Powerpoint: Why the Kiwi b.o. stinks

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

It's the $9 million question. No, not how possibly can the Charlie's Angels movie be any good? But why is the New Zealand cinema box office down that amount from last year?

The previous 10 years had seen rises and last year between January and October, Kiwi film-goers spent $101,500,000 going to the movies. But this year they've spent 9 per cent less.

We have a theory or two of our own. But first the "official" version which made the news after the Motion Picture Distributors Association released the figures with their explanation for the slump.

It's those new-fangled DVD things, apparently. The ones parallel-imported straight to your neighbourhood video store. So by the time some films show up at the local multiplex, DVD queue-jumpers have already seen them. Just wait until the DVD-compatible PlayStation 2, say the MPDA, then we'll really be in trouble, and some provincial theatres already are.

Oh, and said MPDA president Robert Crockett, the lowering of the drinking age and the net have affected ticket sales too.

Of course the MPDA is making noises to hold the Government to its election promise to close the parallel-importing window. But you might wonder, how can parallel-imported DVD account for a $9 million dip in business?

So, a couple of our answers to the $9 million question. First the simple ones: There's been no mega-movie in 2000 like a Titanic or Phantom Menace to get the Kiwi box office over the $100 million mark. And how about those Olympics, huh?

Here's the more complicated but more obvious one — movies got worse. People noticed.

We're talking about a specific type of film — the big films of the American summer, the big-star, big-dollar grabbers.

Proof? Well, there's been plenty of American commentators that have said movie-wise in the US, summer never really started. Lacklustre box office figures there back it up.

This was the season, remember, of The Perfect Storm (the shallowest of films about a deepwater disaster), Gone in 60 Seconds (a car theft flick stuck in first), Hollow Man (wow, now that I'm invisible, I can grope women), Dinosaur (yes dear, I'm sure if they talked, they may well have avoided extinction. Eat your greens) Bless The Child (Kim Basinger is the second coming's Aunty), Rules of Engagement (Uncle Sam Wants You. To shoot some Arabs), What Lies Beneath (look, Harrison Ford nearly moved in that scene), Coyote Ugly (Yo barmaid, once you finished dancing up there can I get two more Girlpower cocktails please), and The Patriot (Lethal Musket 2: Revolution).

Yes it wasn't all a winter of multiplex discontent, it was also the season of the rip-roaring M:I2, The X-Men, and Gladiator. And it was open season on big-grossing comedy grossness with Me Myself and Irene, Nutty Professor 2, Scary Movie, and Road Trip.

But if the thing that most persuades people to see a movie is word of mouth, then only a few titles opened with a bang and sustained it after the front-end hype and the reviews were in.

Just five films this year so far — The World is Not Enough and Double Jeopardy last summer, then Stuart Little, Erin Brockovich and Gladiator — sustained longer than two weeks in the top spot at the NZ box office. There were 12 one-week wonders, among them some fine movies (American Beauty), and some (like The Whole Nine Yards ) which just make you wonder: who the hell rushed out to see that?

Now nerdy, anecdotal evidence: The average star ratings (out of five) for all the 60 or so mainstream movies we reviewed in the Herald between January and October 1999 were just under three. For the same period this year they're 2.5. Yeah, yeah what do jaded critics know anyway?

Basically this. We know we like movies, good ones, original ones, funny ones, spectacular ones, sexy ones, ones with stories (could the MPDA also blame the slump on Harry Potter?) and movies with developed characters who aren't just there to make the special effects look big (see: The Perfect Storm. Or don't).

These aren't high-minded ideals. Just the stuff that folks are entitled to when they pay their $11 for a movie ticket. Or for that matter, when they rent a DVD, however it got here.