Ten Past Midnight

Well, Paul Feig is back. The creator of Freaks and Geeks has a new movie coming out, Unaccompanied Minors. However, I fear he has a flop on his hands. The problem? The title. A terrible title. It's being called Grounded over in the UK, and it's obvious somebody over there has a little more brains. Warner Brothers (right now the last-place studio...with hair-brained decisions like this it's not hard to see why) has been marketing the movie towards small children, but they've given the movie a title that they can't even pronounce or understand. And I don't think they're playing up the cast enough, especially with the large fanbase that Wilmer Valderrama (That 70's Show) has. Even worse for Feig, I fear that there might actually be a good movie hidden under all of the marketing bullshit. It's based on a true story, which essayist Susan Burton recounted on NPR's "This American Life" a few years back, and the cast is great. Sadly, it looks like another flop for Feig, whose 2003 film I Am David bombed, grossing just $284,000 on a $25 million budget. Since then, he's gone back to TV-land, directing episodes of The Office and Arrested Development, which was a good fit for him and is probably where he should stay. Of course, we wouldn't even be having this conversation if Warners would just call the movie Grounded.