Don’t you just love the American public? More specifically, the moviegoers (let’s just say it — those really deep women out there who read the tabs and are total fools for the Brangelina mythology) who just had to see the thoroughly rancid Mr. and Mrs. Smith to the tune of $51.1 million last weekend, and thereby rewarded director Doug Liman and stars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie for making the biggest piece of shit of their careers?? (Variety said that “boosting Smith were older femme adults, who don’t usually turn out for actioners but do read the celeb weeklies and watch tabloid TV chronicling the are-they-or-aren’t-they star pairing.”) Let’s just be happy that the Smith success makes it that much easier for the next grossly expensive big-studio piece of shit to get greenlit. And also that all of those wise and perceptive American moviegoers (most of them under 35, I’m guessing) also decided to blow off Cinderella Man last weekend (it was down 48% from the previous weekend). The story of Jim Braddock is basically a corpse now, just waiting to get picked up and carried out of theatres because so many millions of American moviegoers didn’t show up over…what? Russell Crowe’s phone-throwing episode? Because Ron Howard’s boxing film is too quality-skewed to compete in the mindless summer season? Because Univeral didn’t push the family angle heavily enough in the ads? A good movie is a good movie, darnitall, and every indication is that those who’ve seen Cinderellla Man really like and speak well of it. It just doesn’t add up that a movie as worthy and emotionally effective as this one would just stumble and run out of gas like this.