In baseball, no one — teammates, the manager, coaches, even broadcasters — is allowed to say anything when a pitcher has a no-hitter or a perfect game going. It’s considered a jinx.
So pointing out that “Bucky Larson: Born to be a Star” is working on a perfect game this morning will surely screw everything up. But with opening weekend in its rear-view mirror, “Bucky” has a perfect score of zero on the Tomatometer.
Granted, only 20 critics have weighed in so far. Sure as anything, some online genre specialist with the bar set extremely low will come in with a belated, damning-with-faint-praise review that will somehow be judged “Fresh” (i.e., positive).
But it hasn’t happened yet. And the likelihood of “Bucky” completing the feat should be enhanced by the fact that the total number of reviews has been depressed by the film not being screened in advance for critics.
One of those critics, the New York Times’ A.O. Scott, was lamenting the fact that he saw the movie after it opened against his better judgment. “This movie was not screened for critics, and I should have taken the hint,” he wrote, after noting, ”This may be the worst movie Pauly Shore has ever been in. Think about that.”
I’d rather not. But for the record, Shore has a cameo as himself, playing a host at a porn-awards ceremony. The title character, of course, is a buck-toothed simpleton who thinks he’s destined for stardom because his parents were porn stars, never mind the fact that he’s spectacularly under-equipped for the job.
The handful of mainstream critics who subjected themselves to “Bucky” weren’t any kinder than Scott. Some excerpts:
“…God-awful, unfunny, stinkingly putrid…” — Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News.
“About as funny as the typical scribbling on a public bathroom stall.” — Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter
“…An ugly movie to look at and a faintly nauseating one to sit through…” — Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel
“…A one-note joke played over and over and over.” — Kenneth Staskiewicz, Entertainment Weekly
In addition to the pursuit of perfection, the other encouraging note is that audiences didn’t go for it. The zero Tomatometer score may not last, but there’s no escaping box-office infamy. Boxofficemojo.com reported that the film made a pathetic $1.45 million on 1,500 screens over the weekend, making it the worst-grossing opening for any film with Adam Sandler’s name attached to it. (“Bucky” is a Happy Madison production, with Sandler serving as producer and co-screenwriter.)
For folks who don’t crunch box-office numbers (and there’s no reason you should, really), here’s how bad that was: “Bucky” placed 15th last weekend, behind even “The Smurfs,” which came out two months ago. And $1.45 million on 1,500 screens means that on average, there were eight people at any given screening. Eight.
The only thing that kept matters from being worse was “Creature,” a cheapo horror flick that opened on the same number of screens last weekend and made a microscopic $331,000 — the worst ever for a wide release.
But “Creature” opened last Friday with no advance publicity, no stars and no expectations. The same can’t be said of “Bucky,” which was heavily promoted. That PR campaign was so dumbed down, it basically told its target audience, ”Hey, stupid people. Have we got a movie for you!”
Obviously, folks are smarter than they think …