Sex? Nah. Explosions? Nope. Guess it won't be a hit movie

TERESA ISASI / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Enlarge Image 

Nia Vardalos, left, and Alexis Georgoulis in My Life in Ruins. A huge ad budget may not have helped its box office results.

Don't cry for Nia Vardalos. Just because her new movie tanked at the weekend box office, it does not mean her life is in ruins.

The Winnipeg-born-and-raised actress is a feisty gal. If you don't believe me, see her Huffington Post blog from Monday evening where she defends her film's performance and accuses certain Hollywood studios of deciding to stop making "female-lead movies."

My Life in Ruins, as corny a romantic comedy as you are likely to find, opened at No. 9 at North American theatres, earning US$3.2 million.

In top spot was the male gross-out comedy The Hangover, also in its first weekend, which earned $45 million.

Given that hit films tend to open in the top two or three slots, it's clear that My Life in Ruins has a rocky road ahead of it.

But as Vardalos argues on her blog, what else could you expect? She had access to many fewer screens than the big boys, and an indie film (picked up by a smallish distributor, Fox Searchlight) lacks the marketing clout of a major studio release.

"We had an advertising budget of about six bucks, Canadian," she writes. "We don't have billboards, or giant newspaper ads, or skywriting."

She's been going the viral route, Twittering, posting homemade videos on YouTube and "blabbing to anyone who makes eye contact with me."

Check her YouTube spot where she confesses to having a real-life affair with her co-star Alexis Georgoulis, the Rambo look-alike who plays the hairy bus driver.

It's very funny. Funnier than the movie, actually. (My wife and I saw it on the weekend, and to be fair, she enjoyed it more than I.)

The truth, of course, is that a huge advertising budget would not have made a big difference to the opening weekend of an old-fashioned film like My Life in Ruins.

For decades now, movies that open strongly are almost always special-effects-driven action films and vulgar comedies -- in short, movies aimed at teenaged boys.

Which demographic has the time and money to rush out to see a movie on its first weekend? Largely, it's people aged 15-30.

And if they're going to pay for a movie, they want added value to what they get on television. To the youthful mind, this translates to sex, violence, foul language and big explosions (though it must be said the first three are turning up more and more on TV).

My Life in Ruins, meanwhile, is a chick flick for middle-aged chicks. They like the travelogue scenes, the teary-eyed shtick with Richard Dreyfuss and the Harlequin Romance-like ending.

If it is going to find that audience, it will do so in its video and premium cable incarnations, probably in the late fall.

Its budget was a reported $17.2 million, peanuts by Hollywood standards, so it doesn't need an immense audience to break even.

Vardalos's breakout film, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, earned US$370 million worldwide, according to the esteemed online source boxofficemojo.com.

No wonder she's been given another vehicle, even after a failed TV series and disappointing follow-up movie, the chick buddy flick Connie and Carla.

Vardalos herself is 46, and how many 46-year-old women get leading roles in youth-obsessed Hollywood?

Speaking parochially for a second, may I ask this? Can you think of another Winnipeg-born actor who has managed to carry an American movie?

There were Deanna Durbin and Anna Paquin, of course, but both these actresses left well before they could think of themselves as Winnipeggers. Monty Hall, Len Cariou, and David Steinberg, who've all enjoyed impressive U.S. showbiz careers, have not been movie stars as such.

Whatever happens with My Life in Ruins, Vardalos will stay in the ring. Despite her cuddly screen persona, she is obviously a driven woman and she'll live to fight another day.

morley.walker@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 10, 2009 D3