adam Sandler in a blonde wig like we do.
They lag behind, too, on the Alvin question. Regular chart watchers might note the rodent still pulling in top-10 business, eight weeks after release, on both sides of our Border. Last weekend Chipwreckedtook €50,688 (€34,018 down here; £13,836 up there) in Ireland, bringing its all-Ireland tally to a whopping €2,567,357.
The other big cross-Border success story is The Grey. The thrilling survival film in which Liam Neeson goes loco on lupines has made €295,761 in the ROI and is estimated to have done around 18 per cent of its trade on our rock. It's a good result but it should be better. Taken, a fun but infinitely weaker Neeson vehicle, yielded better numbers and more golden proportions.
And crucially, in stark contrast to The Grey, it wasn't the single most Irish-American film ever made. This is a movie in which guys swap stories about faith, Catholic guilt and Pogues-grade mawkish vignettes about family. It features Liam Neeson saying things like "I'm going to start beating the shit out of you in a minute" in a Ballymena accent. And it's a better remake of The Thingthan, well, The Thing.
The Greyought to have been one of the biggest films in the history of the peninsula, but it wasn't press-screened for Irish critics, and there's only so much magic that word of mouth can do. Do the director and star know?
