“From Food Court to Box Office”
Hey, we’ve been tracking this for days now here and especially here, so I guess it’s fair to say that we scooped the New York Times, who are just now getting on the mall cop express:
At the end of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, the Columbia Pictures comedy “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” surprised Hollywood by opening at №1 at the box office, taking in $39.2 million in its first four days of release. That figure places the movie, which stars the rotund comedian Kevin James as a clumsy guard, in the category of bona fide hit, particularly in the cinematically fallow month of January. In April, Seth Rogen (of “Knocked Up” and “Pineapple Express”) will assume the role of retail protector in the Warner Brothers comedy “Observe and Report,” in which he plays a frustrated mall cop who must team up with a high-strung detective (played by the “Goodfellas” star Ray Liotta).
And last week, the Fox network ordered a pilot episode for “Walorsky,” a television comedy about a former police officer turned shopping mall guard who is charged with training a new recruit.
It’s a freaking mall cop tsunami! And we even nailed one of the big reasons why Paul Blart: Mall Cop succeeded. See if you can guess from the quote below:
For Mr. James (who wrote “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” with Nick Bakay), the shopping mall was another setting to play the hapless every-dunce character he refined on the CBS sitcom “King of Queens” (on which he played a driver for a UPS-like delivery service) and film comedies like “Hitch” and “I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry.”
“I don’t think it really dwelled on the psyche of a mall cop so much,” said Jeff Blake, chairman for worldwide marketing and distribution for Sony, the parent of Columbia Pictures. “It allowed Kevin to really be the sympathetic underdog in the story, and that really was the winning formula.”
Did you pick it up? Let’s try that again, this time with emphasis added:
“I don’t think it really dwelled on the psyche of a mall cop so much,” said Jeff Blake, chairman for worldwide marketing and distribution for Sony, the parent of Columbia Pictures. “It allowed Kevin to really be the sympathetic underdog in the story, and that really was the winning formula.”
And what did I say here?
So what does the movie do for the first half-hour plus? It spends almost all that time establishing the Protagonist’s character, specifically driving home again and again and again why we, the viewer, should feel sympathy for Paul Blart.
Okay, that’s it. I am now proclaiming myself the official Seer of Hwood!
The best comment in the NY Times article is this:
Some in the retail industry did not know whether they should be flattered by the many film and television projects dedicated to mall officers.
“I don’t know, Hollywood, do they need three of them?” said Malachy Kavanagh, a communications executive for the International Council of Shopping Centers, a trade group. “I guess there’s no original ideas there.” He added that while mall cops perform vital functions, like helping parents search for lost children, they were also capable of laughing at themselves.
“Everybody can take a joke,” he said. “Who’d go see a movie that portrayed real life?”
“I guess there’s no original ideas there.” Yes, Mr. Malachy Kavanagh of the International Council of Shopping Centers! You are absolutely right: There are no original ideas in Hwood. And guess what? 20 years from now, Hwood will remake Paul Blart: Mall Cop.
Thus sayeth the Seer of Hwood!
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go backdate some blogposts wherein I forecast the next hot trend will be movies set in India involving a love affair and a nationally televised game show.