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Top Movies: Mediocre Kids Flicks

Inexplicably, the top movies of the year are average-quality kids animated films

What in the heck are we paying (or not paying) to watch in movie theaters this year?

The biggest movie of the past two weeks is the animated kids film called Rio that isn’t even from Disney or DreamWorks and which only got above-average reviews. We’ve spent $84 million on it in just two weekends.

The top movie of the year so far is the animated movie called Rango ($120 million), which had far less glowing reviews. It’s one of only three movies so far this year that has grossed more than $100 million. One of the others is another animated kids film called Hop. Close in fourth is the British animated kids movie Gnomeo and Juliet with $98.3 million.

Including Rio, four of the top six movies are animated kids films. (Perhaps more notable, three of the top six, including Gnomeo, Rio and The Green Hornet are all in 3D.) The Green Hornet was almost universally panned.

Last year at this time there were five movies that had grossed more than $100 million, including three – Alice in Wonderland, How to Train Your Dragon, and Clash of the Titans (all in 3D) -- that went on to gross far more than this year’s topper Rango.

I’m not sure what to make of all this other than it appears that we moviegoers are not going to as much--perhaps because there have been few quality offerings--but when we do go, we are not being very selective at all when it comes to movies we take our kids to see. Lucky for us that in Arcadia, there are a lot of things to do besides going to the movies. 

Read more by Scott Hettrick at ArcadiasBest.com.

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