As reviews go, they were dire. "Tepid", "pretentious", "tedious", "self-indulgent" were just some of the critics' verdicts on By the Sea, a marital drama released earlier this month in the US and earning just $300,000 to date. This represented a huge loss given its reported budget of $10 million, a figure that industry insiders put at nearer $40 million owing to its long shoot in Malta.
Who could be responsible for such a mammoth flop? Only Angelina Jolie, the highest-paid actress in Hollywood (not to mention honorary Dame of the British Empire for her charity work), who wrote, directed and starred in the film alongside her husband, and father of her six children, Brad Pitt.
Despite its double starpower, the film has so far performed even worse than that other famous folies-a-deux Swept Away, directed by Guy Ritchie and starring his then-wife Madonna, or Gigli, starring the then-betrothed Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck.
Yet if you examine Jolie's record, the disaster seems less surprising. For someone so famous, whose estimated $33 million salary for her last starring role made her the only woman in Hollywood's top 10 earners, Jolie, 40, has had few film hits.
Of these, the greatest was last year's Maleficent, in which she played Sleeping Beauty's evil fairy. The film made $758 million worldwide, but this is arguably more down to its familiar, child-friendly content than the star.
Her next-biggest hit was 2009's Mr and Mrs Smith. It was poorly reviewed but audiences flocked, possibly in the knowledge that it was during the shoot that she fell for her co-star Pitt - then married to Jennifer Aniston.
Apart from that, Jolie's biggest box-office triumphs have involved voice-overs for Kung Fu Panda and A Shark's Tale and the 2001 film Lara Croft, Tomb Raider in which she played the eponymous Croft in head-to-toe black latex. Even Girl, Interrupted, the film that, in 1999, won her a best supporting actress Oscar for her performance as a mental-hospital patient, made only a paltry $28 million. (By way of comparison, Jennifer Lawrence has starred in hit after hit in the last few years, yet her highest salary to date is the $20 million she secured for the forthcoming sci-fi film Passengers.)
Jolie's directing career is shorter, but even less stellar. Her first outing, In the Land of Blood and Honey, about the Bosnian war, made only $300,000, but is thought to have cost about $13 million to make. Her second, last year's Unbroken, made a respectable $118 million in the US but flopped internationally, was lukewarmly reviewed and - despite huge hype - received only a few Oscar technical nominations. As the critic Tom Socca observed in 2014: "You could write a comprehensive history of the past 20 years of American popular cinema without mentioning a single Angelina Jolie film."
The Rescuers
The Rescuers Down Under
The Great Mouse Detective
The Sword in the Stone
Oliver & Company
A Goofy Movie
The Emperor’s New Groove
I love B-list Disney.
"The Land Before Time," "An American Tail," and "Thumbelina" from Don Bluth kind of destroys every
B-list Disney movie (and a few A-list Disney movies, like "A Frog Princess," lol) on your list, though.
Is this Maria? I remember her. She tried to commit suicide when Mariah had her breakdown to get into the same psych ward as Mariah. She was a bit insane and banned from all the Mariah forums back in the day for trying to steal some of Mariah's hair with a scissors during meet and greets.
Is this Maria? I remember her. She tried to commit suicide when Mariah had her breakdown to get into the same psych ward as Mariah. She was a bit insane and banned from all the Mariah forums back in the day for trying to steal some of Mariah's hair with a scissors during meet and greets.
"The Land Before Time," "An American Tail," and "Thumbelina" from Don Bluth kind of destroys every
B-list Disney movie (and a few A-list Disney movies, like "A Frog Princess," lol) on your list, though.
...Vin
Ok but where's An American Tail: Fievel Goes West in your list?
It's actually a better love story about two straight males than The Shawshank Redemption.
