All right, everybody calm down: the $68.5 million earned by Universal’s Meet the Fockers since last Wednesday is not an American tragedy. The first weekend is always about marketing, never the film. It’s about people being too lazy to read the reviews or, in this instance, to consider Dustin Hoffman’s referring to the film as “this thing.” (I ran this quote twice.) Always listen to words in passing…they always tell the tale. No one out there loves this film, everyone was disappointed, and it’s the big mega-movie of the moment. Ain’t that America?
